Alas, that ever we wrought this sin!
Our bodily sustenance for to win,
Ye must delve and I shall spin,
In care to lead our life.

_Cain and Abel_ follows; then _Noah's Flood_, in which God says,

They shall not dread the flood's flow;

then _Abraham's Sacrifice_; then _Moses and the Two Tables_; then _The
Prophets_, each of whom prophesies of the coming Saviour; after which we
find ourselves in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the midst of much nonsense
about Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, about Joseph and Mary and
the birth of Jesus, till we arrive at _The Shepherds_ and _The Magi, The
Purification, The Slaughter of the Innocents, The Disputing in the
Temple, The Baptism, The Temptation_, and _The Woman taken in Adultery_,
at which point I pause for the sake of the remarkable tradition embodied
in the scene--that each of the woman's accusers thought Jesus was writing
his individual sins on the ground. While he is writing the second time,
the Pharisee, the Accuser, and the Scribe, who have chiefly sustained the
dialogue hitherto, separate, each going into a different part of the
Temple, and soliloquize thus:

_Pharisee_. Alas! alas! I am ashamed!
I am afeared that I shall die;
All my sins even properly named
Yon prophet did write before mine eye.
If that my fellows that did espy,
They will tell it both far and wide;