munion on this day, and servants had liberty to rest from their bodily labour to attend the religious service of the day. In regard to which usage the author of the Constitutions1 gives this direction: let servants rest from their labour on Epiphany, because on that day the divinity of Christ was declared, when the Father gave testimony to him at his baptism, and the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove shewed him to those that stood by, and heard the testimony that was given him. And though at first this day was not exempt from juridical acts and prosecutions at law; nor were the public games and shows forbidden for some time to be exhibited thereon: yet at length Theodosius Junior gave it an honourable place among those days, on which the public games should not be allowed; forasmuch as men ought to put a distinction between days of supplication and days of pleasure. And Justinian, reciting one of the laws of Theodosius the Great, makes both the nativity and Epiphany days of vacation from all pleadings at law, as well as from popular pleasures. And so it is in the laws of the Visigoths, published out of the body of the Roman laws by Reciswindus and other Gothic kings, and the old Gothic Interpreter of the laws in the Theodosian Code. From whence we may conclude, that this was become the standing rule and custom throughout both the Roman and the Visigoth dominions, to keep this festival of Epiphany with great veneration; neither allowing the courts to be open on this day for law, nor the theatre for pleasure.

SECT. 9.-Notice usually given on Epiphany concerning the Time of Easter in the ensuing Year.

I have but one thing more to note, as it were by the way, concerning this day: that they, to whom the care of the

1Constit. lib. viii. cap. 33. Vid. lib. v. cap. 13. lib. xv. tit. 5. Spectac. leg. v.

2 Cod. Theod. 3 Cod. Just. lib. iii, tit. 12. de Leges Visigoth. lib. ii. tit. L. leg. 11. 5 Cod. Th. lib. ii. tit. 8. de Feriis. in Interpretat. legis ii. Nec non et dies natalis Domini nostri, vel Epiphaniæ, sine forensi strepitu volumus celebrari.

Feriis. leg. vi.

Paschal Cycle, or rule for finding out Easter, was committed, were obliged on or about the time of Epiphany to give notice what time Easter and Lent and all the moveable solemnities were to be kept the ensuing year. The letters sent from the metropolitan to the provincial bishops upon this occasion, are commonly called Epistolæ Paschales and Heortasticæ, Paschal and Festival Epistles, which are usually a short discourse upon some useful and important subject, closed with an intimation or notice of the day when Lent should begin, and of Easter-day, and Whitsunday. As those three Paschal epistles of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, which were translated by St. Jerom, and are now among St. Jerom's Works, and in the Bibliotheca Patrum.1 Concerning which and the rest of the same kind, Cassian says, “it was an ancient custom in Egypt for the Bishop of Alexandria, as soon as Epiphany was past, to send his circular letters to all the churches and monasteries of Egypt, to signify to them the beginning of Lent and Easter-day." And there are some such of Dionysius, Athanasius and Cyril and Pope Innocents and Leo; and some orders of Council, that the primates of Provinces should send their circular letters to give timely notice of these things to the several churches under their jurisdiction. Particularly the fourth Council of Orleance, speaking of the time of keeping Easter uniformly by the Paschal Laterculus, or table, made by Victorius, (Victor they call him) say, “ the bishops of France shall every year on the day of Epiphany give notice of the time when the festival is to be kept in

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1 Bibl. Patr. t. iii. p. 79. 2 Cassian. Collat. x. cap. 2. Intra Ægypti regionem mos iste antiquâ traditione servatur, ut peracto Epiphaniorum die epistolæ pontificis Alexandrini per universas dirigantur ecclesias, quibus initium quadragesimæ et dies paschæ non solum per civitates, sed etiam per universa monasteria significentur. Vid. Sozomen. lib. viii. cap. 11. 9 Innoc. Ep. xi. Dionys. ap. Euseb. lib. vii. cap. 20. Athanas. Epist. Heortastic. Cyril. Serm. 30. 4 Leo. Ep. 93. al. 95. ad Episcop Gallos. See Cod. Afric. can. 136. 5 Con. Arelat. i. can. I. Con

Carthag. iii. can. 1. et 41. Con. Carthag. v. can. 7.

6 Con. Aurelian

iv. can. I. Placuit ut sanctum pascha secundum laterculum victoris ab om

their churches. And if any doubt arise about the time, they shall have recourse to their metropolitan, and he to the apostolical see for resolution." And this leads us to the consideration of the next great festival, which was that of Easter.

CHAP. V.

Of Easter or the Paschal Festival.

SECT. 1.-The Paschal Solemnity anciently reckoned fifteen Days, the whole Week before, and the Week after Easter Sunday.

In speaking of the Paschal solemnity, I shall here only consider that part of it, which was properly festival. For we are to know, the Ancients commonly included fifteen days in the whole solemnity of the pasch, that is, the week before Easter Sunday, and the week following it: the one of which was called pascha çavpooquov, the pasch of the cross, and the other pascha àvaçáoquov, the pasch of the resurrection. Suicerus will furnish the learned reader with examples of both. The general name pascha, which is of Hebrew extract from pesach, which signifies the passover, will comprize both. For the Christian Passover includes as well the passion as the resurrection of our Saviour, who is the true Paschal Lamb, or Passover, that was sacrificed for us. And, therefore, though our English word, Easter, be

nibus sacerdotibus uno tempore celebretur. Quæ festivitas annis singulis ab episcopo epiphaniarum die in ecclesiis denuncietur. De quâ solennitate quoties aliquid dubitatur, inquisita vel agnita per metropolitanos a sede apostolicâ sacra constitutio teneatur. It. Con. Antissiodor. can. 2. Ut omnes presbyteri ante epiphaniam missos suos dirigant, qui eis de principio quadragesimæ nuncient, et in ipsâ epiphaniâ ad populum indicent.

Suicer. Thesaur. Eccles. tom. i. p. 304, et t. ii. p. 1014.

generally used only to signify the resurrection, yet the ancient word, pascha, was taken in a larger sense, to denote as well the pasch of the crucifixion, as the pasch of the resurrection. And for this reason the Ancients commonly speak of the pasch as containing fifteen days in its solemnity, including the passion-week, together with that of the resurrection. Thus in one of the laws of Theodosius,1 where he decrees what days shall be days of vacation from all business of the law, he reckons into the number of them the holy days of the pasch, seven going before, and seven following after. And Gothofred, in his learned commentary upon the place, says, both Papianus in his body of laws, collected by him out of the Roman for the use of the Burgundians, and Anianus, in his collection for the use of the Visigoths, keep to the same phrase of fifteen Paschal days. To which we find also a plain reference made by St. Austin, in a sermon preached by him on the Dominica in Albis, or Sunday following Easter day, wherein he thus addresses himself to his audience:-" The days of vacation are now over, and those of convening, exactions, and lawsuits succeed in their room. Take care, my brethren, how ye spend these days. From the vacation of the foregoing days, ye ought to learn meekness, not to meditate subtle devices: for some men rest on those days only to plot wickedness, which they may practice when the festival days are over. We desire you may so live, as they that are to give account to God, not only of those fifteen days, but of their whole life." And Scaliger mentions a law of Constantine,5

Cod. Th. lib. ii. tit. 8. de Feriis. leg 2. Sanctos quoque paschæ dies, qui septeno vel præcedunt numero, vel sequuntur, in eâdem observatione nu2 Papian. lib. Responsor. tit. 12. Paschalibus etiam 3 Leg. Visigoth. lib. ii. tit. 1. leg. 11.

meramus.

quindecim diebus.

Aug. Ser. 19. ex editis a Sirmondo. t. x. p. 811. Peracti sunt dies feriati: succedent jam illi conventionum, exactionum, litigiorum, &c. Petimus vos, ut ita vivatis, tanquam qui Deo rationem reddituros vos sciatis de totâ vitâ non de solis istis quindecim diebus. Scaliger. de emendat. Temp. p. 776. Τὰς παςχαλίας δύο ἑβδομάδας ἀπράκτως τελειν. τὴν τε πρὸ τῶ πάσχα καὶ τὴν μετ' αυτὸ

5

wherein the paschal weeks, the one before, the other after the pasch, are ordered to be days of vacation from all proceedings at law. But because the former of these Paschal weeks belongs to the Lent fast, we will consider it under that head, and here only speak of the Paschal solemnity as it was properly festival.

SECT. 2.-Great Disputes in the Church concerning this Festival. Some observing it on a fixed Day every Year.

Now concerning this there were anciently very great disputes in the Church; though all agreed in the observation of it in general, yet they differed very much as to the particular time when it was to be observed; some keeping it precisely on the same stated day every year, others on the fourteenth day of the first moon in the new year, whatever day of the week that happened to fall upon: others deferring it to the first Sunday after the first full moon; and those often differing in the Sunday, on which they celebrated it, by the difference and variety of their calculations. Epiphanius says,1 some of the Quartadecimans in Cappadocia always kept their pasch on the eighth of the kalends of April, that is, the twenty-fifth of March, pretending certain information from the acts of Pilate, that that was the day of our Saviour's passion; yet other copies of those Acts said the sixteenth of the kalends of April, that is, the seventeenth of March. The Christians of Gaul also, till the time of Pope Victor, if Bede may be credited, kept their pasch always on the eighth of the kalends of April, that is, the twentyfifth of March, taking that to have been the day of our Saviour's resurrection. Bede cites the authority of Theophilus, Bishop of Caesarea, and the synod held under him for this. But considering that Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who lived in the time of Pope Victor, says no such thing of the French Churches, but the contrary, that they fixed their

Epiphan. Hær. 50. Quartadeciman. n. 1.

2 Bed. de Ratione Temporum, cap. 45. It. de Æquinoctio vernali. t. iii. p. 232,