The cleft in the rock of Golgotha is mentioned in
a fragment of the defence made before Maximinus in 311 or 312 by Lucian
the Martyr of Antioch The fragment is
added by Rufinus to his Latin translation of Eusebius, Hist.
Eccl. ix. 6, and is also given in Routh, Rell. Sacr. iv. p.
6.: If yet you
believe not, I will also offer you the testimony of the very spot on
which the thing was done. The place itself in Jerusalem vouches
for these facts, and the rock of Golgotha broken asunder under the
weight of the Cross: that cave also, which when the gates of hell
were burst, gave back the Body in newness of life.” On this
passage Dr. Routh remarks that Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo to
Jerusalem, at Easter, 1697, “shews that the rock had been
rent not by any instrument, but by the force of an earthquake.
Also it is related by Eusebius in his Theophania, a book now recovered,
that there was one cave only in this cleft of the
rock.”