all the sophistry of the Roman Catholic writers cannot pervert its
obvious meaning, that the bread and wine is only typical of the body and
blood of our Saviour.

To one who has spent much time in reading the lives and writings of the
monkish theologians, how refreshing is such a character as that of
AElfric's. Often, indeed, will the student close the volumes of those old
monastic writers with a sad, depressed, and almost broken heart; so often
will he find men who seem capable of better things, who here and there
breathe forth all the warm aspirations of a devout and Christian heart,
bowed down and grovelling in the dust, as it were, to prove their blind
submission to the Pope, thinking, poor fellows!--for from my very heart I
pity them--that by so doing they were preaching that humility so
acceptable to the Lord.

Cheering then, to the heart it is to find this monotony broken by such an
instance, and although we find AElfric occasionally diverging into the
paths of papistical error, he spreads a ray of light over the gloom of
those Saxon days, and offers pleasing evidence that Christ never forsook
his church; that even amidst the peril and darkness of those monkish ages
there were some who mourned, though it might have been in a monastery,
submissive to a Roman Pontiff, the depravity and corruption with which
the heart of man had marred it.

To still better maintain the discipline of the church, he wrote a set of
canons, which he addressed to Wulfin, or Wulfsine, bishop of Sherbourne.
With many of the doctrines advocated therein, the protestant will not
agree; but the bibliophile will admit that he gave an indication of his
love of books by the 21st Canon, which directs that, "Before a priest can
be ordained, he must be armed with the sacred books, for the spiritual
battle, namely, a Psalter, Book of Epistles, Book of Gospels, the Missal
Book, Books of Hymns, the Manual, or Euchiridion, the Gerim, the
Passional, the Paenitential, and the Lectionary, or Reading Book; these
the diligent priest requires, and let him be careful that they are all
accurately written, and free from faults."[102]

About the same time, AElfric wrote a treatise on the Old and New
Testaments, and in it we find an account of his labors in Biblical
Literature. He did more in laying open the holy mysteries of the gospel
to the perusal of the laity, by translating them into the Saxon tongue,
than any other before him. He gave them, in a vernacu