vout exercises which were to nourish the souls of believers, and secure the integrity of their morals, throughout the year, we may discover the seeds of that superstitious reverence, which subsequently reduced the sacred observances of the Lent Fast to vain and even impious forms. The writings of the Fathers abound in magnificent and overstrained eulogies, in which an efficacy is ascribed to the devotions of this season far superior to every other.

The tendency of such exaggerations, in their effect upon the minds of the ignorant, though unsuspected by their pious authors, is to us sufficiently obvious. No wonder, therefore, if,. when the whole of religion degenerated into formal ceremony, the period of Lent was distinguished above every other by those bodily exercises which profit nothing,' and by formalities which affect the senses while they stupify the judgment and corrupt the heart. So long as the mere external form was found to be sufficient to maintain the minds of the people in imbruted subjection, their teachers cared not that the essential principle, which alone imparted to them their value, had fled. Thus it was, as regarded the useful but abused discipline of fasting: the end of the ordinance was defeated, by shifting the essential point of it, from entire abstinence or extreme tempe

rance, to a mere change in the material of the indulgence. Flesh was indeed rigorously avoided, but pains were at the same time taken to furnish, from other viands, delicacies yet more flattering to the appetite-the exact abuse denounced by our Lord, among the pharisees, whose fastings were for hypocritical display, to win praise from those who looked but to the letter of the ordinance.' Again penance, which, though occasionally objectionable, on the ground of extreme the rigour with which it was imposed by the primitive disciplinarians, was of powerful aid in preserving the purity of the church, degenerated at last into a merely formal confession of all persons, whether in the condition of penitents or not; from whom the only sign of repentance required, was that they should comply with the empty ceremony of having their heads sprinkled with ashes. It is from this custom that the name of Ash-Wednesday is derived. Many puerile customs distinguished the several divisions of Lent, calculated only to amuse the vulgar, and divert the at

1 Matt vi.

The ashes used on this occasion, were obtained from the palms, blessed on the Palm Sunday of the preceding year. The annual ceremony of placing ashes on the heads of the pope, cardinals, prelates, &c. at Rome, is still one of the most solemn ceremonies in the Papal church.

tention of the worshippers from the proper solemnities of the time; and we may doubt which, in our own days, are more injurious to the minds of the people, whether the folly and levity of the Popish carnival, or the pompous exhibitions and profane shows which diversify the succeeding period of mortification.

Together with the other corrupt and superstitious observances that had found their way into the church of Rome, our reformers discarded all those which deformed this holy season. They restored the use of fasting, according to the custom of the earliest ages; but probably feeling that, after such an interval of laxity, the people were no longer in a condition to bear the reimposing of so severe a yoke, the ancient discipline of penance was omitted. Not, however, to leave the Lent of the reformed church unmarked by any observance proper to recall sinners to a due sense of their fearful condition, and to deter others,

'The stated times for abstinence, besides the great annual fast of Lent, are- -the three Rogation days, (from rogationes, supplications,) or those which immediately precede our Lord's ascension; the Ember days, (a word of doubtful origin, but probably referring to the custom of sitting upon ashes, or sprinkling the head with them, as an act of humiliation and penance,) viz. the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, in the weeks after the first Sunday in Lent, after Whit-Sunday, after September 14th, and December 13th; to which are added all the Fridays in the year, in memory of the crucifixion.

they substituted the service for Ash-Wednesday, entitled a "Commination, or denouncing of God's anger against sin." It would appear, however, that this insufficient substitute for penitentiary discipline was only to be used, " until," in the words of the compilers, "the said discipline may be restored again, which is much to be wished:"-" to be wished, rather than expected, in these licentious times," subjoins the commentator on our book of Common Prayer; and, alas! the period that has since elapsed, without lessening the necessity, has greatly diminished the probability, of this desirable restoration !

The neglect, and, in too many cases, the contempt, into which the solemn observance of Lent has fallen, is one of the multitude of instances in which extremes beget extremes. When the early writers lavished their panegyrics upon this "divine medicine of the soul," and represented that by the penitence of the quadragesimal period the sins of all the rest of the year were to be removed, they were preparing the way for those superstitious abuses which, in their turn, produced

As this service, the propriety of which has been often controverted, still continues to give offence to not a few well-meaning persons, room has been spared in the present volume for a Sermon, (Sermon II.) in which the reader will find the whole question satisfactorily discussed.]

? Wheatly.

our present worse than indifference. When, for example, the primitive discipline of fasting was degraded into a mere mockery of abstinence from some particular kinds of meats, while, at the same time, the whole design and principle of the ordinance were abandoned, we cannot wonder that plain, wellmeaning Christians began to look upon it altogether as a vain superstition. To regard it in this light appeared, to too many, a mark of the sincerity of their Protestantism; and when hostility to a rival church was leagued with man's natural repugnance to mortification and self-denial, the result was what might have been anticipated. Yet we may plead, in favour of this ordinance, both an obvious usefulness, and a sanction, if not a command, from the highest authority. Why, if fasting were that indifferent, or even ridiculous ceremonial, which it is the fashion to consider it, did our Lord himself give directions about the manner of its observance? and how came he to rank it with prayer and almsgiving, two of the most indispensable duties of the Christian; directing us at the same time, and in equivalent terms, to pray, to fast, and to give alms? The utility of abstinence, as a means of subduing our earthly to our spiritual being, is strongly urged by the apostle of the Gentiles, from his own example; who certainly

1 Matt. vi.