occasional private fasts, to select the Wednesday: and this it were well to bear in mind, for the church prescribes what is generally necessary only; those who strive at higher degrees of holiness, and are constantly stretching forward, will, when accustomed to them, practise themselves in private acts of self-denial at other times.
II. Does a feast ordinarily supersede a fast, or how is the fast to be engrafted upon the feast? Our church, in that she has made one exception, (viz. that her weekly Friday fast is to give way to the birth-day of her Lord,) and one only, seems to me to imply, that on all other occasions the fast is to be retained. Yet this does not supersede the feast[1]. The glad remembrance on each such feast-day still remains,—whether that God then crowned with exceeding glory the labours and patience of His blessed servants, the Apostles, or whether it were some act of mercy conveyed to us directly in His Son. The act of fasting (when the habit is acquired) chastens, but diminishes not our joy; nay, on the festivals of the blessed apostles, it carries on the lesson of the vigil, and teaches us how we must "enter into His rest." This, then, seems to me to answer the third question, Are the vigils to be kept as fasts, in such cases, as well as the day itself? I should answer, yes; because the vigil, or fast, of the preceding evening, is intended to prepare the soul, by previous abstinence and meditation, that it may rise disposed, and refreshed, and unencumbered, ready to receive God's holy influences on the morrow, and this ground is even increased by the additional solemnity of that morrow. There appears, however, to be this difference between the vigil and the Friday, or the Lent fast,—that in the vigil, not humiliation, but preparation for a solemn service, is the main object, the fasting is incidental only; as indeed the very name leads one to think of the watching and previous meditation, not of the abstinence, except as far as it facilitates this end.
- ↑ Bingham mentions that the 51st Canon of the Council of Laodicea forbad the celebration of the birth-days of martyrs, i.e. the days of their martyrdom (and so saints'-days) during lent: they were to be transferred to the Saturday or Sunday. This, however, has not been adopted by our church.
