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Where one finds music on the pages, you'll find a control at the bottom of the page where you can turn it off, if you like.

"What," you may ask, "are the Elizabethan homilies?" These were sermons written by reformers in England during the time of the English church's reformation. As a devotional tool, they are wonderful sermons and an encouragement for the Christian. As an academic tool, they provide an insight into the minds of the English reformers. For those who think that the English reformation was not reformed or only political - take a look at these sermons.

It's a labor of love on the part of a team of scholars and pastors to present both of the Elizabethan Books of Homilies, first converted to electronic data by Dr. Lancashire of the University of Toronto, and then converted from SGML to RTF¹ and HTML² by me. They are now available for download.

I am thankful to Dr. Ian Lancashire for the work he and his compatriots have done in making this text freely available to me, and thus to us all. If these documents are used for something other than personal study and pleasure, please be sure to properly attribute the source to Dr. Lancashire. For further information, go to the web page at the University of Toronto.

Even with the completion of this stage, the availability of the Elizabethan Homilies is a work in progress. Please note: All Scripture references have been carefully checked, as well as references to the Apocrypha. However, references to Patristic and other sources have not yet been checked. Please notify me of any errors you may find.

I would still like to work over these sermons and modernize the spellings, provide definition for the more obscure words, and improve the appearance by shortening some of the longer paragraphs, etc.

All compressed files are in the ZIP format. This a very popular compression format and Mac machines also have utilities for extracting the files. See my Computer page for PC and Macintosh utilities supporting this compression standard.

If you are completely overwhelmed by ZIP and compression, let me know and I'll send you any one or combination of the homilies. They are available in RTF format from the following list. RTF is compatible with nearly every word processor on nearly every platform. Note: Due to disk space limitations, only the ZIP files are available here for download. Contact me directly for other formats.

One final note: I'm beginning to get feedback from people all over the world who appreciate having these homilies available. I appreciate hearing from you all, it's an encouragement to keep the homilies here.

Lancashire's Introduction to the Homilies

First Book of Homilies

Introduction to Book I.
I. A Fruitfull exhortation to the reading of holy Scripture.
II. Of the misery of all mankinde.
III. Of the saluation of all mankinde.
IV. Of the true and liuely fayth.
V. Of good workes.
VI. Of Christian loue and charity.
VII. Against swearing and periury.
VIII. Of the declining from GOD.
IX. An exhortation against the feare of death.
X. An exhortation to obedience.
XI. Against whoredome and adultery.
XII. Against strife and contention.

Second Book of Homilies

Introduction to Book II.
I. OF the right vse of the Church.
II. Against perill of Idolatry.
III. For repayring and keeping cleane the Church.
IIII. Of good workes. And first of Fasting.
V. Against gluttony and drunkennesse.
VI. Against excesse of apparell.
VII. An Homilie of Prayer.
VIII. Of the place and time of Prayer.
IX. Of Common Prayer and Sacraments.
X. An information of them which take offence at certaine places of holy Scripture.
XI. Of almes deeds.
XII. Of the Natiuity.
XIII. Of the Passion for good Friday.
XIV. Of the Resurrection for Easter day.
XV. Of the worthy receiuing of the Sacrament.
XVI. An Homilie concerning the comming downe of the holy Ghost, for Whitsunday.
XVII. An Homilie for Rogation weeke.
XVIII. Of the state of Matrimony.
XIX. Against Idlenesse.
XX. Of Repentance and true Reconciliation vnto God.
XXI. An Homily against disobedience and wilfull rebellion.

¹ Rich Text Format is a word processing format common to nearly every computer platform.

²Hyper-text Markup Language is a method for coding text appearance and placement on web pages. It's what you're looking at right now.