It is a fact no less lamentable than remarkable, that out of the lessons
appointed by the Church of Rome for the feast of the Assumption, to be
read to believers assembled in God's house of prayer, three of those
lessons are selected and taken entirely from this very oration of John
Damascenus[118].

[Footnote 118:

The Fourth Lesson begins "Hodie sacra et animata arca."
The Fifth " " "Hodie virgo immaculata."
The Sixth " " "Eva quæ serpentis," &c.--Æ. 603.

These contain the passages to which we have before referred as
fixing the belief of the Church of Rome to be in the CORPOREAL
assumption of Mary. "Quomodo corruptio invaderet CORPUS ILLUD in
quo vita suscepta est? [Greek: pos diaphthora tou zoodochon
katatolmaeseie somatos.]"]

This, then, is the account nearest to the time of the supposed event;
and yet can any thing be more vague, and by way of testimony, more
worthless? A writer near the middle of the sixth century refers to a
conversation, said to have taken place in the middle of the fifth
century; in this reported conversation at Constantinople, the Bishop of
Jerusalem is represented to have informed the Emperor and Empress of an
ancient tradition, which was believed, concerning a miraculous event,
said to have taken place nearly four hundred years before, that the body
was taken out of a coffin without the knowledge of those who had
deposited it there: Whilst the primitive and inspired account, recording
most minutely the journeys and proceedings of some of those very
persons, and the letters of others, makes no mention at all of any