The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy

THE Almighty “Word, by whom God the Father created all things, is the true vine: and the Lord of the household who planted this vine cultivates the vineyard — that is, holy church — by means of the labourers sent into it, from dawn of day to the eleventh hour, that he may gather from it abundant fruit. He never ceases tending this vine, and propagating its magnificent branches, throughout every region of the world. He, indeed, the true King of ages, the true High Priest of good things to come, the true Prophet, and the Lord of men and angels, ineffably “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows,” the Angel of the covenant of the Father’s unfathomable counsels, — He (according to the oracles of the prophets, who, taught by the Holy Spirit, shone as stars in the darkness of this •world, and, like the cock which by his crdwing awakes slumbering man before day-break, foretold the mysteries of the Lord’s advent) chose for his mother, among many thousand women, Mary, the royal virgin, descended from the house of king David, and wonderfully endowed with the fulness of grace. This blessed Virgin, thus adorned with distinguished virtues, having been miraculously espoused to that just man, Joseph, saluted by the archangel Gabriel, and overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, conceived without sin, and brought forth without pain, on the eighth of the calends of January (25th of December), the Saviour, who Avas the desire of all nations. Thus our Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, a city of Juda, at the time of the first census, when Cirinus was governor of Syria, according to the order of all the prophecies which had announced his coming. Glorious signs, as the sacred oracles relate, appeared in heaven at the birth of Christ, and the angels with pious thanksgivings for the salvation of man, sang: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!” Thus, in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Augustus, twenty-eight years after the deaths of Cleopatra and Anthony, when Egypt became a Eoman province, in the third year of the 193rd olympiad, and 752 years after the foundation of Eome, that is to say, at the time when Octavianus Caesar, having restored order among all the nations of the earth, and, by God’s providence, established a most firm and secure peace, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, consecrated by his advent the sixth age of the world. Prom the creation to the birth of Christ, we reckon 3952 years, according to the correct Hebrew chronology; after the computation of Isidore, bishop of Seville, and some other doctors, there are 5154 years; again, according to the calculation of Eusebius of Caesarea and Saint Jerome, we find 5231 years between the birth of Adam and the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when Christ suffered on the cross.