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DURATION AND OBSERVANCE.

247

tivals of Heathendom;* and again when he speaks of it as "a very large space of time appointed by the Church for the administration of baptism (Acts ii.), during which season not only was the Resurrection of the Lord frequently demonstrated to the Disciples, but the grace of the Holy Spirit was first poured out upon them."+ A like conclusion as to the ancient customary duration of Pentecost is to be arrived at from a decree of the Council of Elvira (A.D. 303 or 309), which was framed against an obnoxious custom that had originated in some part of Spain, of anticipating the day—or, which is the same thing, of abridging the season-of Pentecost by celebrating it on the fortieth, instead of the fiftieth day after Easter. The Council of Elvira protested against this abuse, and enacted (Canon xliii.) that any one who was guilty of the practice, and refused to conform to catholic usage, should be dealt with as the bringer in of a new heresy.

Following the Jewish custom of commencing and ending a cyclic festival with a degree of solemnity greater than that attaching to the average run of the days which composed it, the primitive Christians distinguished with peculiar honour the first and the fourth week of the Pentecostal season. But the whole time of its duration was regarded as one prolonged day of sacred joy and festivity, during which, indeed, it was anciently forbidden to observe a fast or to bend the knee in prayer, as Tertullian and Epiphanius severally inform us. "We hold it a wickedness," observes the former, "to fast on the Lord's-day, or to worship kneeling. We rejoice in the same immunity from Easter even to Pentecost." And Epiphanius writes to the same effect:-" During the fifty days of Pentecost neither are the knees to be bent, nor is a fast to be proclaimed."§ The Council of Nicea applied its authority to establish the uni

*De Idololatria, c. 14.

De Corona Militis, c. 3.

De Baptismo c. 19.

§ Expositio Fidei Catholicæ, c. 22.

brate Pentecost," St. Augustine says, "that is, the fiftieth day after the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord, because in it, according to His promise, He sent unto us the Holy Spirit, the Comforter (Acts ii., 1-4); and because the event of this day was presignified by the Passover of the Jews, when, on the fiftieth day after the feast of the slain Lamb, Moses received on the Mount the Law written by the Finger of God (Ex. xix. and xxxi). Read the Gospel, and observe that the Holy Spirit is there called the Finger of God" (Luke xi., 20).*

To a statement of the same connection between the two dispensations, Leo the Great appends a doctrine of capital importance. "As to the Hebrew people," he says, “just delivered from the bondage of the Egyptians, on the fiftieth day after the sacrifice of the Lamb, the Law was given on Mount Sinai (Ex. xix., 17), so after the Passion of Christ, in which the true Lamb of God was slain, on the fiftieth day from His Resurrection, the Holy Spirit entered into the Apostles and the whole body of the faithful (Acts ii., 3), that the earnest enquirer might understand that the elements of the Old Testament subserved to the principles of the Gospel, and that the Second Covenant was established by the same Spirit by which the First was instituted."+

The term Pentecost is of two-fold significance; it is both a day and a series of days-a diurnal and a cyclic anniversary. Its first appearance in ecclesiastical history is in the latter character, when, as we have already seen while treating of Ascension-day, it comprehended that quinquagesimal interval which, commencing at Easter, came to a close with the day we now name Whitsunday. That this was the sense in which it was understood by Tertullian is evident from the manner of his mention of it as more than outmeasuring in dignity and duration the aggregate of the fes

*Contra Faustum Manichæum; Lib. xxxii., c. 12.
Sermones de Pentecoste; Sermo 1., c. 1.

DURATION AND OBSERVANCE.

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tivals of Heathendom ;* and again when he speaks of it as "a very large space of time appointed by the Church for the administration of baptism (Acts ii.), during which season not only was the Resurrection of the Lord frequently demonstrated to the Disciples, but the grace of the Holy Spirit was first poured out upon them."+ A like conclusion as to the ancient customary duration of Pentecost is to be arrived at from a decree of the Council of Elvira (A.D. 303 or 309), which was framed against an obnoxious custom that had originated in some part of Spain, of anticipating the day—or, which is the same thing, of abridging the season-of Pentecost by celebrating it on the fortieth, instead of the fiftieth day after Easter. The Council of Elvira protested against this abuse, and enacted (Canon xliii.) that any one who was guilty of the practice, and refused to conform to catholic usage, should be dealt with as the bringer in of a new heresy.

Following the Jewish custom of commencing and ending a cyclic festival with a degree of solemnity greater than that attaching to the average run of the days which composed it, the primitive Christians distinguished with peculiar honour the first and the fourth week of the Pentecostal season. But the whole time of its duration was regarded as one prolonged day of sacred joy and festivity, during which, indeed, it was anciently forbidden to observe a fast or to bend the knee in prayer, as Tertullian and Epiphanius severally inform us. "We hold it a wickedness," observes the former, "to fast on the Lord's-day, or to worship kneeling. We rejoice in the same immunity from Easter even to Pentecost." And Epiphanius writes to the same effect:—“ During the fifty days of Pentecost neither are the knees to be bent, nor is a fast to be proclaimed."§ The Council of Nicæa applied its authority to establish the uni

*De Idololatria, c. 14.

De Corona Militis, c. 3.

De Baptismo c. 19.

§ Expositio Fidei Catholicæ, c. 22.

versality of the practice,* not so successfully, however, as to convince St. Augustine that a uniform observance had been secured; whilst Cassian more expressly cites the monks of Syria as habitual offenders against the rule, although their neighbours, the Egyptians, were very precise and punctual in its observance.‡ St. Ambrose, in his time, spoke of the custom in question as an ancestral one:"We have received by tradition from our fathers that all the fifty days of Pentecost are to be observed as Paschal days. Throughout these fifty days the Church allows no fast, but holds them all as if they were one continued Lord's-day."Ş

But no statement of the unbroken festivity of Pentecost is to be taken without qualification. For, not to mention the appointment as vigils of the eves of Ascension and Whit-Sunday, there arose in the middle of the fifth century a custom of setting apart the three days immediately preceding Ascension-Day as Litany or Rogation days. This custom was introduced by Mamercus, Bishop of Vienne, who, out of gratitude for the success of the intercessions which had cleared his diocese of several direful evils that afflicted it, appointed these days to commemorate the deliverance of his flock, and as a perpetual preparation for the coming feast of Ascension. Litanies, or Rogations, were not new to the Church in the time of Mamercus, but it

* The twentieth and last canon re-established the uniformity of the usage which obtained in former ages of praying upright, and not on the knees, on Sundays and the fifty days of the Paschal season. This canon is omitted, however, in the version of the Western Church, and the practice seems to have been confined to the Orientals, notwithstanding that Irenæus had assumed to trace its origin to the Apostles.

"As to our standing to pray during these days and all Lord'sdays, I know not whether the custom be generally observed."— Epistola 119 or 55, c. 17.

Collatio xxi., c. 11.

§ Expositio Evangelii Secundum Lucam, c. xvii., v. 4.

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was he who first fixed them to these particular days; and the observance of them gradually obtained amongst the Churches in the West until the era of the Reformation, which frowned upon the public processions by which their supplications had been accompanied.

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The twenty-seventh Canon of the first Council of Orleans, A.D. 511, appointed that they should be yearly observed; and the thirty-third Canon of the Council of Mayence, A.D. 813, ordained various acts of penitence and deprecation as proper to this triduum, which was to be a season of "abstinence and not of joy." The Rogation fast in the season of Pentecost was, however, a thing unknown to the Greek Church, which always preserved unbroken the festival character of the period. In the Church of England it was thought fit to continue the observance of these days as private fasts. There is no office appointed for the Rogation days in the book of Common Prayer; but among the Homilies there is one designed for the improvement of these days. The requisitions of the Church are abstinence," and "extraordinary acts and exercises of devotion." Perambulations were in many parishes observed on the Rogation days; during which, as ordained by an Injunction of Queen Elizabeth, the curate was "to admonish the people to give thanks to God in the beholding of God's benefits, for the increase and abundance of His fruits upon the face of the earth, with the saying of the 104th Psalm." George Herbert's "Country Parson" is represented as a great lover of these quasi-religious processions, which he well knew how to turn to the pious purposes just mentioned; and Izaak Walton, in his "Life of Hooker," has a pleasant picture of the latter upon his annual perambulations, for the keeping-up of which he was a staunch advocate, and during which he would vary as grave and gay, facetious and didactic, but above all exhorting his parishioners then present "to meekness and mutual kindness and love."

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