fasts; so as we have seen that cause, the memory of our Lord's Passion, to have given foundation universally to all ages and parts of the Catholic Church, both for her weekly stations (stationum semijejunia) on the fourth and sixth day of the week till three o'clock; and of her annual paschal or lenten fast about the time of our Lord's crucifixion. And whereas our Lord hath said of His disciples, which are or shall be 22 such indeed, that in those days (év éκelvais тaîs nμépais) "they shall and will fast:" what the Church doth and hath done ever since, (that foretold by the Lord when He said they would then fast,") must needs be the best interpretation of what the Lord said they would do. He said it: “in those days they will fast;" hath the Church done what He said they would? or will any say nay? Learn we the Church's days on which she ever since hath, and doth, and professeth that she will fast, and we must needs have the true meaning of this prediction, in these words of her Lord who could not be deceived, "In those days they will fast."

66

5thly. Be therefore my fifth reason this following: Christians will not fast, none can expect they will, on any public, set, solemn days of fasting, (which was the thing here called for by the Scribes from their own alleged example, and that of John's disciples also,) except they do agree upon such days; but if every man was to be left to understand what he please by these words, "The days when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them," (as Aerius had his sense of them, and Jovinian his, and Vigilantius his, and none bound to the Church's sense of them,) we should have no means left us possibly to agree, and so to meet on any days at all by force. of these words, or any other one universal cause; and so should we never meet in any public solemn fast at all; no, not for so public fixed a cause as the taking away of the Bridegroom once for the sins of the whole world.

The Church's teaching then her sense of her Lord's words, by her rules, comments, and practice, must silence these men, 23 as her Lord's prediction of her practice did silence the Scribes and Pharisees, yea, and some other better meaning disciples (St. John's) also, cunningly drawn in (as is usual) by the enemies of the Lord and His Church, to join in expostulations, cavils, and quarrels against them.

18

The Church, our proper teacher,

Reason; and experience; and the direction of all wise men in the Church of God ancient and modern, the house of wisdom; councils; reverend Fathers and writers; and our Church in particular; have directed and commanded us not to interpret Scripture in things of public concernment to the Church's 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 any new and strange doctrine or practice, as necessary therefrom, or to the opposing of any constantly received doctrine or practice of the Church universal, (for in other matters they may happily with leave quietly abound in their own sense,) leaves all bold innovators which can but draw away disciples after them, to be as much lawgivers to the Church by their uncontrollable 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 heresies 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 falsely so called, pervert the Scriptures to their own and others' (their obstinate followers) destruction.

Here therefore I first join issue, that the Church hath 24 observed these days of the Paschal fast, (as it was called in the ancient Church,) or Lent fast, (that is, from the Saxon dialect, "Spring fast",") ever since the times of these children of the bride-chamber, the Apostles of the Lord, and ever since the taking away of the Lord, the Bridegroom.

2. That the Church hath done this, hath observed this Paschal fast, as from the Apostles, grounding their practice upon instruction evangelical; and particularly also upon this text now before us, "The time shall come when," &c. "And then” (èv ékeivais тaîs ημépais) “in those days they shall fast."

b Since the Reformation, Lib. Canonum Eccles. Anglican. anno 1571. [p. 19.]-Videbunt, ne quid unquam doceant pro concione, quod à populo religiose teneri et credi velint, nisi quod consentaneum sit doctrinæ Veteris aut Novi Testamenti, quodque ex illâ ipsâ doctrinâ

Catholici Patres et veteres Episcopi collegerint.

Called also by some Ante-paschale jejunium, meaning the same thing.

d Lencten, Sax., The Spring. Lencten-færten, Lent.

hath ever so taken and acted upon the text;

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Mat. 28.19.

1. For the Church's visible practice from the Apostles' times, if our brethren shall say, Shew us express example written in the following Scriptures, which may interpret this text so, or we are at liberty for the sense and practice; they must be told, what they cannot but freshly remember, that so said the brethren the Anabaptists: one express example of baptizing infants after that sanction and commission, Joh. 3. 5. whereby to interpret such sanction and commission. An express command, as the Church thinks, to "baptize all nations," would not hold them. So said the Socinians for their no-necessity of baptizing at all "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Shew us one example in all the following Scriptures, acts, and letters of the Apostles of that form observed. A direct command as we would think it, could not bind up their liberty of inter25 preting it otherwise. The history of all the following ages of the Church after the Apostles is little to them, compared with the word of God in their own sense. All those following were but men, and these, in their giving out the sense of the Scripture, are more!

For our parts, we 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," (not only they will teach on what days men should fast,) and the bride herself, whose cause is most concerned in it, declaring to us her practice, and assuring us she had received that her 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 for 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, Nos habemus talem consuetudinem, et

15, 16.

20 (demand of direct example in Scripture, unreasonable :) Ecclesiæ Dei, "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 customs of the Churches of God; as St. Paul hath 26 1 Cor. 11. shewn us by his example that against contradictors it is best to do. Let our brethren, therefore, either shew 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 St. Paul concerning the Church's customs; or let them acknowledge it an apostolical note of contentious Rom. 2.8,9. persons, (to whom he elsewhere saith belongs "tribulation and wrath,") to oppose their interpretations and exceptions against such custom 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.

Now, albeit my premises neither contain, nor need to contain, more than that the Church in all ages observed this fast of Lent, called Paschale jejunium, and that from the Apostles themselves, their own evangelical instructions of her, and particularly in this text also which she received from their evangelizing; yet inasmuch as I have occasionally before mentioned, that the Apostles themselves also observed this Paschal fast, I shall not content myself to bring witness that they delivered it to the following times, or only that it was practised in their own times, (of which I shall speak in my second testimony,) but also together that themselves did practise and observe it. For the proof whereof, although it might be sufficient to argue from their delivering it to the Church, that therefore they observed it themselves; (for surely they laid not on the Church any burden of precept which themselves with one of their fingers would not touch, 27 or not teach perfectly by their example first;) yet my argu

For as it was said of the Lord, Acts i. 1, "All things which Jesus began both to do and to teach," (as He did in the exercise of fasting,) so also the Apostle saith of himself and the other Apostles; when he did warn the Philippians of some that walked so, as that their God was their belly, he saith, "Be ye followers of us, and mark them that walk so, as you have us for an example," chap. iii. 17, 19; and 2

Thess. iii. 9, "that we might give ourselves to you for an example to follow us." Yea, these very disciples of the Pharisees, and of John, not only alleged first their own example of frequent fastings, but even St. Mark saith of them, chap. ii. 18, ἦσαν νηστεύοντες, “they were at this time fasting," when they came to the Lord and made this exception to His disciples, for their not so fasting.

shewn, in the first century: from Tertullian,

21

ment for it shall be, not any logical collection, but a direct testimonial asseveration; premising only first, that it is undeniably certain from the instance which I have touched before concerning "baptizing in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," that something the Apostles themselves did most certainly do, and constantly, as well as all ages of the Church after them, of which yet, besides the first commission, (which is not practice,) no one example of any of the Apostles' practice at any time is recorded in all the New Testament, and yet was it done, we are most sure, by every Apostle, and constantly. This premised, I think it sufficient to produce other ecclesiastical unquestioned record to prove the Paschal fast was observed by them; and I allege the witness not of any single Father only, (though written by one pen,) but of the Church itself within the FIRST century of years, or age, after the departure of the last of these honourable children of the bride-chamber, St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, who died in the second year of Trajan. And the Church's testimony by me to be produced, stands recorded by Tertullian, who lived within a hundred years of the Apostle St. John's departure; the Church's witness by Tertullian recorded against himself and his fellow Montanists, in whose 28 behalf he so contends as follows with the Church, and the Church against him and his.

The Record is in Tertullian's Book De Jejuniis', c. 1, 2. where he thus writes: Arguunt nos [Psychici, i. e. Catholici : for so he contumeliously calls the Christian Catholics, ascribing to Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla, novam prophetiam, et spiritualem disciplinam] quod jejunia propria custodiamus, &c.-Novitatem igitur objectant, de cujus inlicito præscribant, aut hæresim judicandam, si humana præsumptio est ; aut pseudoprophetiam pronunciandam, si spiritualis indictio est ; dum quaqua ex parte anathema audiamus, &c. Nam quod ad jejunia pertineat, certos dies a Deo constitutos opponunt,-Certe in Evangelio illos dies jejuniis determinatos putant, in quibus ablatus est sponsus, et hos esse jam solos legitimos jejuniorum Christianorum, abolitis legalibus et propheticis vetustatibus.— Itaque de cætero indifferenter jejunandum, ex arbitrio, non ex imperio, pro temporibus et causis uniuscujusque. Sic et Apof [P. 544.]

* [P. 545.]