8 
THE LEGEND OF ST. THOMAS. 
angels to let him live in its lowest chambers ; but they 
answered that it could not be, for this was his brother's palace, 
erected by the Christian. Q-ad therefore asked and obtained 
leave from the angels to go back to the world that he might 
buy the palace from his brother. Then king Gondophares and 
Gad became followers of the Apostle and begged for the seal 
of baptism and the Apostle sealed them and they heard the 
voice of the Lord, saying " Peace to you, brethren ! " 
The story would not be complete "witho-ut some enumer- 
ation of further miracles, to which the writer attached a 
great deal of importance. There are three notahle miracles, 
(1) about the dragon and the young man, (2) about the demon- 
that dwelt in the icoman, (3) about the young man that hilled 
the maiden. It would be tedious to relate these miracles. 
There is no beauty in them ; on the contrary, they verge 
on indecency. The object of the -^Titer, or at least one 
main object, seems to have been to advocate the practice of 
celibacy as a Christian institution. It is not merely the 
celibacy of the clergy that he enjoins, but the celibacy of 
every member of the chiu'eh of St. Thomas. To this doctrine 
too he gave retrospective effect, dissolving the bonds of holy 
wedlock in the case of such married persons as became his 
disciples. The married life was treated by him as absolutely 
unlawful. This apostolic preacher is represented as having 
done a good work, when a couple about to consummate their 
wedding have been prevailed on to abandon their design, or 
when a wife has been persuaded to refuse fiu'ther intercourse 
with her husband. That all generation is sin seems to have 
been his thesis, and it is as the martyi- of this contemptible 
cause that Thomas is pietiu-ed in the Apocryphal Acts. For 
when he left the court of Gondophares and arrived at that 
of Misdeus, he converted Mygdouia/ the -nife of the chief 
' Mygdonia is the name of a pvovinoo in tho north-east of Slacedonia, 
adjoining Osrohene. This sister-in-law of lilisdeus may, therefore, have 
been either a native of that province or otherwise connected with it by- 
family tics. 
