The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, in the Original Anglo-Saxon, with an English Version. Volume I.Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham
Religion
The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, in the Original Anglo-Saxon, with an English Version. Volume I.
Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham
Sermons, English (Old)
Then for some time after the flood there was fear of God among mankind, and
there was one language among them all. Then said they among themselves that
they would make a city, and a tower within that city, so high that its roof
should mount up to heaven: and they begun to work. Then came God thereto,
when they were most busily working, and gave to every man who was there a
separate speech. Then were there as many languages as there were men, and
none of them knew what other said. And they then ceased from the building,
and went divers ways over all the earth.
Then afterwards mankind was deceived by the devil, and turned from God's
belief, so that they wrought them images, some of gold, some of silver,
some also of stones, some of wood, and devised names for them; the names of
those men who were giants, and evil-doing. Afterwards when they were dead
then said the living that they were gods, and worshipped them, and offered
sacrifices to them; and the devils then came to their images, and dwelt
therein, and spake to men as though they were gods; and the deceived human
race fell on their knees to {25} those images, and said, "Ye are our gods,
and we place our belief and our hope in you." Then sprang up this error
through all the earth, and the true Creator, who alone is God, was despised
and dishonoured. There was, nevertheless, one family which had never bent
to any idol, but had ever worshipped the true God. That family sprang from
Noah's eldest son, who was called Shem: he lived six hundred years, and his
son was called Arphaxad, who lived three hundred and thirty-three years,
and his son was called Salah, who lived four hundred and thirty-three
years, when he begat a son who was called Eber, from whom sprang the Hebrew
people, whom God loved: and from that race came all the patriarchs and
prophets, those who announced Christ's advent to this life; that he would
be man before the end of this world, for our redemption, he who ever was
God with the supreme Father. And for this race God gave and established a
law, and he led them over the sea with dry feet, and he fed them forty
years with heavenly bread, and wrought many miracles among the people;
because he would choose him a mother from this race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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