[219] I say to Gaul, because I take it that he would have sailed to Marseilles, which was then the great port of communication with Asia Minor, as we have noted above, pp. 372-74, when treating of the worship of Diana and its extension from the East to Marseilles.
[220] There is to this day a trace of this custom in the Book of Common Prayer in the rubric which prescribes that the collect for Sunday shall be said on Saturday evening. In colleges, too, according to Archbishop Laud's rules, surplices are worn on Saturday evenings as well as on Sundays.
[221] See above, pp. 342 and 361, where I have pointed out the dangerous character of the argument from mere silence. I may perhaps recur to the example of Meyer, the eminent textual critic, to illustrate my view of German critics stated in my first note to this chapter, p. 386 above. Meyer is an exhaustive textual critic, but as soon as he ventures on the region of history he falls into this trap, and concludes from the argument of silence that Apollos was never baptized with Christian baptism because he was so clever and spiritually enlightened that he did not need it. But, then, how does he account for the case of St. Paul? Was Apollos superior to St. Paul? And yet he was baptized. But the illustrations of the fallacies of this method of argumentation would be endless. If the argument of silence is sufficient to prove a negative, what are we to do with female communicants? There is not a single instance of them in the New Testament. It is here, however, that the study of the second-century writers is so valuable as illustrating the silence of the first. See my note on p. 342 above.
[222] The Christian library was a series of fifty volumes which Wesley published for the use of his followers. They were begun in 1749 and completed in 1755. "The opening volume contains, 1. The Epistles of the apostolical fathers Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, whom he believed to be endued with the extraordinary assistance of the Holy Spirit, and whose writings, though not of equal authority with the Holy Scriptures, are worthy of a much greater respect than any composures that have been made since. 2. The martyrdoms of Ignatius and Polycarp. 3. An extract from the Homilies of Macarius, born about the year 301." See Tyerman's Life of Wesley, ii. 25, 65-67.
[223] Here we have an illustration of 1 Cor. xiv. 16: "Else if thou bless with the Spirit, how shall he that filleth the place of the unlearned say the Amen at the giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?" See also ch. lxv. of Justin's same Apology for another reference to the Amen, and cf. Apost. Constitutions, viii. 10; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat., ch. v.; Euseb., H. E., vi. 43 and vii. 9; Ambros. De Sacrament., iv. 4; Jerom., Epist., 62; Chrysost., Hom., xxxv. on 1st Cor.; Bingham's Antiqq., XV. iii. 26; and the article on Amen in the first volume of Smith's Dict. Christ. Antiqq. The preceding chapters of Justin's Apology, lxv. and lxvi., are full of information. They expressly state that in the Primitive Church no unbaptized person was allowed to communicate, an elementary point of Christian practice about which some persons and some Christian societies seem at present very uncertain. Hooker's words, Eccles. Pol., Book V. ch. lxvii., are very clear on this topic.
[224] The continuous character, the strong conservatism of the early Christian Church receives an interesting illustration from the history of the Sabbath as distinguished from the Lord's Day. The Jewish Church gave the outward form to Christianity; and though Christianity parted company with Judaism by the end of the first century, yet the sacred character of the Sabbath was still perpetuated among the Gentiles notwithstanding St. Paul's strong language in Galatians and Colossians. In the fourth century the Sabbath was observed in many places in the same manner as the Lord's Day. St. Athanasius says: "We meet on the Sabbath, not indeed being infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath." Timothy, one of his successors at Alexandria, says that the Holy Communion was administered on the Sabbath as on the Lord's Day, and that these two were the only days on which it was celebrated in that city. In the time of St. Chrysostom the two great weekly festivals were the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. It was the same in the fifth century in the Egyptian monasteries, where the services for Saturday and Sunday were exactly the same. See a full account of this matter in Bingham's Antiquities, Book XIII. ch. ix. sec. iii.
[225] St. Augustine, in Epist., cxviii., Ad Januar., cc. vi. vii., was one of the first to suggest this idea. The passage is quoted by Bingham, Antiqq., XV. vii. 8.
[226] See the exhaustive article on Agapæ in Smith's Dict. Christ. Antiqq., vol. i., p. 39.
[227] The early Christians celebrated the Holy Communion in memory of Christ's resurrection as much as in memory of His death. The resurrection of Christ was, in fact, the central point of their belief and thought. This alone would have conduced to the practice of early morning communion, even before day, inasmuch as it was at that time the resurrection took place. Cf. Dict. Christ. Antiqq., vol. i., p. 419, on the hours of celebration of the Holy Communion. On p. 41 of the same volume the writer of the article on the Agapæ makes an extraordinary statement that it was only at the third Council of Carthage, A.D. 391, that the time of Eucharistic celebration was changed to the morning, and that then the Agape was first separated from the Holy Communion. The change and the separation had taken place in Pliny's time, as I have already shown.
[228] This whole subject of fasting communion is discussed at length with all the authorities duly given in Bingham's Antiquities, Book XV. ch. vii. sec. 8, whence I have taken my references, and where he quotes Bishop Fell's Notes on Cyprian, Epist. lxiii. p. 156, who says that "the custom of communicating after supper lasted for a long time in the Church": cf. Socrates, H. E., v. 22, and the Dict. Christ. Antiqq., vol. i., p. 417, on Fasting Reception of H. C.