serving however to let us know in gross That the Solemnity was not then held an inconsiderable Matter but all along much debated and studied and determined with great Exactness Upon the whole Matter therefore we have seen that as we had some reason to presume the Apostolical Observation of a Yearly from the Weekly day of the Resurrection so this Presumptive Probability is besides actually confirmed to us by sufficient Authority And from these Premises I hope I may have leave to conclude if not That this Paschal Observation was delivered by the Apostles to all the Churches with the Weekly Lord's Day yet That it was a Tradition received by many Churches in the Apostolick Days And this I presume to take for a Truth in so high a degree of Evidence that it will not be questioned by such as shall consider impartially c Plin. Ep. l. 10. Ep. 97. Soliti stato die ante lucem convenire d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 g Euseb Hist Eccles l. 5. c. 23. In that time a great Controversie was raised the Bishops of Asia strictly so called judging by their Ancient Tradition That the Paschal Solemnity was to be kept on the 14th day of the Moon then when the Jews sacrificed the Lamb and that their Fasting ought to break off on that day whatever day of the Week it happened to be and the other Bishops of the rest of the World observing from Apostolical Tradition a different Custom and which now obtains That it was not fit to break up the Fast on any other day but the Day of the Resurrection Upon this there were several Synods and Consultations held by the Last and they all unanimously by their Letters declar'd this to the World for an Ecclesiastical Rule That the Solemnity of our Saviour's Resurrection from the Dead was to be kept on no other day but a Sunday and that on that Day only the Paschal Fasting was to cease There is yet to be seen the Writing of those of Palestine over whom Theophilus Bishop of Cesarea presided and Narcissus Bishop of Jerusalem There is another too from those of Rome concerning the same Question speaking Victor to be Bishop Another of the Dioceses of France where Irenaeus was Bishop Another of those of Osroene and the Cities thereabouts One particularly from Bacchyllus Bishop of Corinth And several others all concurring in the same Opinion and giving the same Dâ—termination i 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is here commonly translated Kinsman but I have ventured to guess it may signifie a Countryman one of the same City 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Bishop of the same See making the Succession to have been in a Family and the Kindred Spiritual This is certain the Number of Seven Predecessors agree well with the Distance between Him and St. John n 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this Epistle of Irenaeus it seems very evident That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be understood not absolutely but in construction with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well in this place as others according to the common rendering notwithstanding a contrary Suspicion elsewhere suggested and to which a Defect in this place of some Particle to be understood gave the Occasion That Defect Valesius supplies by reading from Conjecture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have rather supposed then or something of that Sense to be understood CHAP II. Concerning FASTING § I. The several Kinds of Fasts § II. Several Occasions of Fasting particularly Penitence and Baptism § I. SO far we have view'd the Evidence for the Antiquity of the Paschal Solemnity in general with a more particular respect to the Festival of the Resurrection we now come expresly to consider the preceding Fast and its various Observation But first for the better understanding of what is to follow it will be fit to premise some Account of Fasts and their Variety and what were the more solemn times for that Duty There are Three Sorts of Fasting which Tertullian reckons up to us (a) De Je. jun. c. 2. consisting either in the Lessening or Deferring or Refusing of our Food The first sort is Abstinence not from all Food but from some kinds of it a Fast in part as Tertullian calls it (b) Tert. de Jejun c. 9. Portional Jejunium Abstinence from Flesh especially and Wine Or not only from Flesh and Wine but from any thing of Broth or any Juicy Vinous Fruit. Such a Dry Diet as Tertullian speaks of appropriated by him to his Fellow-Sectaries the Montanists (c) De Jejun c. 1. but used by Christians before and by Daniel (d) Dan. 10.2 3. when he mourned three full Weeks and eat no pleasant bread neither came flesh nor wine in his mouth neither did he anoint himself at all The second sort was when they did not Dine but deferred their Eating to some time of the Afternoon till after Three as the Catholicks did in Tertullian's Age who on certain days continued their Assemblies to that hour (e) De Jej. and both that their Assembling and that Fasting was call'd a Station from the Military Word says Tertullian (f) De Orat c. 14. but immediately from the Jewish Phrase and the Custom of those devout Men who either out of their own Devotion or as Representatives of the People Assisted at the Oblations of the Temple not departing thence till the Service was over g Such Stations are term'd Half-Fasts (h) De Jejun 13. Stat. semijejunia by Tertullian and were held later by the Appointment of Montanus But before their time we know from Hermes an Author very ancient and in the beginning of the Second Century that the Stations of the first Christians were sometimes kept as severely and that when they came at last to Eat nothing was to be tasted but Bread and Water that day i Such a kind of Fast as this ending in a moderate Refreshment towards Night is generally to be understood when any great number of Days is said to be fasted together This Fast is too supposed to have begun from the Evening before when the Stars appear'd For then the Day began with the Jews as well as with the Athenians k But under this kind which allows some time for Food in the 24 hours the Periodical Day we may too reckon that manner of Fasting which forbids to eat or to drink while the Sun is up the Vulgar Day but either gives liberty all the Night the Fast of the Mahometans during their Month Ramazan (l) Ricauâ—â— l. 2. c. 22. or else gives leave to refresh themselves provided it be done before their first sleep as is the manner of the Jews in all their ordinary Fasts (m) Maim de Jejun c. 1. §. 8. The third sort is when they Eat not at all the whole day from Sun-set or the Appearance of the Stars till the same season again as the Jews now do in their strictest Fasts as on the Ninth of their Month Ab or on
marked with B much according to Russinus his Version made about the End of the fourth Century And to begin with what concerns the Fast in general it can never be supposed though some would be willing it should That Irenaeus in the last of the two doubtful Passages however rendered speaks any thing to the Disparagement of the Fast it self as if those who long before his time had Governed the Church less exactly had shew'd their less Exactness in the Institution of a Lent Had He said so he had indeed effectually silenc'd one part of the Grand Dispute that concerning the End of the Fast for he had declared against any Fast at all but he must have been taken then for an ill Arbitrator by Victor and the rest as well as by Polycrates who all equally joined in the Tradition of the Fast and must of necessity by the change of the Question have become a common Adversary and turned the whole Dispute upon himself But this Great Man used another method and went by the common Principle For he speaks to Victor of the Practice of those of his own side who differed from the common Custom but with whom Communion had been always held and was not now refused by Victor himself Some of those Differences it is plain he charges with less Exactness and reflects upon the Authors of them whoever they were but not upon Victor's Predecessors or his own and his Argument then for Peace proceeds thus with great force That the Bishop of Rome should not break off Communion with the Asiaticks for their different manner for those who joined with him against them and remained in his Communion had their different Customs too There is therefore no Reflection from this place upon the Original of Lent but on the contrary there is a strong Confirmation of its Apostolical Antiquity under either Version For those who according to Valesius Governed the Churches with that little Exactness as to be Authors of an undue Custom were very Ancient long before the days of Irenaeus and are supposed here to have had Cotemporaries who observed the right Manner But further in the other I think more exact Interpretation those who were long before Irenaeus his time and consequently very near to the time of St. John are said expresly to have been though not faithful and exact yet Retainers and Keepers of a Custom which had therefore been rightly practised yet earlier even before the days of those who were long before Irenaeus § III. Thus much concerning the Antiquity of a Lent I could not omit to add from these few Lines of Ireneaus casually preserved to us and which speak very casually to that Matter To the Manner of Keeping Lent they are more express and direct but very brief and concise as wrote on another design and not for Victor's or our Information in the Particular we desire to see In this transient Mention of the Manner he says some observed One day some Two and some More not expressing who they were or in what they were less Exact for Victor might understand him well though we do not Those who kept but One day and whose Resurrection-day was a Sunday in all probability kept what we call Good Friday the Weekly Day of the Passion and if they did not too use some sort of Abstinence though not so strict on the Saturday they were so little exact as to offend against the Rule and to brâ—â—◠〈◊〉 their Fast before Easter-Day But if there were any whose One Day was the Saturday they who begun their Fast so late little wanted that Rule to tell them when to end it and their neglecting the passion-Passion-Day could not seem very exact to those that observed it As to the Two or More days it is not neither determined after what sort they were kept whether in One continued Fast uninterrupted by any Food as two or more of those days were certainly fasted by some of the next Age especially in the Passion-Week or whether the Fasts were several though the Days were continued each Day ended with some Refreshment If those More days were very Many they were as we have intimated already (*) Ch. 2. §. 1. likely to have been kept in the last Manner There might too have been more Days than Two kept together not only once just before Easter but oftner and at some distance within the Compass of a larger time Hereafter Examples will appear of such Fasts and the several Practices may have been old though the mention of them in Books be later Hitherto the Words are plain and of certain Construction though we may not know every particular Case to which they might referâ—â— but those that follow are of ambiguouâ— Interpretation and particularly the word Forty is expounded as we see by some of Days and by some of Hours It is not absolutely necessary to any design of these Papers That forty Days should be here named expresly for they may well be admitted under the latitude of the word More if we shall hereafter see Reason to understand them so early I hope therefore I am not partial when I judge the Old Translation of this Place to be preferable to the Modern For first a Day of 40 Hours is a space of time never before heard of neither determined by the Sun's Appearance nor Revolution And if we should admit of such a single Day measured not by the Sun's Motion but by our Saviour's lying in the Grave yet it would be strange to join two or more of those days together Valesius therefore wonders That the Absurdity has been endured and that no Body has seen that the Greek word for Day must be changed into that for Fast and the Sentence run so Some measure their Fast by 40 Hours c. This Change he is forced to by the Sense not countenanced by the Authority of any Copy But not to object the Odness of this Fast that was to begin at soonest after Breakfast on the Friday and which took notice of our Lord's Burial but not of his Crucifixion much less of his previous Sufferings and Apprehension to pass this over for this might be one of those less exact Manners which once had place though afterwards left off yet still the mention of Hours of Day and Night would be very redundant especially where the Author is so Brief for what need is there of this Circumstantial Description and how could Forty Hours have otherwise come together Such Objections as these to which the New Interpretation lies open do put us upon looking out for another more proper which I take that of Ruffinus to be For the Forty Days which somâ— are unwilling to find so soon in the Church will appear hereafter not to have been so unhâ—â—â—â—â—f for a Fast as 40 Hours but rather to have been a Number much celebrated within 〈◊〉 little while in the Christian Lent and in all probability sacred before to Abstinence in the Jewish Church Ruffinus
not to understand him of the Practice of the Catholicks of which Sozomen and others speak but of the Novatians of whose Affairs all own that he had a particular Knowledge if he was not inclined to their Sect. From their Dispute it was he enter'd upon this Discourse and from some Memorials of theirs he may have drawn up something of this Account which otherwise might easily have been as plain and full as that of Sozomen had it not been wrote in a different View And so if we suppose the Regard to Forty Days to have first prevail'd universally from the Council of Nice we may suppose that the Novatians having had no share in that Council continued at least at Rome in their old Custom and kept on their Three Weeks If this Conjecture pass for the Three Weeks I should then either think that the Romans had not begun to fast on Saturday till after the Novatians had left them Or that a Word or rather a Numeral Letter c should be supplied in the Original and Thursday be understood a Day as St. Augustine tells us d not commonly fasted in his Time and possibly not in Lent by the Romans in the Time of Novatian § IV. BUT on this I lay no stress and shall only take notice of the Remark which Socrates makes with some Wonder That Numbers of Days so different should all have the same Denomination and be call'd from the Number Forty It is plain that neither the Western nor Eastern Church of his Time did measure adequately either the Days they fasted or the Term of Days within which they fasted by the Number of Forty but however a regard they had to it and a Forty Season they all pretended to keep We have withal seen how that Denomination obtain'd so much that all spaces of Fasting and in all Seasons of the Year were call'd by it For so St. Jerome term'd the Two Fasts instituted by Montanus (e) Ch. 4. Note g though they were but of a Week each of them and in other times of the Year What Reasons were then assigned for this Common Name Socrates tells us not and I wish we knew It should seem at first sight That the Christians aspired in a Fast of so great Devotion to the Imitation of the most Solemn Fasts recorded in Scripture those of Moses and Elias and that particularly of their blessed Master And then when the Church had once fix'd upon that Number of Days for their Example in general the Fasts of lesser duration might well go under the same Name by an easie Metonymie But all this will be yet more natural if those Fasts so recorded were rather miraculous in the Manner than singular in the Extent of Days and the Number Forty had been always with the Jews the proper Number for an extraordinary Humiliation a Conjecture we are to offer hereafter in the other Part of this Discourse § V. AND thus have we viewed the Practice of Lent through the first 400 Years We have seen in the last of those Centuries when Christianity came to be more openly professed under the Christian Emperours and abounded in Writers many express and undeniable Testimonies of the general Observation though in a different manner of the Forty Season then commonly so called from Forty Days In the next Age above it the Third and as high too as the middle of it a time that affords us not many Authors and when there was little occasion to speak of this Matter we have however a very punctual Account of their strict Manner of keeping the Passion-Week from one of the greatest Men of the Church who happen'd to be consulted about a Nicety of Ending this Lent And that their great Strictness in the Holy Week equal to any that was used after may well induce us to imagine That these Men had not left the Devotion of all the preceding Weeks to be added by the very next Generation Especially when we find the Forty Season expresly mentioned in Origen a Master of this Dionysius as consecrated to Fasting For that place of Origen though we have it only from the Version of Ruffinus and he none of the most exact Translatours yet certainly if he was not the worst that ever was is much more likely to be truly render'd than wrong there being no reason to fasten the Falsity on this Word more than on any other of the Sentence nor any wonder to find that spoke of now which not long after was celebrated so much But to proceed we have seen further from Tertullian an Author to be reckon'd to the Second Century as well as to the Third that the Days in which our Lord was taken away Good-Friday and the Holy Saturday at least if not the whole Week were in the Opinion of the Church of his Time to be fasted by all from Apostolical Authority and that no other Days were to be fasted necessarily and as by Divine Precept but at Discretion only and as Christians should think fit in Godly Prudence Upon the account of which Discretionary Uncertainty the Argument he was engag'd in made it not proper for him to say any more concerning them nor to tell us the several Customs of several Churches about that Arbitrary part of Lent though it may otherwise be collected even from him that there was then such an Additional Time observed But to go yet higher and nearer to the Apostolical Age about the Year 190 and not 90 from the Death of St. John Irenaeus a Venerable and now a very Old Bishop who had conversed familiarly with the great Polycarp as Polycarp had with St. John and other Apostles has happened to let us know though incidentally only the various observation of his Time that some thought they ought to fast One some Two and some More Days and some Forty as we have learn'd too in the general both from him and the Bishops of almost the whole Church concurrently with him that some such Ante-Paschal Fast had been all along observed in all Places up to the Time of the Apostles themselves a Sozom. l. 7. c. 19. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 b In this place that our Witness may be the more credible hereafter in our Cause I have ordered at a small Correction of the Text to reconcile it to the Truth of the Fact For it has been abundantly proved and particularly by Quesnel in his Edition of Leo That the Bishop of Rome preached there very often in Sozomen's time who is therefore commonly delivered up here to a Charge of â—gaerâ—â—â— anâ— Negligâ—â—ce whereas a very slight Change of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thing in which Criticks are not used to be difficult in Favour of any Author would have saved his Credit and rectifiâ—d â—he whole Matter b 2 Socrat. Hist Eâ—â—les 5.22 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 e The Guess I intimate is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
if they reckoned by different Years or by different Beginnings of the same sort of Year So those Montanists in Sozomen (e) Lib. 7. cap. 18. who went by the Solar Year and kept the Resurrection-day on some Sunday near the sixth of April would no more agree with those who placed it by the 14th day of the first Lunar Month of the Jews than the 14th day of the Moon 's Age would always be upon the same day of April And so those who agreed to use the Year of the Moon 's according to the Jewish Form might still differ among themselves if some followed the erroneous Calculation of their cotemporary Jews and begun their Year sooner than Moses had directed as the Christians of Cilicia Mesopotamia and Syria did before the Council of Nice and if others amending the Jewish Calendar stayed till the Aequinox according to the Original Appointment as the rest of the World did to whom those Easterns therefore by the direction of that Council in a little while conformed And further those who were so far agreed as to keep their Easter-day on a Sunday and to observe the same Reformed Jewish Year might yet differ in their placing of the Sunday in that Year Some as the Latines (f) Buch. in Victorii Can. Pasc c. 11. assigning it to the 16th day of the first Month on which day our Saviour was by them supposed to have arose and thenceforth to any of the six days after on which the Sunday should happen and some to the 15th day the first and great day of the Jewish Paschal Feast and thenceforward to any of the six days after of the same Jewish Solemnity a Practice to which the Western Church has since agreed as the Alexandrians used to do who supposing the Resurrection to have been on the 17th f might think they came near enough to it when the Sunday was never to be further from it than two days before or four after And some might allow it to be on the 14th day the day in which the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed as amongst others the old Brittish Inhabitants of our Isle were found to do who if they thought our Saviour to have risen on the 16th day placed their Easter-Sunday as exactly near it as the Alexandrians plac'd theirs and if they thought he rose on the 17th they were yet more exact than any and put it as near as was possible so as never to be more distant from it than three days either before or behind it For such Reasons our old Predecessors might have thought fit thus to keep their Easter however they were blamed by our Austin for it and afterwards call'd Hereticks and Quartodecimani a term of Dislike more justly given to those of whom we are going to speak and who occasion'd this too nice and too long Digression which the Reader therefore finds in another Letter that he may if he pleases pass it over § III. THE most likely Question to happen concerning the Place of the Yearly Resurrection-Day whether it should be always kept on a Sunday or no was the great Controversie between the Churches of Lesser Asia and Rome and in which all Christendom became ingag'd a Dispute managed by the Bishop of Rome too warmly but which has done so much good as to give occasion for the preserving some Records relating to this part of the History of Christianity by which we are certainly inform'd of the Great and Universal Antiquity of Easter and its preceding Fast. Those Asiatick Churches besides their singularity in breaking off their Fast on the 14th day celebrated the Solemnity of the Resurrection on a fixt day of the first Month of the Jews whatever day of the Week it prov'd to be and the rest of the Christian World if it happened not to be a Sunday observed it on some Sunday near it But both the Parties kept the Festival and each of them contended That it had been so kept in their several Churches from their first Plantation For about this Matter at the Request of Victor Bishop of Rome the several Bishops of Christendom met in their several Synods and all of them except those of Asia properly so called agreed on these two Points as deriv'd to them from Apostolical Tradition 1. That the Solemnity of our Saviour's Resurrection was not to be celebrated on any other day but the Lord's Day 2. And that the Paschal Fast ought not to be ended till that Day This was the Answer of all those Synods to the Questions in difference and the Returns of many of them are mentioned by Eusebius to have been extant in his time g The general Result of those Synodical Determinations which Eusebius gives us is sufficient to satisfie us That the Bishops of both sides were fully possess'd of the Apostolical Tradition of their different Customs of observing Easter And such an uniform Concurrence of so many venerable Persons from such distant Places about such a solemn and observable a Practice and at a time no more remote from the Age of the Apostles cannot but induce us to give credit to this their single Affirmation as it is by him Authentically reported For as to the time of this Dispute it is well judg'd to have been agitated about the Year 190 of our Lord's Birth not 160 after his Passion and Resurrection the Memorial of which we now speak of not much above 120 Years from the Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul nor above 90 after the Death of St. John § IV. GREAT Regard is therefore to be had to the Judgement of the whole Christian Church of that time which Eusebius summarily reports to us g of their Tradition concerning Easter Had indeed the several Answers the Bishops of the Provinces sent remain'd to our days or had Eusebius given us more Extracts of them we could not have fail'd of many remarkable Particularities alledged by them in Favour and Justification of this general Assertion But they are all lost neither was it agreeable to that Historian's purpose to fill his Books with Proofs for the Antiquity of this Solemnity a Matter in his days never doubted by any For which Reason neither does he give us out of them any Instances in Confirmation of that particular Usage in which the great part of the World agreed with Victor and which afterwards generally prevail'd He rather thought fit at a time when the Asiatick Custom was left off to preserve some little Account of what they had to say for their singular Fashion and even out of that little we shall be able to see how well the general Tradition was grounded Polycrates Bishop of Ephesus the chief of the Asiaticks in his Letter to Victor a Fragment of which Eusebius gives (h) Euseb Eccl. Hist 5.24 professes That they kept the true Day unfalsified and then says in answer I suppose to Victor who had boasted of the Sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul and other Saints from whose Authority he might have
recommended the Custom of his side That there were too deposited in Asia the Remains of very great Saints and Martyrs Philip and his three Daughters St. John who lay in our Lord's breast Polycarp Thraseas Sagaris and Melito who all had kept the 14th day of the Passover according to the Gospel and so adds he have I according to the Tradition of my Kinsmen or Countrymen or my Predecessors in this See i with some of whom I conversed They were seven and I am the eighth and they always kept the Day when Leaven was forbid I therefore who am now 65 Years old in the Lord and have conversed with our Brethren of the whole World and have perused all holy Scripture am not at all moved at those who trouble and threaten me For my Betters have said God is rather to be obeyed than Man This Holy Man was himself a great Evidence of the Antiquity of the Custom for which he stands He was about the 8th Bishop from St. John for however the Word is to be rendered about so many sate in the same interval at Rome and writes this about 90 Years after his Death when he himself had been a Christian 65 Years of them and able to testifie of all those Years if he was baptized Adult as they then generally were We may too think that he had some particular Instances in his View of the Practice of those Persons whose Names he vouches if we may infer from what we chance to know of two of them Melito and Polycarp For Melito who was Bishop of Sardes had as Eusebius tells us in another place (k) Hist Eccl. 4.26 some twenty Years before wrote a Treatise of the Lord's Day and two Books concerning the Passover or the Christian Solemnity at that time of the Year there having been a great Dispute raised about it at Laodicea then when Sagaris the Bishop of that Place named here by Polycrates received his Martyrdom a Dispute I suppose of the same nature with This. And in it Polycarp here too mentioned had been engaged before who went to Rome as St. Jerome (l) Catal. Scâ—ip Eccl. expresses it about some Questions concerning the Paschal Observation in Anicetus his Pontificate And the Conversation which he had with Anicetus about that Subject we have related by Irenaeus a Disciple of Polycarp's and who had been bred up in Asia He now Bishop of Lyons in France though declaring for Victor yet interposing and endeavouring to moderate the Heat of the Controversie in a piece which Eusebius has sav'd of that Letter (m) 5.24 among other things told Victor as follows And the Presbyters before Soter who presided in the Church which you now govern I mean Anicetus and Pius and Hyginus and Telesphorus and Xystus neither kept the 14th day themselves nor permitted those of their Church to do it And nevertheless they not keeping it held Communion with those who came from other Dioceses where it was kept Although then when they were together in Rome the keeping it was more contrary to those who kept it not n And none were ever refus'd Communion for this Matter But the Presbyters before you who kept it not sent the Eucharist to those of the Dioceses who kept it And when Blessed Polycarp was at Rome in Anicetus his time and there were some Differences between them about other things They presently agreed never proceeding to have any Contention on this Subject Anicetus not prevailing with Polycarp to forego a Custom which he had all along observ'd with St. John the Disciple of our Lord and the other Apostles with whom he had conversed and Anicetus alledging That he for his part ought to keep the Custom of the Bishops his Predecessors And these things standing so they communicated together and in the Congregation Anicetus gave Polycarp the Respect of Celebrating the Eucharist and they departed from each other in Peace in all the Churches those who kept and those who did not keep preserving Peace and Communion one with another Here then we have Polycarp a Disciple of St. John attesting to the Asian Tradition an undeniable Witness of its Apostolical Antiquity We know too that this Discourse of his with Anicetus must be at farthest in the year 161 if we reckon Anicetus his Death with Bishop Pearson and in the year 153 if with Mr. Dodwell between 30 and 40 years before this Dispute of Victor's And indeed it seems plain from the same piece of Irenaeus his Letter that this Difference had been taken notice of almost from St. John's time though mutually tolerated For to that purpose he mentions the behaviour of Anicetus Pius Hyginus Telesphorus Xystus all Bishops of Rome up to the year of our Lord 101 by Bishop Pearson 102 by Mr. Dodwell very near the time of St. John's Decease From all which we see not only what good Authority the Asiaticks disputing with Victor had for their Tradition but that this matter had been long before brought into Question and made so remarkable very early that those of both sides must have had some distinct and more than general remembrance of the successive Practice of their several Customs convey'd down to them Neither indeed could those of Victor's Judgment have ever oppos'd the Asiatick Observation whose Antiquity was so well prov'd if they had not produc'd on their side as good Evidence for their own such Evidence I say as they might well be furnisht with from the elder Memorials of the same debate And thus did both sides of this Great Dispute however they differ'd in the particular manner of their Paschal Observation absolutely agree in the general concerning the Apostolical Antiquity of it A little while after this time Clemens of Alexandria wrote a Treatise concerning the Paschal Observation and some Dissertations concerning Fasting all which are lost And the Design of his Paschal Book as Eusebius tells us (o) Eus Eccl. H. l. 6. c. 13. was to deliver down the Traditions which he had receiv'd from those before him about that subject and in it he made mention of Melito and Irenaeus whose Relations he set down Hippolitus likewise a Bishop and Martyr a Disciple of Irenaeus in the year 221 wrote a Book of the Paschal Season in which (p) Eus E. H. lib. 6. c. 22. as Eusebius says he gives an Account of the past Times by a repeated Cycle of 16 Years concluding in the first Year of Alexander the Emperour's Reign which Book is wanting But a Table of his engraven in Stone was happily dug up at Rome the last Age which beginning at that first Year of Alexander gives all the Easter Days which were then to come for 112 Years with as much Formality and Method as they have been us'd to be calculated since (q) Apud Bâ—â—her in Vidorium Such express Accounts of the Paschal Season there have been heretofore given very near the Apostles times which had they been preserved might have more particularly informed us
quae ipsae suos quidem dies habeant Quartae Feriae Sextae Passivè tamen currant neque sub lege Praecepti neque ultra supremam diei quando Orationes fere Hora Nona concludat de Petri exemplo quod Actis refertur Xerophagias vero novum affectati officii nomen proximum Ethnicae superstitioni quales castimoniae Apim Isidem magnam Matrem certorum eduliorum exceptione purisicant n Ibidem Cap. 13. Praescribitis constituta esse solennia huic Fidei Scripturis vel Traditione Majorum nihilque observationis amplius adjiciendum ob illicitum Innovationis State in isto gradu si potestis Ecce enim convenio vos praeter Pascha jejunantes citra n 2 illos dies quibus ablatus est Sponsus Stationum semijejunia interponentes vero interdum pane aqua victitantes ut cuique visum est n 2 The very Learned Dr. Beveridge in his Cod. Canon Apost Vindic. l. 3. c. 6. suggests That citra illos dies may well signifie the Season just before them and denote a larger Lent to have been kept by the Catholicks of that time That Meaning the Phrase will bear but I have not given the Translation according to it lest any one should complain That I produc'd a Testimony in a straitened though a very proper Sence which was capable of a larger o Quod si nova Conditio in Christo jam nova Solemnia esse debebunt Aut si omnem in totum devotionem temporum dierum mensium annorum erasit Apostolus Cur Pascha celebramus annuo circulo in Mense primo Cur quinquaginta exinde diebus in omni exultatione decurrimus Cur Stationibus Quartam Sextam Sabbati dicamus Jejuniis Parasceven p Quanquam vos etiant Sabbatum siquando continuatis nunquam nisi in Pascha jejunandum q secundum rationem alibi redditam p Parasceve by many is understood here to signifie Good-Friday in particular because of the ordinary Fridays as well as of Wednesdays mention is made before But the Word is never found to signifie after that manner in any other place and besides our Author has already spoke of the Pascha in the same Period and with him we know Dies Paschalis is Good-Friday as we may see in the next Testimony to this cited out of his Book de Orat. and here in the Close of this Passage the Saturday following is Sabbatum Paschae He seems therefore after he had mentioned the Yearly Solemnities of the Pascha and the Pentecost which begun on easter-Easter-Day to come now to the Weekly and is understood by Petavius in his Notes upon Epiphan p. 358. to imply That as both Wednesdays and Fridays were the Days assign'd for Stationary-Meetings So the Fridays were appointed for Fasts supposing the Word Statio not so much to signifie the Half-Fast as the Assembling and the Jejunia to be much above those Semi-Fasts and of the stricter sort This is certain though Wednesdays and Fridays are joined together often yet Friday is at other times particularly remember'd and as the more solemn Day as you will see hereafter Ch. 5. § I. and Ch. 7. § I. And such a Sence the Words may carry if at that time all the Wednesdays and Fridays were Stationary and all the Fridays were fasted But if the Fridays were not always fasted but only held the most proper Days of all the Week for a Fast yet then there might remain a Sence apt enough after this manner How come we to appoint Wednesdays and Fridays as most proper for Stations and the Fridays as most proper for stricter Fasts And so the Christians might have chose a Friday as the Jews if they are to have a solemn Fast chose for it their Monday or Thursday All this is said upon this Passage as it is now read But if there were any Manuscripts to be consulted I should look after the Words Quartam Sextam Sabbati to see whether Sextam were not an Interpolation of some Copyist who had observed them above and thought they were wanting here q Mr. Daillé willing to have Montanus the Enlarger of the Ante-Paschal Fast would fain suppose the Two New Weeks of Fasting which he instituted to have been placed by him before Easter and for that purpose cannot allow That the Montanists fasted the Saturday before Easter because as we see out of Tertullian in the next Paragraph in those Two Weeks they fasted not the Saturdays But on the contrary we have learn'd from St. Jerome That those Two Weeks were Two New Lents note g and we have found too f 2 some Reason to think That their Lent before Easter was of Two other Weeks differing we suppose from such a Lent of the Catholicks only in this That it was injoin'd as by Divine Precept And besides this very place will not endure such an Interpretation easily For the Montanists are known to have declined Fasting on Saturdays as much as the Catholicks and upon that Account only the Sabbatum nunquam jejunandum nist in Paschate may be said by them as of their own Judgment and their own Practice It is too most reasonable to understand it in such a manner For here Tertullian speaks and not the Catholicks and must be therefore rather presumed to have given his Own than Their Opinion which Opinion besides he says was founded upon a Reason elsewhere given and to say elsewhere might be proper enough if the Reason was any where given by himself in some Treatise of his but it was too loose and uncertain if the Reason was given by some Catholick in general for where should one look for it And who was he that gave it To all this we may add That if a Catholick's Opinion were here express'd and his Reasons meant it would have been rather thus Quanquam vos etiam Sabbatum siquando continuatis in Paschate Jejunandum secundum rationem alibi redditam for the Fasting on the Saturday of them who did it but sometimes was to be the Doubt and to require a Reason though for Tertullian to give a Catholick's Reason and not to censure it would have been very unnecessary and very flat Faults not usual in his Style And on the other side if the Montanists Judgement is there spoke and they fasted not that Saturday but the Catholicks did it should then instead of nisi have been nec and conceived in this manner to the Reproach of the Catholicks Quanquam vos etiam Sabbatum siquando continuatis nunquam nec in Pascha jejunandum c. Such a Reproof of the Catholicks was likely from Tertullian and such a Reflexion is obliquely made in the Translation above which tells of the Catholicks That they too continue the Saturday but that they should only fast that Saturday and no other which yet some of them were used to do This is all true upon the common Supposition That Parasceve signifies Good-Friday in this place But if it be to be taken
end at the Time of our Saviour's Resurrection A Bishop of the Neighbourhood having been troubled about this Nicety sends to Dionysius the Famous Bishop of that Capital City for a Resolution and his Answer here follows d You wrote to me right Trusty and most excellent Son inquiring what Hour of Easter-Day the Fast should end For some Brethren you say think it ought to end at Cock-Crow and some the Evening before For the Brethren of Rome as they say wait for the Crowing of the Cock and those here you tell me are something sooner But you desire me to give you the exact Hour and that very precisely and scrupulously determin'd a thing troublesomely nice and in which it is easie to mistake This indeed will be agreed by all That we ought to begin our Festival Joy after our Saviour's Resurrection Humbling our Souls with Fasting till that time comes But you have proved in your Letter very well from the Holy Gospels That it is not very exactly determined there at what Hour it was that he arose Those places of the Gospels he then considers and infers thus That the Setting out and the Going of the Disciples to the Sepulchre was in the deep of the Morning and very early but that they spent in their Going and about the Sepulchre to Sun-Rising This says he being the State of that Case To those who are so scrupulous as to inquire for the very Hour or Half or Quarter of an Hour when to begin the Festival we Answer thus We blame those who make too much haste and give over before Midnight And those who hold out longer and continue till the Fourth Watch we commend But to those who leave off in the mean time as their Inclination or Ability has served them we are not severe For not to be nice about Hours the Six Days of Fasting themselves are not kept equally and alike by All. Some continuing without Food pass over e the whole Six Days some Two some Three some Four and some not One. Now to those who have endured such Passings over without Sustenance and grow unable to hold out and are ready to faint to them leave is to be given for an earlier Refreshment But if there be any who have been so far from thus passing over the preceding Four Days that they have not so much as fasted f nay it may be have feasted and then coming to the Two last and onely Days and passing over the Friday and Saturday think they do a great thing if they hold on to Day-Break As to these I cannot think that they have strove alike for the Mastery with those who had been engaged in the Exercise more Days before Here is from great and unquestionable Authority a very accurate Account of the Manner in which the Christians of Alexandria and that Country passed the Week before Easter Nor is it to be doubted but that those generally of other Places observed it with more than ordinary Abstinence though they might not come up to all this Austerity and though the Aegyptian Christians as well as Jews for so I take Philo's Essenes to have been may have been the greatest Fasters each of their own Religion Some we are told wholly abstain'd from Food or pass'd over all the Six Days some Four beginning with Wednesday some Three and some Two And these last did the least of those who pretended to Pass Over for he mentions none who thought fit to begin on the Saturday and so to pass over but One whole Day He mentions indeed some who pass'd over not so much as One but it is plain that these were very few in comparison of the Rest and it is besides observable that those who did not Pass over a day altogether might however in the Language of this Author have Fasted a day till the Evening and in this manner it is probable they that Pass'd not over one day did however Fast more than one and possibly all the Six in the self-same Manner in which we now keep the most solemn of our Fasts Such Abstinence was us'd in the Passion-Week at Alexandria and in probability in most other Churches for the Account of Dionysius begins with the mention of Rome and Other places and does not at all seem to appropriate the Practice to that single City When therefore St. Cyprian a Cotemporary and Correspondent of Dionysius speaks occasionally of the first Solemnities of the Passover which detained his Brethren the Bishops at their own Churches g we may very well understand them to be the Devotions of the Holy Week and suppose that the Season of Seven Days before Easter and Seven after which by the Law of Theodosius the Great was made a Vacation in the Courts of Justice h had been before kept holy by the pious Usage of the elder Christians And this will seem the less strange if we reflect upon the Practice of the Jews about the same Season We shall hereafter endeavour to shew that very much of the Christian Usages were derived from them and it will not be deny'd by any That our Easter answers in some sort to their Passover-Day and the Seven Holy-days after the one to the Seven after the other This is acknowledg'd but it is not improbable that the Days before Easter had some such regard too The Monday of that Week we have seen in the last Chapter was supposed to be the Day in which the High-Priests resolved on our Saviour's Death as it was appointed in their Law for the Day in which they were to single out their Paschal Lamb and this as we there observed may have seemed sufficient Reason to the Ancient Christians to begin their stricter Devotion then But it is besides observable and remarked by Theophylact i That the Jews commonly began to make Entertainments and commenced their Festivity the Day before that on which he supposes our Saviour was entertained at Bethany the sixth day before the Passover if they did not earlyer And this in the general is the more probable from the Appellation the Jews now give the Sabbath before the Passover calling it the Great Sabbath a Greatness I suppose in which the rest of the days of that Week had their share For as the Scripture tells us (k) John 11.55 That many came up before the Passover to purifie themselves and to offer Sacrifices for their Sins so too we may presume many came to pay the Peace-Offerings they had vow'd and of them the most solemn the Eucharistical were not capable by reason of their Leavened Bread which accompanied them (l) Levit. 7.13 to be offered on any of the latter seven days and made up therefore as we have reason to think the Solemnity of the Season before Now if those days before the Passover were thus distinguished among the Jews by their Festivity they might be among Christians as much distinguished by their Abstinence according to the Rule of that Apostolical Constitution produc'd by the Audaeans for
Occasion for such a mention the Church having been generally imployed hitherto either in Apologies for their Religion against the Heathens or the Defence of it against Heathenish Heresies or the suffering of Persecution for it But now in the next Age when Christianity comes to be owned and countenanced by the Government their Writings will be more frequent and more copious and express and amongst other Observations of our Religion we shall not fail to find sufficient Information of this after which we are inquiring But before we come to those happy Days the last fierce Persecution it self began by Diocletian in the East according to Baronius in the Year 302 and there continued by the Cruelty of those who governed that part of the Empire gave occasion for some sort of mention of Forty Days which it may be to our Purpose to observe Before the Persecution began and in the beginning of this Century the Episcopal Chair of that great Christian City Alexandria in which the above-nam'd Dionysius had sate was now fill'd by one Peter a very venerable Person Eminent for his Knowledge and Sanctity and who at last suffered Martyrdom in the Year 311. And upon the rising of this sharp Persecution the Christians had behaved themselves very differently some had endured to the last with admirable Constancy some yielded and deni'd their Religion after the suffering of grievous Torments some upon the offer of Torture after they had undergone the Pains of Imprisonment and some at the first Accusation Of those too who had not renounc'd some had escaped by Flight some by buying off the Prosecution and some by hiring Witnesses to attest to some Idolatrous Act of theirs which had been never done Of all these sorts there were many who desired to be re-admitted to the Communion of the Church and some had now long sought it with much Lamentation to whose various Circumstances different Rules were therefore to be suited such as this Peter after deliberation had with his Brethren delivered in a Discourse now lost but from which some Excerpts had been made in form of Canons and by that means preserved to us The first Canon as Zonaras and Balsamon give it is thus a Whereas now the fourth Easter is come upon this Persecution it may suffice for those who were accused and imprisoned and indured insufferable Tortures and intolerable scourgings and many other grievous Cruelties but after all were betrayed by the Weakness of the Flesh for those I say though they were not admitted into Communion at first by reason of that their great Apostasie yet because they strove much and resisted a long while for they fell not upon Choice but were betrayed by the Weakness of the Flesh and because they bear still in their Bodies the Marks of their Lord and some of them have been mourning these three Years for these I say it may suffice That a Penance of Other Forty Days to be reckon'd from after their Admission should be additionally inflicted on them for their Admonition which Forty days tho' our Saviour had fasted after Baptism yet He was tempted of the Devil in which they too being exercised super abundantly and more earnestly sober may watch unto Prayer continually meditating on that Answer given by our Lord when he was urged by the Tempter to fall down and worship him Get thee behind me Satan for it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve This is the first Canon and for the better understanding of it we only add That the second imposes another Year's Penance upon those who had suffered the Pain and Misery of Imprisonment but did not resist Torture and that the third puts those off to the End of another Year for Trial and not till then to receive their Sentence who out of Fear and Cowardliness had yielded presently § II. Forty Days of Fasting and strict Devotion are here singularly and eminently mentioned but in what part of the Year they were plac'd it is not here certainly determined If by the fourth Easter is come as I have render'd it may be understood is now coming and the Bishop's Discourse may be dated before Easter those Forty Days would then be in all probability before Easter too and the very Lent which we are now looking after They must undoubtedly have some near Aspect upon Easter For why else is it mentioned and the Years of Persecution reckoned by it And no time was so proper to re-admit Penitents solemnly to Christian Communion as this of the Passover when the Pardon of our Sins was recogniz'd by the solemn Memory of our Saviour's Death on the Friday and the Holy Communion the Sacrament of his Death was so solemnly frequented on the Sunday neither was any Season of the Year more fit for the stricter Humiliation of the Penitent than that on which all good Christians were ready to join in something of the like Devotion For this Reason we may justly suppose St. Cyprian (b) Ep. 56. Edit Oxon. was consulted before Easter about the same Case the Reconciliation of those who had been Penitents three Years that if he had answered favourably they might have been admitted at the approaching Festival So have we under this Supposition a Lent of Forty Days for Penitents at least to be kept throughout by them and with great Severity while the rest beginning as early and using such Abstinence as their Discretion directed and the Necessities of their Conscience required equalled generally the Austerities even of those at the latter End And this way if we are allowed to conceive the Canon the Other Forty Days there mentioned may then respect the former Three Lents that had gone before except any one would rather understand that one particular Lent to be intimated which had been kept by these Christians just before they were Baptized which too was done generally at Easter and which they were now ordered to keep in the same manner again before they should be again received into the Church And thus the Forty Penitential Days will be the very Forty Days of Lent if we suppose the Synod to be held before Easter as the Nicene Council did order afterwards But if it was not and they did not concur with such a Lent they will however infer It. Let us then suppose the Synod to have been assembled after Easter And very probably it was for it is not unlikely that the Order of the Council of Nice in this Particular was a Change of the old Practice which Order was reversed in a little time by the Council of Antioch and besides we see that the Synod of Ancyra a Synod held on occasion of the same Persecution and much about the same time did meet after Easter for they speak of the Great Day the Day of Easter and seem to reckon it to be about a Year before it would come again Under this Supposition that Synod of Ancyra will help us to understand the other of
at the same time make some Satisfaction for what is past and fortifie our selves against Temptations for the future Watch and pray says he that ye enter not into temptation And I presume they the Disciples were therefore so far tempted because they slept Our Lord himself was surrounded with Tentations presently after his Baptism when he had performed his Fasts Forty Days And therefore may some one say We too should rather fast after Baptism Now in this place I confess it is not evident that the Paschal Vigils and the Forty Days Fast before Easter are particularly meant and therefore heretofore I did not bring this Passage for a Proof but neither is it improbable that they are intended for the time of the Apostles sleeping agrees to the time of those Vigils and the Forty Days Abstinence of our Saviour being not mentioned with any intimation of the one continued extraordinary Fast but as so many Fastings may also well refer to those of the Catechumen § II. IT has appeared already from the Synod of Alexandria That Forty Days had been in Use for a Penitential Fast before thâ—◠〈◊〉 and that in all likelihood those Days were just before Easter I shall therefore be content to add only two Authorities The one concerning the Number of those Days and the other concerning their Place And as for the Fast of Penitents how proper Forty Days are for that Office I shall give the Authority of St. Jerome in his Commentary on Jonas excribing the whole Passage the rather because it will be of further Service hereafter The old Translation of the 3d. Chapter of Jonas at the 14th Verse was thus Yet three days and Nineveh shall be destroyed upon which he says g The Number Three which is put by the Septuagint is not proper for Penitents And I can't but wonder how it came to be so translated seeing in the Hebrew there is no Agreement either in the Letters or Syllables or Accents or Words Besides the Prophet sent from Judaea on so long a journey was to require a Penitence worthy of his Preaching that such old and putrid Vlcers might be cured with a Plaister that should lie some longer time upon them Now Forty is a number that is proper for Penitents and Fasting and Prayer and Sackcloth and Tears and Perseverance in deprecating God's Anger For which reason Moses also fasted forty days in Mount Sinai and Elias flying from Jezabel and the Wrath of God impending upon Israel is describ'd to have fasted forty days Our Lord likewise himself the true Jonas who was sent to preach Repentance to the World fasted forty days and leaving to us the Inheritance of his Fasting still prepares our Souls for the Eating of his Body by the same Number Here we have the Fitness of Forty Days for Penance in the Judgment of St. Jerome and we suppose of the Church of his time the onely Remark thence we make as yet The Fitness of Easter-day for the Re-admission of those Penitents into the Bosom of the Church we shall find from Gregory Nyssen in the Preface of that excellent Letter which he wrote to Letoius Bishop of Metilene about Canonical Penances and sent him probably for an Easter Present It thus begins h This too is one of those things which appertain to the Holy Festival the consideration of the Rightful and Canonical Dispensation which is to be exercised upon Offenders that every Spiritual Malady which has been contracted by any Sin may have its proper Cure For seeing this Catholick Festival the Festival of the Creation kept throughout the World every Year in the stated Period of the Annual Circle is celebrated for the Resurrection of him that fell and Sin is a Fall and Rising up from the Fall of Sin is a Resurrection it must be very proper on this Day not only to bring to God by the Grace of the Font such as are transform'd by Regeneration but those too who by Penitence and turning to God are come back from dead Works into the way of Life to lead these as it were by the hand to that saving Hope from which they have been estranged by Sin The meaning of this Preface is plain That a Penitential Discourse was as proper a Subject before Easter as a Catechistical And this he might think fit to premise because in those times there might seem to be more occasion for the Catechistical then when by the Grace of God the number of those who needed solemn Penance was very inconsiderable in respect of the multitude of Adult Converts to Christianity And for the same reason I presume Penance appears more formally in the Lents of some Ages hereafter than it did before because few grown Persons were then to be baptiz'd to whom Catechistical Discourses belong'd and occasion for the other the Penitential Exhortations there was then too much not but that the solemn Preparation of Penitents by Lent might have been as ancient well nigh as that of the Candidates for Baptism The Reason certainly for their Admission at Easter was the same as our Author has suggested and we have before observ'd b Cyr. Hieros Prologus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Catech. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 d Catech. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 e Catecâ— 18. In his Discourse on the Saturday he tells them he spares them in Consideration of the fatigue they had undergone from their continuing on the Fast begun on Friday and from their Watching 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And this both Watching and Fasting is express'd by St. Hilary to have been commensurate to the time of our Lord's Passion and is therefore reckoned to have continued three days Hilar. in Can. 15. Matth. Venturi ad Baptismum prius confitentur credere se in Dei Filio in Passionc Resurrectione ejus huic Professionis Sacramento sides redditur Arque ut bane verborum sponsionem quaedam rerum ipsarum veritas consequatur toto in Jejuniis Passionis Dominicae tempore demorantes quádam Domino Passionis societate junguntur Igitur sive ex Sponsionis Sacramento sive Jejunio omne illud Passionis Dominicae cum Domino agunt tempus hujuâ— spei â—rque comitatûs Dominus misertus ait Secum Triduo esse f Tert. de Bapt. c. 20. Ingressuros Baptismum Orationibus crebris Jejuniis Geniculationibus Pervigiliis orare oportet cum confessione omnium retro Delictorum Simul enim de Pristinis satisfacimus conflictatione Carnis Spiritus subsequuturis Tentationibus munimenta praestruimus Vigilate Orate inquit ne incidatis in tentationem Et ideo credo tentati sunt quoniam obdormierunt lpsum Dominum post Lavacrum statim tentationes circumsteterunt quadraginta diebus jejuniis functum Ergo nos dicet aliquis à Lavacro potius jejunare oportet Et quis enim prohibet nisi necessitas Gaudii gratulatio Salutis g Hieron in Joh. c. 3. Trinus
numerus qui ponitur à Septuaginta non convenit Poenitentiae satis miror cur ita translatum sit cum in Hebreo nec Literarum nec Syllabarum nec Accentuum nec Verbi sit ulla Communitas Alioqui de Judea tanto itinere missus Propheta in Assyrios dignam suae Praedicationis Poenitentiam flagitabat ut antiqua putrida vulnera diu apposito curarentur Emplastro Porro Quadragenarius numerus convenit Peccatoribus Jejunio Orationi Sacco Lachrymis Perseverantiâ—e deprecandi ob quod Moyses quadraginta diebus jejunavit in Monte Sina Helias fugiens Jezabel Dei desuper ira pendente quadraginta dies jejunasse describitur Ipse quoque Dominus verus Jona missus ad Praedicationem Mundi jejunavit quadraginta dies haereditatem nobis Jejunii relinquens ad esum Corporis sui sub hoc numero nostras animas praeparat h Greg. Nyss Ep. Can. ad Letoium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 CHAP. IX § I. A Lent always and every where observed though not of Forty Days § II. Mr. Daillé's Objections against it from Cassian § III. From St. Jerome § IV. From St. Chrysostome § I. THE Reader may perceive by the liberty we have taken of this Digression concerning Baptism and Penance that we are now at leisure and free of all Difficulties concerning the Actual Observation of the Forty Season And indeed about the Fast of it Mr. Daillé henceforth gives us no trouble but against the Apostolical Right he is still looking out for Evidence But in that Point the Reader may have already understood how little we are concern'd who do not pretend to prove That a Lent of so many certain Days was observ'd in the latter end of the Apostolical Age but that some Lent there then was generally kept by all and probably of Forty Days by some in the second Century a thing that will not I presume appear so strange when we come to the Second Part of this Discourse Though therefore I am inclinable to believe that there was very anciently some regard had to the Number Forty and that this in process of time increased very much so as to have been the Solemn Number of Lent in many Churches by the End of the Third Century yet I am willing to allow from what we have seen of St. Chrysostome That this Observation grew so universal from the Recommendation of the Nicene Fathers Those Forty Days too though regarded and observed yet I do not say that they were all of them fasted and every where equally but am ready to allow what St. Chrysostome intimates (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 15. that in his time at Antioch some fasted Two some Three and some all the Weeks of them at their own Discretion and what Socrates will hereafter tell us of the same kind § II. That also which Cassian a Disciple of St. Chrysostome's says and is us'd to be produc'd upon this Argument as an unanswerable Objection against the Antiquity of Lent I have no need to dissemble It is to be known says he b that this Observation of forty days as it is now strictly injoyn'd had no being as long as the Perfection of the Primitive Church continued For those who enlarged the Fast throughout the whole Year were not confined by the necessity of this Ordinance nor within such narrow bounds of Fasting as if under a Legal Restraint But when the Multitude of Believers daily falling off from that Apostolical Devotion began to grow worldly then it was thought fit by the Bishops of the Vniversal Church That Men immersed in the Cares of the World and wholly ignorant if I may so say of any such thing as Abstinence and Repentance should be reduced to the Holy Duty by this Canonical Injunction of Fasts and compelled to it as it were by the Imposition of a Legal Tenth c An Injunction advantageous to the weak and which cannot be prejudicial to the perfect those who being under the Grace of the Gospel by their voluntary Devotion already exceed the prescribed Law I shall not now observe what some might venture to say That Cassian speaks all this upon Mistake supposing with Eusebius here what he evidently does in another place d That the Aegyptian Essenes describ'd by Philo were Disciples of St. Mark and that the Primitive Christians lived all at first in that Austerity I shall only remark that Cassian speaks here of the forty days and not of a Lent in general and of their being fasted by Injunction and not at Discretion And therefore those Perfect Men of his who fasted the whole Year might however have fasted some peculiar time before Easter with a more peculiar Devotion for that they fasted all the Days cannot be meant by him much less with an equal Abstinence and they might too some of them have so particularly fasted Forty Days though not by Legal Direction yet by their own Choice notwithstanding any thing said in this place If too we understand the time when these Forty Days were first imposed by common Consent to have been that of the Nicene Council this is no more than we before had from his Master St. Chrysostome But if he means some elder Times and he may the very first Age For they began to be luke-warm very early as we learn from some parts of the New Testament we have then a Testimony from Cassian of a much higher Antiquity for this Quadragesimal Institution However that which he adds concerning the Imposition of Forty Days whenever it began that it was no hinderance to the Perfect is very observable and to be consider'd by all Pretenders to Perfection For the Injunction he intimates though not made for the Perfect would however be kept by them and they would shew they were under Grace by Exceeding and not by Transgressing the Ecclesiastical Law In as much as he that fasts every day will not fail to fast forty and he that is ready to offer his whole Time will not hold back the Tenth § III. WE see how far Cassian's Expressions are from any Reflexion upon the Institution of Lent and those of St. Jerome alledg'd usually for the same Purpose apparently require the same Construction and need only to be seen if the Reader will bear the length of the Passage e Some may say if it be not lawful to observe Days and Months c. we then are under the like Guilt who observe Wednesday and Friday and the Lord ' s Day and the Fast of the Forty Season and the Holy Days of the Passover and the Joy of the Pentecost and the several Days that are kept in several Countries in Honour of Martyrs To this he that will give the plain Answer will reply That the Days the Jews observe are not the same with ours For we do not celebrate the Passover of Vnleavened Bread but of the Resurrection and the Cross neither do we in Pentecost reckon the Seven Weeks with the Jews
a Viris Prudentibus constitutos qui magis seculo vacant quam Deo nec possunt immo nolunt toto in Ecclesia vitae suae tempore congregari Quotus enim quisque est qui saltem bâ—co pauca quae staâ—uta sunt vel Orandi tempora vel Jejunandi semper exerceat CHAP. X. § I. Sozomen's Account of the keeping of Lent in his Time about Ann. Chr. 440. § II. What Additions have been made since § III. Socrates his Account of the Practice of the same Age I suppose by the Novatians § IV. His Wonder That Lents of differing Lengths should all of them be called the Forty Season § V. The Conclusion § I. THE Novatians who held it unlawful to re-admit any into the Church who had either renounc'd the Faith in time of Persecution or had committed some other grievous Crimes and who had on this account themselves renounc'd the Communion of the Church in St. Cyprian's time about the middle of the Third Century were now greatly divided among themselves in this Age about the Observation of Easter the same Dispute which the Authority of the Nicene Council had composed among the Catholicks now breaking out among those Schismaticks and making a new and very angry Schism between them This Quarrel of theirs Sozomen relates and upon occasion of it he mentions the peaceable Behaviour of Anicetus and Polycarp remembred on the same Subject by Ireneus and in Imitation of the same Author and to shew that it is not fit to break Communion about such Traditional Differences he represents at large the great Variety of Usages in the Churches of his time professing the same Faith a That among the Scythians there is but one Bishop over all their Cities whereas in Arabia c. there are Bishops in Villages That in Rome there are no more than seven Deacons and they sing Halleluiah there but once in the Year on Easter Sunday that there either b the Bishop preaches or some one else but in Alexandria the Bishop only c. And he adds the Forty Season as it is called before Easter in which the People use to fast some reckon by six Weeks as those of Illyricum do and all Europe westward and those of Africk and Aegypt and Palestine some by seven as in Constantinople and the Countries about it as far eastward as the Phoenicians And some fast three of the six or seven Weeks discontinued and some the three before Easter together and some two as the Followers of Montanus That the Followers of Montanus kept their Lent the Fortnight before Easter we find here and have observed in its proper place § II. WHAT the Author says concerning the different Reckoning of the Forty Season in the West and in the East is not only observable for the History of his time but for the understanding of modern Practice The Western Empire with Aegypt and Palestine accounted the Forty two Days of six Weeks to be their Forty Season as the LXXII Interpreters are commonly called the LXX but of these they fasted only Thirty six all the Sundays being exempted The Eastern Empire Palestine and Aegypt then excepted call'd seven Weeks that is Forty nine Days their Forty Season for they were still under the Number Fifty But then because they did not think it fit to fast on the Sabbath no more than on the Sunday unless only on the Saturday of Passion-Week they likewise deducting their seven Sundays and six Saturdays fasted effectually no more than thirty six Days Since that time the Greek Church that they may in some sort be nearer to the Number Forty have added an Eighth Week of previous Abstinence beginning on those five days to fast from Flesh though they allow themselves the use of Eggs and Milk and Cheese and Butter things from which in the seven following Weeks they strictly forbear And they besides for an Introduction to this whole Fast set apart another ninth Week wherein they specially prepare for it by Confession of their own Sins and Forgiveness of the Sins of others against themselves This is the additional Practice of the Greeks And the Latines likewise have enlarg'd their Lent and whereas before they rather adjusted the space of Time within which they kept their Fast than the number of Days they did actually fast to the Number Forty forty two being nearer to Forty than thirty six they have since thought it better to make up the Number Forty precisely of such fafling Days and have therefore added Four to the former beginning on the Wednesday of the seventh Week as is well known § III. WHAT we have from Sozomen is express and without Dispute what follows from Socrates is more confus'd and ambiguous but may serve however to give us some light He writing at the same time with Sozomen and taking the same occasion from the Novatian difference to enter upon the like Discourse says among other things b 2 Those of the same Faith differ in their Vsages The Fast for Example before Easter is differently observed in different places For those in Rome fast Three continued Weeks before Easter except Saturdays and Sundays But the Illyrians and Grecians of Europe and Alexandrians keep a Fast of Six Weeks before Easter calling it the Forty Season And besides these there are others who beginning seven Weeks before and fasting by Intervals only Three Weeks of five Days a-piece call that space of Time nevertheless the Forty Season And I can't but wonder how those who differ so in the Number of the Days should agree to give them that common Name of which Denomination several inquisitive Men have given several Accounts Neither is there a difference only about the Number of Days but about the Abstinence of their Diet. Some abstain from all that has Life some eat of no Animal but Fish some of Birds too some abstain from Fruits and Eggs some take only dry Bread and some admit not that but others Eating not till Three in the Afternoon after that use their Liberty And infinite are the differences about these things concerning which we have no written Precept and thence it is plain that they are left by the Apostles to every one 's own Judgment and Choice that every one may voluntarily do what is Good not for Fear or out of Necessity This Account of Socrates has been much question'd in what relates to Rome it being apparent from Sozomen and otherwise That in that time not Three Weeks but Six were observed in that City He himself too afterwards says that they fasted there all Saturdays as they are known to have done in that Age from other hands excepting that before Easter only The Author for this has met with a very hard Censure from some others have endeavoured to salve the Matter with new Readings and Valesius stands so much on his side as to take up the Paradox and justifie every Tittle he is supposed to say against all Opponents But it may be the fairer way would be
any where in Scripture before the Babylonish Captivity neither am I much concern'd in that Point it being sufficient for our purpose that it had been in Practice four or five hundred Years before our Saviour and was in his time the Received Law and Canonical Discipline of their Church But of their Church I desire to be understood and in the fullest Sence notwithstanding Mr. Selden's Express Dissent which I am bound therefore with the Reader 's Leave a little to consider This eminently Learn'd Gentleman as he observes that Excommunication with the Jews was a Civil Punishment inflicted in Civil Cases and by Civil Officers so he very frequently and very positively affirms That it did not take place in their Synagogues or Temple and had no Influence at all upon their Religious Worship (a) De Jure N. G. juxta Heb. lib. 4. cap. 9. De Anno Civ veterum Judaor cap. 18. De Synedr lib. 1. cap. 7. But how far this first Observation is true we have seen already (b) Cap. 4. §. 4. in the Case of Presbyters by whom the Sentence was juridically pronounced For as they were Civil Officers but at the same time Sacred as being Officers in God's Commonwealth and for the Execution of His Laws so this Excommunication however Civil was in the same manner Sacred being the Punishment us'd in that Nation which was the Church of GOD. And as for his other Assertion That Excommunication did not operate in the Synagogue or the Temple it is both very strange and I believe not well founded Strange it is at the first sight that those who were separated from their Brethren as unclean in all Civil Conversation should freely mingle in Religious and should be allowed to tread on their Heels in the Synagogues from whom they were to keep such a distance in the Streets And very strange it is that those who were esteem'd as Lepers much more those who were cut off from the People of Israel should be admitted into the Temple and promiscuously allowed to worship in that Holy Place in the Company of the Holy People Though all this might not seem so strange when Mr. Selden wrote then when People were privileged in the Houses of God from such mannerly Ceremony as they observed in their own Houses and in the Streets But this peremptory Assertion is not only Suspicious but Erroneous And as to the Synagogue I have the express Affirmation of Leo de Modena an Author in Esteem with Mr. Selden directly to the contrary (c) Cerem des Juifs 2.3.3 I shall not therefore urge any more Authority than what may be useful on another Occasion and that is of the Practice of the Jews the day before their Expiation-Fast In that Evening before the Prayers for the following day begin from the Desk of the Synagogue they suspend the Excommunications of all Transgressours whatsoever without their Desire and give them leave to come in and pray with the Congregation which in that day reputes it self as a Company of Sinners And that such a Relaxation may appear to be more necessary it is very formally pronounced by the Praecentor assisted with two of the chiefest Rabbins on either side and is conceiv'd in this Authoritative Manner By the Power of the Consistory above and of the Consistory below by the Authority of GOD and by the Authority of the Church we grant Leave and Licence to pray with the Wicked (d) Buxtor Sâ—n. Juâ— cap. 26. Now if Excommunication excludes from the Synagogue we may presume it does from the Temple But Mr. Selden offers to prove for the Temple what he suppos'd only of the Synagogue and his Proof is from a Passage in the Misnah (e) Midd. c. 4.2 which Maimonides has also exscrib'd (f) Maim de Aedif. Temp. c. 7. §. 3. and which with him runs thus All who enter'd into the Temple went in on the Right Hand and came out on the Left But if any one lay under any Misfortune he went on upon the Left Hand And then they ask'd him Why goest thou to the Left and if he answered Because I am in Mourning they reply'd He comfort you who dwells in this House but if he said Because I am Excommunicate they reply'd He who dwells in this House give thee Grace to hearken to thy Brethren that they may restore thee And here indeed we find one Excommunicate within the Precinct of the Temple but it is neither consider'd how far he was suffer'd to go nor under what Excommunication he lay things Mr. Selden would have examined with great Accuracy if they would have made for his Design For if we do but read what follows of the very same Chapter we shall see what is to be remark'd also for other Purposes that the Ground belonging to the Temple was very large and several Courts to be pass'd before one came to the House or Temple properly so called Six are reckoned from the first Gate and in this Order Into the First and outmost Court A the Gentiles and the Defil'd by the Dead and even the Dead Bodies themselves were admitted tho' not only Lepers were excluded For they might not come within Jerusalem but others who were under some impurer kinds of Vncleanness Into the Second B neither Gentiles nor the Defil'd with Dead could enter but those might who were wash'd for Lesser Defilements which polluted but for a Day and waited only for Sun-Set to be perfectly clean The Third C was what was call'd the Court of the Women and into it the last mention'd could not come but they who were otherwise Purified and only wanted to be Expiated by Sacrifice might The Fourth D was the Court of the Israelites for those who were Clean and Perfect Beyond this there was a Fifth E for the Sons of Levi and then lastly a Sixth F where the Altar G stood and the Sacrifices were made just before the Porch H of the House I K And now what sort of Argument is this that the excommunicated Israelite was not debarr'd the Liberty of worshiping in the Temple because he was admitted into the Outmost Court and where a Gentile might come as well Whereas for ought appears he might be suffer'd to go no further and might be kept off at the Distance of Three Courts from the Place of the Israelites Devotion But how much less will this avail for an Argument if the Excommunicated Person there spoken of was not one of the more guilty sort or not of that kind which are compared with the Leper much less of those who are wholly Cut off from the People of GOD Notwithstanding therefore this Argument of Mr. Selden's the Presumption from the Practice of the Synagogue would hold good for the Temple and on that I might rest but there are other very probable Arguments that will concur to exclude the Excommunicate at least from any near Approach in the Temple For tho' Excommunicates are not at all reckon'd by
Cross in the Forehead and Eyes and Nostrils and Ears and upon the Breast and on their Hands and Feet and leaves only Impositio of Hands to be conferr'd by the Bishop at any time afterward the Practice as I conceive of our Church l Whereas in the Latin Church the Priest anointed the other Parts pouring the Chrism upon the Head but it was reserv'd to the Bishop's confirmation to sign the Forehead with the Chrism at the same time he laid on his Hands Innoc. ad Decent And this signing they call'd the Spiritual Seal Ambros de Sacram. 3 2. the Holy Ghost being suppos'd to be given by that and the Imposition of Hands And this Confirmation the Bishop when present at the Baptism administer'd to the Baptiz'd when he had put on the white Garments after his first Anointing Ambros de â—is qui Myst Init. c. 7. And lastly Hands were laid upon him with a Blessing calling and inviting down the Holy Ghost m and as the same Author expresses it he was overshadowed by the Imposition of Hands n Fifthly The next Morning if not immediately on Easter-day they proceeded to the Eucharist k 7 In the Greek Church even the Infants receiving it and wore their white Garments all the next Week not allowing themselves the Use of Bathing for that time h 8 When also they had more perfectly expounded to them the Nature of those two great Mysteries the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist to which they had been lately admitted as we see in the Mystagogick Discourses of Cyril of Jerusalem made for that purpose § II. WITH so many Circumstances was the Initiation into the Church begun and perfected in those early days of Christianity neither is it to be imagin'd that all these Rituals were the pure Invention of such Simple Plain men as the first Christians appear to have been much less can it be thought that they were borrowed by those pious men from the Heathen Idolatry Whence therefore should most of these Circumstantials be deriv'd but from the same Religion from which the Sacrament it self was taken And whence else should They derive them who had been originally of that Religion or Well-willers to it as most of the first Christians were This conjectural Conclusion the account given above of Jewish Baptism (a) Ch. I. § 2 3. which we suppose the Reader to remember will confirm and it may be so far as to make us willing to suppose that a more exact Correspondence would have appear'd if the Information from the Jews had been less defective For First That the Jews proselyted Children by Baptism we have there seen and also that they requir'd Sureties for them which we shall the less doubt when we know that they do not Circumcise a Natural Jew withâ—ut a Godfather and Godmother (b) Buxt Syn. Jud. â— 4 The Passover also was their chief Festival and their Converts in probability capacited themselves by Baptism then particularly for its celebration neither could the natural Jews themselves (c) Maim de Sacrific Tract 1. cap. 9. § 9. partake of it if they had any Servant of their House Uncircumcis'd and as I suppose consequently Unbaptiz'd These sorts of men therefore I presume were amongst those who purified themselves before the Feast and added to the Solemnity of the Week or Fortnight before (d) Part 1. ch 5. § 3. And lastly tho' any Three would serve to confer it yet regularly it was to be done by commission from the Consistory and I presume by the Appointment of the Father or President of it to whom we suppose the Bishop to answer (e) Ch. 4. § 5. § III. Secondly There was likewise a great Distinction of Persons made by the Jews There was a Common Gentile and there was one who believ'd the Unity of God and took upon him to observe the Precepts to be kept by all the Descendants of Noah (a) Maim Tract de Regibus cap. 8. § 11. tho' he did not oblige himself further yet and this was a degree of approach into which he was solemnly admitted being call'd a Proselyte of their Gate as one permitted to live amongst them in the Holy-land Further there were those who profess'd their desire to become Jews (b) Ibid. § 10. and this Profession we find was solemn and they reputed by it of another rank for if they did not proceed to make it good within a Twelvemonth they were degraded we are told and to be esteem'd as a meer Heathen There was too yet as it should seem a further Class of such Stranger Servants as were Circumcis'd and Baptiz'd in the Quality of Servants (c) Maim Tract de Proh Congressu cap. 13. § 11. but wanted still a further Baptism to compleat them Jews as there were others who were Circumcis'd and Baptiz'd into perfect Judaism but not yet Sanctified by a Sacrifice (d) Above Ch. 2. §. 2. The Proselytes of the Jews were distinguish'd by these Advances and it is plain that their Proselyte of the First kind the Proselyte of the Gate was of the same rank with a Hearer and also that he who undertook to become a Jew was in the nature of a Christian Catechumen as he who was in immediate Preparation to be Circumcis'd or was Circumcis'd but waiting to be Baptiz'd was in a like Class to that of the Immediate Candidates and Probationers for our Baptism and he too who was actually Baptiz'd into Judaism but not yet Expiated by Sacrifice was in the Condition of one Baptiz'd a Christian but yet Vnconfirm'd and not admitted to full Communion So were the Steps made by a Convert of the Jews agreeable to those of a Proselyte to Christianity The Instruction also by which he was gradually brought on (e) The same §. was much alike to that recommended in the Apostolical Constitutions (f) See Note e of the former §. proceeding gently and by easie ascents Neither is it to be doubted but that the Jews were severe enough in their Scrutiny of him since they were so shy of Proselytes (g) The Section above cited of the Second Chapter and that a solemn Profession of Repentance for his former Heathenism was requir'd of him Now it is probable likewise that these different sorts of Persons with the Jews had their different Places and liberties of Access For the Apostolick Constitutions themselves suppose the placing of the Faithful in the Assembly according to their Sex and Age to be after the pattern of the Temple h And as a Christian Church has been describ'd to be separated in two Partitions whereof the Vpper part D Fig. 2 belongs to Men or the Chief of them and such as peculiarly attend on the Sacred Offices and the Lower part C to Women who are dispos'd of on either side of it leaving the middle for a Passage and to be taken up by Ordinary men or such who are not provided to go higher so we see (i) Ch.
Sun is going to Rise for then they began their Morning Sacrifice (d) M. De Cult Dio. Tract 6. c. 1. §. 2. to Ten of the Clock (e) De Prec 3.1 and at those they all assist in the Synagogue if they are not extraordinarily hinder'd before they do any other Business Their Evening Prayer may be said any time from half an hour past one but ordinarily from half an hour past Three till Sun-set (f) Ibid. §. 2 3 4. in any of which hours the Daily Evening Sacrifice might have been offer'd (g) Cult 6.1.3 Besides these two Daily Duties of Prayer Commanded them they have taken upon themselves to perform another in the Night and in any hour of it (h) Prec 3.6 7. after the example of those Parts of the Sacrifices which were usually then Burning And possibly because those Parts were not to be put on the Altar after Midnight (i) C. Div. 6.1.5 though they might continue afterwards to Burn it might thence seem most fit in strictness at least to begin the Night Prayers at that time as it was also the fittest hour being at equal distance from the Last of the Evening Office and First of the Morning an hour too the far greater part of the Christian World would therefore also be more likely to observe because it had been with them the Beginning of their Sacred and Civil Day as we have learn'd heretofore from Pliny (k) See Part 1. Ch. 2. lit k. Such are the constant Prayers of the whole People of Israel Thrice every day On their Sabbaths and other Holy-Days as they had Additional Sacrifices to be offer'd between those of the Morning and the Evening so in their place there are Additional Prayers to be said after the Morning and before the Evening Prayer but regularly not after One in the Afternoon (l) Maim de Prec 3.5 Now this Duty though it obliged the Generality only on those Peculiar Days yet it was every day repeated by the Representatives of the whole People the Stationary (m) See Part 1. Ch. 2. lit g. Men both in the Temple and Distant Synagogues and was attended with a solemn Blessing (n) Maim de Cultu Div. 2.6.4 And if we suppose it to be done by them at a Fixt time no hour could be more proper for it than that of the Mid-day a Cardinal time and equidistant from those two of the Sun-rising and Sun-set about which times the same Blessing was likewise pronounc'd (o) Maim de Prec 14.1 And lastly to all this said on the occasion of Origen's assignation of time I may add in reference to the Antient Christian Prayers made when they began to Light Candles and call'd thence Lucernary that there was such an office with the Jews likewise call'd the Close from the shutting up of the Day and its Service a kind of Completory us'd by all of them on their Propitiation Day and by the Stationary Men on every day but the Sabbath Eve at what time the Priests gave the Blessing also as has been but now observ'd § IV. The Matter and Method of Prayer is the Last thing this Antient Writer considers and he directs it to consist first of Doxology or Giving Glory and Praise Secondly Of Returning Thanks Thirdly Of Confession of Sins with Supplication for Grace and Pardon Fourthly Of Intercession for greater Favours and lastly to conclude with a Doxology again (a) Orig. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pag. 134. It is too observable that where St. Paul exhorts that Supplications Prayers Intercessions and Thanksgiving be made for all men (b) 1 Tim. 2.1 our Author distinguishes the three first sorts of Prayers in this manner a Supplication he understands to be an Humbler Petition begging the Relief of our Necessities Prayer strictly so called to be an Address to God speaking his Glory and without Dejection of Mind Desiring his Favour and Intercession to be that which is made with yet a greater Degree of Assurance and Holy Confidence c Now as this latter Explication may interpret what he means in the third and fourth Member of the matter of Prayer so it gives a sense to the Apostles words which may make those four sorts of Prayer made for our selves and others to agree with the four sorts of Sacrifices us'd to be offer'd for that purpose For so Supplication answers a Sacrifice for Sins or Trespasses by the Remission of which Relief was to be procur'd Prayer the Burnt-Offerings which were chiefly meant to God's Honour and also besought his Favour Intercession the Peace-Offerings which were join'd with Requests put up with some kind of Communication and Familiarity and lastly Thanksgivings agree plainly with the Sacrifices of that Name The Constituent Parts of Prayer are no doubt very rightly assign'd by Origen but as for the Order and Method of them it seems by his expression to be rather what he thought fit for private Composure than what was observ'd in the service of the Church or even in our Lord's Prayer upon which he there Comments For our surer information therefore on this subject it may be best to have recourse to other Authors § V. NOW the Offices of Publick Devotion for the Lord's Day Morning are summarily represented by Justin Martyr a as perform'd in this Order that first they Read the Scriptures of both Testaments the Writings of the Apostles and Prophets that then there was an Exhortation made that after they Rose up and Prayed and lastly that they made the Oblation and Receiv'd the Eucharist This is that Apologists short account to the Emperour that the Heathens might know in general how Innocently the Christian Assemblies were imploy'd Tertullian b from another Occasion accidentally falls upon a very cursory mention of the former of the same Offices interposing another remembring the Reading of the Scriptures the Singing of Psalms the making of a Discourse and the Putting up of Prayers And this Office of Psalmody though for brevity omitted by Justin yet questionless was as antient as the other and is too recounted by the Author of the Apostolick Constitutions in the same method after the Lections and before the Sermon (c) Lib. 2. Cap. 54. He also in a following Chapter (d) Cap. 57. gives a larger description of the whole Service after this manner A Reader first is directed standing in the Ambo or Desk to read some Lessons out of the Old Testament Another then chants the Psalms of David the People also chanting in their Turns after Lessons follow out of the Acts and Epistles then the Gospel is read by a Priest or a Deacon all standing and afterwards the Exhortation is made by the Priests and the Bishop This being done and the Catechumens c. dismiss'd the Faithful turning towards the East join in Prayer and then after that the Oblation began and other Prayers were made and lastly the Eucharist was celebrated So do these Constitutions giving a true account of
Antient Practice though under suppos'd names represent the Psalmody to be perform'd most of it together as it stood until in the Fourth Century it was order'd by the Council of Laodicea (e) Can. 17. to be more intermixt with Lessons that the Attention of the Congregation might be the better refresh'd and secur'd by that variety This was the Primitive Order of the Christian Liturgy according to the General Descriptions we have of it for as to the lesser particulars many no doubt there were and some of them such as we find in the Liturgies going under the names of St. James St. Chrysostom c. § VI. NOW the Jews have their Liturgy too and their Morning Devotions consist of several Offices (a) Maim De Prec Cap. 7. 17. And here first I may mention those occasional Benedictions they are suppos'd to have made daily upon their Waking Hearing the Cock Crow Putting on their Cloths c. such as we intimated above and three and twenty of which they are directed to pronounce constantly every day and which run in this form Blessed art or be thou O Lord our God the King of the World who clothest the naked if they are putting on their Cloths or if they are covering their Heads who crownest Israel with Honour or if they are tying their Girdle who Girdest Israel with Strength But besides these Benediction which are to be said apart and on their proper occasions only (b) Ibid. §. 7. though some Synagogues are us'd to repeat them together as an Office the next stated Duty is that of Reading some part of the Law Written or Oral to which every one is every day oblig'd and this Duty as all others is still to be prefaced and concluded with its proper Prayers or Benedictions of which Prefatory Benedictions the first for Example is this Blessed is the Lord c. who hath sanctified us with his Precepts and hath commanded us to study the Law This office is not only Private but publickly also discharg'd in the Synagogue and read there Next to it is the Duty of Repeating the Psalms which has to it Benedictions with which it begins and ends And this Duty is so acceptable that the Practice of some is recommended who have daily repeated the whole Book however the Synagogue every day say over some Psalms and especially on their Sabbaths and other Great Days to which also they generally add some Verses of the Bible that are chiefly Laudatory as in some places the custom is to conclude with the Song at the Red Sea or with that of the 32d Chapter of Deuteronomy (c) Sect. 12 13. For it is in general to be noted that in several places the usages are various as to the choice of the Sections and Psalms and Hymns After this Duty there follows another of Repeating the Verses of the Law they call Shema from the first word of the first of them which is as it were their Creed and begins thus Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one God This Repetition they are oblig'd to every Morning and Night whereever they are and it has too its proper Benedictions before and after and makes up also an Office in the Synagogue These foremention'd Offices may be differently perform'd in different Countries according to their particular Customs but that which follows and to which the others are but Introductory is constant and stated and uniformly observ'd by all the People of Israel being a Formulary of short Prayers now 19 in Number 18 of which were dictated by Esra as they say These Collects are regularly to be said by each of them at home or in Publick thrice every day and this Office in the Synagogue is always to be said for the Greater Solemnity by the Precentor or Deputy of the Congregation himself whereas the Foregoing might have been read by a Private Person Of those Prayers or Collects the Three First and Three Last are most remarkable those speaking the Glory of God and these returning Thanks (d) Maim de Prec Cap. 1. §. 4. the other Intermediate ones being Petitionary for Understanding Repentance Pardon Relief from their Distresses Healing their Infirmities Giving of seasonable Plenty Return from their Captivity Restoration of their Government Protection of Good Men Reinhabiting of Jerusalem the Coming of the Messiah c. the Requests gradually rising up according to Origens above-mention'd distinction of Supplications Prayers and Intercessions It is also further to be remark'd that though the three first Collects are noted to be wholly Doxological yet the rest are not to be thought to want that Duty all of them beginning or ending with a Benediction of God and the whole Formulary being accordingly call'd the 18 or 19 Benedictions as it is also prefaced with this Versicle Lord open thou our Lips and our Mouth shall shew forth thy Praise But the Third of those Prayers is more signally Glorificatory when it is said in Private referring to the Hymn of the Cherubins (e) Is 6. Ezek. 3.12 Holy Holy Holy c. and when in Publick expressing it And there is also a solemn Hymn of Glory which they call the Kadish pronounc'd particularly by the Deputy of the Assembly before and after every Service (f) Ord. Precum Subjunct Libr. 2â—o Libri Jad Chaz Titulo de Benedictionum Formulis Thus far goes an Ordinary Morning Service But on Mundays and Thursdays there still follows a Litany and such Prayers are particularly order'd to be pronounc'd from a Low Place (g) Buxt Syn. J. c. 10. After the Litany on Those Days (h) Buxt Ibid. c. 14. or after the Offices before described when there is no Litany as on the Sabbath (i) C. 16. the Law is brought from the Ark to the Desk in great Pomp and peculiar Portions of it are read there by several with Praevious and subsequent Benediction of God and then in the same manner it is carried back the People all the while Standing and as the Book comes and goes Chaunting out some Versicles and pressing to Kiss it Lastly on Sabbaths and other Great Days there follows Another Office the Additional Service peculiar to the Festival consisting now chiefly of the Commemoration of the Peculiar Sacrifices on that day heretofore offer'd And this Service of Prayers though having some the same is separate and distinct from that of the Daily Morning Prayers as the Daily and the Additional Sacrifices however some things in both might be of the same nature were never intermixt and dispatch'd together for greater speed and convenience but always separately offer'd and each Office kept intire to it self (k) Maim de Cult Div. Tract 6. Cap. 7. § VII NOW to this last describ'd Jewish Order of Morning Prayers so far did the Antient Christian agree as to begin likewise with Lections and Psalmody and from the Jewish Custom of sitting at the Repeating of those Psalms it is that such Portions of the Psaltery as
Paschal Letters agrees with the Practice of the Jews § III. The Ante-Paschal Preparation of Christians answers to a like Preparation of the Jews before their Day of Expiation § I. THE Festival which puts an end to Lent the Solemnity of Easter is known by all to be an Imitation of the Jewish Passover and the Resurrection-Sunday to have come in the place of that Great Day on which the Children of Israel were releas'd from their Aegyptian Bondage And it is known likewise (a) Vide Bucher de Pasch Jud. Cyclo Cap. 1. that in the appointing of this Paschal season the Christians followed for some time the Designation of the Jews and that afterwards when they found reason to regulate this matter by themselves they still kept to the same Mosaick Rule § II. Now when the Christians began to use a common Calculation of their own it was generally the work of the Bishop of Alexandria a place fam'd for Astronomical Learning to consider afore-hand on what day of the common Solar year the first month of the Lunar year would happen to be the next Spring and accordingly to ascertain the Easter Sunday which was to be the First Sunday after the fourteenth day of that First month This the Great Bishops of several parts learnt usually from him of Alexandria and timely notified to those of their Provinces that they might know when to begin their preparatory Devotions which attended that moveable Festival And this also was done as I conceive after the Example of the Jews For tho' when they were in their own Country the Lunar year was with them of common use yet they were still to learn when it should begin for the first New Moon was to be so plac'd in the Spring season that on the sixteenth day of it a Sheaf of the First-fruits of the Harvest might be presented before the Lord (b) Levit. 23.10 c. (c) Maim de Conseâ—r Calend. Cap. 4. Seld. de An. Civ Vet. Jud. Cap. 5. Such things therefore the Priests as in other Nations or the Sanhedrim as the Talmudists will have it were to consider and if the ordinary year of twelve Lunar Periods fell short they were to lengthen it out with the Addition of a thirteenth and whether they would make such an Intercalation or no it was fit they should signifie to the People (d) Maim Ibid. Seld. Libriejnsd Cap. 9. some convenient time before that a suitable Preparation might be made against that solemn Feast to which every Israelite was bound to repair Notice the Jews wanted that liv'd at any distance from Jerusalem to order their affairs so that their absence for some Weeks at that time from home might be less incommodious however to make ready any residue of Holy things that might be in their hands and were to be spent at Jerusalem to take care to have all their Family circumcis'd to Purify themselves if not to take up the Lamb to discharge the Vow of a Nazarite if they had any such upon them to provide and to offer any Eucharistical Sacrifice that might be due And for some of these reasons they commonly came up to the Temple before the Feast and the precedent Week had its peculiar Celebrity and probably all the fourteen days of that First Month were half Festival as hath been intimated above (e) Part 1. Ch. 5. §. 3. Now such a notice was likewise necessary for the Ante-Paschal Preparation the Christians us'd though in a contrary manner For they as we have seen (f) Part 1. Ch. 3. spent some time before in Fasting all of them both the Asiaticks and those who differ'd from them and though some fasted only one day yet others fasted two others more says Irenaeus and of them some Forty This indeed is the account Irenaeus gives of his own and Victor's side but in all probability the Asiatick manner of Fasting differ'd not from theirs in length of time For from that Apostolical Constitution cited by the Audaeans in Epiphanius it has appear'd not unlikely e that those also of the Asiatick manner opposing their Fasts to the Festivity of the Jews began therefore their Fasting at least a Week if not a Fortnight before the 14th day as the same Opposition might have directed them to have kept the 50 days after with great Joy § III. But in this contrary manner of observing the Antepaschal Season Opposition to the Jews was not primarily design'd neither was it further prosecuted by the Christians than they were lead to it by contrary Causes For what ever reason the Jews might have for their Pentecostal Sadness the Resurrection of Christ gave his Followers a greater for Joy and if the Jews did exult in the Death of their Messiah the Christians were certainly to lament it This Lamentation also of our Saviour's Death as it was not made in consideration of any loss by them sustain'd so neither did it arise out of Indignation against his Mortal Persecutors On his Passion-Day they Fasted and Griev'd for the Sin of the Jews by which he was put to Death but they bemoaned also their other Sins and the Sins of the whole World and more especially their own those for which he suffer'd and which were all the more guilty and more hateful causes of his Crucifixion In this Abhorrence of all Sin and Penitential Grief they spent the day of their Lord's Death and for the better performing this Duty then they prepar'd themselves by the Abstinence and Devotions of the Season before This was the Intention as well as Practice of the whole Church and this was their Antepaschal Preparation concurring at least in time with that of the Jews But the Christians agreed yet nearer with the Jews in this whole Action passing their time not indeed as the Jews then did in that very Season but as they did in another as solemn and in an occasion wholly alike to the present circumstances of the Christians that is the Church of Christ kept the Day of the Passion as the Jews did the Day of Expiation and prepar'd for the one just after the same manner as They did for the other For this is the Conjecture I now offer that as many Jewish Ordinancies were patterns to the Christians and as their Sabbath and Munday and Thursday were remov'd to our Sunday and Wednesday and Friday so their Expiation Day was transfer'd to our Passion Day accompanied as it us'd to be attended with all its Praevious Offices And this Parallel Tertullian we may remember in the name of the Catholicks has already suggested to us (g) Part 1. Ch. 4. § 2. though he did not speak it out when he tells us that the Fast of the tenth day of the Seventh Month is abolisht and at the same time that the Days on which our Saviour was taken away were now determin'd to that Duty This Conjecture I shall endeavour to approve by shewing first the Correspondence between the Expiation â—â—â—y of the Jews
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is Spina And it may likewise be observ'd of the words relating to the abovementioned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has under it the signification not only of Insula but also of Recessus seu Decrementum aquae vel Maris and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a Hedg now and might the Thorns heretofore and withal expresses the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Buds which are mention'd by Barnabas CHAP. III. § I. The Devotional Duty of the Jews an their Expiation Day § II. Practis'd by Christians on the Passion Day § III. Some Circumstances of the Eves of those Days compar'd WHile this Reconciliation was making in the Temple at Jerusalem the People even those who were not present at it had their parts to perform and were to join with it wheresoever they resided Fasting that whole Day and afflicting their Souls from Evening to Evening (a) Lev. 23.32 For whatsoever Soul it was that was not afflicted in that same Day he should be cut off from among his People (b) 29. Now that they might be sure not to be defective in so necessary a Duty they took care to begin the Office of that Day earlier than the Sunset of the first Evening and to conclude it later than that of the second The Affliction also of their Souls they shew'd not by Fasting only but by all other Demonstrations of Penitence and Grief for Sin And therefore for the better performing that Duty as they prepare themselves some considerable time before of which we are to speak in the following Chapter so more particularly on the Ninth Day the day immediately preceding For then they repair to their Synagogues before day and continue long at their Devotion there going afterward to their Burying places for their greater Humiliation and in the Afternoon they wash themselves Confessing their Sins make ready their Candles which they are presently to use and particularly take care to Ask Pardon of those they have injur'd and to make satisfaction Then in the Synagogue with other Prayers they make a solemn Confession of their Sins and sometimes receive from one another their Forty stripes save one and afterwards they return home and eat a Formal Supper thereby to distinguish that day from the following in which they are neither to Eat nor Drink (c) For this and what follows see Buxt Syn. Jud. c. 25. And now before the Night beginning that Great Day is come they return to the Synagogue set up and light their Candles for each one and sometimes two as both for their Soul and their Body and after Proclamation is made of leave for the Excommunicate to join with them they begin their solemn Prayers of the Day which they continue towards Midnight some spending the whole Night and repeating the whole Psalter However before Sun-rising they come thither again and stay there all the rest of the Day Reading out of the Scriptures and Praying in which Prayers they take care that their second Service the Sacrificial Service for the Day be said before Noon After Noon they begin the Service of the Evening continuing their Devotions till the Sun is ready to set when they subjoin another Office for the Close of the Day and peculiar to that day and then when the Night of the next day is come they have the solemn Blessing pronounc'd by the Priests that are present and so are dismiss'd After this manner while the Temple stood the Jews heretofore are presum'd to have employ'd the Day of Expiation and not otherwise to have expected any benefit from the Sacrifice which was then offer'd and by which all their Sins were to be intirely Remitted And since the Destruction of their Temple and ceasing of their Sacrifices this their own Office the Jews still continue and impute so much to their due performance of it as to think (d) Rep. 1. Ch. 9. §. 2. that the Punishment of many offences is entirely Forgiven and of the rest at least suspended by that alone and without the help of the Expiatory Goats which are now wanting § II. NOW as it is certain what was laid down in the Chapter foregoing that the Day of our Saviours Passion was the Great and Last Day of Expiation when that one Propitiatory Sacrifice was made for the Sins of the whole World and of all Ages by that our Great and Catholick High Priest (e) Tert. adv Marc. 49. so is it not to be question'd but that the whole World had it then known what Propitiation our Blessed Lord was making for them would have join'd the Affliction of their own Souls with that his bitter Passion and would in their several Habitations have accompanied his Oblation for their Sins with their own Confession of them with bitter grief for their Commission and strong and earnest Supplication for their Pardon This All Mankind could not have fail'd to have done on that Day had they but known what our Saviour was then doing for them But that then was hid from the Eyes of the Apostles themselves When therefore the Mystery of his Death came to be reveal'd and the Propitiation of that day was made known if his Disciples thought fit to keep an annual Memorial of it and that duty the Paschal Season of the Jews so solemnly kept could not but suggest to Christians they could not neither fail of Solemnizing the return of that Day with that Profound Veneration of our Suffering Lord and that Penitential Supplicatory Devotion to the Father which the Original Day it self would have requir'd from them Now that such a Day was kept yearly in memory of the Passion of our Lord in the first and Apostolical Age is a truth which the former Part of this Discourse may have clear'd to us (f) Part 1. Chap. 3. and that it was all along observ'd with as great a strictness of Fasting and Humiliation as the Jews themselves us'd on their day of Propitiation is likewise manifest as it is also most certain that the Grief and Affliction they then were under was not for the Death and Loss of their Lord and Master but for the Guilt of their Sins and the Sins of the World for which their Lord and Master had that day suffer'd So much correspondence there was most evidently between the Practice of the Jews and of the Christians on their two Great Fast Days Thus should our Saviour's Expiatory Sacrifice which completed and superseded the Jewish have been attended answerably and thus actually was the Annually Memory of it afterwards celebrated with a suitable Devotion And this though not done by the Primitive Church in vertue of any such strict Injunction as that under the Old Covenant might yet be well taken up upon the cogent reason of so just a Congruity And as the Jews continue their Devotional Office now when by the Judgment of God an end is put to the Sacrificial so
find a fuller and a higher correspondence not only in a Weekly but in a Forty Season and that likewise of Penitential Duty For first the Jews prepare themselves for the Day of Propitiation more particularly the Week before it They rise before Light assist at Publick Prayers confess their Sins thrice every day Fast and give Alms (b) â—or this whole Section See Buxt S. J. Cap. 26. And as the People fit themselves in a more especial manner by the Devotions of those seven days for the solemn Act of Humiliation commanded them by Moses so they tell us the High Priest heretofore imploy'd the same Week in a continual Exercise of his Office that he might be the better able to discharge the Difficult Duty of the Great Day (c) Jomâ— Cap. 1. The Sabbath also of that Week they distinguish by a peculiar Title and call it the Sabbath of Repentance Thus the Jews pass the seven preceeding days and so Leo de Modena (d) Câ—r des Juif P. 3. C. 6. distinguishes them from the rest For though all the ten of that seventh Month are call'd the Ten Days of Repentance reckoning the Day of Expiation for one yet the two first are in some manner Festival being the first of their Political Year and on them they abstain not from Dinner and Supper for which reason they may not be esteem'd as Penitential as the seven that follow These Ten Days are constantly so observ'd by all Jews the last the Tenth by Scriptural Precept and the others by Universal Custom And further to these are added out of the foregoing Month ordinarily a Week at least says Leo de Modena For even the German Jews begin their Humiliation as early according to a particular Rule they have (e) Morin de Poen 10.34.3 But other Nations generally take more time to that solemn Office and frequently Devout Persons begin from the First Day even of this preceeding Month to Fast to make Prayers and Confessions to repeat the Penitential Psalms and to Give Alms continuing so to do the whole Forty days However all Jews begin their Penitential Devotion the First day of that Month the Fortieth day before the Expiation though they may afterwards discontinue in the intermediate time On that day also they begin to blow the Horn in their Synagogues which they do every day that Month for an Alarm they say that they may Repent and be ready to meet the Judgment of God who according to their Tradition sits in Judgment the Ten days of the Next Month. § II. I have mention'd their Opinion of God's Judging the World in the Beginning of their Seventh Month and it may seem thence that their Custom of giving notice by the sound of the Horn may rather respect the Beginning of the Month Tisri than the Tenth Day of it and be rather the Warning of Thirty than of Forty days But this suspicion if it should arise will receive easy satisfaction from another concurrent Tradition of the Jews universally receiv'd by them that Moses went up upon the Mount the Last time on the First day of their Sixth Month and return'd again to them with the second Copy of the Law on the Fortieth after the Tenth of the Seventh their Expiation day (f) Rab. Salom. in Locum Deuter. proximè â—itand Now when he went up he commanded a Horn as they say to be sounded thorough the Camp to give notice to the People on what Errand he was going that they might not again commit the like Abominations in memory of which they now still sound it and we besides know from better Authority (g) Deut. 9.18 that Moses spent these forty days and forty nights in Fasting and Supplication for the Sins of the Children of Israel So that we are rather to think that they have since in some measure follow'd his pious Example and that on the day of his Ascent they begin to prepare for that of his Descent which in their Opinion is the tenth of Tisri and on which they have been since commanded always to Afflict themselves before the Lord at least one Day and Night The Forty days therefore here are not to be look'd upon as an accidental number and the bare Aggregate of Thirty and Ten but as they make up directly a full Penitential Season And indeed that Number seems to have been very antiently appropriated to Penance and Humiliation For not to reckon up the Forty Days by which God drown'd the World (h) Gen. 7.4 or the Forty Years in which the Children of Israel did Penance in the Wilderness (i) Numb 14.34 or the Forty Stripes (k) Deut. 25.3 by which Malefactors were to be corrected though these Instances may concur to strengthen the Opinion whoever considers that Moses did not once only fast this Number of Days (l) Deut. 9.9 18 25. that Elias Fasted also in that Wilderness by the same space (m) King 1.19.8 that the Ninevites had precisely as many Days allow'd for their Repentance (n) Jon. 3.4 and that lastly our Blessed Saviour when he was pleas'd to Fast observ'd the same Length of time (o) Matth. 4.2 whoever I say considers these Facts cannot but think that this number of Days was us'd by them all as the common solemn number belonging to Extraordinary Humiliation and that those were accustom'd to afflict themselves Forty days who would deprecate any great and heavy judgment though the Scripture does not specify the number as those we know p who had a Nazaritical Vow upon them were us'd to observe thirty days though the Scripture had not neither determin'd that space And this is no more than what St. Jerom a Father much vers'd in the Jewish Knowledge has expresly averr'd in his Comment on Jonas where he says that Forty is the number proper for Penitents and Fasting and Prayer c. and that for this reason Moses fasted forty days and so Elias and likewise our blessed Lord c. as may be seen at large in the Passage already exscrib'd above (q) Part 1. Ch. 8. §. 2. This is there positively and in good earnest said by St. Jerom as the Reason of those Examples though Mr. Daille puts it off r as if the Good Father had Play'd upon them while Hâ— himself rather plays with the Father And according to this the Penance of Forty days is very frequent in the Modern Penitentials of the Jews as we have also seen before (Å¿) Rep. 1. Ch. 9. §. 2. being there generally injoin'd upon any of the Greater Transgressions And to go yet a little further in this matter I cannot tell whether the Forty Days which our Blessed Saviour himself fasted in the Wilderness were not so pass'd by him in the nature of a Penitential Fast For the Baptism of John is known to be a Baptism of Repentance (t) Acts 19.4 preparing for the Messias to come and it may not be unreasonable to suppose that by it
might the Christians think fit to keep up a yearly memory of that their Sacrifice whose offering was once made and never to be reiterated but its efficacy is to endure for ever they likewise observing this Solemnity not with any Ritual Form but with such eternal Duties of Penitence and Supplication as are always incumbent upon us miserable Sinners which the Justice of God will perpetually require and his Goodness in our Saviour accept § III. THERE seems therefore to be reason enough from the nature of the Thing from that Mysterious Suffering of our Lord and the consequent Practise of his Primitive Servants to found the continued Solemnity of the Passion Day upon its correspondence with the Levitical Day of Propitiation Neither is it to be expected that I should justify the Parallel by producing any like Opinion of the first Christians to that we have seen of the Jews concerning the Necessity and Merit of the Observation of the Day when the one was observ'd only as Proper and Expedient though in the judgment probably of those who had the Spirit of God and the other as Positively commanded by God Himself And yet so far did the first Christians seem to regard the vertue of a Jewish Expiation Day in their Practise about their own that they still determin'd the ordinary stated Period of the Penances of ejected Brethren with the Penitence of Good Friday and the following Saturday both which were the Days of our Lord's Passion as if by that their Conversion was consummated and the Pardon of the Church intirely gain'd And when they readmitted Penitents on Maundy Thursday as was the Antient Usage of the Church of Rome and it may be of all others they did not therefore depart from this their Parallel with the Expiation Day but rather confirm'd it For the Jews as we have seen (g) Rep. 1. Ch. 5. §. 3. on the Eve of their Expiation relax their Sentences of Excommunication and admit all to the Office of the next Day and for the same reason the Christians might admit their Excommunicates to the Offices of both Passion Days and even those whom they did not afterwards suffer to continue in their Communion The office of the Passion Day or Days I mean which consisted in Confession and Supplication for it is very probable that in the earlier times the Reconcil'd Penitents were not admitted to the Sacrament of our Lord's Body and Blood until Easter-Day The Supper likewise which was us'd to be held solemnly on that Thursday though it is said to be in Imitation only of our Lord's Supper yet it may also have proceeded from the Practise of the Jews on their Expiation Eve which we mention'd above For they in the Conclusion of their Penitential Preparation towards the Propitiation Day do always make a Solemn Supper and think it as much their Duty to eat well on that Evening as on the Sabbath that being in their Opinion a Duty of the Afternoon as strict Fasting is the Duty of the following Day So agreeable was the Supper of Passion Thursday to the Supper of the Jews on the Eve of their Expiation and more agreeable than to the last Supper of our Blessed Lord which if we go by Jewish Custom was held after Night and in their reckoning therefore rather on the Friday than on the Thursday Agreeable I say as to the time for as to the Freedom of Eating I suppose it differ'd much from that Jewish Meal But those Asiaticks (h) Part 1. Ch. 1. §. 3. who differ'd from the other Churches both in their observing the 14th day with the Jews whatever day of the Week it should be and also in breaking off their Fast that day might possibly in this point have as much follow'd the Custom of the Jews for one Season as they did their Calculation for the other For those of Asia seem to be of the Opinion of which their Followers in Epiphanius (i) Part 1. Ch. 5. §. 3. lit m. certainly were and which many other Churches have also embrac'd that our Saviour suffer'd on the 15th day of Nisan neither is it likely that they did not Fast on that day notwithstanding they are said to have broke it off before for such a neglect no doubt could not have been pass'd over unobserv'd by their Adversaries and would have drawn upon them the censure of Victor more than either of the other differences and besides we know their now mention'd Followers did actually so fast i I suppose therefore that their Breaking off the Fast was not a Determination of it but an Interruption by such a Supper and that this their Meal was Formal and Full and in the nature of a Feast and so reputed whereas the Supper if any of the rest of the Christians was a sparing refreshment and such as in comparison with the other Meal did not seem to Discontinue the Abstinence of the Season as since it has not been thought to do To these lesser particulars by which some indications of a Propitiation Day may appear I shall lastly add another Custom to be read in the Ordo Romanus their custom of striking of Fire and lighting up their Candles very solemnly in the Evening of the same Passion Thursday For whatever other reason it may have had for its institution it does also very well correspond with the Usage of the Jews who take as we have observ'd very particular care to have their Candles ready against their Propitiation Eve with which that night their Synagogues are more than ordinarily enlightned And thus I have offer'd to shew the Resemblance our Passion-Day bears to the Jew's Expiation Day both in it self and some Rites of the Day immediately preceeding it I am now to go higher and to consider at large the whole Previous Season call'd commonly Lent how well it agrees with the like Preparatory Season of the Jews before their Day of Expiation CHAP. IV. § I. A Penitential Season with the Jews Preparatory to their Expiation Day some certain Days next before it kept Vniformly by All More also generally though in various numbers and Forty by many but the First of the Forty Vniversally observ'd § II. Forty Days a solemn space of Penitence in the Jewish Discipline § III. The Christian Lent compar'd with the Jewish § I. THAT the Jews had an Antepaschal Season if not of a Fortnight yet of a Week and particularly that the Sabbath of that Week was call'd the Great Sabbath we have observ'd before (a) P. 1. Ch. 5. §. 3. whence appear'd a Conformity between them and the Christians those especially who reckon'd by the days of the Month and not of the Week in point of Holy Time though the Devotions of the one were generally Festival and of the others altogether Penitential But when we once suppose the Day of our Lord's Passion to have been the Day of Expiation and come to consider the Preparatory time that usher'd in this solemn Day we then begin to