[78]. halde, keep: comp. ‘haldeð his heastes,’ SK 1788; ‘heaste halden,’ HM 5/28.
[80]. wið is adverbial and repeats ‘þurh’: see [62/24 note], and add, ‘vor vuel ꝥ ter kumeð of hit,’ AR 52/2; ‘þu ꝥ dest eni þing hwarof þer mon is fleschliche ivonded of þe,’ id. 58/22. The repetition of conjunctions is also found as in, ‘nis he fol chepmon þet, hwon he wule buggen hors oðer oxe, ȝif he nule biholden bute þet heaued one?’ AR 208/6; of pronouns, as ‘ꝥ þe muð ne mei uor scheome, þe liht eie spekeð hit,’ id. 60/6. B omits wið. þen = þen ꝥ.
[81]. schad: see 122/176. wit ⁊ . . . wisdom: see 22/142. wurðen &c.: see 130/52.
[82]. forð: se uorð B, se forð T: se being wanting in this text, the following ꝥ must mean, so that.
[83]. unwitlese: so B unwitelese, but T witlese, senseless, the meaning required. wuneð in: the idea that idols are inhabited by demons is as old as Porphyry: it is frequently expressed in the legends: comp. 145/118; SJ 22/14; CM 2303; SK 553; ‘praecipio tibi, daemon, qui in eo [ydolo] latitas, ut simulacrum istud comminuas,’ Legenda Aurea, ed. Graesse, 39/2; ‘In hoc ydolo quidam daemon habitabat,’ id. 540/30.
[84]. hereð &c.: see 130/49.
[87]. fint: ‘malorum omnium inventor diabolus.’ crokinde creftes, comp. 129/42: not ‘crooked crafts,’ but either, perverting devices, or more probably, devices by which he hooks his victims; the idea of both words being pursued in ‘keccheð’ and ‘creftluker’: for the termination of the latter, see 125/270.
[88]. cang: see 58/82.
[89]. ꝥ he makeð, by his making.
[92]. sunne &c.: the Latin has only ‘elementis mundi’; perhaps the author had in mind, ‘Nam solis lunaeque simulacra humanum in modum formant, item ignis et terrae et maris: quae illi Vulcanum, Vestam, Neptunum vocant,’ Lactantius, de Origine Erroris, ch. vi (ed. Spark, 143/5).