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aid and confirm its institutions; hence the anxiety to give to the 25th day of December, the honour of the nativity." Nelson, in his " Nelson, in his "Companion to the Fasts "and Festivals of the Church of England," labours to remove the difficulties which encumber this point, by asserting that "Jesus' birth-day was a great festival in the primitive" (i. e. Roman Catholic) "church; though we have no certain evidence of the exact time which was observed, "the 25th December, there is little doubt, is the very day; though if the day were mistaken, it will be pardonable in "those who think they are not mistaken." (51.) That mistakes, or inconsistencies, either do, or have existed, even in England, is unquestionable; the alteration of the style alone shews the absurdity of any church, either past or present, in observing what we now call the 25th December as the very day." The Eastern and Western churches, too, have never agreed upon "the very day," the former keeping it on the 5th January, the latter the 25th December; though not always consistent even to that date, there being variations in the Western churches from the 20th to the 25th December. There were other churches who celebrated this " very day" in April-others in May; and the Greek church now observe Christmas in February. Yet the English national church is, without doubt, infallible upon this, in common with all other parts of its service; and we have before us a learned and laboured work, written by a clergyman of that diocese, which, in our own times, is blessed with so orthodox and so 'immaculate a bishop. The title of this work is expressive of its character, and of the importance, too, which is attached to precision, relative to the birth of Jesus; it is "A Brief "but True Account of the certain Year, Month, Day, and "Minute of the Birth of Jesus Christ.-By John Butler, D.D. "Rector in the Diocese of Peterboro'.-1671." And this inquiry results in proving the day to be the 25th December; but, in despite of all this learning, and this "true account" of the "certain day," it is with great reluctance admitted by Sir Isaac Newton, by Shepperd, upon this subject, and yet more strongly, and more recently, by Brady, in his "Clavis Calendaria," that "there are not any certain traditions "“about the years of Christ." (See Newton on Daniel.) "The day of our Lord's Nativity it is now settled beyond all dispute, by arguments incontrovertible, did not take place on the 25th December." (Brady, vol. 2, p. 330.)

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One strong evidence of the absurdity and inutility of these observances is the circumstance that they may be,

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and have been, alternately instituted and abrogated by human authority, and in compliance with human interest or human caprice. The laws of morality remain unchanged in all ages; the commands of God, if given in favour of any institution, may, at any time, be referred to as a standard; but how can we be safe, if at one time men in authority can command the observance of days, and at another time their non-observance; if we are here directed to observe one period, and there compelled to regard another as sacred to the same object? Yet such are the inconsistencies which the history of feasts and fasts frequently present us with. In the earlier ages many doubtless did not observe these times and seasons, yet it is described, by Chrysostom, as a festival" renowned far and wide, from Thrace even to Cadiz, as of all festivals the most venerable-the mother and metropolis of the rest." And although the good people of this country are now commanded by those "in authority" to keep this day holy, they were, during the commonwealth, in the seventeenth century, commanded also, from the "authority" "then existing, to "put down Christmas day, and all other "superstitious festivals;" each command being, of course, equally “part and parcel" of the law of the land-equally binding upon all pious and loyal subjects-and in an equal degree essential to" stir up the dull mind of man," to the formance of his duties. It is, at this time, our duty, according to our legitimate Christian lawgivers, to maintain a veneration for this festival; but precisely the contrary, was, at one time, binding upon our ancestors. A scarce tract published in 1648, informs us that on "Wednesday, December 22, 1647, "the crier of Canterbury, by the appointment of Master Maior, openly proclaimed that Christmas day, and all other superstitious festivals, should be put down, and that a market "should be kept on Christmas day." And among the single sheets preserved in the British Museum, is an order of parliament, December 24, 1652, directing" that no observation "shall be had of the five-and-twentieth day of December, commonly called Christmas day; nor any solemnity used "or or exercised in churches upon that day in respect thereof." -See Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. 1, p. 370.

per

Leaving, therefore, as we may well do, the observers of this festival to settle their own differences, and to reconcile their perplexities, we proceed to submit the evidence by which we think it may be clearly established that the festival of Christmas is derived from two festivals, and both of them heathen; the one originating in pagan Rome, the other

among the Northern European nations; both of which, occurring at the same season of the year, were naturalized by the Roman catholic church, under the assumed plea of commemorating the birth of Jesus, and therefore called the mass of Christ, and afterwards Christmas. The latter term being still held as expressive of that event, not merely by the established church, but even by a portion of the Unitarian body in their reformed" Book of Common Prayer," we think it well to recur to the origin of the term. The mass of Christ, was the mass or eucharist celebrated on the assumed birthday of Christ. To make religion bend to the pagan prejudices of the people has been an invariable feature in ecclesiastical history. The heathens, even more than the Jews, were averse to the simplicity of the Christian religion; with the view, therefore, to their national conversion-not from vice and the practice of abominable rites-not even from the objects—but from the names merely of their worship, a project was formed, in the third century, for the purpose of permitting the new converts to Christianity to observe the festivals of the countries in which they resided, subject to one most remarkable condition: that, "instead of "celebrating those days to the honour, and in the name "of heathen gods, they should dedicate them, and reckon "them all sacred to the memory of some martyr or Christian

saint;" for it was argued that "the simple and "unskilled multitude, by reason of corporeal delights, “remained in the error of idols; in order, therefore, that "the principal thing' might be corrected in them, and that, "instead of their own vain worship, they should turn their eyes upon God, they were to be permitted at the memories "of holy martyrs to make merry, and to delight themselves, "and be dissolved into joy." These "pious" and "devout" instructions would seem to have met with the most ample success among our own heathen ancestors; who, when they offered human and other sacrifices to the god ODIN, concluded the ceremony with drinking the healths of their several gods. This custom the Christian missionaries, as they are called, could not abolish; and therefore incorporated it with their religious ceremonies, directing that, instead of ODIN, NIORD, and BRAGE, they should drink the health of the saints, of Jesus, and of God!-See Mallett's Northern Antiquities, vol. 1, p. 311. And, in after times, we learn from Bede's Ecclesiastical History, that Pope Gregory,

*See Mallett's Northern Antiquities.

in his letter to Militus, an English abbot, thus instructs him: "Whereas the people were accustomed to sacrifice

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many oxen in honour of demons, let them celebrate "a religious and solemn festival, and not slay the animals "to the devil, but to eat them themselves, to the praise " of God!!!" It also appears that St. Augustine and forty other monks were dispatched by the same pontiff, to erect temples to the worship of God in our island; in which project their adoption of the pagan practices caused them to be successful. The heathen temples, with their altars, were left standing entire, but were appropriated to the new religion, and continued so to the period of the protestant reformation, when these altars were taken down and destroyed. So attached, however, were the " simple and "unskilled multitude," and the artful and well-skilled priesthood, to what had been the establishments of catholicism, that we learn in a work upon "The Rise and "Antiquity of Cathedral Worship-1699, London," and from other sources, that Archbishop Laud, and others, succeeded in re-establishing altars, and the ceremonies connected with them, in the protestant churches; assertions but too well confirmed by what we may observe even in our own days: and not only in our own country but, at an earlier period, on the continent, the prostration of the Christian faith was most complete, not merely to the heathen feasts, but to the minor prejudices and habits of a pagan people.* The pastimes, too, and sports of the English and other Northern nations, afford proof in illustration of our hypothesis. The WAKES were attempted to be converted into a religious institution, in resemblance of the agappa, or love feasts of the first Christians; and they were held upon the day of the dedication of the church in each district, or the birth day of the saint whose reliques were therein deposited; and these people were directed by King Edgar "to pray devoutly, and "not to betake themselves, as when they were heathens, to

Neither the Thracians, the Celts, nor any other of the barbarous people settled in Europe, made use of letters, looking upon it as dishonourable; they held in contempt every occupation, except that of bearing arms; their priests having utterly forbid them the use of letters, pretending that their doctrines were only for the initiated. Thus the Emperor Charlemagne could not write; and so religiously had this prohibition of the priesthood been observed, that the Saxons, under Louis le Debonnaire, persisted in their resolution of not learning to read, when he, to accommodate them, had the Old and New Testaments turned into verse: they then willingly learnt and sung them, after their own manner.

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"drunkenness and debauchery;" but it was found, however, in practice impossible strictly to keep the new converts to any observance in which their appetites and passions were not the chief object of gratification; and therefore" the "pepal fell to letcherie, and songs, and dances, and to glotony and sinne, and so turned holyness to cursydness; whereof the holy faders ordained the pepal to leve that "waking and to fast the evyn which is called vigilia?" And in proportion as these festivals regained their old character, they increased in popularity; the people flocked together, and the greater the reputation of the tutelary saint, the larger was the assembly. Hawkers and pedlars attended, and by degrees the religious wake became a secular fair. From these wakes originated the church ales, for the parish officers finding that at Christmas the wakes drew together a larger number than upon any other holy days, they, together with the priest, turned them to the account of profit, by collecting money from them, for the support and repairs of the church; and by way of enticement, there was brewed ready for the festival a quantity of strong ale, so that in the churches debauchery and excess of the worst kinds were patronized under the sanction of Christmas and other holy days; for when" this huffe cappe-this nectar of life-is set abroach, "well is he that can get the soonest to it, where drunken "Bacchus bears sway against Christmas, and Easter, and Whitsuntide; and when he that spends the most at it is "counted the godliest man of all the rest, and most in God's 'favour, BECAUSE IT IS SPENT IN THE CHURCH! They "bestow that money which is got thereby for the repair of "their churches and chapels, books for the service of God,

cups for the celebration of the sacrament, surplices for "Sir John, and other necessaries."- Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, p. 325.

The names, too, as is well known of our months and days, are themselves evidence of their heathen original: thus, JANUARY from the Latin Januarius, in honour of Janus, a heathen god selected by Numa to preside over the year; from thence represented with two faces-one the old, expressive of his past experience; the other new, looking to the coming year. The first of this month was kept by the heathens as a day of extreme rejoicing, upon which they sacrificed to their god Janus, and indulged in every excess. The Christians first held it as a fast to distinguish themselves from the heathen, but it was afterwards conveniently