Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/190

 118 every spiritual gift, the work which St. Vedast, with the grace of God preventing him, had by his evangelic teaching begun. Thus the one guided the eager king to the fountain of everlasting life, the other washed him on A.D. 499. his arrival in the stream. Both the holy fathers were almost equal in piety: the one by teaching, the other by baptizing, presented the temporal king an acceptable offering to the King of Heaven. These are the two olives; these the two shining lights, by which the aforesaid king was instructed in the way of the Lord, and snatched by God's mercy from the snares of the Devil, entered the gate of eternal life together with his brave subjects the Franks, and adopted the faith of Christ. The nation was thus made holy, a peculiar people, that in them might be displayed the virtues of him, who called them out of darkness into marvellous light.

CHAPTER III.

Holy Gospel informs us that the Lord Jesus, on his way to Jericho, to confirm the hearts of those who were with him in their belief of his majesty, restored sight to a blind man, who called to him: so that by opening the eyes of one that was blind, the hearts of many might be spiritually enlightened. Thus St. Vedast also restored sight, with Christ's assistance, to a certain blind man; and by this miracle confirmed the faith of the king which by his preaching he had planted in his heart, so that the king himself perceived that the illumination of the mind was as necessary to him as that of the eye to the blind man, and that the same effect which Divine Grace had produced by the prayer of his servant in the darkened eye of the body, was brought