coming into the nave, and the gospels are kissed by men, women, and children of the congregation. Renaudot quotes the rule of the Coptic liturgy, that the people should follow the example of the priests and kiss the book of the gospels when it was brought to them, after having been read [in the ancient Coptic version] and translated [into the vernacular Arabic].(1)

P. 18, B. 197. som tyme. Cf. Lydgate's Vertue of the Masse; MS. Harl. 2251, fol. 182 b:

"¶Credo in solempne dayes.

The gospel redde. a Cred after he saythe
Solempne dayes. for a remembraunce
Of .xij. articles. that longithe to our faithe

The whiche we are bounde to live(2) in oure creaunce."

A list of these solemn days is given in the rubrics, which vary slightly, according to the different uses. This mention of the creed shows that these devotions were intended for those who could hear mass daily, and not only on Sundays and the principal holy-days.

B. 202. tellis-viz. B. 241, of the Offertory.

C. 100. It will be noticed that the later texts omit the prayer during the gospel, and the cross after it.

P. 19, F. 75. sayenge. The modern form of the participle instead of

the and of the older texts.

P. 20, B. 204. pin englyshe crede. The creed to be said by the layman is the Apostles' Creed, or "pe lesse crede," as it was called,(3) "that each man is bound to can and to say,"(4) which was used in common prayer at prime and compline, and in private devotions. The Nicene Creed, the symbolum patrum or mæssecreda,(5) was used in the mass at this place. It will be observed that the distinction is drawn in this treatise, B. 198.

B. 208. And alle of noght. Cf. Hampole :

B. 209-10.

"First whan God made al thyng of noght,
Of the foulest matere man he wroghte,

þat was, of erthe. '-P. C. 372-4.

These two lines are written as one in the MS.
Cf. alone, B. 142.

B. 210. al onely.

(1) Liturg. Orient., I, 211.

(2) live, for bileve. A.S. gelyfan, to believe. W. de Worde prints "be

(3) Old English Homilies (Morris), First Series, p. 217.

(4) Myroure, 311.

(5) The Canons of Elfric, IV, Thorpe, Ancient Laws, II, 345. Masse Crede," Myroure, 311. See ante, p. 98, 1. 13.

The

P. 20, B. 213. gast preserves its northern (1) form to rhyme with chast, which did not admit of alteration, and similarly in B. 68 gastly is left unaltered, either per incuriam or to preserve the assonance to largely. The midland scribe does write gost, B. ll. 233, 275, &c. B. 213-16. Cf. "He lighted doun ful mekeli

Into the maiden wamb of Mary."

English Met. Homilies (Small), 12.

"And born of a mayden cleene

Bicause a man, in meekenes moost."

Songs to Virgin (Furnivall), p. 101, 1. 11-12.

B. 217. pounce pilat. Ponce, which still lingers in our cottages, stood its ground in the Apostle's Creed in the daily service of the Prayer Books of Edward VI, Elizabeth, and until the last review in 1661, when it was changed to Pontius; (2) and this is the more to be remarked as Pontius had been the rendering of the Nicene Creed from 1549. Perhaps some new-fangled classicist will protest against Pilate, and propose a further change to the Latin Pontius Pilatus in full.

B. 219. Cf." And þei diden him upon pe rode,

And he bougt wit his blissed blood.

And sithen he went to helle

be fiendis power for to felle."

MS. York Minster Library, XVII, 12, fol. 63 b.

"And specially for pe haly crose, pat god was done opon." Ante, p. 68, 1. 12.

B. 223. Vp he rose in flesshe and felle—

Compare: "In soule oonli pou went to helle,

And took pens þi part, it was good rizt,

But up pou roos in fleish and in felle,

be prid day bi godli my3t."

Hymns to the Virgin, &c. (Furnivall), p. 102.

The fell may have been specified in these and other instances,
with reference to the vision of the resurrection of dry bones in the
prophet Ezekiel, "I will . . . . cover you with skin" (ch. xxxvii. 6).
Or, perhaps, it may have been in reference to the place in Job,
"Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh" (ch. x. 11), that our
forefathers may have so generally specified the skin in proof of a
true human body.

(1) "pai salle pair God apertly se,
And alle pe pre parsons in trinite,
pe Fader, and Son, and Haly-gaste

pat sight salle be pair ioy maste."-P. C. 8651-4.

(2) See Black-letter Prayer-Book of 1636, photozincographed 1870, p. 60. I happen to have a Prayer-Book of 1638, which has Pontius in this place; but there was no lawful authority for the change.

Thus to begin with an extract from the celebrated passage in Ælfric's Paschal Homily:-" Se lichama soplice de Crist on drowode, was 3eboren of Marian flæsce, mit blode and mid banum, mid felle and mid sinum, on menniscum limum, inid 3esceadwisre sawle zeliff ært," &c. The body, truly, that Christ suf fered in, was born of the flesh of Mary, with blood and with bones, with skin and with sinews, in the limbs of a man, animated with a reasonable soul. So again (of our Lord) :

"Man in felle and flesche was he."

English Metrical Homilies (Small), 109.

"And alswa he ordaynd man to dwelle

And to lyf in erthe, in flesshe and felle."-P. C. 81-2.

"Bot þe ryche man saule feled in helle (1)

Payne, als he had bene in flesshe and felle."-P. C. 3076-7.

"Oft y crie merci, of mylse (mercy) thou art welle,

Alle buen false that bueth mad bothe of fleysche ant felle,
Levedi suete, thou us shild from the pine of helle,
Bring us the joie that no tongue hit may of telle."

Lyrical Poetry (Wright), 102.
It will be observed that E. reads Vp he ros as fel.When this
was written, fell may have begun to be restricted, as now, to the
skins of beasts; and the scribe, to get out of one seeming impro-
priety, and unable to find another rhyme, blundered, as usual, into
describing our Lord as fell not to say anything of his utter dis-
regard of the metre.

P. 20, B. 225. stegh-which we still have in the north, in the sense of mounting up, and more particularly by the help of a stee or ladder, appears to have been as strange to the southern scribe, as fel in line 223; and he blunders again into confounding the Resurrection and the Ascension.

B. 226. pouste, from the O.F. poesté, Lat. potestas.

"For Ic am man under pouste,

And Ic haf knihtes under me."

English Met. Hom. [Matt. viii, 9] (Small), 127.

It was also written, pausty.

"he þat gives me pausty."

Cursor Mundi (Morris), Fairfax, MS. 4371.

B. 229, 231. deme-ben. Cf. the rhymes synn and hym (B. 269, 270), temptacionem and amen (B. 488-9).

B. 232. In adam sede.

"pens schalt pou come us alle to deeme

Bope quik and dede of adams sede."

Hymns (Furnivall), p. 102, 1. 29, 30.

(1) Cf. Appendix, p. 135, 1. 269.

P. 20, B. 235-6. And so I trow that housel es bothe flesshe and blode. This is, perhaps, in itself the most noteworthy passage in the treatise, regarded as a literary curiosity, and it, moreover, furnishes a note of time,(1) from which we may infer that the French original was not earlier than the twelfth century.

We at once see that the author has understood the "sanctorum of the creed as neuter, (2) instead of masculine. In so doing, he has gone against the whole current of ecclesiastical tradition"Credo in . . . . sanctorum communionem ”—“ I believe in . . . . the communion of saints." However contrary this may be to the principle of sound criticism universally professed, if not uniformly practised, at the present time, the forcing of any meaning which could be drawn from words, without reference to the context, or the subject matter to which they referred, would in those days have been regarded as a legitimate exercise of scholastic ingenuity, or mystical profoundness.

Dr Newman notices the absence of the "dogma of the real presence "(3) from all the creeds, and supposes that "the omission is owing to the ancient disciplina arcani, which withheld the sacred mystery from catechumens and heathen, to whom the creed was known." However this may be, we may fully admit the fact that the creeds are silent as to the doctrine; and this makes it all the more curious that the exigencies of controversy, concerning the sacrament of the supper of the Lord, should have led to an article of the creed being pressed into service in support-or at least as a statement of the doctrine, that "flesh and blood" were both present under each of the two species of bread and wine.

(1) This opinion was not formally accepted before the council of Constance in 1415; but it was generally received in the twelfth century, and was held to justify the withdrawal of the cup from the laity and afterwards from the clergy also, except the priest who was celebrating mass. We do not meet with it in the time of the Berengarian controversy, but we find it thus stated by Anselm in the end of the eleventh century, "In utraque specie totum Christum sumi;" and by Peter Lombard in the middle of the next century, “Integrum Christum esse in altari sub utraque specie." The council of Constance defined "integrum Christi corpus et sanguinem tam sub specie panis quam sub specie vini veraciter contineri ;" and the terms finally adopted in the creed of Pius IV, as now prescribed and professed under oath in the Church of Rome, are as follows: "sub altera tantum specie totum atque integrum Christum verumque sacramentum sumi."

(2) "Sancta" occurs in an Ordo Romanus of the consecrated host. (Mabillon, Iter Ital. II, p. xxxix.) Unless, perhaps, we are to understand evangelia, we find a similar use in the Laws of King Cnut, "XXXVI. Si quis falsum juramentum super sancta jurabit." "Ayta in the Greek Liturgies is used of the holy gifts after consecration, as it is also used of them before consecration, when placed in set form and ceremony upon the altar. For this last use of sanctum and sancta, see Martene De Rit. Antiq. I, 197, 213, &c. (3) Grammar of Assent, p. 141.

In the trilingual creed, printed by Dr Heurtley, to which he assigns the date of A.D. 1125,(1) this article is thus given :

"Ic gelefe on . . . . Halegan hiniennesse.

Jeo crei....

La communiun des seintes choses;

Credo in . . . . . Sanctorum communionem,"

where the insertion of "choses" points to a similar application. There is a third and, so far as I know, among the many extant versions of the Apostles' Creed, and the varying paraphrases of this particular article, the only (2) other example of a gloss in a similar sense and this embodying a farther development(3) of the doctrine-in Pierce the Ploughman's Crede. (4) The first two

(1) Harmonia Symbolica, Oxford, 1858, p. 91-3.

(2) At the end of the Royal MS. (17 B. xvii), from which our B-text is printed, there is written, or rather scrawled, on a blank leaf (p. 263-4), the creed in English in a very unformed hand of the xvth century. This article is paraphrased as follows; but it will be seen that it is rather an incomplete enumeration of the seven sacraments, often specified under this head, as being the inheritance of the saints, than an application of the article to the sacrament of the altar; and, moreover, it does not touch the particular point of the presence of the body and blood under the same species: "I beleue in sacrament of hooly chyrch a gift of the fadur & of the son & of the holy goost thre persones in o godhead I beleue also in hooly chirch ordrynge us I byleue in þe sacrament of goddis flesche & his blood þat he shedde on the blissid rood tre for me and for alle man kynd."

Compare Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt (Morris), p. 14. “And ine þise article byep onderstonde / pe zeve sacremens / pet byep ine holy cherche." Also Thoresby's Catechism, on this article :—

"That is comunyng and felaured of all cristen folke,

that comunes togedir in the sacrements

and in othir hali thinges that falles til hali kirke." Durandus gives the following as an alternative exposition: "Vel præcipio sanctorum communionem, i. e. panem benedictionis de quo dicitur, Crede et manducasto."-Rat. 4, XXV, 26.

(3) The text asserts the presence of the body and blood of Christ, which were sundered by His death: the Crede speaks of Christ Himself in the oneness of His person and the fulness of His bodily nature, in which He suffered.

(4) This was a satirical attack on the friars, written quite at the end of the fourteenth century by an avowed favourer of Wyclif; and it is so very common to read history backwards-and especially the history of doctrinethat this definite statement of his belief may, perhaps, come most unexpectedly upon some of those who are familiar with the opinions of later reformers, and know that this very point afterwards became one of the great battle-grounds with the Church of Rome. But we must recollect that in the fourteenth century it was practical abuses and not points of doctrine which in the first instance gave rise to opposition, and even afterwards, at least in respect to the doctrine of the eucharist, it was not the presence that was in dispute, so much as the scholastic explanations which were put forward to account for it, and the logical consequences which were supposed to be involved in it.