Thær thurrh he dide Nicodem

By that he caused Nicodemus

To sen and unnderrstanndenn,

To see and understand

Thatt he wass Godd himm sellf, off Godd,

That he was God himself, from God,

And Godess Sune ankennedd,

And God's Son acknowledged,

And wurrthenn mann o moder hallf
And become man on mother's side

Thurrh sothfasst herrsummnesse,
Through faithful obedience,

Thurr-thatt his Faderr haffde himm sennd

Because his Father had sent him

And gifenn himm to manne,
And given him for man,

To tholenn death o rode tre

To suffer death on the cross

Forr all mannkinne nede,

For all mankind's need,

All thurrh thatt lufe, and thurrh thatt lusst All through that love and through that desire That tegg till mannkinn haffdenn,

That they had towards mankind,

Forth withth thatt Hallghe Frofre Gast
Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter

Thatt cumethth off hemm bathe,

That cometh of them both,

All thurrh thatt lufe and thurrh thatt lusst

All through that love and through that desire

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1 The measure is (though without rhyme) that of the old song from which Autolycus sings in the " Winter's Tale "—

"A merry heart goes all the day

Your sad tires in a mile-a."

2 Seggde. The italic g stands for the g softened to y or gh sound, and represented at one time by a letter like 3.

* The old common use of the word well as an intensive, still found in idiomatic phrases as "well on in years," or "well-nigh dead," or "you may well say that," is so far weakened that its sense is sometimes better given by another word.

That tegg till mannkinn hafïden,
That they had towards mankind,

To lesenn menn off defless band
To release men from bonds of the devil,
And ut off helle pine,

And out of the pain of hell,

That whase trowwenn shollde o Crist
That whoso should believe on Christ
Wel shollde wurrthen borrghen.
Surely should be saved.

Whi seggde Crist to Nicodem
Why said Christ to Nicodemus

That Drihhtin Godd off heffne
That the Lord God of Heaven
Swa lufede thiss middell ærd,
So loved this mid-carth,

Thiss werelld, tatt he sennde
This world, that he sent
Hiss aghenn Sune, Allmahhtig Godd,
His own Son, Almighty God,

To tholenn dæth o rode,
To suffer death on the cross,
Als iff he shollde lesenn ut
So that he should deliver

The middell ærd off helle?

The mid-earth from hell?

Thurrh whatt wass heffness whel forrgarrt

For what was heaven's wheel (the firmament) com

To dreghen helle pine?

To suffer pain of hell?

And lifft, and land, and waterrflod,

And air, and land, and waterflood,

Hu wærenn thegg forrwrohhte

How were they condemned

To dreghenn wa withth mikell rihht

To suffer woe with much right

Inn helle withth the defell?

In hell with the devil?

Off thise fowre shaffte iss all

Of these four created things (clements) is all Thiss middell werelld timmbredd,

This middle world built,

Of heffness whel and off the lifft,
Of the firmament and of the air,
Off waterr, and off erthe;

Of water and of earth;
And i tha fowre shafftess niss
And in these four elements is (not)
Nowwtherr,-ne lif ne sawle
Neither-nor life, nor soul
That mihhte gilltenn anig gillt
That might be guilty of any guilt
And addlenn helle pine.
And deserve pain of hell.

We ought to know now that for us
The World here signifies
Created thing that was condemned
To suffer pain of hell.

The World here signifies for us

The race of man alone; And since man's body is made up Of what is in the world:

Of heaven's fire, and of the air

Of water, and of earth:

[pelled

40

And since man's Soul is through the world Here surely signified,

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60

After the English speech,

The little World, and all for this:
Because the Soul of man

God has clothed worthily and well
With God and righteousness.
And even as this World is clothed
With creatures beautiful,
The World also may signify

Mankind therefore the better,
Because man's body is made up

And wrought of creatures four,

Of heaven's fire, and of the air,

Of water, and of earth.

And therefore here the World must mean

Only the race of Man

That Word of God was sent by God

To loosen out of hell.

And of the Son of Man, and Son

Also of God, of both,

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1 Cosmos. The Greek kóauos means in the first instance order (from Kоpéw, I take care of), that which depends on thought and care; order of dress, clothes (the sense on which Ormin here dwells); order of behaviour; order of private life; order of a state; order or system of the universe. The range of the word is from the divine order that fills the world with beauty down to Livia's cosmetic

---"A light fucus

To touch you o'er withal."

(Ben Jonson's "Sejanus.")

MAN'S PERIL AND SAFETY.

From Cotton. MS., Tiberius, B. v.

And that the Lord hath there declared
With words to Nicodeme,

That the Almighty hath not sent

His Son that he should judge
This world, but that he should redeem

It from the Devil's power;

That said he then to cause him so

To see and understand

That he was sent and made as man

To rescue men from hell.

Through love he bore himself, and through

Love of his Father too

And Holy Ghost, the Comforter,
Proceeding from them both,

Through that he was not come down then
To judge the people all,
But in humility to save

The world by his own grace.
And that he there to Nicodeme
Yet spake thus of himself:
Whoso believeth upon him
That man is not condemned;-

Withouten ord and end,'

That am come to choose many for

My brethren upon earth

That cheerfully shall persevere

And do my Father's will,

So that he shall hold all of them
For children of His own
And give them to abide with me
Heirs of the heavenly realm,

That am the only son of Him
All one with him in kind,-

The man who wholly shall refuse

To trust this and believe,

That man is now condemned and set To suffer pain of hell,

Unless he can escape therefrom

Before he come to die,

Believing that I am true God,

True Saviour on earth.

And that he there to Nicodeme

Yet spake thus of himself:

That is the doom, that light and gleam Is come upon the earth,

And men have no love for the light,

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260

220

Known by the name of men

Because they follow their own flesh In all its foul desires,

1 Ord and end, beginning and end. This is the original of our phrase "odds and ends." "Ord" was a First-English noun that meant "beginning." When it became obsolete, and the old phrase "ords and ends" still held its ground, the obsolete word was at last confounded with the nearest known word that resembled it. That is a not unusual process, to which we owe such phrases as "under the rose, ," "set the Thames on fire," &c.

That they so long in heathendom
Had angered the true Lord.
And so they came into the light,
Into the right belief

In Jesus Christ our Saviour,
Whose name is Faithfulness:
For all that's ever true and right
And good, and pleases God,
Salvation for His handiwork,

All comes by grace of Christ.
And so they come into the light

To shew and to make known

That their deeds have been done aright

By pattern of our Lord;

For all together did one thing

Both Christ and they themselves,

Christ has rebuked them for their wrong

By teaching righteousness,

And they also rebuke their wrong

By shrift and penitence,

So all together did one thing

Both Christ and they themselves.

And so through that was plainly seen
That any good they did

Was all in God and all through God,
Effected by His help.

And God Almighty grant us here

To please Christ while we live,

All pure in thought and pure in word,
Pure mannered, pure in deed,

So that we may be worthy found

To win the grace of Christ. Amen.

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And how a man might please his God

And earn the bliss of heaven,

And stand against the evil one,

And turn himself from hell. And after our Lord Christ was come

To be a man on earth, Thereafter was this middle earth

Filled full of heaven's light,

Because that our Lord Christ himself

And his Disciples too,

Both what was right and what was wrong

Made known in all the lands,

And how a man might please his God

And earn the bliss of heaven.

And many peoples haughtily
Withstood and still denied,

And turned them from the light of heaven
And from the heavenly lore,
Because they rather chose to be
In darkness that they loved,
To follow lusts of their own flesh
In every kind of sin,
Because they rather hated light

That brought rebuke of sin.

And other peoples well received

The gift of heavenly lore,

And turned them to the Christendom
And to the right belief;

That is that very light and gleam
That leadeth man to heaven;
And it received full inwardly
By shrift and penitence,
Accusing all their own misdeed
And punishing themselves,

Side by side with this faithful work there was much darkness gathering where light should have been brightest. At the beginning of the thirteenth century both the Dominican and the Franciscan brotherhoods were founded to meet needs of the time with higher spiritual effort than had come of late from the chief teachers in a church weakened by wealth and luxury. The founder of the Dominicans was a Spaniard, Domingo, of the noble family of Guzmans, in the valley of the Douro. He pitied the poor. In a famine year he sold even his cherished books to relieve them. But he had learnt in his books that the way to heaven was along one narrow line of orthodox opinion; and when, after nine years of study at Osma, he travelled with his prior across a region of France cursed with the persecution of pure-minded heretics by orthodox priests who had neither knowledge wherewith to set forth, nor lives that would recommend, the opinions of which they sought brutally to compel acceptance, Dominic felt the need of a right power to convince of error thoughtful and well-meaning men whom he devoutly believed to be astray on a path leading to eternal punishment. Most of us now believe with Milton that there is more light in the world than shines in at our own windows. Few thought so then, and Dominic was profoundly sincere, true also in deeds of life to his own deepest convictions, when he founded the order of Preaching Friars called after him Dominicans. They were not to be monks, named from a Greek word that implied life in seclusion, but Fratres.

Friars, Brothers of men going amongst them, putting aside all worldly ambitions, and devoting themselves wholly to diffusion of what they held to be the vital truths of God. They were to be practised in a profound study of the Scriptures, armed with knowledge, and trained to skill in its use that they might detect heresy in its beginnings, and triumph over it when at its strongest. The followers of Dominic, in the Black robe which gave them their name of Black Friars, were to be devoted guardians of the faith. Dominic's first followers adopted the rule of St. Augustine. They were first embodied with Papal assent in 1215 and 1216 as Predicants or Preaching Friars, afterwards called Dominicans from their founder, and Black Friars from their dress. This order also degenerated in the course of time. It had a great house in the part of London still known as Black Friars, and from this house came, as we shall find, from the custodians of orthodoxy condemnation of what were regarded as the heresies of Wiclif.

A DOMINICAN. (From Dugdale's "Monasticon.")

The Franciscan Order of Gray Friars or Minorites was founded nearly at the same time as the Dominican, and represented another form of effort to put truer life into the ministrations of the Church. Francis, son of a wealthy merchant, was born in 1182 at Assisi, in Umbria. He was twelve years than Dominic, whose birth year was 1170. Francis of Assisi, bred as a merchant, became deeply devout, pitied the poor, abandoned his own worldly wealth, and made it the work of his life to bring home to the poor the comforts of religion, as one

younger

1 Representations of the several religious orders that first appeared in the "Monasticon" were used again for the "History of Warwickshire."

the Church, gathered so many to his ranks, that at a chapter of the order held in 1219, 5,000 Franciscan Friars were present. The Franciscans in their early days would not allow great houses to be built for them. When a house of stone was built for them at Oxford, they had it pulled down and replaced by a building with mud walls, and it was placed in the lowest haunts of the poor. In London they lived by the shambles in a place called " "Stinking Lane." They put aside the pride of knowledge, left book-learning to the Dominicans, called themselves the Lesser Friars, Fratres Minores, Minorites, and trusted to humility of love. This order also degenerated as the days of the pure enthusiasm that established it were left more and more in the past. But it is a significant fact that the putting away of books in which science lay as petrified, and from which people took forms of opinion to be exactly reproduced, caused the Franciscans presently to become leaders of knowledge. They went among the poor, and sought to win from them goodwill and confidence. They sympathised with their troubles, sought to pacify their quarrels, and heal their infirmities of body or of mind. In seeking means to