Church two regulations remain, which though conformable enough to ancient discipline, it might be proper to abolish.-During Advent the solemnization of matrimony is prohibited, and if conjugal abstinence is not positively enjoined, it is at least strongly recommended.

Of the four annual fasts of the Greek Church, the first and most solemn is that of Lent, and the second in point of solemnity and duration is that of Advent. The Advent fast is as strictly observed as the Lenten, but the abstinence prescribed is much less rigid: for though they are obliged to refrain from flesh, butter, eggs and milk, yet they are allowed the free use of oil, wine, and all sorts of fish, as at other times. The fast continues forty days, beginning on the fifteenth of November. This fast, some pretend, was instituted in honour of Moses, as that of Lent was in honour of the fast of Christ; and the reason given for determining the number of days in the Advent fast to forty is, that as Moses, by a fast of forty days upon the Mount, was prepared to receive the two tables of the Law from God, so it is, à fortiori, incumbent upon Christians to prepare themselves, by a like abstinence, as far as human infirmity will permit, for the reception of the eternal Word, the true and great Lawgiver, coming in the flesh. It must however be admitted, that the Greeks were somewhat tardy in making the discovery, if it be true, that after the expiration of the twelfth century, this regulation was unknown among them. In the Greek Churches Advent was never observed with much uniformity, whether we examine its

duration, or the number of its fasts.

Constantinople alone, where above all places, uniformity might have been expected, exhibited specimens of three very different usages. Some, as the Monks still do, kept a fast of forty days, others of three weeks, and others fasted one week only. This last alone is obligatory on the people, though many of them, from principles purely conscientious, still observe the fast of forty days.

OF THE COLLECTS, EPISTLES, AND GOSPELS
IN ADVENT.

LONG before our Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments was compiled, or the Reformation itself thought of, the Offices for the season of Advent had in the Western Churches undergone a considerable change. Among Churches of different countries, whose usages were different, variety in the selection of lessons from the Prophecies, Epistles and Gospels must naturally be expected: and it has often happened, that in the same Church, the Offices of one Sunday have been transferred to another; and similar variations made, especially where the Offices were common to the whole season of Advent, and not appropriated to any particular day.

THE FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

AFTER the reduction of the number of the Sundays of Advent to four, and the appropriation of peculiar Offices to each, the Gospel for the fourth Sunday before Christmas, or the first in Advent, was commonly the narration given by St. Matthew of Christ's solemn entry into Jerusalem six days before his death; and this Gospel has been retained by the original Compilers*, and subsequent Revisers of the English Offices. But other Churches † have reserved this Gospel for the sixth Sunday in Lent, or the Sunday next before Easter (once universally known throughout England by the name of Palm Sunday,) probably because they thought the circumstances it relates better adapted to that day, which is in reality the sixth day before the commemoration of our Lord's Crucifixion and Death. In the place of this has been substituted the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel, with a design to denote, that the intention of the Church, at the commencement of her ecclesiastical year, was to celebrate the first Coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, to deliver mankind from the death of sin. Others, again, have selected for the Gospel of this day a passage from St. Luke ‡, which relates to the second Coming of our Lord. This last is the Gospel ap

* They found it in the Missal of Sarum.
+ The Roman and Gallican.

Chap. xxi. 25.

pointed in the Roman Missal, and in such of the Gallican Missals as I have had the means of examining*.

The changes of the Epistle for this day have been more numerous than those of the Gospel. Without specifying any of the former, I shall simply observe, that the passage adopted by the Church of England has for several centuries been employed on the same occasion by the general concurrence of the Western Churches; with this only difference, that in the Roman and Gallican Missals the Epistle begins at the eleventh verse, but in our Liturgy at the eighth.

The present Collect, which is consonant to the Epistle, was composed at the Reformation. The Collect formerly used in England, and still appointed by the Roman and Gallican Offices for this day, is, with some variation, the same that we and they read on the fourth Sunday of Advent †.

• Before the overthrow of the Church of France, the Missals of different dioceses differed considerably, as those of York, Sarum, and Lincoln formerly did in England. The Roman Missal is uniformly one and the same, like our Book of Common Prayer. When alteration has been made in either, its observation was not partial, but universal.

GREGORY'S Collect for the fourth Sunday before the Nativity, and that of the Roman, Gallican, and Sarum Missals for the first Sunday in Advent is, Excita, quæsumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni; ut ab imminentibus peccatorum nostrorum periculis, te mereamur protegente eripi, te liberante salvari; qui vivis. That for the fourth Sunday is, Excita, quæsumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni; et magnâ nobis virtute succurre, ut per auxilium gratiæ tuæ, quod nostra peccata præpediunt, indulgentia tuæ propitiationis acceleret ; qui vivis, &c.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

In the time of GREGORY the Great, A.D. 590; and for many centuries after; in the time of RUPERTUS, who wrote early in the twelfth; and of DURANDUS, who flourished about the end of the thirteenth century, the Gospel from St. Luke, which, in the latter ages, the Western Churches in general have transferred to the first Sunday, was uniformly appointed to be read on the second; and in the Church of England it retains its ancient situation. This Gospel relates to the end of the world, and the signs that shall precede our Lord's coming to judgment.

In the place of this Gospel the Gallican and Roman Churches read the narrative related by St. Matthew, of the deputation of two of John's disciples to Christ, and of the testimony that Jesus gave of the Baptist.

The Epistle for this day has had the singular felicity to retain its place, with little interruption, among the selections appropriate to Advent.

The Collect, which corresponds with the Epistle, was composed by the compilers of our Liturgy. The ancient Collect for this day was, "Excita, Domine, corda nostra ad præparandas unigeniti tui vias; ut per ejus adventum purificatis tibi mentibus servire mereamur; qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus per omnia sæcula," &c.

Rom. xv. 4.