CHAPTER XIV.
After this it came to pass, when he returned home to the city of Nazareth, that he fell sick and kept his bed. And this was the time in which he died, as it is appointed unto all men. Now he was grievously afflicted by this sickness, nor had he ever been so ill as at present, from the time he was born. And thus truly it pleased Christ to arrange the affairs of Joseph the Just.[1] Forty years he lived before he entered the married state; his wife remained under his protection forty-nine years, and died when they were gone. One year after her death, my mother, the blessed Mary, was committed to Joseph by the priests, that he might keep her until the time for marriage. Two years she spent in his house, with nothing remarkable occurring, but in the third year of her sojourn with Joseph, and the fifteenth of her age, she bore me in the earth, by a mystery which no creature can penetrate or apprehend, save myself and my Father, and the Holy Spirit, constituting one essence with me.[2]
CHAPTER XV.
Therefore, the whole age of my father, the just
