civil rights; it was irreligion in ecclesiastics to exercise civil government, and it became therefore essential to the accomplishment of their plan to call in the aid of secular powers. Secular powers readily assisted them; but at the same time obliged them to keep measures with royal prerogatives, court factions, the intrigues of the old clergy, and the prejudices of the common people. They therefore left the reformation unfinished, and died in hopes that their successors would complete in happier periods what they had begun. Far from entering into this just and liberal design, we seem to have lost sight of it, and to have adopted principles subversive of the whole. We seem to have discarded picty, incorporated luxury, and the few, who have not given up all sense of shame, endeavour to conceal the scandal under a cover of superstition. Thus we affect modesty, and dance naked in a net to hide our shame!

Superstition is to religion, says one, what astrology is to astronomy; the foolish daughter of a wise mother. These two have long subjugated mankind. We have no objection in general against days of fasting and prayer; they have always the advantage of retaining a scriptural form of godliness; they are often edifying, and some times necessary. Nor do we find fault with those christians who make conscience of observing all the festivals of their own churches. They have a right to judge for themselves, and their sincerity will be rewarded. Neither will we suppose the English clergy to have been deficient in teaching their peo

ple, that all practical religion divides into the two parts of moral obligations, and positive institutes; that the first are universal, unalterable, and eternal; and that the last were appointed by the legislature to serve the purposes of the first: but as the cause of moral rectitude can never be pleaded too often, nor the nature of it explained too clearly; as superstition is very apt to invade the rights of religion, and as numbers who have great interest in these articles have not leisure to trace them through folios, it may not be unseasonable, and we trust it will not be deemed impertinent, to expose to public view in brief, the history-the authority -the piety-and the polity of church holidays. To discuss one is to examine all, and we select for this purpose that day, on which, it is reputed, the founder of our holy religion was crucified, commonly called GOOD-FRIDAY.

Let no one blame an historian who does not begin before his records; it is not his fault, it is his virtue. Strictly speaking, all documents in protestant churches should be found in the holy canon; for the people of each church refer an inquisitive man to their clergy, their clergy refer him to their printed confessions of faith, and all their confessions refer him to scripture. There are many ceremonies in some protestant churches which do not pre

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tend to derive themselves from scripture immediately, but they were appointed, they say, by those who were appointed by scripture to ordain them. The examination of this appointment does not fall under this article, and we defer it to the next. At present we only observe, Good-Friday is a ceremony of this kind, and the original records of puré christianity say nothing about it.

Neither any one evangelist, nor all the four together, narrate the whole history of Jesus Christ, nor yet all the circumstances of those parts on which they enlarge most. St. John, the last of these historians, closes his history with a declaration, that many things relative to Jesus Christ were not written. The times of the birth and crucifixion of our Saviour are so written in these authentic records, that nothing certain can be determined concerning them. All who have pretended to settle these periods, are conjecturers, and not historians, as their variety proves. There is only one opinion in the whole christian world concerning the country of Jesus Christ, and the place of his nativity; all allow he was a Jew, and born at Bethlehem. We should be equally uniform in our belief of the times of his birth and crucifixion, had scripture as clearly determined the last as it had related the first. There are more than one hundred and thirty opinions concerning the year of his nativity, and the day of it has been placed by men of equal learning in every month of the year. There is a like variety of opinions concerning the time of his crucifixion. Let us respect

the silence of the oracles of God. No argument can be drawn from it to endanger christianity. A point of chronology is not an object of saving faith, nor is zeal for an undecided question any part of that holiness, without which none shall see the Lord. The inspired writers did not design to make laws about feasts, but to enforce the practice of piety and virtue.

The first congregations of christians consisted of native Jews, Jewish proselytes, and Pagans of different countries, and of divers sects. Each class brought into the christian church some of their old education prejudices, and endeavoured to incorporate them with the doctrine and worship of christianity. The apostles guarded against this unnatural union, and, during their lives, prevented the profession of it; but after their decease they were made to coalesce; and from this coalition came Good-Friday, and other church holidays. Christianity affirmed the facts-proselyte mathematicians guessed at the times-pretended scholars accommodated prophecy and history to the favourite periods-and devotional men, whose whole knowledge consisted in an art of turning popular notions to pious purposes, began to observe the days themselves: by the austerity of their examples they gave them a sanctimonious air to others, and so recommended them to the observation of all who chose to be accounted pious as well as wise.

We hear nothing of Easter till the second century; and then we find Polycarp, Anicetus, and others conferring on the time of keeping it, celebrating it at different times, and exercising a mutual toleration notwithstanding their differences. Jesus Christ was crucified at the time of the Jewish passover. The christians of Asia celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, according to the law of Moses, on whatever day of the week it fell, so that if they kept some years a Good Friday, they also kept in other ycars Good Monday, Good Saturday, or Good any day; for the day of Christ's crucifixion must be at its due distance from the day of his resurrection. These eastern christians pretended St. John kept Easter So. The western churches used to observe the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the March moon, and they said St. Peter and St. Paul always did so. If these christians could not convince one another in times so near those of the apostles, it is not likely we should be able to determine the time of Easter now. We have then nothing more to add here, except that they debated and differed like christians; they tolerated one another, they communicated together, and the liberal temper of such disputants is always edifying, however idle we may think the dispute.

About the year 190, Victor I. then bishop of the church at Rome, had the audacity to excommuni`cate those christians who kept Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon. The excommunicated pitied his pride, and persevered in their practice.