IV. Rogation days; or, the three days preceding our Lord's ascension. This, according to Bingham, is a Western fast, unknown in the East, where the whole period of Pentecost was one season of joy. This fast appears to have been a sort of extended vigil, preparatory to the day "when the Bridegroom was taken away," and teaching us that, laying aside our worldly appetites, we should " in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell." "Doubtless," says Cæsarius[1], bishop of Arles, "he loves the wounds of his sins, who does not, during these three days, seek for himself spiritual medicines, by fasting, prayer, and psalmody." The council of Orleans, A.D. 511, ordained that they should be kept after the manner of Lent. There is something salutary both in the eastern and the western view; in most periods, however, of church history, the earnestness and distrust of self implied by this preparation for the festival of the Ascension is more fitted and more salutary for us than the unbroken exulting joyousness of the eastern church.
V. Should the observance of the church's fasts be public? and if so, how should it be regulated? Undoubtedly we are not to fast, any more than to pray, or give alms, "to be seen of men:" but as no one has ever interpreted our Saviour's warning as forbidding public or Common Prayer, so neither can it apply to public or common fasting. If we do publicly only what the church requires, there is no more boastfulness in so doing than in going publicly to church. "In the season of the Passion," says Tertullian[2], "when the religious observance of fasting is universal and in a manner public, we scruple not to lay aside the kiss of charity, (this omission was the public avowal that a person was fasting,) not caring to conceal an observance which all are sharing with us." But further, since fasting is to be accompanied by retirement, all that the world need know is, that we do fast; the degree of self-denial need be, for the most part, known
- ↑ Ap. Augustin. t. v. p. 299, App. ed. Bened, Serm. 174, alias de tempore 173, quoted by Bingham, book 13, c. i. sec. 10, as Augustine's.
- ↑ Sic et die Paschæ, quo communis et quasi publica jejunii religio est, merito deponimus osculum, nihil curantes de occultando quod cum omnibus facimus. Tertul. de Orat. c. xiv.
