ΤΟ HIS MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY OUR SOVEREIGN LORD CHARLES THE SECOND, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY MONARCH OF MOST GRACIOUS AND DREAD SOVEREIGN, THE subject matter of this discourse, the holy Fast of Lent before Easter, which hath always been a sacred solemnity of your royal court, and hath for nineteen years (one whole cycle of those solemnities) been driven hence together with your Majesty, and at length by the blessed hand of God together with your sacred Majesty restored unto us, was forthwith by your pious care in its first periodical return owned in your royal proclamation and example the last year, and by your meanest subject and servant maintained in a discourse preached before your Majesty. But the same observance of Lent was forthwith in the same week, by a nameless and false pamphlet scattered at the very gates of your court, maligned and opposed; and became soon after matter of deliberate contest and debate", as part of that which was thought fit to be excepted to in the public Liturgy or Common Prayer Book, and propounded by some to be altered. The depending of which debate and controversy, and the employment, which by your Majesty's gracious commission I had part in, to consider of that, with many At the Savoy. other particulars in the Common Prayer Book, and the expectation of the utmost which could be brought against that primitive and religious fast, which lately now we have received in print; hath necessitated this discourse (delivered at first in a sermon in your royal chapel, and by your Majesty commanded to be published, and by the warrant of your permission since enlarged) to choose rather to expect the beginning of this Lent, than to appear at the ending only of the former. It now, not unseasonably, as I hope, presents itself to your sacred hands, and flies to your royal protection, who are most truly the defender of that holy faith whereof this and other solemnities of the Church are the fence and mound. The royal Constantine, in whom first God did most eminently fulfil His holy promise of giving to His Church kings to be her nursing fathers, began that course with which your sacred Majesty set forth; writing unto all the Churches in his empire, and that undoubtedly from the advice of the first and most sacred Ecumenical Council of Nice, then sitting, for the religious and uniform observation of the holy feast of Easter with the appointed fasts that precede it. In which his imperial letters he did instruct the Churches of his empire, "that this holy solemnity of Pasch, as comprising both the feast and fast, had from the very first day itself wherein our Lord did suffer upon the cross, been in the Church ever observed unto that present year;" and for the years following, no adversary will or can deny it to have continued. How after that example your Majesty's own royal ancestors have even in ancient ages preserved here and transmitted to posterity this holy feast and fast, is in part shewn in the following treatise; and the ages to come shall not be silent of your Majesty's princely piety herein. What Athenagoras, a primitive apologist for • Ωρισμένας νηστείας he calls them. e Euseb. lib. de Vit. Constantin. c. 16, 17, 18. [vol. i. p. 586.] Theodoret. lib. i. c. 9. [vol. iii. p. 771.] Socrates, lib. i. c. 9. [p. 33.] our Christianity, prayed unto Almighty God for the emperors Aurelius, Antoninus, and Commodus, we with infinitely greater reason pray for your sacred Majesty, the most Christian Catholic defender of our holy faith and Church, pouring out supplications [on our fasts and feasts, and all other days] for your Majesty's happy reign over us, that according to your most just rights, the father to the son may ever continue to transmit your kingdoms (with your piety), that your royal dominions may be more and more. extended, and all prosperous success ever follow you, that we living a godly, quiet and peaceable life, may readily and cheerfully serve and obey you; so prayeth your sacred Majesty's most humble and loyal subject and chaplain, PETER GUNNING. 4 Legat. pro Christianis in fine. [p. 80.] A SERMON. ST. LUKE V. 35-38. But the days will come, when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. And He spake also a parable unto them, No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old: if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. THE Scribes and Pharisees, saith St. Luke; St. John's disciples, saith St. Matthew; St. John's and the Pharisees' disciples together, saith St. Mark; came to our Saviour, and by way of exception said, "Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast often," (Toλà, TUкvà) "but Thine fast not?" They did not, because they could not say, "but Thou fastest 2 not." Not the devil himself might deny, what he had felt, that the Lord had (as John himself had not at any time, and Moses and Elias but by His strength) fasted forty days and forty nights. His frequent exercise of fasting is witnessed in two mystical Psalms understood of Christ. "The zeal of Thy Ps.69.9,10. house hath even eaten me, &c. I wept and chastened myself with fasting, and that was turned to my reproof." And, "My Ps. 109. knees are weak through fasting, my flesh is dried up for want of fatness; I became also a reproach unto them." The context of which verses, and the ancient Fathers' commentaries on those Psalms, are our warrant that David in spirit spake them of Christ. On Psalm lxix. St. Hilary thus writeth: "This Psalm contains the prophecy of the sufferings of our [In Ps. lxviii. § 1, 12. col. 215. 220.] GUNNING. B 23, 24. |