all the Ambrosian Missals* prior to the edition of 1669. In the Roman Church, and those that adopted its rites, Advent began on the fifth Sunday before Christmas, as appears from the Gregorian Sacramentary and ancient Lectionaries.

During the time of CHARLEMAGNE, the last mentioned usage of Rome, with some other Liturgical alterations, were received into many parts of the Gallican Church: and very soon afterwards the season of Advent was reduced to four weeks, or to speak more accurately, to four Sundays, and three weeks with the part of the week preceding Christmas Day. AMALARIUS, who survived CHARLEMAGNE, mentions these two different usages. For the establish

* The Missals of AMBROSE and GREGORY differ in many respects. Each had its respective adherents, and the question. which of the two should be read in the Church was, as it is pretended, decided by a miracle. The two Missals were laid upon the altar, and the doors of the Church shut and sealed. In the morning GREGORY'S Missal was found torn in pieces, and scattered about the Church; but AMBROSE's was opened and placed upon the altar in a posture of being read. If I had been to judge of the meaning of the miracle, says Bishop Jeremy Taylor, I should have said, it had been the will of God that the Missal of St. AMBROSE, which had been anciently used and publicly read, and approved of, should still be read in the Church; and that of GREGORY let alone it being torn by an angelical hand as an argument of its imperfection, or of the inconveniency of innovation. But they judged it otherwise; for by the tearing and scattering about, they thought it was meant, that GREGORY'S should be used over all the world; and that of AmBROSE read only in the Church of Milan. Liberty of Prophe sying,

ment

ment of them he assigns fanciful and mystical reasons, but gives no decided preference to either. Together with this new institution of four Sundays, was introduced the term Advent itself, to denote the time of fasting, and the devotional offices, that were to be employed as a preparation for the festival of the Nativity. The manner of reckoning the Sundays was likewise changed. What it had been the custom to denominate the fourth Sunday before Christmas, now began to be styled the first Sunday in Advent; the third before the festival, the second in Advent, &c. so that the first Sunday before Christmas Day, became the fourth and last Sunday in Advent.

In the Western Churches in general, the Advent of four weeks did not immediately abolish, though it gradually superseded, that of six weeks or forty days. Even so late as in the 13th century, persons of piety thought themselves obliged to spend not only four, but six weeks, in fasting and prayer *.

The fast of Advent was no where at any time so rigidly observed as that of Lent, and in the eleventh century the practice of fasting began to decline, both among the Laity and Clergy. Fasting in Advent was not afterwards much insisted on, though it was occasionally recommended in the Acts of Councils, and more strongly by the example of monastic institutions. No part of Advent is noticed in the "Table of Days

*This is reported of the King St. LEWIS by BONIFACE VIII. in the Bull of Canonization.

"of fasting, to be observed in the Church of England," and even the abstaining from flesh during that season, has been entirely abandoned by the members of the Roman Catholic Church. In that 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 recep; tion 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 mak

ing

ing the discovery, if it be true, that after the expira tion 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 ob serve 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

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 pas.. sage from St. Luket, 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