Daily Reading for October 18 • St. Luke the Evangelist

The third Evangelist is Luke, who was a physician in the world,
and dwelt with the apostles, and with Paul afterward,
serving the Almighty without any sin
in a pure life, ever without a wife, filled with God’s Spirit,
and he wrote and wisely arranged the Gospel,
and he also wrote the Acts of the Apostles.
He wrote his Gospel in the land of Achaia,
and departed to God, filled with the Holy Ghost,
when he was four and eighty years of age. . . .

Now we have said, in this epitome,
how God revealed the true Evangelists
in the Old Law, and also in the New;
and these four only are to be received
in the orthodox church, and the others to be rejected,
who wrote false writings, by themselves (only),
not by the Holy Ghost, nor by the Saviour’s choosing.
Thus we end this treatise here.

From “Other Things: The Four Evangelists,” in The Lives of Saints, Volume 1, by Aelfric, edited by Walter W. Skeat (Early English Text Society edition).