The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

16. And the festivals or other days, which were kept in honourable commemoration of those Apostles and Martyrs, was another way of keeping these things in memory: Whether it were well done or not, is not my present enquiry (only I may say, I cannot accuse it of any sin, till it come to over-doing, and ascribing too much to them.) But certainly ⟨p. 133⟩it was a way of transmitting the memory of those things to posterity.

16. And the festivals or other dayes, which were kept in honourable commemoration of those Apostles and Martyrs, was another way of keeping these things in memory: Whether it were well done or not, is not my present enquiry (only I may say, I cannot accuse it of any sin, till it come to over-doing, and ascribing too much to them.) But certainly ⟨p. 133⟩it was a way of transmitting the memory of those things to posterity.

17. Another hath been by the constant commemoration of the great works of Christ, by the days or seasons of the year, which were annually observed: How far here also the Church did well▪ or ill, I now meddle not: But doubtless the observing of anniversary solemnities for their commemoration, was a way of preserving the memory of the acts themselves to posterity. How long the day of Christs Nativity hath been celebrated, I know not: Reading what Selden hath said on one side; and on the other finding no currant Author mention it (that I have read) before Nazianzene: and finding by Chrysostom, that the Churches of the East, till his time had differed from the Western Churches, as far as the sixth of January is from the 25 of December. But that is of less moment, because Christs birth is a thing unquestioned in it self. But we find that the time of his fasting forty days, the time of his Passion, and of his Resurrection, and the giving of the Holy Ghost, were long before kept in memory, by some kind of observation by fats or festivals: And though there was a controversy about the due season of the successive observation of Easter, yet that signified no uncertainty of the first day, or the season of the year. And though at first it was but few days that were kept in fasting at that season, yet they were enough to commemorate both the forty days fasting, and the death of Christ.