he _making war upon_ or _despoiling of
hell_,[16] for which the authority is a passage in the Gospel of
Nicodemus, full of a certain florid Eastern grandeur. I need hardly
remind my readers that the Apostles' Creed, as it now stands, contains
the same legend in the form of an article of faith. The allusions to it
are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.

The soul of Christ comes to the gates of hell, and says:

Undo your gates of sorwatorie; _place of sorrow._
On man's soul I have memorie;
There cometh now the king of glory,
These gates for to breke!
Ye devils that are here within,
Hell gates ye shall unpin;
I shall deliver man's kin--
From woe I will them wreke. _avenge._

* * * * *

Against me it were but waste
To holdyn or to standyn fast;
Hell-lodge may not last
Against the king of glory.
Thy dark door down I throw;
My fair friends now well I know;
I shall them bring, reckoned by row,
Out of their purgatory!

_The Burial; The Resurrection; The Three Maries; Christ appearing to
Mary; The Pilgrim of Emmaus; The Ascension; The Descent of the Holy
Ghost; The Assumption of the Virgin_; and _Doomsday_, close the series. I
have quoted enough to show that these plays must, in the condition of the
people to whom they were presented, have had much to do with their
religious education.

This fourteenth century was a wonderful time of outbursting life.
Although we cannot claim the _Miracles_ as entirely English products,
being in all probability translations from the Norman-French, yet the
fact that they were thus translated is one remarkable amongst many in
this dawn of the victory of England over her conquerors. From this time,
English prospered and French decayed. Their own language was now, so far,
authorized as the medium of religious instruction to the people, while a
similar change had passed upon processes at law; and, most significant of
all, the greatest poet of the time, and one of the three greatest poets
as yet of all English time, wrote, although a courtier, in the language
of the people. Before selecting some of Chaucer's religious verses,
however, I must speak of two or three poems by other writers.

The first of these is _The Vision of William concerning Piers
Plowman_,--a poem of great influence in the same direction as the
writings of Wycliffe. It is a vision and an allegory, wherein the