to the Apostolic age, as any monuments or records of the Church attain. And in this sense, it is so binding upon the conscience of all earnest Christians, that they must esteem it a fearful loss and risk to disregard it. The testimony of the whole Church, in every age, in all lands, and at the lips of all her people, is an authority practically divine; and it comes with that impress of the spirit of truth and love, for the benefit of men's souls, which only they, who care little for their souls, will venture to resist.

The question of positive divine command is immaterial. The Church is the witness of God to His people; and she has authority, in His name, to give expression to the spirit of His almighty will. The foundation which the Lent fast claims in the Gospel, is the same which it possesses in the Law; a foundation of example, rather than of precept,—the example of Moses and Elias in the one, and of our Blessed Lord, and His chosen disciples, in the other. The power of ordering details of spiritual guidance for the souls of those, who would walk in their Master's steps, is that express gift, with which He has blessed His Church, and for which He will call her to account. Whether the Lent fast was originally forty hours of forty days, three weeks or six, cannot affect the real consideration, which Christian people are bound to entertain; need not therefore be discussed.

The Church has authority to make her seasons of

discipline longer or shorter, as she shall see fit. "As long as the perfection of the primitive Church remained inviolable," says Cassian,* "there was no observation of Lent; but when men began to decline from the Apostolical fervour of devotion, and gave themselves, overmuch, to worldly affairs, then the priests, in general, agreed to recall them from secular cares, by a canonical indiction of fasting, and setting aside a tenth of their time for God."

And "why do we fast these forty days?" asks S. Chrysostom. "Many heretofore were used to come to the Communion indevoutly and inconsiderately, especially at this time, when Christ first gave it to his disciples; therefore, our forefathers, considering the mischief arising from such careless approaches, meeting together, appointed forty days for fasting and prayer, and hearing of sermons, and holy assemblies, that all men, in these days, being carefully purified by prayer, and alms-deeds, and fasting, and watching, and tears, and confession of sins, and other the like exercises, might come, according to their capacity, with a pure conscience to the holy table."

Whatever reasons conspired, at the first, through the providence of God, to bind upon all portions of the Church alike, the period of forty days, remain in equal force now. Certainly, there have arisen, in

* Cassian. Collat. xxi. cap. 30. (Lips. 1733, p. 573.) ap. BINGHAM.

+ Hom. 52, vol. v. p. 709. B. 10. ap. BINGHAM.

these latter times, no prevailing causes why it should be less; but, on the contrary, a call most urgent and pressing, for those who seek the favour of God, to deprecate the growing wickedness of baptized souls amongst us, their apathy, and unbelief, and selfwilled adherence to the world, with all the accumulated national and individual corruptions which are ready to overwhelm us,-with more zeal, and fervency, and perseverance, than the most devoted have ever yet been privileged to show.

Thank God, in the letter of the Church's law there is, as yet, no swerving from the fulness of the primitive rule, although, for that discipline which, less demanded in purer and holier times than ours, kept the spirit alive, we have, alas! to look in vain. "For our parts," as Bishop Gunning has well said, " finding the Bridegroom, the Lord Himself, thus referring us to the practice of His known disciples, the children of the bride-chamber, ' in those days they will fast,' and the Bride herself, whose cause is most concerned in it, declaring to us her practice, and assuring us she had received that practice from those friends of her Bridegroom, and children of His marriage-chamber, the Apostles; that Bride, also being, as we know, the Queen standing at His right hand, the mother of us all; whose authority is above all mothers, (and yet each mother's is from God over her children); we, I say, joining in

*

obedience with all those who have this Church for their mother, are assured that we obey, and have God or our father, and His Spirit not to leave her in her leading us, without certain conduct into all truth of necessary faith, or bounden practice; that is, certainly to secure her from every of the gates of hell never to prevail against her. We have the Church, our mother, to hear; and as to the point we would hear of We have such a custom, and so have, and had, the Churches of God.'" If any man, against all this, list to be contentious, we still have learnt not to let fall our appeal to the Churches of God; as S. Paul hath shown us, by his example, that, against contradictors, it is best so to do. Let our brethren, therefore, either show some Church or age before their own of yesterday, where this was not the custom of Christian people; or else devise some other sense also of that text of S. Paul, concerning the Church's customs; or let them acknowledge it an Apostolical note of contentious persons (to whom, he elsewhere saith, belong 'tribulation and wrath,'t) to oppose their interpretations and exceptions against such customs of the Churches of God, as this Paschal fast, or fast of Lent, in remembrance of the taking away of the Bridegroom of the Church, can manifest itself to be."‡

* 1 Cor. xi. 15, 16.

Rom. ii. 8, 9.

Bp. Gunning on the Lent Fast, pp. 19, 20. Oxford.

The disinclination, here in England, to fulfil the Church's law, at the cost of selfish indulgence and worldly pleasure, is, alas, of old standing. We have all of us, both clergy and laity, for many generations, been slow to learn the true practical application of the doctrine of THE CROSS; we have thought to know another JESUS than "Christ crucified." And yet, ever and anon, God has raised upa bold and faithful servant to warn the rest. Just an hundred and fifty years ago, when, in spite of the holy lessons which such men as Beveridge and Wilson were teaching the English Church, she was entering upon the most lifeless page of her history, a country parish priest rose up, and witnessed against "the long neglected times of fasting, and abstinence appointed by the Church." He never told his own name; but he came forward under the protection of two, for ever to be honoured and had in reverence, Nelson,-to whom he dedicated his appeal,-and Hickes, who commended it with a preface of his own. "An attempt of this nature," said Hickes, "to retrieve the observation of fasting-times, is commendable and noble, what success soever it may have; and acceptable, without doubt, to God and good men, because the observation of them, though grown almost into utter disuse, is very serviceable to the great ends of religion, as this author has shown; particularly in fitting us to bear the crosses and persecutions which may arise at any time, or of any