Homilies on the excess of apparel ...... he was only reading!
The removal men's faces sank when they came to move me from my retirement cottage to my new lease of life Vicarage.
It was not the furniture, the white goods or the beds it was the books.
Having counted the pennies for most of my adult life, often with too much month at the end of the money, often without two half pennies to rub together, mysteriously there has always been money for books.
Despite the occasional thinning down, occasionally selling a few selected pieces to fund a particular project, despite downsizing when I retired, nevertheless the books attract comments, the most common being: Have you read all of these? to which the answer is, pretty much.
As a student I once returned from my vacation to a note from the person who had used my room during a conference, the note complimented me on my library and thanked me for the opportunity to read a couple of my books.
Around the corner from the College was a bookshop that, it being the early sixties and they didn't know better, used to remove plates from old books and frame them, there was more profit selling the prints separately.
At night on the way back from the pub I occasionally went through the dustbins outside the shop, that way I found some lovely old leather bound prayer books and bibles, I kept them for years and treasured them until I downsized once again and they are now residing and are much cherished, in the Cathedral Library in Carlisle.
As a curate I was puzzled when people would come to my door with old books and hand them over, usually saying, we though that you might like these.
I was so puzzled that I sought advice from my vicar as the piles of old bibles, prayer books, confirmation books and Sunday school prizes grew higher.
Ted's comment was simply that it was part of the ministry we are called to exercise, the disposal of reliquaries, which is in effect what most of these books were, sometimes inherited, sometimes kept only because of the guilt involved in their disposal, so handing them to the curate was, in effect tantamount to handing your sins over to a confessor, once you had confessed you were free to go and, not as Jesus might have it, sin no more, but sin again without a guilty conscience, until eventually your sinning caught up with you once more.
Arriving in Snods Edge, the first task that I was given was to deal with a plastic storage box containing a number of dusty old books, I kept putting the task to the back of my mind and my to do list, until one afternoon recently I took a wheelbarrow across to church and uploaded the books and trundled back to the Vicarage.
It was only when I examined the books did it dawn on me that here there were treasures to be valued.
A number of bibles no longer in regular use in the church but all dedicated in memory of individuals and they need to be kept safely on the Vicarage bookshelves.
There are however two books dating from the 1800's that seem pretty special.
One is an insight into the state of clergy education in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, the book is in fact a reprint of a book first published in 1562.
The homilies and sermons are to be read on Sundays by:
'Ministers, (who) have not the gift of preaching sufficiently to instruct the people, which is committed unto them, whereof great inconveniences might rise, and ignorance still be maintained'.
The titles of the homilies are powerful:
The misery of mankind, Exhortation against the fear of death, Against gluttony and Drunkenness, Excess of Apparel, An homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion.
Well, if I ever get stuck, twelve pages on Wilful Rebellion might just do?
The other book, a bible, I have never seen before. It was published in 1859 and the text is marked with readings for every day of the year, enabling the reader to read the whole bible, Genesis to Revelation each year, again some big chunks of text to wade through, including the Apocrypha so nothing will be lost!
So more research is needed to see if these books are too special to remain in my care, or whether they need specialised care or whether they should just be used to press flowers.
Time will tell.
But it is amazing how quickly the time passes when you are reading the fifteen pages on Excess of Apparel or ploughing through some of the more arcane and possibly apocryphal stretches of the Apocrypha.
As was remarked when I one forgot a funeral: 'And he was only reading'!
It was not the furniture, the white goods or the beds it was the books.
Having counted the pennies for most of my adult life, often with too much month at the end of the money, often without two half pennies to rub together, mysteriously there has always been money for books.
Despite the occasional thinning down, occasionally selling a few selected pieces to fund a particular project, despite downsizing when I retired, nevertheless the books attract comments, the most common being: Have you read all of these? to which the answer is, pretty much.
As a student I once returned from my vacation to a note from the person who had used my room during a conference, the note complimented me on my library and thanked me for the opportunity to read a couple of my books.
Around the corner from the College was a bookshop that, it being the early sixties and they didn't know better, used to remove plates from old books and frame them, there was more profit selling the prints separately.
At night on the way back from the pub I occasionally went through the dustbins outside the shop, that way I found some lovely old leather bound prayer books and bibles, I kept them for years and treasured them until I downsized once again and they are now residing and are much cherished, in the Cathedral Library in Carlisle.
As a curate I was puzzled when people would come to my door with old books and hand them over, usually saying, we though that you might like these.
I was so puzzled that I sought advice from my vicar as the piles of old bibles, prayer books, confirmation books and Sunday school prizes grew higher.
Ted's comment was simply that it was part of the ministry we are called to exercise, the disposal of reliquaries, which is in effect what most of these books were, sometimes inherited, sometimes kept only because of the guilt involved in their disposal, so handing them to the curate was, in effect tantamount to handing your sins over to a confessor, once you had confessed you were free to go and, not as Jesus might have it, sin no more, but sin again without a guilty conscience, until eventually your sinning caught up with you once more.
Arriving in Snods Edge, the first task that I was given was to deal with a plastic storage box containing a number of dusty old books, I kept putting the task to the back of my mind and my to do list, until one afternoon recently I took a wheelbarrow across to church and uploaded the books and trundled back to the Vicarage.
It was only when I examined the books did it dawn on me that here there were treasures to be valued.
A number of bibles no longer in regular use in the church but all dedicated in memory of individuals and they need to be kept safely on the Vicarage bookshelves.
There are however two books dating from the 1800's that seem pretty special.
One is an insight into the state of clergy education in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, the book is in fact a reprint of a book first published in 1562.
The homilies and sermons are to be read on Sundays by:
'Ministers, (who) have not the gift of preaching sufficiently to instruct the people, which is committed unto them, whereof great inconveniences might rise, and ignorance still be maintained'.
The titles of the homilies are powerful:
The misery of mankind, Exhortation against the fear of death, Against gluttony and Drunkenness, Excess of Apparel, An homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion.
Well, if I ever get stuck, twelve pages on Wilful Rebellion might just do?
The other book, a bible, I have never seen before. It was published in 1859 and the text is marked with readings for every day of the year, enabling the reader to read the whole bible, Genesis to Revelation each year, again some big chunks of text to wade through, including the Apocrypha so nothing will be lost!
So more research is needed to see if these books are too special to remain in my care, or whether they need specialised care or whether they should just be used to press flowers.
Time will tell.
But it is amazing how quickly the time passes when you are reading the fifteen pages on Excess of Apparel or ploughing through some of the more arcane and possibly apocryphal stretches of the Apocrypha.
As was remarked when I one forgot a funeral: 'And he was only reading'!
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