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The roman bishops intrigued, caballed, got councils called, and at length the council of Arles, held in the year 314, having no doubt the fear of God before their eyes, and being endued with more wisdom, more power, or more presumption than their predecessors, DECREED that all churches should celebrate Easter on the Sunday after the fourteenth of the moon of March, when that moon should happen after the vernal equinox. Eleven years after, the council of Nice confirmed this decree, and the Emperor Constantine enforced it by orders sent into all the provinces of the empire. The council did not think to provide for one difficulty which might arise; which might produce a new dissention, and throw down that idol, uniformity, which these christian Nebuchadnezzars had committed so many crimes to set up. The fourteenth day of the full moon in March might fall on a Sunday. It did so. A difficulty started, and different opinions followed. The eastern churches celebrated Easter on the day of the full moon, when it fell on a Sunday in March. The western christians deferred it to the Sunday following. How could a synod of 318 bishops, they were but men, foresee this difficulty!

In the seventh century, one of our petty kings, Oswy, having been instructed in the christian religion by Scotch monks, kept Easter after the Asian fashion; while his queen, who had been taught by a roman priest, observed it in the western way; and it sometimes happened, that his majesty was joyfully celebrating our Saviour's resur

rection, while the queen was fasting on account of his crucifixion To get rid of this inconvenience, the king summoned a council to meet at Whitby to determine the original time of Easter. The clergy on the one side rested their cause on tradition derived from St. John, while the clergy on the other urged that which came from St. Peter. The king was judge, the balance inclined neither way, and long was he perplexed with authorities quite equal; at length being informed, that, however great St. John might be, St. Peter kept the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the king very prudently took care of the main chance, declared for St. Peter, and Easter has fallen on a Sunday in England ever since.

Good Friday had the fate of all other holidays; it had a solemn service composed for it; and, being established by civil power, the people were obliged to fast-and to pray—and to say—and to sing-and so on to the end of the chapter.

When king Henry VIII. reformed the British church, although he discarded many festivals, yet he thought proper to retain Easter, and Lent its appendage. The old service was afterwards new vamped, and during the succeeding reigns of Elizabeth and the Stuarts many were persecuted for refusing to comply with it. That inestimable prince, William III. procured a toleration, the present august family protect it, and the inhabitants of this country now enjoy the liberty of keeping festivals or of renouncing them.

The history then in brief is this. Neither GoodFriday, nor any other fasts or feasts were appointed to be observed by the Lord Jesus Christ or his apostles. The time of Christ's birth cannot be made out, and that of his crucifixion is uncertain. Could we assure ourselves of the year, we could not prove that the Jews observed the regressions. of the equinox, nor that they made use of accurate astronomical tables. No traces of Easter are to be found in the first century, nor for a great part of the second. When the first observers of it appeared, they could not make evidence of their coming honestly by it. Councils decreed that it should not be kept before the 21st of March, nor after the 20th of April. Some, however, kept it on the 22d of April, while others celebrated it on the 25th of March; others at times different from both, and others kept no day at all. Our ancestors murdered one another for variety of opinion on this subject; but we are fallen under wiser and better civil governors, who allow us to think and act as we please, provided the state receives no detriment; so that the language of scripture is spoken by the law of our country. He who regardeth a day, let him regard it to the Lord; and he, who regardeth not a day, to the Lord let him not regard it. What good christian can refuse to add a hearty Amen?

The AUTHORITY of GOOD-FRIDAY.

Dull and uninteresting as this poor subject may be as an article of history, it becomes extremely important, when it is foisted into the religion of Jesus Christ, enjoined on all christian people under pain of his displeasure, and considered as the livery of loyalty and piety. In such a case, the disciples of the Son of God are compelled to enquire, whose are we, and whom do we serve? His we are whom we obey.

Should a man form an idea of the christian church from reading the New Testament, in which Jewish ceremonies are said to be a yoke, which neither the Jews of Christ's time, nor their ancestors were able to bear-in which those rites are called weak and beggarly elements-rudiments of the world-shadows of good things to come, of which Jesus Christ was the substance-and should he then behold a christian church loaded with ceremonies of pagan and jewish extraction, there would naturally arise a violent prejudice in his mind against this modern church, and he would be obliged to enquire what Joab had a hand in this alteration.

It must be allowed, consummate wisdom-cool and unbiassed judgment—rectitude the most rigid -and benevolence and power the most extensive, are absolutely and indispensibly necessary qualifications in religious legislation. The nature of God and man-the relation of each to the other -and of both to all the countless conditions and

circumstances of all the rest of mankind-the kind of worship-and the manner of performing it— the necessary requisitions of justice—and the proper effusions of goodness-with a thousand other articles, form one grand complex whole, which would baffle all, except infinite penetration, in forming a system of real religion.

As an assumption of legislative power in religion is an ascent to the most elevated degree of honour, and as it requires a kind of submission to which human dignity is loth to bow, so, it must be supposed, the clearest evidence of a right to exercise it is naturally expected. No blind submissionno precarious titles-no spurious records—no popular clamour-nothing but clear revelation, expounded by accurate reasoning, can be taken, in evidence here. An immortal intelligence is the noblest production of infinite power and skill; when pays its homage to the Deity it is in its noblest exercise, and no mean guide must conduct such a being then.

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On these just principles I take up Good-Friday where I find it, as part of the established religion of my country, and I modestly enquire the autho rity that made it so. A few old women refer me to the fourth verse of the twelfth of Acts for the word Easter, and I return the compliment by referring them to their grandsons at school, who say St. Luke wrote passover, I could, were I inclined to revenge, be even with these old ladies by telling the tale of Lady Easter, Ashtar or Ashtaroth, a Sidonian toast: but I am too busy and too

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