Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][ocr errors]

city: No Noise is heard there, but the singing of Psalms. Wheresoever you go, you have either the Ploughman singing Hallelujahs as he's holding the Plough, or the sweating Mower pleasing himself with Hymns; or the Vine-dresser singing David's Psalms. These without doubt were acceptable to GOD, and thine undoubtedly will be acceptable also.

But if thou art not ty'd down by Necessity, do not say that the common Necessaries of Life require then thy Labour: For this is not losing, but Redeeming the Time; what thou spendest in the Care of thy Soul, is not lost in the Care of thy Body. Never was Man poorer, for observing the Duties of Religion. If thou lose any Thing of the Wages of the Day, to do the Service of GOD, he will take care to supply it, thou shalt be no loser.

Why then art thou fearful, O! Thou of little Faith! Why dost thou take so much Thought for thy Life? Behold the Fowls of the Air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into Barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them: Art thou not much better than they? And why takest thou thought for Rayment?

Consider the Lilies of the Field, they toil not, neither do they Spin; and yet I say unto thee, that Solomon, in all his Glory, was not arrayed like one of these.. And shall he not much more Cloath thee, O Thou of little Faith! Therefore take no Thought for what thou shalt Eat, or what thou shalt Drink, or wherewithal thou shalt be Cloathed; but seek thou first the Kingdom of GOD and his Righteousness; prefer the Care of these, to the Care of all other Things, and all these things shall be added unto Thee.

Let not then the busy Cares of this Life, be

any hinderance to thy Care of the other, set apart this small Time, for the Time of Preparation, and look on it, as an Emblem of the whole Time of Life: Which is our Day of Preparation, for the eternal Sabbath, the everlasting Rest, the undisturbed Quiet of the other Life.

OBSERVATIONS ON CHAP. XII.

THE religious Observation of the Saturday Afternoon is now entirely at an End. I should be happy, were I able to say with Truth that the Conclusion of that of the Sunday too did not seem to be approaching.

Mr.

Mr. Bourne uses great Affectation in translating the Quotation from Selden. He has printed the Latin erroneously too: It ought to be "in lunaris "diei diliculum, &c."-The Sabbath was not to be observed from Saturday at Noon, but from three o'Clock on that Day in the Afternoon, and whatever Part of the Day might have been called Noon at the Time he alludes to, he might have hinted to us in a Note, without confounding it in his Text with the Mid-day of this Age.

To our Author's Account of the Custom of the old Churches of England and Scotland, an Alteration may be added, of which he seems never to have heard. It is, that in the Year 1332, at a Provincial Council, held by Archbishop ́Mepham, at Magfield, after Complaint made, that instead of fasting upon the Vigils, they ran out to all the Excesses of Riot, &c. it was appointed, among many other Things relative to Holy Days, "that the Solemnity for Sunday should begin upon Saturday "in the Evening, and not before, to prevent the "Misconstruction of keeping a Judaical Sabbath*.* See Collier's Ecclesiastic Hist. Vol. I. p. 531.

[ocr errors]

Our Author's Exhortation towards the Conclusion of this Chapter is, I think, liable to Misconstruction:

* Mr. Wheatly tells us, that in the East, the Church thought fit to indulge the Humour of the Judaizing Christians so far, as to observe the Saturday as a Festival Day of Devotion, and thereon to meet for the Exercise of religious Duties,-as is plain from several Passages of the Antients. Illustration of Common Prayer, P. 191.

An

An Inference might easily be deduced from it in favour of Idleness.-Perhaps Men, who live by manual Labour, or have Families to support by it, cannot better spend their Saturday Afternoon, than in following the several Callings, in which they have employed themselves on the preceding Days of the Week.-Industry will be no bad Preparation to the Sabbath!

Considered in a Political View, much Harm · hath been done by that prodigal Waste of Days, very falsely called Holy Days, in the Church of Rome. They have greatly favoured the Cause of Vice and Dissipation without doing any essential Service to that of rational Religion.-Complaints seem to have been made in almost every Synod and Council, of the Licentiousness introduced by the keeping of Vigils.-Nor will the Philosopher wonder at this, for it has its Foundation in the Nature of Things*.

[ocr errors]

For the Honour of human Nature, (which like the majestic Ruins of Palmyra, though prostrate in the Dust, is still respectable in its Decay) I forbear to translate the subsequent Quotation from Dr. Moresin." Et videre contigit. Anno 1582, Lugduni in Vigiliis "Natalium Domini deprehensos in stupro duos post Missantis Al"tare hora inter duodecimam et primam noctis, cum præter unum "aut aliud Altaris lumen, nullum esset in Templo reliquum, &c." Deprav. Rel. Orig. p. 177.

CHAP.

CHAP. XIII.

Of the Yule-Clog and Christmas Candle; what they may signifie; their Antiquity; the like Customs in other Places.

IN the Primitive Church, Christmas-Day was always observ'd as the Lord's-Day was, and was in like Manner preceded by an Eve or Vigil. Hence it is that our Church hath ordered an Eve before it, which is observed by the Religious, as a Day of Preparation for that great Festival.

Our Fore-Fathers, when the common Devotions of the Eve were over, and Night was come on, were wont to light up Candles of an uncommon Size, which were called ChristmasCandles, and to lay a Log of Wood upon the Fire, which they termed a Yule-Clog, or Christmas-Block. These were to illuminate the House, and turn the Night into Day; which Custom, in some Measure, is still kept up in the Northern Parts.

It hath, in all probability, been derived

from

« AnteriorContinuar »