But if you turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them; though some of you were cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from there, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there.
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Bede
AD 735
On the twenty-fourth day of this month, the children of Israel came together with fasting and with sackcloth, and earth upon them. And the seed of the children of Israel separated themselves from every foreigner, and so on. /1300/ One should note the devotion of the people reformed after the captivity: when the feast which had been commanded by the Lord's Law had been duly completed, after just one day's intermission, they immediately came together of their own accord with fasting and with repentance, and diligently carried out “372” what on the days of sacred readings and rejoicing they had heard must be done by separating themselves in both mind and body from the fellowship of those who were proven to be alienated from the Lord and his worship, lest through the association and examples of the wicked they should again fall into the evils of captivity and hardship which, they discerned, they had just at that time barely escaped after long revolutions of times and ages. And what are we to reflect on mystically about these matters except that, following the examples of such people, whatever we have learnt in a public meeting or reading1 should be done, we should reflect on again with mutual discussion among ourselves, and we should search out with careful scrutiny the ways we can fulfil each duty with the reproof of our heart or body. The immense industry of their more reformed life is proven when it is added:
