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

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

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

defend the Catholick Faith that they might break in pieces your Arguments Hitherto S. Augustin l. 1. 2. contra Iulianum I thought fit to adjoyn this Reflexion of S. Austen though superabundant to the force of my Argument it being sufficient for my purpose to prove that Lent-Fast was generally practised in the 4th and 5th Century both by the Eastern and Western Churches and so much evidently follows from the Authorities above cited For though some may be so self-conceited as to confess that S. Hierom S. Ambrose S. Basil S. Crysostom and the rest of the Holy Fathers Greek and Latin deemed the observation of Lent to be a pious Christian practice but they with humble submission judged it to be Superstition Will-worship and the Doctrin of Devils Yet few I think but have so much regard for these Primitive Doctors as to allow them so much judgment as to know what was the practice of their several Churches in their days and so much fidelity as to write the Truth as to that particular which is sufficient for the purport of my discourse unless you can think that these Holy Fathers were of one Faith their Flocks which Reverence them as Sts. of another For the 4th and 5th Age practising Fasting in Lent not as a piece of Piety begun by themselves but commended to them by Tradition from the Apostles it not only follows that it could not be first begun by their immediate Progenitos which had it been they could not possibly have been ignorant of it but also that it must necessarily have been first taught the world by the Apostles For if the first Converts of the Apostles all over the World had not only been taught no such observation but also had been positively instructed to look upon Abstinence from certain kind of Meats as Superstition and the Doctrin of Devils and with all had been charged not to receive any other Doctrin though Preached to them by an Angel sent from Heaven and they in like manner teaching their Children the same they had learnt as none can doubt but they did How is it possible that the Christians in the 4th Century should most tenaciously adhere to this principle of admitting no new Doctrin or Practice but to hold fast to what was delivered them by their Ancestors from the Apostles and yet should themselves Superstitiously Abstain from Meats and not pretend Scripture for it neither but Apostolical Tradition But had the Pastors of the 4th Century Abstained from certain Meats on pretext of Scripture in such a manner understood by them or upon account of some Decree of a General Council or Law of some Emperor made in the second or third Century or pretending to follow some person or persons raised up by God in the third Age to teach the Christian world a more strict observance it might well be conceiv'd how the 4th Age might abstain from Meats upon a Religious account though no such thing had been taught the world by the Apostles but the quite contrary And from what has been said all well put together I think it is efficaciously concluded against all Opposers of Lent-Fast that it was taught the world by the Apostles But it is not a Tippet or a Surplice I am Arguing for but a practice which if rightly observed is sufficient to make all the world Saints and therefore for the more abundant satisfaction of my Reader I shall now adjoyn positive Evidences out of the Writers of the first 300. years that the Holy Fast of Lent was practised in those most pure and Primitive Times S. Denys B. of Alexandria who lived in the middle of the third Age in his Epistle to Basilides the Bishop Records the Fast before Easter as Universal as the joy and Feast of Easter It will be confessed saies he of all agreeably that we ought to begin the Feast viz. of Easter and Ioy until that time humbling our souls in Fastings they truly which make too much hast and before well toward mid-night break their Fast we blame as regardless and not Masters of their Appetite giving over the Race a little before the Goal Such indeed as are much worn by the Fasts and toward the end as it were faint we easily pardon if they eat sooner And in the same Epistle he mentions in special manner the six days of Fasts to wit those of the last week not alike observ'd of all Origen in the beginning of the same Age. Hom. 10. In Leviticum Habemus Quadragesimae dies c. We have the days of Lent Consecrated to Fasting we have the fourth and sixth day of the week on which we solemnly Fast. And certainly a Christian has liberty to Fast at all times but not out of a Superstitious Observation but by the Vertue of Continency The first General Council of Nice held a little after the year 300. did not first ordain the keeping of Lent but in the sixth Canon makes mention of it as a time known to all the Christian world for in that Canon the Fathers ordain that two Provincial-Councils should be celebrated by the Bishops of every Province every year one of them ante dies Quadragesimae c. before the days of Lent to the end that all Contests if any such be being made up a pure and solemn gift may be offered to God Now how should Lent be observed all over the Christian world so early before any General Council What other Universal cause could there be of so Universal an Observation but the first teaching of the Apostles Or if such a practice had been Superstitious and the Doctrin of Devils how came so Venerable and holy a Councel not to take notice of it As if they could be ignorant of such Scriptures as falsly understood are alledged against it by Non-Conformists In the second Age Tertullian in his Book de Iejunio c. 1 2. tells us that it was not the Sentiment of some one particular Man but of all Catholick Christians who are by him contumeliously called Psychici that the Pascal Fast was Constituted by God and observed by the Apostles His words are Nam quod c. For as to what appertains to Fasts they oppose that there are certain days Constituted by God They surely think that in the Gospel those days are determined for Fasts in which the Bridegroom was taken away and those days only are now the legitimate days of Christian Fasts c. And that thus the Apostles observed the rule of Fasting imposing no other Yoke of certain or Set-Fasts to be kept of all in common And c. 13. Ye prescribe against us that the solemn times for this matter are to be believed already constituted in the Scriptures or in the Tradition of our Elders and that no further observance is to be superadded for the unlawfulness of Innovation Maintain this your ground if you can for lo I convince you even your selves Fasting besides the Paschal Fast those days in which the Bridegroom was taken away