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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44239	The Holy fast of Lent defended against all its prophaners, or, A Discourse shewing that Lent-fast was first taught the world by the apostles, as Dr. Gunning, now Bishop of Ely learnedly proved in a sermon printed by him in the year 1662 by His Majesties special command together with a practical direction how to fast.	Gunning, Peter, 1614-1684.	1677 (1677)	Wing H2525; ESTC R40999	45,046	54

of the Sacred Christian Pen-men written a Book on purpose to declare the whole manner of Christian worship like Moyses his Exodus or Leviticus we might reasonably have expected an account what days Christians were to set apart for Fasting or Religious Feasting what Garments they were to use in time of Divine Worship c. Bu● they only as is manifest writing Books for other intents and purposes by way of History for example or moral Exhortations and making mention only by the by of some of our Christian Rites as they occurred nothing can be more unreasonable then to expect in their said Writings an express clear mention of every Christian Ceremonial Observance The four Gospels are a History of our Blessed Saviours Life and Death who lived as to the external Rites of Religion according to the Jewish Law and so we cannot reasonably in any of them expect what Fasting or Festival days we Christians are to observe Indeed had the Act of the Apostles been intended as an exact Narration how the Apostles lived as to the whole course of their Life what days they kept Holy and what they Fasted c. We might reasonably have expected some mention there of Lent and Easter But that holy Book making mention only of some few particular passages of two or three of the Apostles lives the Apostles might well keep Lent and Easter too and teach them also to their first Converts and yet there be a profound silence of them in the Book of their Acts As for S. Iohn's Prophetical Book it were no ways proper in it to speak of Easter or Lent The rest of the New Testament are certain Epistles or Letters of Spiritual Counsels written by S. Paul or some other Apostle to particular persons or whole Cityes already instructed in the Christian way of worship But why they should needs make mention therein of Lent I understand not unless perchance the persons they wrote unto had been deficient in observing of it But does not S. Paul expresly decry the keeping of Lent in one of his Epistles and tell the Christians he wrote to he was afraid he had laboured in vain amongst them by reason of their superstitious Observations of Days and Times Gal. 4. v. 9 10. How are ye Converted again to weak and beggarly Elements which you will serve again Ye observe Days and Months and Times and Years I am afraid of you lest I should have laboured amongst you in vain Was then the Holy Apostle afraid lest the Galatians should leave Christianity and return to Judaism or Pagaism because of their observing Lent in memory of our Blessed Saviours Fasting 40. days or Easter in memory of his Resurrection Is this a likely Story Or is it not evident from the Context of their returning again to weak and poor Elements that because of their returning to the Observation of Iewish days commanded by Moses or Pagan days in honour of Iupiter Mars c. he was afraid they would relinquish the Gospel by them received and become Jews again or Pagans But does not the same Apostle 1 Tim. 4. tell us expresly that Abstinence from certain M 〈…〉 the Doctrin of Devils and that nothing which God has made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be rejected by us but eaten with thankfulness Now the Spi 〈…〉 eth expresly that in the later times some shall depart from the 〈…〉 heed to Seducing Spirits and Doctrins of Devils speaking 〈…〉 Hypocrisie having their Consciences scared with a hot Iron fo● 〈◊〉 to Marry and commanding to abstain from Meats which God 〈…〉 to be received with Thanksgiving of them which believe and know the Truth For every Creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with Thanksgiving That we may rightly understand these words of S. Paul we must reflect that upon a double account we may abstain from certain Meats or Drinks First we may abstain from certain Meats as thinking them out of Error and Superstition naturally unclean and unholy And to teach Abstinence from certain Creatures upon such an account is deservedly called the Doctrin of Devils And with this Heresie the Manicheans are charged by S. Austin and other Fathers And that the Apostle meant such like Abstainers from certain Creatures is manifest by the reason he gives why Christians should not Abstain upon such an account to wit because every Creature of God is good and consequently we ought not to reject any as in themselves evil and unclean Secondly we may abstain from certain Meats or Drinks as less suitable to a time of Humiliation or appeasing of Almighty God for our sins by Penitential works of Fasting Weeping and Mourning or for some other Spiritual end And such an Abstinence as this is so far from being prohibited by S. Paul or any other of the Apostles that it is commended not only by the light of Nature but also by the Holy Scriptures and the examples of the Holiest Men that ever lived upon Earth Thus S. Tymothy Abstained from Wine continually for Mortification so that S. Paul thought fit to exhort him not always to drink water but to make use of a little Wine for his Stomack-sake and frequent infirmities Whereas had it been Superstition to ab●●ain from certain Creatures of God upon a Religious account he ought to have disswaded him from his Abstinence by telling him such an Abstinence from the good Creatures of God was the Doctrin of Devils Wil-worship c. Eating Flesh and drinking Wine are very Lawful and Laudable when done in their due and proper season but are no ways suitable to days or times when I am called upon by my lawful Superiors to appease God Almightys Anger for my own and others sins by Fasting Weeping and Mourning Hear not me but the Holy Prophet Isa. ch 22. v. 12 13 14. And in that way did the Lord God of Hosts call to Weeping and to mourning and to Baldness and to Girding with Sack-cloath And behold Ioy and Gladness slaying Oxen and killing Sheep eating Flesh and drinking Wine Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall dye And it was revealed in mine Ears by the Lord of Hoasts surely this Iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye dye saith the Lord God of Hosts Now they seem not so much to be a-sleep as dead who hear not God Almighty crying out unto them and calling them to Fasting Weeping and Mourning this Holy and Penitential time of Lent after all the Authorities above-cited for its Apostolical Institution To say nothing of the abounding of all sorts of wickedness amongst us and the heavy Spiritual Plagues of blindness of mind and insensibility of Divine things which has seized upon us and no doubt call aloud for Penitential Humiliations But if Abstinence from certain Meats upon a Religious account be true Christian Piety what shall we say to S. Paul Rom. 14. v. 2. One believeth that he may eat all things another who is weak eateth Herbs and v. 6. He that eateth

less my self that I may have the more to give to those that are in Necessity my Fast is an act of Charity If I Fast the better to dispose my self for Prayer 't is an act of Religious Devotion If I Fast judging my self not worthy of any Delicacies nor of my fill of even the coursest Fare 't is an act of Humility and disposes my soul moreover as little to affect fine Cloaths or stately Dwellings as I do good Victuals and consequently moderates my desires of Money and Riches which are not desirable by corrupt Nature but for these or such like uses If I Fast that I may be better able to pay my Debts or provide my Children Portitions 't is an act of Justice and Christian paternal Piety If to moderate my inordinate Appetite of Meat and Drink 't is an act of Temperance In fine 't is hard to name a Virtue which Fasting does not strangely help to procure maintain and encrease And after all this can either Pagan or Christian deny the holy Fast of Lent to have a Divine Character stamp'd upon it and must it be still stigmatized with the ignominious brand of Superstition and Will-worship But how do I know assuredly the Apostles of our B. Saviour taught the Primitive Christians to Fast in Lent Am I able to produce a grand Jury of so many Venerable old Men who have been miraculously kept alive ever since and are ready to avouch as much upon solemn Oath No not I. How do I then know it Has an Angel appeared to me and told me as much No. How then Why how did the Israelites who lived above two thousand years after the Institution of the Sabbath know that God Almighty commanded their first Father Adam to keep it holy They had no book of it the Book of Genesis being written above two thousand years after by Moses I conceive they knew it thus Adam instantly upon God-Almighties Command set himself Religiously to observe that day and taught his Children to do so also his Children practised and taught their Children downwards till Moses his days Nor had any reason to doubt of the Divine Institution of that first holy day because it was not transmitted and recommended to them by a Book Nor would it have been a sufficient excuse for any one then to have pretended how could they be certain that some of their Ancestors betwixt them and Adam had not of their own head superstitiously devised a Religious observation of that day before all others unless they could have produced some positive evidence of such an Innovation In like manner I say concerning the holy Fast of Lent The Holy Apostles first taught the observation of it in the several Countrys where they Preached the Gospel their Converts fell to the practice of it and taught their Children in like manner and so one Generation another till our present days and this all over the Christian World Now unless Non-Conformists can shew when this burdensome precept of Fasting-Lent was imposed upon Christendom since the first planting of Christianity I cannot see how they can more excuse themselves from this Obligation than could the Israelites excuse themselves from the keeping of Saturday Sabbath which was ordained two thousand years before they were born and there was also as yet no written Word of God at all for any such observation But what proof can be brought that all intermediate Generations since the Apostles in several Christian Countrys have kept Lent A much stronger then Iacob could bring to prove to his Children that Saturday-Sabbath had been kept ever since Adam He could only produce the Testimony of the present Generation that so they had been taught by their Fathers and Grand-fathers time out of mind nor had they any Tradition amongst them of a later beginning of such an Observation Written Records Divine or Human he had none I besides the Testimony of those of the present Age in several Christian Countrys who affirm that they have Immemorially from the first planting of Christianity amongst them Religiously observed Lent will produce by and by Records of above a thousand years standing for its Apostolical Institution But positively to prove that the Apostles appointed Lent I argue thus Two hundred years agoe England France Spain Germany Italy and all the Eastern Church universally Fasted Lent as 't is evident by the Records and Annals of our own and those other Christian Countrys Therefore the Apostles taught Lent to their first Converts both in the Eastern and Western World where they Preached For it cannot be imagined that so many several Countrys Kings and Subjects Priests and People could by chance fall upon the yearly practice of Abstaining from flesh forty days before Easter Therefore they must either all at first be taught so by their first Masters of Christianity which is the Conclusion intended to be proved or some Universal Supream Authority Ecclesiastical or Civil must so have commanded them to do or some Preachers first in one Country and then in another must so have perswaded them to do in some Age since But no Annals of our own or other Christian Countrys make any mention of any such Preachers or any such Ordination made by any general Council Pope Prince or Emperor Nor yet have we or other Cbristian Countrys wanted Ecclesiastical Historiographers who in their Memorials have taken notice of far lesser matters than such an Innovation as this must needs have been had the Apostles taught the World no such Observance And the truth is 't is pure Ignorance in Ecclesiastical History and the works of the Primitive Fathers that makes so many waver in the Belief of the Apostolical Institution of Lent in which if they were well Conversant they could not possibly doubt of it Further Not only two hundred years ago but twelve hundred years agoe Lent was Universally observed in the whole Christian World both in the Eastern and Western Church as is manifest out of the pious works of the prime Pillars and Pastors of Christs Church in the fourth and fifth Century of Christianity Nor do the Opposers of Lent deny so much and therefore appeal to the first 300. years after our Saviour for which time and for which only they pretend the Christian worship was untainted and not infected with the Superstitious observation of Lent And no doubt they have a great deal of reason to think so Charitably of the Primitive Christians who for the first 300. years after our Saviour were all over the World sought after to death for their Religion that they would have a care to keep that Religion unspotted and teach the same faithfully to their Posterity which they were all ready every day to dye for and many of them actually did dye for Besides what a reproach would it be to our B. Saviour that his Church should be Universally over-run with Superstition within 300. years after his Death and yet Moses should be able so to establish a Religion as it

observance which was preparatory to the greatest Feast which was followed with the 50. days Solemnity Thus Philo contemporary of the Apostles concerning the Hebrew Christians in and about Alexandria where S. Mark was set Bishop by S. Peter I omit the Testimony of the 68. Canon of the Apostles for that Ecclesiastical Writers do not unanimously agree that those Canons at least all of them were made by the Apostles although the sixth General Councel Celebrated above a 1000. years agoe received and approved 85. of them There can be no doubt but they are very antient Bishop Gunning thinks they were made in the second Century by the Successors of the Apostles who in that Age were commonly as he says called Apostles The 68●h Canon runs thus If any Bishop or Priest or Deacon or Lector or Cantor shall not Fast the sacred Lent Quadragesimam before Easter or Wednesday or Friday let him be deposed unless he be hindred by weakness of body But if he be a Laick let him be deprived of the Communion Indeed the Canon does not seem first to institute Lent but rather supposes it and urges its observance by inflicting a penalty upon Non-observers All which makes for my designed purpose for who could so early except the Apostles be the first Authors of such an Institution when as yet there had been no General Council except that of the Apostles at Hierusalem But have we no Scripture for the Observation of Lent Fast We have Scripture that our B. Saviour Fasted 40. days and we have also in Scripture that if any man says he is in Christ he ought to walk as he walk'd Moreover we have yet more express Scriptures as interpreted not by some one or two Fathers but by the whole body of Catholick Christians as Bishop Gunning well observes out of Tertullian cited above They that is the Catholick Christians who are called by him Psychici surely think that in the Gospel those days are determin'd for Fasts in which the Bridegroom was taken away and a little after the Paschal Fast those days in which the Bridegroom was taken away Those words then of our B. Lord in excuse of his Disciples not Fasting whilst he was with them Can you make the Children of the Bridegroom fast while the Bridegroom is with them But the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them then shall they fast in those days Those words I say in the sense of the Primitive Church in the second Century were intended by our B. Saviour to signifie that Christians after his departure should Fast yearly upon Good-Friday the day of his death and the rest of the Pascal or Lent-Fast those days in which the Bridegroom was taken away I add whether those words in those days did in the intention of our Saviour signifie Lent-Fast or no it 's evident had not the Primitive Christians Fasted Lent they would never have interpreted our Lords words as they did which is sufficient for my purpose to wit to evince that the most Primitive pure Church did Fast Lent And besides according to common sense who are more likely to understand aright our B. Saviours or his Apostles words they who lived in the next Age to them or we who live sixteen hundred years after Do we or any other Nation in the world understand our written Laws according to the sense a crafty witty Lawyer can wrest them to signifie or accordingly as they have been immemorially understood since the first making of them and as cases and disputes have by our Learned Judges been decided by them More-over suppose but only the Primitive Christians for whose sake the Holy Scriptures were written rightly understood them and let after Generations interpret the same Scriptures in the sense they were interpreted by their Ancestors and let this be their great enquiry how their Fore-elders understood them and its impossible they should ever be mis-understood but leave their Interpretation to every private mans sentiment and you open a gap to all Innovations and Heresies as Bishop Gunning judiciously observes Reason says he pag. 23. and experience and the direction of all Wise men in the Church of God Antient and Modern the House of Wisdom Councels Reverend Fathers and Writers and our Church in particular have directed and commanded us not to interpret the Scripture in things of publick concernment to the Churches rule of believing and doing but as we find it interpreted by the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church as they had received it from those before them For that the leaving of every man to make any thing of any Text upon any device out of his own head to the founding of any new and strange Doctrin or Practice as necessary there from or to the opposing any constantly received Doctrin or Practice of the Church-Vniversal for in other matters they may happily with leave quietly abound in their own sense leaves all bold Innovators which can draw any disciples after them to be as much Law-givers to the Church by their uncontrolable Law interpreting as any Pope or Enthusiast can or need pretend to be and hath been and ever will be to the end of the World the ground of most H●resies and Schisms brought into the Church by Men who departing from the teaching and stable Interpretation of the Church in their own Instability and Science falsly so called pervert the Scriptures to their own and others their obstinate followers destruction And indeed he who has so much Pride and Self-conceit as to prefer his own seeming sense of holy Scriptures before the sense which Holy Fathers and Christian. Doctors unanimously attest to have received from their Fore-elders is nextly disposed to vilifie and reject the whole Letter of Sacred Scriptures upon pretext of being uncertain whether the Letter now commonly owned and approved by the unanimous consent of Christian Doctors be indeed that Letter which was left the World by the Apostles But if a yearly Religious Observation of the Holy Fast of Lent be of such singular benefit and Spiritual advantage to all Christians and if also the Apostles of our Lord Jesus did recommend such an Observation to the several Countrys by them Converted to the Christian Faith how comes it to pass that none of all their Writings which have come to our hands makes express mention of it Hear Bishop Gunning p. 138. Ritual Observances being Visible and as it were legible in the Vniversal Churches constant practice needed not to be set down in her written rule Or those which are therein set down not necessarily so evidently but that they might need the Interp●etation of such the Churches practice And indeed whoever will impartially consider the nature of the Books of the New Testament will be so far from wondering that all the Rituals of Christianity are not expresly declared in them that he will rather wonder there is so much in them of the exterior Rites of Christian Religion as there is Had any