The Vikings are raiding, the people are degenerates, the clergy are corrupted and the leaders of the kingdom are brigands…so cries the Bishop known as: The Wolf

🔥🔥🔥 Bishop Wulfstan: Sermon of the Wolf to the English written c1009🔥🔥🔥

“Beloved men, know that which is true: this world is in haste and it nears the end.”

The State of the Nation:

And in short, the laws of God are hated and his teaching despised; therefore we all are fre­quent­ly disgraced through God’s anger, let him know it who is able. And that loss will be­come universal, although one may not think so, to all these people, unless God protects us. Therefore it is clear and well seen in all of us that we have previously more often trans­gressed than we have amended, and therefore much is greatly assailing this nation.

No­thing has prospered now for a long time either at home or abroad, but there has been military devastation and hunger, burning and blood­shed in nearly every district time and again. And stealing and slaying, plague and pesti­lence, murrain and disease, malice and hate, and the robbery by robbers have injured us very terribly.

And excessive taxes have afflicted us, and storms have very often caused failure of crops; therefore in this land there have been, as it may appear, many years now of injustices and unstable loyalties everywhere among men. Now very often a kinsman does not spare his kinsman any more than the foreigner, nor the father his children, nor sometimes the child his own father, nor one brother the other.

Neither has any of us ordered his life just as he should, neither the ecclesiastic according to the rule nor the lay­man according to the law, but we have trans­formed desire into laws for us entirely too often, and have kept neither precepts nor laws of God or men just as we should.

Neither has anyone had loyal intentions with respect to others as justly as he should, but almost everyone has deceived and injured another by words and deeds; and indeed almost everyone unjustly stabs the other from behind with shameful assaults and with wrongful accusa­tions — let him do more, if he may.

The Sin of Sex Trafficking

“Also we know well where this crime has occurred, and it is shame­ful to speak of that which has happened too widely. And it is terrible to know what too many do often, those who for a while carry out a miserable deed, who contribute together and buy a woman as a joint purchase between them and practice foul sin with that one woman, one after another, and each after the other like dogs that care not about filth; and then for a price they sell a creature of God – His own purchase that He bought at a great cost – into the power of enemies.”

“And many mis­fortunes befall this nation time and again: things have not prospered now for a long time neither at home nor abroad, but there has been destruction and hate in every district time and again, and the English have been entirely defeated for a long time now, and very truly disheartened through the anger of God”

We Pay Our Abusers:

“But all the insult that we often suffer, we repay by honoring those who insult us. We pay them continually and they humiliate us daily; they ravage and they burn, plunder and rob and carry to the ship; and lo! what else is there in all these happenings except God’s anger clear and evident over this nation?”

Sins of the people:

It is no wonder that there is mishap among us: because we know full well that now for many years men have too often not cared what they did by word or deed; but this nation, as it may appear, has become very corrupt through manifold sins and through many misdeeds: through murder and through evil deeds, through avarice and through greed, through stealing and through robbery, through man-selling and through heathen vices, through betrayals and through frauds, through attacks on kinsmen and through manslaughter, through injury of men in holy orders and through adultery, through incest and through various fornications. And also, far and wide, as we said before, more than should be are lost and perjured through the breaking of oaths and through violations of pledges, and through various lies; and non-observances of church feasts and fasts widely occur time and again. And also there are here in the land God’s adversaries, degenerate apostates, and hos­tile persecutors of the Church and entirely too many grim tyrants, and widespread des­pisers of divine laws and Christian virtues, and foolish deriders everywhere in the nation, most often of those things that the messengers of God command, and especially those things that always belong to God’s law by right.

Here in the country, as it may appear, too many are sorely wounded by the stains of sin. Here there are, as we said before, man­slayers and murderers of their kinsmen, and murderers of priests and persecutors of monas­teries, and traitors and notorious apostates, and here there are perjurers and mur­derers, and here there are injurers of men in holy orders and adulterers, and people greatly corrupted through incest and through various fornica­tions, and here there are harlots and infanti­cides and many foul adulterous fornicators, and here there are witches and sorceresses, and here there are robbers and plunderers and pilf­erers and thieves, and injurers of the people and pledge-breakers and treaty-breakers, and, in short, a countless number of all crimes and misdeeds. And we are not at all ashamed of it, but we are greatly ashamed to begin the remedy just as the books teach, and that is evident in this wretched and corrupt nation.

Sins of the Clergy:

And entirely too many holy religious foundations have deterior­at­ed because some men have previously been placed in them who ought not to have been, if one wished to show respect to God’s sanc­tuary.

And that came about, just as he said, through breach of rule by the clergy… through the sloth of the bishops and folly, and through the wicked cowardice of messengers of God, who swallowed the truths entirely too often and they mumbled through their jaws where they should have cried out”

And therefore things have now come far and wide to that full evil way that men are more ashamed now of good deeds than of misdeeds; because too often good deeds are abused with derision and the God-fearing are blamed entirely too much, and especially are men reproached and all too often greeted with contempt who love right and have fear of God to any extent.