SECT. I. The Authorities of keeping it on this day both in the Eastern and Western Churches about 400. years after our Saviour; and that then it was ancient in the Western Church, and known also under the name of the Winter-Solstice-day; which is especially here observable.

FOr the first, that is, the Authorities of the received use of keeping this Feast on the 25 of December 400 years after Christs Birth, they are frequent in S. Ambrose, S. Chry­sostome, S. Augustin, and others of the Fathers that liv'd about the end of those 400 years: Those three especially have many Sermons appropriated to the celebration of this day, and they frequently tell the people confi­dently, that the Birth of our Saviour was on the 25 of December, or the 8 Kalends of January; as also that the birth of Saint John Baptist was on the 8 Kalends of July, or the 24 day of June, according as to this day they are observed. Ecce, saith Serm. de Temp. 8. & 10. Saint Ambrose, in nativitate Christi dies crescit, & Johannis nativi­tate decrescit; illo oriente lux proficit, hoc nascente minuitur: That is, On our Saviours Birth­day the days begin to lengthen, and on St. Johns to shorten; for the Fathers herein sup­posed the 25 of December to be the Winter­at what time ever the days begin to lengthen; and the 24 of June to be the Sum­mer-solstice, [Page 8]in which they contrariwise be­gin to shorten: and this was according to the ancienter Astronomy, out of which supposi­tion in this Feast-day, the antiquity of the tradition shall be also presently confirmed. And to this purpose of the Summer-solstice at St Johns Birth, and of the Winter at our Sa­viours, they apply (I dispute not how well) that in St. John, D. Joan. c. 3. comm [...]n. 30. [...], i. He must increase, but I must be diminished. So St. Augustine also, Natus D. Aug. serm. ded versis 40. & 59. l. 4. ad­vers. Crescon. c. 37. & in Psalm. 132.est Johannes hodiè, ab hodierno minuuntur dies; na­tus est Christus 8 Kalend. Januarias, ab illo die crescunt dies. And enough to this purpose oc­curs in others of that D. Hiero. in epist. de celebr. Pasch. tom. 4. age, wherein these two Births were observed, and only these two, and that in all, or the greatest part of Chri­stendom; Solius Domini (saith Serm. de fan­ctis 2. St. Augustine) & Beati Iohannis dies Nativitatis in universo mundo celebratur & colitur. But it being clear­ly plain that about this time of 400 years past after our Saviour, this 25 day was so ob­serv'd, and taken generally for his Birth-day, it falls next to inquire the original whence it was so taken: Had those Clementines been of sufficient credit, there had been no need to have made any further inquiry; for then we might have thence resolved that the Apo­stles had ordained it; and it had been fit for them that stand so much for the Authority of those Constitutions, to have proved that the Apostles had done so, that so they might [Page 9]have cleared that supposititious Volume of such a Character of falshood. For doubtless had such a Constitution been published in that Volume, and by the Apostles, the Eastern Church had not so long been ignorant of it, as it appears by St. Chrysostom they were: For untill some 10 years before his Sermon D. Chrys. edit. Savilianâ, tom. 5: {fo. p. 511. made upon this day, especially for the truth of the time of the Feast, that Church had not been generally instructed with this certainty of it; for then it was newly learn'd from the Western Church, in which even from Thrace to Cadiz (as he tells us from such as instruct­ed him) it was so observ'd. But although that Ordinance touching it in the Clemen­tines, attributed to the Apostles, be supposi­titious, yet there is great reason for us to think that the tradition of this Feast to be so kept on that day was Apostolical, that is, taught and deduced into the Church (though not in writing) both from the Apostles, and first Disciples and Observers of our Saviour. Quid autem (saith Advers. Ha­res. l. 3. c. 4. Irenaeus) si neque Apostoli quidem scripturas reliquissent nobis, nonne oporte­bat ordinem sequi traditionis quam tradiderunt iis quibus committebant Ecclesias? And we shall here use aptly enough the very words also of Tertul. De corona mi­litis c. 4. speaking of divers observations in both Sacraments, and other parts of Christian Religion in his time, which was near the A­postles; Harum & aliarum ejusmodi Discipli­narum si legem expostules scripturarum, nullam [Page 10]invenies: But, traditio praetendetur auctrix, con­suetudo confirmatrix, & fides observatrix. But for the order of proof here (it being first cleared that this tradition was about the time of those Fathers that testifie it com­monly received in Christendom) before we come to the particular deductions of it out of the elder ages that preceded them, we shall here not untimely first note, that as it was commonly received as a thing then set­led, so was it generally thought of as what was then very ancient. So saies St. Chryso­stom expresly, Serm. dict. item in hom. 34. tom. 2. edit. Basil. & in serm. 27. de nat. Jo. Baptist. co­dem tom. being instructed from learned men of the Western Church, it was then [...], that is, of ancient time, and delivered in the Church many years before, as his words are; and yet, saith he, it is new too, new in the Eastern Church, because (as he writes) we have so lately learn'd it, that is, within ten years since; but he calls it [...], &c. i. old and very ancient, in that it is e­ven of equal age with the ancienter feast-dayes which they had received: and again, though it came but lately into the Eastern Church, yet it was, saith he, [...], i. well known from ancient time to those that were of the Western Church. And St. Augustine also Enarrat. in Psalm. 132. expresly sayes that the birth was up­on this day, sic tradit Ecclesia; which denotes [Page 11]great antiquity even in his time: and in Serm. de sanct. 4. a­nother place speaking of the celebration of St. Iohn Baptists birth-day, which was recei­ved with this, it seems, by a like tradition, Hoc majorum traditione suscepimus, (saith he) hoc ad posteros imitanda devotione transmittimus. These passages alone are enough testimony that this Feast-day thus placed was reputed in those times, that is, about 400. years af­ter Christ, very ancient: But to know how ancient it was more particularly, it behoves us to look backward from those times by such degrees, as that by careful observing one of them after another, up towards the times of our Saviour, we may be herein in­structed according to the occurrence of such testimony as may make to the end of the in­quiry; and I doubt not but we shall so well e­nough at length find it receiv'd in the Church, in the Western Church, even from Apostolical tradition, deriv'd from observation, while yet our Saviour was on the earth. But to begin this course of inquiry by looking back by degrees from the time of St. Chrysostom, and the rest of the Fathers of about his age, we shall first look on the time of near 100. years before them, that is, of Constantine the Great, and the first general Council of Nice, held in the year 325. at which time we shall with sufficient arguments first shew, that this Feast was kept on the 25. of December, as now it is, and that then also from ancienter [Page 12]time; against those which suppose the be­ginning of it no elder than after or about Constantine: And from thence we shall go upward to the Apostles. But because that hath first reference to the time of this Coun­cil, and makes much otherwise also for confir­mation of the antiquity of this, and the cele­bration of the day (as shall be presently shew­ed) consists especially in observation of the name of the time under which those Fathers received, denoted and celebrated it, that is, of the very day of the Winter-Solstice, with reference to the Spring-Aequinox, as to the time of the conception of our Savi­our, and to the Summer-Solstice, and Au­tumn-Aequinox, as to St. Iohns birth and conception; it is first here requisite that we shortly open the ancient supposition which the most primitive times had touching those four beginings of the Quarters of the year, which (being much different from what was received, both at the time of the Council of Nice, and before it, and somewhat is also yet retain'd in Church-cycles) will make way for confirmation of the receiv'd opini­on of that sacred Birth-day.

SECT. II. For preparation of more particular proof of the Tradition of this Feast-day, the supposition which the most Primitive Ages had touching the time of the Solstices and Aequinoxes.

THe ancient and civil supposition of the Solstices and Aequinoxes, (in which an express character is found of the Antiquity of this Tradition, as shall be presently shewed) was both before and about our Saviours Birth-day, (especially in the Roman Empire) of another kind from that which either at this day is, or at the time of the Birth was agreeable to the more accurate and naturall Astronomy; I mean, the supposition which was generally received in their Characters and Parapegmata, which denoted both their Sacrifices, Feast-days, and Country-observa­tions for matter of Husbandry: For they supposed in those Calendars, that the Suns entrance into the 1 degree of Aries was on the 15 Kalends of April in the Julian year, that is, on the 18 day of March; but that the spring-aequinox was not untill the 8 Kalends of April, that is, the 17 of June, they placed the Suns first entrance into Cancer; but the Solstice on 8 Kalends, that is, on the 24 of June. So the 15 Kalends of October, or the 17 of September, was their supposed time of the Suns first entrance into Libra; but the [Page 14]Autumn-aequinox on the 8 Kalends, or the 24 of September; and according to these the first entrance of the Sun into Capricorn they placed on the 15 Kalends of Ianuary, or the 18 of December: So that the Aequinoxes and Sol­stices were not supposed in the first entrance, or in the 1 degree of those 4 signes (as at this day they are, and many ages since have been) but at such time as the Sun held the 8 degrees of them. For the Suns proper Diurnal motion being about a degree, it so fell out in their Calculation, that 8 days being reckon'd from the first entrance into every of those signs (as is seen in the examples) on the 8 day the Sun was in the 8 degrees of those signes, and then made the supposed time of Solstices and Aequinoxes. The testimonies of this kind of placing in those times are frequent. Ovid Fastorum l. 6. expresly teacheth us so for the Summer­solstice. But in the Calendar that is com­monly joyned with him, and received by o­thers, it is therein mistaken. The like for all four do Pliny, Hist. nat. l. 2. c. 19. l. 18. c. 25. & 29.Columel, De re Rusticâ c. 14. & l. 11. c. 2.Vitruvius, Architect. l. 9. c. 5.Martia­nus Capella Nupt. Philol. & Mercur., the Scholiast on Germanicus his Aratus, and the Author of the fragment joyn'd with Censorinus: And of the naturall forces of the two Tropiques or Solstices, to this purpose Manilius; Astron. l. 3. ad extrem.

Meaning that the common opinion was, they were (with the Aequinoxes) in the eight part of their signs, but that some thought them otherwise; some in the tenth, some (as they ought) in the first. But this opinion of the eight parts, and so by consequence of those times of the Aequinoxes and Solstices was a most ancient tradition, and retained still in their Calendars, or Fasti, made for ci­vil, sacred and rustick use; notwithstanding that the more accurate Astronomers had found it to be an errour; not otherwise then at this day those which keep the Iulian and Dionysian account in the Church, (as we in Great Britain) suppose the spring-aequinox on the 21 of March, though the known A­stronomy teach us that it anticipates about 11 days. And as it happens in like cases, they still retain'd what had been from anci­ent time setled in the State, neglecting the corrected Astronomy; and that especially be­cause those old Calendars were already fitted to their Feasts and Sacrifices, and were more known to the people, who could not but have been much troubled with an innovation of the time of all their publick solemnities. Neither Sosigenes in his divers amendments of the year made upon Iulius Caesars commands, or the rest after him so imployed, alter any thing in this supposition: All which is fully expressed in that of Columella, in his Precepts of Husbandry; where having first spoken of [Page 16]the Solstices and Aequinoxes, falling upon the 8 degrees of those signes, he presently thus admonishes: Agricult. 1. p. c. 14. Nec me fallit (saith he) Hipparchi ratio, quae docet Solstitia & Aequi­noctia non octavis, sed primis partibus signorum confici: Verum in hac ruris disciplina sequor Eu­doxi & Metonis, antiquorumque fastos Astro­logorum, qui sunt aptati publicis sacrificiis; quia & notior est ista velus Agricolis concepta opinio. He gives here the true reason why that sup­position was retained; but, by the way, is deceived in this, that he takes Eudoxus and Meton to be of those ancienter Astronomers from whom it was received. It is true indeed that in the old Parap. quod gemino subne­ctitur. Parapegmata, which shew us that according to. Calippus and Euctemon, the Solstices and Aequinoxes were at the first entrance of the Sun into the signes proper for them: Eudoxus yet had otherwise pla­ced them; as for the purpose, the spring­aequinox on the 6 day after the Suns entrance into Aries, and the Winter-solstice on the 4 day after the 1 entrance into Capricorn: But we find not that he had taught this learning of the 8 days or parts; no more do we that Meton was any teacher of it; although also for this particular, beside the published Pa­rapegmata, I made speciall search also for it in Ptolomies Cod. Ms. est V. C. Henrici Savill Eq. Au­rati; mihi verè communicavit pro suâ huma­nitate V. C. T. Bambridge Medicinae D & Mathematicus egregius. [...], a Book never yet printed, but fraught with divers pieces of the Para­pegmata both of Meton and Eudoxus; and [Page 17]wholly another thing from that which goes under a like name for Ptolomies, published at the end of some Editions of Ovids Fasti. Be­side, it is certain that the Summer-Solstice observed by Meton with Euctemon in the 316. year of Nabonassar, that is about CCCCXL. before Christ, was upon the 21. of the Egyp­tian Moneth Phamenoth, as Mathemat. Syntax. l. 3. Ptolomy expre­sly testifies, which for that time agrees with the 27. of the Iulian Iune. Neither Eudoxus therefore, nor Meton, thus placed the Solsti­ces on the 8. Kalends of their Moneths. O­thers of late time have much troubled them­selves to find the ground or original whence this supposition came among the Ancients; as especially Cardinal Contaren, Genesius de Se­pulveda, and most of all Joseph Scaliger; but their conjectures are most uncertain, and too weak to rely on. Neither, I guess, will the original be found among any of the An­cients that are classick in Authority, but in a Transcript of some parts of a Latine Tran­slation by Abraham de Balmis, of a Book tit­led Copiam mihi perhumaniter fecit v. c. Jac. Usherus, sacrae Theol. D. undi­qua (que) doctissi­mus. Isagogicon Astrologiae Ptolomaei, (which indeed appears to be Geminus Phaenomena) compar'd with the Greek; I find these words, as if they were but translated from the first Author, Ʋterque Tropicus, & ambo Aequinoxia, secundum Astrologorum Graeco­rum opinionem, fiunt in primis gradibus horum Signorum; sed secundum Chaldaeorum opinio­nem, in octavis gradibus: but the Greek copy [Page 18]had no such thing; though it be like enough that the copy whence he translated it had, that is an Arabick copy of Geminus, who, as Euclide also, Ptolomy, Aristotle, much of Galen, and other Greek Authors, was turned out of Greek into Arabick, and thence into Latine, long before the Greek it self was translated immediately into Latine, as we have it at this day: and it appears that his translation was from an Arabick copy, in that alone, that the parapegma which is at the end of this Latine Geminus, hath the names of Eudoxus, Calippus, Euctemon, Dolitheus and Meton, so varied as frequently other names are, which are expressed out of Arabick letters into La­tin in like translations; as for Eudoxus, it hath Orchalis; for Calippus, Philidis; for Eu­ctemon, Octiman; for the other two, Dussio­nius and Matheon; all which plainly mista­ken by the translator, when he found either the names written without essential points in the Arabick character, or else mis-tran­scribed, as it might easily be, by such a wri­ter that was not worthy to be trusted to; for the mishaping of a letter, or the doubling of a point, and the like, soon makes such va­riance of names expressed out of that Lan­guage. But for the matter of the 8 degrees, and the Solstices and Aequinoxes referred to them, here is authority that it had original from 9 Kal. Jan. Brumale solsti­tium observant Chaldaei, ait Columella, [...]. l. 11. c. 2. the Chaldees, which I yet think is as far from truth as that of Columel's; neither is [Page 19]this a fit place to make larger inquiry after it. It here sufficeth to shew it manifest, that this placing of those parts of the year was observed from anicnet time, and that espe­cially in the State of Rome; as we see also in those their old Country-Feasts, the Robega­lia, the Floralia, the Vinalia; which were the three main Feasts wherein from ancient time they made intercession to their gods a­gainst all hurt that might happen to their green Corn, and the ripening of the fruits, and their Vintage; and were kept and so no­ted by * Varro, according to another account of the Suns place or motion then is before delivered. And according to this account are the Aequinoxes and Solstices in Venerable Bede's Ephemeris, noted with the addition of juxta quosdam to be understood, although in the Print they somewhat vary it: but it is clear, that in his December the Solstitium juxta quosdam, and in his March the Aequinoctium juxta quosdam, are both placed a day before they should be, that is, they ought to be on the 8. Calends, (not the 9.) the one of Ianuary, the other of April; with which the Sol in Capri­corn, and the Sol in Aries, there before no­ted, to the 15. Calends, exactly suppose the Solstice in the 8. degree of Capricorn, and the Aequinox in the 8. of Aries, that is, in the 25. dayes of their Moneths; reference being still had to this ancient account, which he, being most curious in the cycles of time, Apud Plin. l. 8. c. 19. & Scholiaest. ad Aratea prognostica. [Page 20]would not omit; although his Ephemeris were purposely made for the Dionysian year, which also he hath together expressed in the same colums: But, I suppose, the chief reason why these two stand so displaced, is, because the noting of the birth of St. Anastasia was thought more necessary to the 8. Cal. of Ian. than this old supposed Solstice to be added, it was cast upon a void place of a line next pre­ceding. The same may be said of the Spring-aequinox, which had no room on the 8 Ka­lend of April in the Column, by reason of the conception and passion of our Saviour to­gether noted to that day; and that he is so to be understood, he himself elsewhere is De Temb. ra­tione, c. 28. testi­mony enough, expresly relating this ancient course of accounting the Solstices and Aequi­noxes: So that his Ephemeris is a special ex­ample of it, if rightly understood; as also is that Calendarium Romanum, lately cut in Brass, and so published from the print, as sup­posed to be as ancient as Constantine the Great; where the Summer-solstice is indeed by the cutters or transcribers fault set to the 7 Ka­lend of Iuly, which plainly should have been on the eighth, and the Suns entrance into Cancer is on the 17 Kalend which should be on the 15, as also the Suns entrance into Aries should have been placed on the 15 Kalend of April, which agrees just with the Feast of Hilaria being on the 8 Kalend. And accor­ding to this supposition of the ancients, did [Page 21]that learned Gentleman, George Herwart van Hochenburg, (out of whose Library this Ca­lendar was lately published) judiciously de­clare the reason of those differences that ap­pear in it from the later Astronomy; and in his Letter written to Seignior Haleander, a Gentleman of curious learning in Rome, the Copy whereof was thence sent me through the hand of that learned and worthy Gentle­man Monsieur Pierese, an Advocate in the Parliament of Aix; and this some two years since, when 'twixt him and my self, and from him to Haleander divers Letters passed touching the particulars and authority of that Calendar.

SECT. III. That the keeping of it this day was so receiv'd from tradition, even of the eldest times since our Savi­our; and this justified from the Fathers, sup­posing it to have been on the very day of the an­cient Winter-solstice.

THat ancient supposition of the Solstices and Aequinoxes being thus hitherto first opened, let us in looking back by degrees, first (as is before proposed) begin with the time of the Councel of Nice, held in the year of our Saviour 325. It will so appear, that before that Council, this Feast was established in the Western Church, and that by the ge­nerall [Page 22]testimony of those Fathers, which with one voice suppose it as formerly placed on the very day of the Winter-solstice; for had it been begun after or about the time of that Council, and withall supposed to have ought to have been kept on the Winter-solstice day, then doubtless would they have placed it on that day which was received in the Church to be the Winter-solstice-day, af­ter or about the same Council, as at this day in the Gregorian year, who doubts but that a Feast to be newly instituted on an Aequinox or Solstice, or with reference to either of those times, would be placed by them which have received that Reformation on the Ae­quinoxes or Solstices, or with reference to them according as they are in the corrected Calendar, and not as they fall in the Ju [...]ian or Dionysian year? For example also, what greater testimony were there (if all other were lost) to prove the antiquity of that very kind of keeping the Feast of Easter as we do in our Church, to be of the Primitive time, than this, that the Paschales termini are re­tain'd still according to the Spring-aequi­nox receiv'd in the Primitive times? Now to make clear our purpose, here it is also certain that about and after that Councel of Nice, the Spring-oequinox according whereunto the Paschal-cycles were made, was supposed in the Church upon the 21 of March, as it is seen also in the Paschal-account used to this [Page 23]day in the Church of England; so that it was become four dayes sooner than in those elder times, when it fell in common opinion on the 25 day: but when the Spring-aequinox was so changed, and according to the change also received, it could not but follow that the beginning of the other three parts of the year must also be altered, that is plainly seen in the known course of the Suns motion. And therefore the Solstices and the other Aequi­noxes must also vary in their moneths, and by a like or very Vide sis Mar­cel. Francolin. de temp. hor. ca­nonic. c. 75 & 76. near like difference of days anticipate, as they are accordingly cited in Bede's Ephemeris, who De temp. Nat. c. 28. elsewhere also ad­monishes us as much. Therefore it must follow too, that about and after that gene­rall Councel the time of the Winter-solstice was placed (and so supposed in Ec­clesiastical account) upon the 21 or 22 of December. But if it had been so receiv'd when this Feast-day was first ordained, and specially placed on the Solstice-day (as the Fathers generally by tradition from former times place it) there had been necessary cause enough to have had it fallen yearly three or four days sooner than it did, both in the Pri­mitive times and at this day, that is, on the 21 or 22 of the same moneth. By conse­quence it was then ordained or receiv'd in the Church, at such time as the Winter-sol­stice was not supposed on the 21 or 22 day of the same moneth, but on the 25, that is, at [Page 24]least before that Councel of Nice, or Con­stantine the Great, howsoever too rashly some have delivered Jos. Scal. de emendat. Temp. l. 6. p. 510. & Calvisius Isa­gog. chron. c. 46. of it, that post seculum Con­stantim Romae haec observatio instituta est. Nei­ther can Objection have power here, which perhaps may obviously be brought to im­pugne this kind of argument; that is, that it might notwithstanding be ordained first in the later part of the primitive times, or after Constantine, or that Council, in such sort that it might be placed on the day of the Solstice that was received at the time of the birth, that is, the 25. day, and not that which the received account had so innova­ted: for this Objection is partly answered before in the passage of Feasts at this day to be ordain'd, with reference to the Solstices in the Gregorian Calendar: and besides, if the Church about this time after Constantine had regarded in a new Institution the Sol­stice of the time of the birth, according as it was then to be found in the Moneth, it must be that they either regarded the true and na­tural, or the receiv'd and civil Solstice. For the first, if they had been so curious as to have sought what the true place of the Win­ter solstice to this purpose had been in the age of that birth, as they had indeed sought for the true Aequinox of their own time for their direction of Easter, they had found that the true Solstice anticipated the 25. day about two dayes; for, by the most accurate [Page 25]calcularion to the noon of the Meridian of Bethlehem, on the 25. of December, in the year commonly attributed to the birth of our Sa­viour, the Sun was in the second degree of Capricorn, and some minutes over, as Comment. ad Ptolem. qua­dripartit. l. 2. com. 54. & Vi­de sis Clavium ad cap. 1. Joh. de Sacro bosco. Alter quidem Colurus, p. 297. edit. 4. 1602. Car­dan also places it in the scheme of that nati­vity; whence it must clearly follow, that about the 23. day was the very point of the Winter-solstice, the diurnal true motion of that time of the year in the Perigaeum being somewhat more than a degree. No place was then for this true Solstice in such their consideration of the birth-time, if they had thus inquired after it, unless they would have instituted the Feast (under that name of time) on the 23. day, and not on the 25. For the second, what colour have we to think that they should in those times have retain'd the old supposition of the civil Solstice for their Institution of this Feast­day, and yet so carefully alter the formerly-received aequinox for Easter? This of the birth being as the head and rule of the chief­est immoveable Feasts, as that of the Passi­on and Resurrection is of the moveable. Would they have retained the same error upon Institution of a new Feast, which with so much curiosity they corrected in establi­shing the certainty of an old one? It rests firme therefore, that whensoever it was first instituted for anniversary celebration, it was in such an Age as had the supposition of the [Page 26]Winter-solstice being on the 25. day of De­cember yet retain'd in the Church; other­wise what dependence were there 'twixt the name of the Feast and the Solstice? But that dependence is by the consent of the Fathers fully testified, as a tradition of former times; and the latest Age which in the Church re­tain'd that supposition, must at least be be­fore the Council of Nice, as is already shew­ed; therefore at least the Institution of it must precede that Council.

This being hitherto deduced, it will in the next degree of searching backward fol­low also, if we can prove the received sup­position of the Church touching the time of the Winter-solstice to have been long before this Council, agreeable to that which here is shewed to the time of it, that the first ob­servation or Institution of this Feast, under the name of the Solstice upon the 25. day, was also long before that Council. Now as the Spring-aequinox changed from the 25. to the 21. so did the Winter-solstice of ne­cessity change also, as is before shewed: But the Spring-aequinox was also at least some 50. years before that Council, upon the 21. or 22. of March, by the received suppositi­on of them from whose direction the Church-cycles were principally guided, that is, of the Aegyptians, and especially those of Alexandria; so is the express Apud Euseb. hist. eccles. l. 7. c. 26. te­stimony of Anatolius, born and bred in Alex­andria, [Page 27]but Bishop of Laodicea in the time of Aurelian, about 270 years after our Saviour. He shews that then the 11 Kalends of April, that is, the 22 of March was the supposed Aequinox; which agrees well enough with that of the 21, if regard be had to that varia­tion which the houres out of which the Leap-year is made must of necessity be a cause of, as Bede In epist. ad Wichred de Paschatis cele­bration [...], tom. 2. withall in explanation of Anatolius hath taught us: The same Bede well admonishing, that it was Regula Niceno pro­bato Concilio, not statuta, Wilfrid apud Bedam, hist. Angl. l. 3. c. 25. to have that time receiv'd for the Spring-aequinox. And in­deed the very words of the Epistles sent out of that Council touching it, and the Church­stories plainly prove it to have been gene­rally known and receiv'd in the Church, both of the West, North, South, and part of the East long before. In Constantines Epistle Euseb. de vi­ta Constant. l. 3. c. 18. Socrat. hist. l. 5. c. 21. Nicephor. l. 12. c. 33. to the Churches of Christendom sent presently upon the Council, it is expressed that it was so generally received before; and Ruffinus speaking of the Council, tells us, that, Hist. eccles. l. 10. c. 6. De ob­servatione Paschae, antiquum Canonem, per quem nulla de reliquo varietas oriretur, tradiderunt. Nothing therefore can be clearer then that the aequinox of the 21 or 22 of March, ac­cording to the difference before noted, was ancient in the traditions of the Church, long before the Nicene Council: Otherwise they had as well in expresse terms innovated the aequinox, as established uniformity in obser­ving [Page 28]their Easter by it. Therefore also was the Winter-solstice about the 21 or 22 of December in the traditions of the Church long before that Council then: what follows hence touching the institution of the Feast which we inquire after, is according to the former inferences most apparent, for so much time as those testimonies reach back unto.

To go farther up in a third degree, it will be also justified, that the Aequinox, and by consequence another Winter-solstice then that of the 25 day of December, was not on­ly ancienter then the Nicene Council in the Church-cycles, but also equal to the Apo­stles times. For although we find in the Church-story great differences of the Primi­tive times touching the keeping of Easter, and divers cycles and Canons made for it, yet those differences are chiefly about the day of the week whereon it should be kept, as between the Tessareskaidecatoi and the Churches of the West, but never (in any te­stimony of credit) about the diversity of supposition of the Aequinox that directs it, o­therwise than according to that in Anatolius, which stands with the received time of the 21 of March, as is already noted; I say in any testimony of credit, for under favour of the learned, I conceive not that attributed to Theophilus Bishop of Caesaria, and published at the end of Bedes Epistle to Tom 2. p. 232 edit. Colon. Wichred, [Page 29]where the 25 day is supposed for the Aequi­nox to be other then supposititious, the whole shape of it hath the Character of coun­terfeiting: But the Aequinox is still (for ought appears) supposed the same in that Controversie about Easter had under Euseb. eccles. hist. l. 5. c. 22. &c. Pope Victor about the year CXC. as it was in the Council of Nice, and the same also before Victor, even up to the time of the Apostles. What else is denoted in that of Proterius, Pa­triarch of Alexandria to P. Leo the First, where he tels Apud Bed. de temp. rat. c. 42. & Vide sis Ce­olfrid apud e­und. hist. eccl. l. 5. c. 22. him that St. Mark had taught the Aegyptians (according as he had learned from St. Peter) that Easter was to be observed after the XIV. moon of the first moneth, the first moneth here was known by the spring-ae­quinox, of which if they had not been agreed, as much trouble (or more) would have been in establishing of that, as there was in clear­ing what day of the week the sacred Feast of Easter was to be kept on. The like is affirm­ed of the Apostolical tradition of that uni­form celebration of Easter, by Ceolfrid in his Epistle to Naitan King of the Picts: And to confirm more fully that the observation of it established by the Nicene Council was such as had been even from the beginning of Christianity, or the Apostles time, the very words of the Epistle sent by that Coun­cil to the Churches of Aegypt and Africk are, that now the controversie was ended touch­ing Easter, and that those of the Eastern [Page 30]Church that had before followed the Iews in observing it on the XIV. Moon, did hold it [...], Socrat. bist. eccles. l. 1. c. 6. i. A­greeable to the Romans, to us, and to all you who from the beginning observe Easter as we do; or, Consone cum Romanis, & vobiscum, & cum omnibus ab initio Pascha custodientibus, as Cassiodore anciently translated it; Hist. Tripart. l. [...]. c. 12. which shews also that in Socrates he read [...], that is, from the beginning, as some Copies are; and not [...], i.e. from ancient time, as in others the reading is. It followes there­fore, that even from the beginning, that is, from the Apostles time, the same Spring-aequinox was receiv'd in the Church, that is, the 21 or 22 of March as was afterward; and that it was thence established on the 21 by the Council of Nice, and that by conse­quence, in those times of the Apostles, the formerly-receiv'd aequinox was altered from the 25 to the 22 or 21; and so also (as of ne­cessity it followes) the Winter-solstice from the 25 of December to near about the 21 or 22 of the same moneth. Whence also it is to be concluded, that this Feast day was receiv'd as to be kept on the 25 day even before the Apostles time, and that among the Disciples of our Saviour, while he was yet on earth, that is, while in common reputation the 25. day of December was taken for the Winter-solstice: Otherwise what colour were [Page 31]there why the consent of the Fathers should denote it by that civil Winter-solstice which was out of use in the Church, both in their time, and been so likewise from the times of the Apostles, that is, from some time after the Passion of our Saviour, before which there was no need at all (for the e­stablishing of our Easter, which was to be ruled by the Spring-aequinox) to vary the placing of those points of the Quarters of the year? But it being commonly received, out of the account and Kalendar of the Gentiles, that the 25. of December was the Solstice, and that on the same day our Saviour was born, it grew familiar, it seems, and so was delivered down to those Fathers, that the birth-day was on the very Winter-sol­stice, which they so often inculcate: But the Apostles and Evangelists not being able per­haps in the infancy of the Church to settle the anniversary celebration of Easter, until about their later times, that is, about 100. years after this birth, carefully observed, and especially St. Peter and St. Mark, where the natural aequinox was, according to which the Solstices ever vary, and so found it in that time about the 22. or 21. of March, as by exact calculation it will happen, according to that before noted tou­ching Anatolius; and hence they delivered the knowledge of the change of those Quar­ters of the year to posterity. But also, be­cause [Page 32]even from the very birth it self the 25. day of December had been kept, or known for it, notwithstanding that it was in vul­gar opinion conceived to have been on the day attributed to the civil Solstice, In common reputation a­mong the Gentiles; yet would they not vary it from that day, because in­deed it had no reference to the Solstice. which anticipated it three dayes, as is before shew­ed, but was proper to the 25. day of De­cember onely, as it was the 25. of that Mo­neth: Although those Fathers, being none of the best Astronomers, thought still howe­ver the Solstice was altered in their times, that at the time of the birth the natural Sol­stice had fallen on the 25. day, and then onely they so often note it, mistaking vul­gar supposition delivered in the Kalendars of the Gentiles for exact calculation.

SECT. IV. Expresse testimonies to the same purpose out of ancient History, and a Confirmation from the general use in the severall Churches of Chri­stendom.

NEither is this antiquity of certainty only thus proved from the common joyning the Feast with the Winter-solstice in the Fathers expressions of it, but also from expresse testimonies denoting as much in relations of the ancients. In which to ob­serve first a like course, as before, in going upward from the time of those Fathers to­ward [Page 33]the Apostles, we find, that many years before the Council of Nice, that is, under Dioclesian, this Feast was thus celebrated, and that in some part of the Eastern Church also; however that Church was not gene­rally instructed in it, till in St. Chrysostoms age; For in the Church-story Nicephor. Calistus, l. 7. c. 6. it appears, that under that Emperour, Anthimus Bishop of Nicomedia, together with many thousand Christians, were assembled to keep that Feast-day; when as the Emperour, or his fel­low-Persecutor Maximinus, commanded fire to be put to the Church wherein they were assembled, and that none of them should escape that would not sacrifice presently to Iupiter Victor; whereupon they all willingly receiv'd the Crown of Martyrdom: and in the ancient Martyrology of Rome, the passion of those Martyrs is placed on the 25 of De­cember in these words, Nicomediae passio mul­torum millium Martyrum, qui cum in Christi natali ad dominicum convenissent, &c. which also for the time is justified by the Greek ad [...]. Menologie, where the words [...], &c. that is, Anthimus assembling in his Church a multitude of Chri­stians on the Feast-day of Christs Birth, kept the Feast with them, &c. But indeed the Greek Church casts this Feast of the Mar­tyrs on the 28 of December, as they do also [Page 34]upon other dayes the Menol. ad di­ctos dies. memories of St. Eugenia and St. Anastasia (both which the Western Churches retain with this Birth­day on the 25) the one on the 22, the other on the 24 day. But this was done by them only, because the more single honour might be given both to our Saviours Birth, and to those other names, being so divided: Ʋt ho­rum solennitatem (speaking of those Martyrs saith Old Marty­rol. 8 Kalend Jan. Baronius) celebriùs agerent, cam tran­stulerunt. As also among the Iews a Transla­tion was often used of their feasts from one day to another, that two Sabbaths or great Feasts might not concur, as their Talmud. mas­sec. Rosh. Has­sana. Doctors deliver. Hence then it is enough also ma­nifest, first, that by ancient testimony of the Monuments of the Church, this Feast was thus observed before Constantine, or that Council of Nice which was held many years after the death of Dioclesian.

But also to look farther upon the times preceding this Martyrdom, we shall find good testimony that it was taught to poste­rity to be kept so, even by the Apostles, who knew it as a clear certainty while our Savi­our was yet on earth: For though they or­dain'd it not in those Constitutions falsly at­tributed to them, or in any other Writer, yet might they teach it as a tradition to be re­ceiv'd ever to the Church, as they did the changing of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first of the week; the solemn Re­nunciation [Page 35]of the Devil at Baptism; the keep­ing of Easter on the Sun-day, or the like, quas sine ullius Scripturae instrumento, as De corona militis, c. 3. Tertullian sayes, solius traditionis titulo, exinde consue­tudinis patrocinio, vindicamus. To this pur­pose, among St. Chrysostoms Works in La­tine, one Homily is Edit. Bass [...]. tom. 2. hom. 39. De Nativitate Domim, as the Latine title is, for the Greek of that Homily I have not yet seen; wherein he con­fidently, as elsewhere, teaches, that this day of December is the just day of that birth, and for his authority brings no less than St. Pe­ters testimony; Petrus, are the words, qui hic fuit cum Joh. qui hìc fuit cum Jac. nos in occidente docuit; which hath plain reference to that before noted out of his long Oration for the same matter, where he tells Edit. Savil: tom. 5. p. 512. us also, that in the controversies of those times touching this Feast, such as defended it as what ought to be kept on this day, justified that it was [...], i. Very ancient and from old time known, and fa­mous from Thract to Cadis, that is in the whole Western Church. To these may be added that of Euodius, whom Nicephoras calls the Suc­cessor of the Apostles, and it is delivered Suid in verb. [...], & [...]. that it was ordained by St. Peter himself in Antioch; that we may so distinguish him from that other Euodius Bishop of Ʋzalis Cujus nomini ascribuntur o­pera aliquot ad sin tom. 10. D. Aug. subjunc [...] edit. Lova [...] ­ensi. in St. Augustines time; he in an Epistle touch­ing the times of the Passion of our Saviour, [Page 36]of St. Stephens Martyrdome, of the death of the blessed Virgin, and the like, sayes expre­sly of her, (as the Latine is in Eccles. bist. l. 2. c. 3. Nicephorus, translated by Langius, for neither have I the Greek of him) Peperit autem mundi ipsius lu­cem, annum agens quindecimum 25. die mensis Decembris. And likewise in an old Greek Author (the Book being written about the time of Pope Honorius the First) in the Li­brary of St. Mark's in Florence, express te­stimony is, Apostolos memoriae prodidisse Chri­stum ex Virgine natum Bethlemae 25. Decem­bris, as Albertus Widemonstadius of his own sight witnesseth in his Notes on that impious Book called Mahomets Divinity, and brings also Hesychius his authority to the same pur­pose. And to these may be added Cedren, Orosius, and some ancient Manuscripts Fasti cited by Cuspinian upon Cassiodore; and there is authority also, Catholicus Armeniorum in legatione ad Arvienios malè legitur 20 Dec. tam. in Biblioth. Patrum edit. Paris. tom. 3. p. 864. quam in edit. Colon. tom. 12. part. 1. p. 891. Nam Grae­ce erat [...]e. [...]. quod vi­dere est apud Jos. Scalig. in Isagog. chron. l. 3. p. 30. that howe­ver Epiphamus in his Works have another designation of the day of this birth, (as anon is shewed) yet out of the Monuments of the Jews he learned, and then taught, that this was the very day; which they say was justified also by some Writers brought to Rome from Je­rusalem by Titus; which also is strengthened by that of St. Chrysostome, when he sayes Tom. 5. eait. Savil. sol. 12. expresly, that in publick Records kept at Rome in his age, the exact time of the [Page 37]description under Quirinus, spoken of by St. Luke, (which could not but be a special character of the time of our Saviours birth) was expressed; and then he goes on, But what is this to us, saith he, that neither are at Rome, nor have been there, that so we might be sure of it? yet hearken, saith Ibid. p. 513. he, and doubt not; for we have received the day [...], i. from those which accurately know these things, and dwell at Rome; And that they [...], i. having from ancient time and old tradition celebrated it, have now also sent us the knowledge of it. This is likewise confirmed by an old barbarous Translation of what was taken out of Afri­canus and Eusebius, and published in the noble Scaliger's Thesaurus Temporum, where the words are, Aug. & Sylvano Coss Domi­nus noster Jesus Christus natus est sub Augusto 8. calendas Ianuarias: and then, In ipsa die in qua natus est pastores viderunt stellam, Chuac 28. which should rather be 29. for so a­grees the 25. of December to that of the Ae­gyptian Choiac, which the Author means. And Prudentius upon the day, supposing the In hymn. ad calend. 8 Jan. old tradition of the concurrence of the Solstice with it,

And of later times the Authorities are infi­nite.

These testimonies being compared with the consent of the Fathers, that about 400. years after Christ have written that it was an­cient, as is already shewed; and being con­firmed by the arguments made against the supposed later institution of it, out of the place of the received Winter-solstice, e­nough manifest the antiquity and certainty of this ancient Feast-day, according as we now observe it; and that even from the age wherein it first brought forth the redemption of Mankind. And to these we may adde the consent of Christian Churches ever since a­bout those 400. years; for after that the Eastern or Greek Church of Asia had learned the truth of it from the Western, (as is deli­vered) this celebration of it yearly increa­sed, and grew still more famous through Christendom: so expresly St. Chrysostom, [...], saith Pan [...]g. in di­ [...] dit. Sav. l. to n. 5. p. 512. he, i.e. Every year it increased and grew more famous. But indeed, because in some places it was not as yet so received, but that old erroreous opinion touching it [Page 39](as it happens in like cases, and shall anon be more particularly shewed) still held there place among some that were too wayward to be brought to prefer truth newly disco­vered to them before their own errors, therefore about 100. years after St. Chry­sostome, it was expresly ordained by the Em­perour Iustin (if my Author deceive not) that in every place of the Christian world it should be thus observed: My Author here is Nicephorus Hist. eccles. l. 17. c. 28.Calistus, who (as the Translati­on of him is) tells us first of Iustinian, that he Primùm Servatoris exceptionem (that is, the Hypatants, which in our Western Church is the Purification of the blessed Virgin) tot [...] orbe terrarum festo die honorare instituit: and then he addes, sicut Iustinus de sancta Christi nativitate fecit. And according hereto are the Kalendars and Book of Divine service, not onely of the Western, which are every where common, but of the Eastern Churches also: In the Menology of the Greek Church in December, [...]. i. On the 25. of the same moneth, the Feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, and God, and Sa­viour, Iesus Christ: and ‘ [...].’ That is, The Virgin Mary brought forth our Saviour on the 25. day. Other Volumes of [Page 40]their Divine service, as their Apostolo-Evan­gela, and the like, enough shew this also. And for other Churches which are not under the name of the Greek, as those of Antioch, or Syriae, of Aethiopia, and of Elcopti or Ae­gypt, although we have not their Calendars published with such exactness of the placeing of their feasts, as we have those of the Greek Church, yet have we testimonies enough of them also, whence we may collect that they agree with us in this anniversary cele­bration: As, first, for that of Antioch, they keep Wid monstad. in epist. sub­nexâ Test. Sy­riac. & vide sis computum Antioch. a pud Jos. Scalig. l. 7 de emendat. tomo p. 670. this birth upon the same day with us in their Moneth Canun the former; and in Alfragan (as he is translated) we read in his enumeration of the Syriack Moneths, Canun prior 31. dierum, cujus 25. nox vocatur nox Nativitatis: So in the Aethiopian Church on the 29. of their Moneth Jos. Scalig. dicto l. p. 650. Thachsasch they kept it, which agrees alwayes with the 25. of our December, though their Intercalation falling before ours (and in their Mascha­rum, or our August) changes the day of the Week every Leap-year into the next after what we keep: And for that of Elkopti we see in a short description of their account, re­ceived from an Aethiopian Apud Scalig. diste l. p. 661. Priest, that their Almolad, or the feast of the Nativity, is pla­ced against their Moneth Chiach, which an­swers to our December, and the succession of their Feasts is just as in the Syriack account; and therefore reason enough is, that thence [Page 41]we collect the very dayes in both to be the self-same. And to conclude here, what greater testimony can there be that it was re­ceived into the Church, even from the Dis­ciples and Apostles of our Saviour, than this, that it was so anciently observed, and hath been ever since so generally received through Christendom? for so of the like things that great Father St. Augustine pronounces, Epist. ad Ja­nuarium 118. Illa quae non scripta, saith he, sed tradita, custodi­mus; quae quidem toto terrarum orbe observan­tur, dantur intelligi vel ab ipsis Apostolis, vel à plenariis Conciliis, quorum est in Ecclesiâ salu­berrima authoritas, commendata atque statuta retineri: Sicuti quod Domini Passio, & Resurre­ctio, & Ascensio in coelum, & adventus de coelo Spiritus Sancti, anniversaria solennitate celebran­tur; & si quid aliud tale occurrerit quod serva­tur ab universâ quacunque se diffundit Ecclesia: All such things he supposes either delivered by the Apostles, or ordained by general Councils; for Councils, here we have no te­stimony that they ordained it; therefore it rests by this argument, that we derive it from the eldest tradition that may be in Christianity. But we end here this inqui­ry, and resolve with that old Hymne of St. Ambrose, used in the service of this day in the Church of Rome:

Neither find I any Christian Church that in the later ages hath otherwise celebrated it, save onely that of the Armenians, who Cathalicus Armeniorum in legat. ad Arm. re­tained an ancient custom of confounding it with the Epiphany, and that to the time of Manuel Comnenus, which is about 440. years since, and perhaps yet do; of which confusion of those feasts more in the last Pa­ragraph. But, because in these proofs hi­therto declared, the common and most re­ceived grounds and reasons brought for it out of the holy Text, and some other, are o­mitted; as also on the other side, some ob­jections are made in later times against it, and that by such as bear even the greatest names in the state of Learning; and some ancient testimonies also impugne what we have hitherto concluded: It follows next, (lest the inquiry should seem done with too much negligence) that we both consider of those common grounds and reasons, and then shew why they were not here used; and furthermore, that we give such answer to those objections, and ancient testimonies, as that they may not at all hinder the credit of [Page 43]those arguments which before have so de­monstratively justified it.

SECT. V. The common Reasons used out of the holy Text to justifie this day, and how they are mistaken, and therefore not used here; together with what some would prove from the Scheme of his Nativity.

OF those which have generally received it, the Ancients about 400. years after it have striv'd to fetch reasons for it out of the holy Writ, (being unhappily not con­tented to rely wholly upon the tradition) and some of later time justifie it by Astrological observations; both being deceived, the first by mis-understanding the Text, the other by too much mingling their errors in the consi­deration of Nature with the thoughts of this most sacred birth-day. For those Anci­ents, they knew out of Lev. 16. & 23. Moses, that the High Priest did onely once every year enter into the Holiest place, or the Sanctum San­ctorum; and this is ordained to be on the 10. day of the 7. Moneth, that is, the Feast of Kippurim, or Expiations in Tisri: Then out of St. Luke, they supposed that the Angel appeared to Zachary, being High Priest, and sacrificing there on the same day which they would make agree with the 24. of September, [Page 44](although for the very day they have some­what differed in the Eastern Church, and some have also Stephanus Gobarus Trith. apud Photium, cod. 232. supposed the conception in October, some in November) and that on the night following Zachary's Wife Elizabeth conceived St. John Baptist, as the Apostle foretold him: From hence, according to the Evangelist, they accounted 6. Moneths; at the end of which time the blessed Virgin Mary conceived, that time falls into the 25. of March, from whence 9. Moneths being accounted, (the common time of a birth) the 25. of December found the very birth-day of our Saviour: This is the summe of the calculation us'd out of the holy Text by the D. Chrysostom. in sape laudato Panegyrico. A­nastasius Anti­ochenus, Ce­drenus chronici Alexandrini autor, &c. Ancients, although not without some confusion of Moneths; while by reason of application of old Lunar Moneths to the Ro­man, which are Solar, they confound herein sometimes April with March, and September with October.

That other sort which would prove it by Astrology, shews us the Scheme of this Na­tivity, erected for the altitude and Meridian of Bethlehem, to the midnight following the 25. of December, and then telling how won­derfully it is (by the Rules of that Art) a­greeable to so wonderful a birth; and anti­cipating some part of the accusation they might justly look for, they declare them­selves, that they mean not that any thing tou­ching his Divinity, his Miracles, his Holi­ness [Page 45]of life, or sending forth the Gospel, de­pended at all on the Stars; but they say, that as naturally he was of the best temperature, and exactest beauty, and had continuall health, and so singular gravity of aspect. Sic etiam Deus optimus & gloriosus (as Cardan's Ad Ptolem. Tetrabib. l. 2. text. 54. words are) optimâ constitutione astrorum atque admirabili Genesin illius adornavit; which con­stitution of the Heavens if the Almighty, sayes he, had not to this purpose ordained to have concur'd and have been observed, one of these two things had happened; either that the very day, and hour, and minute of the hour of that birth, had not been so constant­ly and diligently ever kept in the Church; or else that all the significations in the Scheme had not been adeo singularia, as he writes, magnifica, gloriosa, & tanto concursu digna, tum vero omnibus quae successerunt de vitae sanctitate, de morum gravitate, &c. adeo congruentia, ut nil exactius possit excogitari; and after the par­ticulars largely declared, he too boldly con­cludes against such as justly enough impugne the art of Astrology as groundless, with this, that they can now have nothing else left to speak against it, as Ptolomy teaches it, than this onely, that they should perhaps object, that Ptolomy, to gain credit to the profession, wrote his whole Quadripartite, according to the agreement 'twixt this Scheme, which it is most likely he never saw, and the parts of our Saviours life denoted by it; than which, [Page 46]saith he, as he well might, nothing can be more absurd. But out of this we may easily see, that such as stand upon those learned er­rors cannot but think with him, that the ve­ry day and hour of this birth is fully confir­med by that Scheme: Neither is there cause (so their grounds were certain) but that they might hence conclude also that this were the very time, although no other testimony were extant of it: For what want they in this pretence of that knowledge of the anci­ent Tarutius, who was able (as he made some learned men believe) not onely to fore­tell out of the Scheme of a Nativity, but also to find out of the circumstances of any life and fortune, the very point of the birth, and so frame the Scheme it self? as Plutarch sayes he did both in the search after Romulus his birth-day, and the first foundation of Rome; and the finding the exact Scheme is the same with finding the exact time of the birth; which those Astrologers, it seems, think they have done, as well out of the congruity (as they suppose) of the Scheme to what they apply it, as out of any testimony or tradition of the Church.

But the truth is, that both this of some A­strologers; and that other of calculation out of the holy Text, deserve nor place nor name of reason to this purpose: For that of the Calculation of the months out of the holy Text, the chief ground on which it insists, [Page 47]and which being taken away it all become; meerly vain, is that of Zacharias being a High-Priest, and in his sacrificing in the holiest place, or Sanctum Sanctorum, or in the Oracle, as the names of it are varied. For a sacrifice in that place was only in that feast of Expiation, that is, the 10 of Tisri, or 7 month, and this only by the High-Priest; But it is most clear that Zacharis was no High-Priest, but only one of those 24 courses or stations of Priests which weekly served at the Temple. For Da­vid distinguished the 1 Paral. 24. posterity of Eleazar and Ithamar by Lots for the continuall and daily service and sacrifice into 24 courses, and of those courses every one had a week for attendance, so that after every 24 weeks the first came to attend again; as also it was in the 24 courses of the Levites, their weeks in attendance alwaies ending on the morning of the Sabbath. Hereof is plentifull testimony, both in holy 1 Paral. 9. comm. 25. Jos. [...]. l. 7. c. 11 & in vita sua, & 2 adv. Api­onem. writ and in the Jews Liturgies, besides Joseph, and the old Fathers, and it is fully and shortly expressed by Eucherius, Erant sortes 24 (saith he) & sacerdotum, & Levitarum & Janutorum, qui per totidem septimanas sibi ex ordine succe­derent, sabbato novâ turmâ intrante ad officimn, & post sabbatum, eâ quae proximâ septimativâ ministraverat domum redeunte. In these 24 courses the 8 is the family of Abia; of his 8 course was Zacharie a Priest, and was as Ad l. 4. Reg. c. 23. [Page 48]this time in the week of his course building incense in the Temple, but not in the Ho [...] lieft place; so is the Text of St. Luke; A [...] certain Priest [...], i. of the coursed of Abia; speaking of Zachary; and afterward, as soon as the ministrations were accomplish­ed, &c. what course or special dayes of ministration to be accomplished could here belong to the Priests of the Jewes? But as Matthias, and Flavius Josephus were 1 Macab. c. 2 comm. 1 Jos. in [...]. l. 12. c. 8 & in vita sua. Priests of the Sons, or course of Jeho [...]arid. (that is, of the 1 course) so was Zacharie of Abia, or of the 8. Neither was any High-Priest of that age bearing any such name: But he that was High-priest at the birth was Joazar, and his predecessors were Joseph Niceph. Patriarch. in chronol. &c.Matthias, Simon, &c. So that nothing is more certain then this, that Zacharie was not High-Priest; although anciently very great names were deceived, while they took him to be so, as St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostome, Anastasius Patriarch MS. apud Jos. Scalig. l. 6. p. 509. of Antioch, and others expresly: Zachary then being no High Priest, it plainly follows that their whose calcula­tion of Moneths here from the 10. of Tisri. (in which onely the High Priest entred into the Oracle) proves nothing at all, but suppo­ses meerly false grounds; and so no proof of the certainty of this day can be extracted out of that holy Story; and Zacharies Sacrifice, for ought appears there, might indifferent­ly be on any other day of the year. We o­mit [Page 49]here their supposition of an exact num­ber of dayes for the natural time of a Birth, which plainly can never be known; and in so clear a point thus much is too much then enough.

For that other reason or confirmation (as they would have it) out of Astrology, doubt­less it is most vain (that we may speak no worse of it) both in regard of the Art it self, and also of this application of it. For the Art it self though very many Authors are of it, yet there is none extant of any great an­tiquity; and of those which are, very few a­gree to any purpose among themselves. Pto­lomy, who is the ancientest of them, whose Volumes of it are publickly extant, and li­ved about CXL. years after our Saviour, va­ryed Tetrabib. l. 1. comm. 57, 58, &c. from what the Chaldeans before him had observed. The Arabians, as Haly, Albu­mazar, Messalath, the Author of Alcabitius, Zabel, and such more have another Doctrine from his. The Latins, as Manilius and Julius Firmicus, neither agree among themselves nor with others; to omit the numerous dif­ferences that are in the many Volums of it written in the middle and latter ages. What certainty thereof can there be in that Art whose Professors do make no other pretence then long continuance of constant observa­tion of signes, and things signified to justi­fie themselves; and yet in truth they have no testimony of such continuance of obser­vation? [Page 50]And I trust that no man will think that by rationall collection only (as in some other faculties) without a preceding and constant observation of many ages at least, it is possible to discover the nature of this or that Star, or of the various policious of the Heavens which every minute produces. Be­sides, without supposition of a certainty, not onely of the degrees, but in some particulars of the minutes also in which this or that Pla­net is, the Astrologer proceeds not; yet it is most known that the Astronomers, from whose noble search these suppositions are patiently taken by the Astrologers, are here­in even almost as differing among them­selves as the Astrologers in denoting of ef­fects; witnesse the difference of hours in Calculation by the Alphonsine. Tables from the Prutenique, made according to Coperni­cus, and of both of the restored motions of Tycho Brahe. And two of the Planets, Mars and Mercury, which bear no small rule in the precepts of Astrology, have hitherto scarce lesse conceal'd their motions and pla­ces in the Heavens, then Proteus would have done his true shape. Yet still what the Astro­nomer knows is uncertain, and ingeniously confesses to be so; the Astrologer for the most part slothfully believing, and so fixing himself on that belief, takes for his infallible ground, and so deceives, and is deceived in his aspects (which he resolves partile, when [Page 51]they may perhaps be platique, and platique when they may be partile) in his directions in the print of his Horoscope, and the other three of his Figure in his Fines, in his Ferda­riae, in his Conjunctions, and in what else stands upon such exactnesse of calculation. But this is no place to speak more in particular of that Art: Enough hath been said of the vani­ty of it by Mirandula, Alexander ab Angelis, and others that have purposely written Vo­lumes against it. But for the application of it to this of our Saviours Birth-day, it is both too groundlesse also in respect of the hour to which the Figure is erected, and withall im­pious in the rest of the suppositions. For the hour, it is erected to midnight following the 29. of December, for so we must understand that which Cardan designes the time by; Die­bus 6. (saith he) horis 12. ante radicem Astro­logorum, qui auni initium sumunt in Calendis Januariis: This falls upon 12. of the clock of the night following the 25. of December. But whence, I wonder, was Cardan so sure that this was the minute of the hour of the Birth? Some indeed that among the Ancients erro­neously placed it on the 6. of January, took the point of midnight to be the very minute, as we see out of those collections out of Ste­phanus, Gobarus, Tritheites in Photius. And in some part of the Asiatique Churches (especi­ally of Syria) the night of this day hath the name of the night of the Nativity, which [Page 52] Alfragan remembers. But that testimony of the Nativity cited out of an old Greek Ma­nuscript in St. Marks Library at Florence Ad Theolog. Muchamed. not. 12. by Widmonstadius, saies, it was hora diet sex­ta: Hesychius there also mentioned put in on hora diei septima; with which agrees that Chronicle of Alexandria, or the Fasti Editione Ra­dertana p. 532.Siculi [...], i. e. the 7. hour of the day. And though none of those are of credit e­nough to justifie the very hour; yet, it seems, they all meant it a Birth of the day, and not of the night, the houres of which they also note by the name of the hours of the night; neither can it be cleared in the holy Text, whether it were in the night or in the day. The Angel in the night saies to the Shepherds, For unto you is born this day, (that is, [...]) a Saviour, out of which words it were too much rashnesse to resolve whether the point of the Birth were in the night or in the day. If then Cardan, or his followers had been led by authority, they should have ra­ther erected the figure (if at all they erected it) to the 6. or 7. hour of the day, that is about 12. hours before their supposed time; and so the whole Scheme had been changed, and Aries had been the Horoscope instead of Libra, and Capricorn in mid-heaven for Cancer. Be­sides also, had the mid-night following the 25. day been the just time, those which in Jewry propagated the tradition to Posterity, should (by all probability) have deliver'd it [Page 53]to have been on the 26. day of the Julian De­cember, not on the 25. For by the use of the Jews, their naturall days Severus A [...] ­tiochenus apud Anastas. Sinast. quaest. 152. praeter litt. sa­cras. were accounted from Evening to Evening: So that the night following the 25. was part in their account of the 26. day, as also the Ecclesiasticall ac­count of days by the Cannon-Law, Quod die dist. 75. & ex­tra de feriis c. 1 Francolin de horis canonic. c. 43. & synod. in Trullo cani­go. 91. and that from ancient time. Neither can it for this reason alone be salved, unlesse advan­tage of a different account of days be taken from the old use in the State of Rome, where­unto Jewry was then subject: For in that State the naturall day was from midnight F. tit. de fe­riis l. 8. & Plutarch in probl. Rom. 84. to midnight; yet according to that too it stands but indifferent to which of the two days the Birth should be referred, being thus placed in the very point of midnight which parts them. Besides also, the Church of Rome have taken it to have been in the night­time preceding the 25. day, for they in the Vigil of the Feast celebrate the Shepheards watching, and in the morning they have a special Masse with reference Ordo Roman. sed & vide sis Hugo de S. Vi­ctore, erudit. Theol. l. 3. c. 5. to the Shep­heards visitation of our Saviour, at that time in the Manger: So that according to their supposition, that Scheme is not for the birth, but for a day after: In summe, the hour is eve­ry way uncertain, their proof therefore being thus shewed groundlesse in regard of the exact hour of the natural day (which is un­known) I hope there needs not much be said to justifie that the suppositions of dependence [Page 54]twixt any working or significations of the Stars, and that great and most sacred mystery of the Incarnation are most impious; although it were so that otherwise the traditions of that art had their place: As if either the common objects of sense, or uncertain col­lections of mans weak understanding, had so much to do with what but at the best we are able to apprehend by Faith onely. But Car­dan had herein example to follow in those who long before him had impiously referr'd the beginning of Christian Albumazar de conjunct. differ. 8. tract. 2 & apud Rog. Bacon in opere majori M.S. ad Clem. P.P. 4. Religion to a certain number of revolutions of Saturn. And therefore also he makes that Comet which in 1133. appeared in Aries under the Northern part of the Milky way, and was (as he sup­posed) of Martial, Jovial and Mercuriall quality, to denote the Schisms and Changes of Religion which soon after fell in this Kingdom under Henry 8. For to Aries (saies Ptolomy) is this Island subject as to a tutelar sign. And in this Nativity also, that Star which St. Matthew speaks of, Cardan takes for a signifying Comet, and places it in the Ascendent, because it seems he read in the Evangelist that the wise men saw it in the East. But there is good authority among the Ancients, & that by collection out of the ho­ly Text, that their seeing of it in the East was a continuall seeing of it D. August. in serm. 1. edit. Paris. edit. Lo­vaniens. tom. 10. p. 431. Ni­cephor. Calist. l. 1. c. 13. for two years time before the birth in the Countries, that lay East from Jewry: and doubtless also it could not be [Page 55]of any such heights as Comets are at the low­est supposed to be, neither could it have de­signed a particular House in Bethlem, if it had been so high as to have been carried either as Stars or Comets are in the Diurnall mo­tion of the Heavens. But enough hereof is already said against him by that great Ty­cho Brahe, with whose Progymnasm. de nova stella p. 316. words also we con­clude here, that Cardan and his followers, plus impiè quam justâ ratione, quomodocunque tandem excusent, hoc asseverant ut reliqua; pudet n. referra quae Astrologicis suis commentis hac de re inseruit, non adducam.

There was reason enough therefore why neither of these first kind of arguments (whereof the one is taken from a groundless calculation of Moneths in the holy Text, the other from the vanities of Astrology) were used among the proofs brought for the cer­tainty of this Birth-day: For he that endea­vours to establish a truth by arguments, should no less religiously abstain from false premisses, than he ought carefully to meet with the sharpest objections; lest while the conclusion is of it self true, and would clear­ly appear so if no other but true grounds were used to induce it; the credit of it be therefore still questioned, because in the foundations whereon it is so made to insist there is such use of apparent falshoods: At least, he rather seems too willing than truly able to prove, who so mixes truth, doubts [Page 56]and falshood in deducing his conclusion, that either some of his premisses first patiently re­ceived and credited by himself, and then of­fered in his arguments, have indeed either much more need of proof, but are less pro­ved by him than his conclusion; or else are every way false, and so utterly betray both the conclusion and his judgment. But we leave these, and go next (as is before purpo­sed) to the Objections of late time made against what is hitherto concluded touching the just day of this sacred birth.

SECT. VII. The chief Objections that are made against this dayes being the true time of the birth, with plain Answers to them.

THe Objections against this received o­pinion or tradition of the day made in later time are chiefly two; the one taken out of the enumeration of those circular courses, of the Priests divided into their 24. families, as is before expressed; and the other from the circumstances of the time of the year of this birth mentioned in holy Writ. For the first, divers Chronologers, af­ter they have according to their own fancies altered the years of account from our Savi­ours birth, (some making it one, some two, some three, some more years ancienter than [Page 57]the Dionysian Epocha received in the Church) then, that they may settle also the very day of the birth, or at least the time of the year wherein the day fell, they calculate by those weekly ministrations of the 24. courses of the Priests, to find out the week wherein the course of Abia (of which Zachary was) mini­stred in the Temple; for then would it fol­low, that the time of Johns conception, from which the conception, and birth of our Savi­our was accounted would nearly, if not ex­actly be found also. For the Text is, That after those dayes (of his ministration) his wife Elizabeth conceived, and hid her self five months, &c. For example, some here supposing in their chronology that the birth was two years before the vulgarly-received time, and in the MMMMDCCXI. year of the Julian period, thus work in calculation to find out the time of the year when our Saviour was born; they observe first that Antiochus pol­luted the Temple, and discontinued the dai­ly Sacrifices, and so by consequence the con­tinuance of these courses; then they say that Judas Macchabeus, upon the new Dedication of the Temple recontinued the daily Sacrifi­ces, and by a like consequence restored the courses, and in restoring of them began with the first, that is, the course of Jehoiarid, and this in the 25. day of the Hebrew Moneth Caslea, in the MMMMDXLIX. year of the Julian period, which agrees with the 24. of [Page 58] November of that year; this day fell on Munday, so that the continuance of the course of Ieheiarid was (according to the first constitution) till the morning of the Sabbath following, the next Sabbath before this new Dedication of the Temples falling so on the 22. of November: From this renewing of the courses they thus reckon; from the course of Ichoiarid, being the first, to that of Abia, being the eighth, must intercede 49. dayes; so that the course of Abia began on the 10. of Ianuary MMMMDL. year of the Iulian Pe­riod; having then before supposed that the year of the birth was the MMMMDCCXI. year of the Iulian Period, and that the con­ception of St. Iohn was in the year preceding, that is, in the year MMMMDCCX. they account over the whole cycles of those 24. courses that intercede from the course of A­bia in Ianuary of the year MMMMDL. and thence observe at what time the course of A­bia falls again in that MMMMDCCX. year of the Iulian Period; thus they find that in those 160. years 349. of those courses being past, the course of Abia being the last (in this computation, which begins at the next from it) of the 349. falls exactly to begin upon the 21. of Iuly (being the Sabbath) of the year MMMMDCCX. and so ends upon the 28. of the same July, that is, the morning of the Sabbath following: By which they conclude, that upon or immediately after the [Page 59]28. of the same July St. John was concei­ved; according to the Text, that tells us, Af­ter the dayes of Zacharies ministration, &c. This being granted, it would follow that the birth of our Saviour (according to the vulgar cal­culation from the time of St. Johns concep­tion) would be in October or November of the following year, that is, of the MMMMDCCXI. of the Iulian Period. O­thers by another liberty in this kind of num­bering, placing it in September, others other­wise, while they fetch their arguments out of the revolutions of their courses.

The other Objection, that is, from the circumstances of the time of the year of this birth, is out of the holy Text; where it is D. Luc. c. 2. comm. 8. written, that there were Shepheards in the same countrey abiding in the fields, [...], i. and keeping watch over their flock by night, and this at the time of the birth: This, say some, of all times fits not the midst of Win­ter, or December; but rather the Spring, Summer or Autumn, when the temper or heat of the night permit both sheep and shepherd to be in the fields.

But neither of these reasons have any weight against that received tradition of the 25. of December, First, for the 24. courses, it were something indeed if we exactly knew with which of the courses Iudas Macchabe­us began his Instauration of the Sacrifices; [Page 60]for supposing then that from this beginning and new dedication untill Zacharies ministra­tion no disturbance of the continuance of those courses had hapned, & also that had the just number of years fully agreed upon from the same dedication to our Saviours Birth, it were such an argument as could not in any way be exceeded, so that we also otherwise allow the common calculation of time that was used by the Fathers out of St. Luke, in regard only of the distance between the con­ception of St. Iohn, and the conception and Birth of our Saviour. For St. John was, as they commonly agree conceived presently upon the end of Zacharies Ministration, and this conception once fixed were a constant E­pocha (according to the vulgarly-receiv'd in­terpretation of St. Luke) from whence the time of the year at least of our Saviours Birth-night may be clearly collected. But on the other side, if we fail in the certainty of the beginning of the courses, who sees not that nothing can be concluded out of them to satisfie such a judgement as dares not rely up­on such conjecturall inferences without an o­pen clearnesse in their antecedents? Now for that matter, no old Stories have mention of the name of that particular course with which Iudas Macchabaeus began; but they Lib. Hasmo­naeorum c. 1.20 & 4.52. Epit. Jasonis c. 10.15. item Jo­seph Ben Gori­on l. 3: c. 13. onely shew the new dedication, in which it may be granted that there was an instaura­tion of the courses; but whether by begin­ning [Page 61]again (as they suppose) with that of Ie­heiarid, which is first in Davids distribution, or with that of Jedaiah, being the second or with any other of the 24. nothing is left to in­struct us; and we know that through Amio­chus his prophanation of the Temple, the courses were discontinued in the 143. year from Selucu [...] Nicanor, and that upon the 25. of Casleu, and that upon the same day five years after the sacrifices, and by conse­quence the courses were restored. But it is neither known what course was then in Mi­nistration, when Antiochus prophan'd the Temple (for we have no certain Epocha from which that can be deduced) or with what course the first week after the dedication was served: How then is it possible to reckon by the cycles of those courses, and so find the just time of this of Abia, or the eight? No more then it might be possible for one who knew only we had 12 moneths in the year, but withall were wholly ignorant when the first began, could yet tell at what season the 8. fell? And for that their conjecture of the beginning with the course of Jehoiarib, be­cause that was the first in Davids distributi­on, it is both in it self a very weak one and perhaps expresly against the strictness us'd a­mong the Iews in observation of those cour­ses. For besides that, no testimony at all as­sures us but that any other of the courses as well as that of Ichoiarib (according to the op­portunity [Page 62]of time, and fitnesse of persons) might be the first at that new dedication. We have it confessed by the greatest of them which this way impugne the receiv'd tradi­tion, that the certainty of the cycles of those 24. courses was so carefully kept so long as the sacrifices continued, that no one course might supply the room of another, against the order of succession in their cycles: For ex­ample, if that of Iehoiarib were for this week, then of necessity that of Iedaiah, being the second in the cycle, must be for the week fol­lowing, and that of Harim for the third week, that of Seorim for the fourth, and so the rest according to their succession in the cycle; and this insomuch, that if (for the purpose) that of Harim should have missed at the Temple at the third week, after the end of the course of Iedaiah, yet might not the service be supplyed either by the follow­ing course of Scorim, or by the continuance of that of Iedaiah; neither might any other minister in the Temple that week, nor might that of Scorim (being the next in the cycle) begin till the Sabbath following. And to this purpose also, Vide sis in­primis Jos. Scalig. Isag. canon. l. 3. p. 298. they bring that old Canon of the Iewes, [...] i. Every Priest and every Levite that puts himself into the ministrati­on of any of his fellows is punishable with death. And by this also they understand that in Io­sephus, [...]. where he saies that the daily sacri­fice [Page 63]failed upon the 17. day of the Macedoni­an moneth Panemus (which was the 17. day of their Tammuz, whereon the Iews keep a solemn Fast to this day and that this was [...], i. for want of those that should Minister, as if onely (as they understand it) the reason were, because the course of that week failed, and might not be by their Ca­nons supplyed either by the preceding course, or that which was the next week to succeed, nor by any other. This being thus confessed by them, they should otherwise have fearched in their way of proof out of those courses accounted from the new Dedi­cation under Iudas Macchabaeus: For upon this supposition, they should first have been sure what had been the last course at the time of Antiochus his prophanation; then should they have reckoned over the cycles from that course, and so have observed from which of the 24. the Ministration beginning on the Sabbuth, being the 23. of Casleu in the 148. year (of Seleucus, or Dilkarnon) would hap­pen; and thence might they have reckoned forward to search out that of Abia, in this question of Zacharies Ministration. For if there were such a carefull avoiding of sup­plying the course of one by another, then followes it plainly, that it was cer­tainly known at he time of Antiochus his pro­phanation, to which of the courses the Mi­nistration five years from that week would [Page 64]necessarily belong as it was then known what course was in the present ministration: For example, admit five years were com­plete from the end of the week of the pro­phanation and discontinuance of the courses under Antiochus to the end of the week of the Dedication; and suppose also that the first course, that is of Iehoiarid, had served in the Temple in the week of prophanation, then must it necessarily first follow, that the course of Iedaiah on the second, must have served in the week following, that is, the first week of those five years: Now in those five years (taking in about a day to make the numbers round in the example) we have CCLXI. weeks, and 261. weeks are ten com­plete cycles of those 24. courses, and 21. weeks of advantage to go on with to make an eleventh cycle: If then the strict observa­tion of keeping every course to his own week (which was as well foreseen alwayes by the revolution of those cycles as any im­moveable Feast, or the Dominical letter in our Ecclesiastick accounts is fore-known) were in such use, then clearly what course soever should have served in the sixth week of this eleventh cycle, which in our example falls to that of Iedaiah: Reckon with him in this eleventh cycle till the 21. course (as the weeks require) and then the course of Gamul is proper to the very week of the new Dedi­cation; and this way, if the course which [Page 65]served at the prophanation were known, it were easie to find which of them should by that tradition of the Iews have served at the Dedication: But when we neither know which of them served at the prophanation, nor which at the Dedication, what rashness is it to rely upon a bare conjecture; and that also such an one as is adverse to that received tradition of the exact keeping of the cycles; and is in substance confessed to be so by such as have used it? These things thus consider­ed, it follows, that they which insist upon this argument, taken from the beginning of the 24. courses in that of Iehoiarib under In­das Macchabeus, fail in their ground, and prove nothing at all against our received tra­dition: The weakness of their Objection al­so is therein increased, that their chronolo­gy in it is so uncertain, that they know not clearly in what year to fix the birth; some of them making it one, some two, some three or more years before the common E­pocha, and this also upon conjecture. But while they vary so much in the year, they have little reason to be confident (out of their own grounds only, wherein they re­fuse this so ancient tradition) that they can in their supposed years be sure of the very day of which no other old testimony in­structs them, then either what we have be­fore remembred, or that which shall present­ly be both delivered, and so cleared also [Page 66]that it may not have weight against what is already justified. And it might easily fall out, that the certain year of the birth might be forgotten, or at least not so remembred, or the memory of it not so preserved, as that later posterity could clearly have notice of it; and yet that the day of the moneth on which the Birth sell, might by the continu­ance of tradition (as it hath been) be clearly known. The anniversary celebration gave the day certain to posterity, which could not thence find any thing to rectifie them in the exactnesse of the year, as we see also in an example of the Roman States. They clearly knew that the birth of Servius Tullius, who was the first that was King there a­gainst the will of the common people, first fell upon the Nores of some moneth, but they Macrobius, l. 1. Saturnal. c. 13. knew not at all of what moneth, nor in what year, for ought appears: And there­fore they avoided publick meetings in the City upon the Nones of every moneth through the year, that so they might be sure to avoid them (as supposed most unlucky to the State) anniversarily upon his birth­day. This anniversary avoiding publick meetings, or Fairs, on the Nones, continued the certainty of his being born on the Nones of some moneth, though the moneth were unknown; and so did the anniversary cele­bration continue from the Disciples to the day of the moneth, though perbaps the year [Page 67]be not clearly enough certain. And there was other reason also why the certainty of the year might be unknown: For there is nothing that preserves such a certainty, but either such expresse testimonie of Authors as cannot be questioned, or else a continuance of vulgar supputation of time from, or very near from the time of the Birth it self. But we have herein had neither of these. For the first, that is, the testimony of old Authors, they vary in the years of Augustus and of the Consuls, which are the Characters by which they design it; and besides, they are not of such antiquity as that we can clearly rely up­on them; and for that of the vulgar supputa­tion of time, the common account either in Instruments, Letters, Receipts, or the like; was not all made by the years of our Lord, till between D. and DC. after the Birth; that is, after the time that Dionysius made his cycle of DXXXII. by multiplication of the cycle of the Sun into the Golden number, and from that time brought Beda de Temp. rat. c. 45. in (according to his own suppositions) the supputation of time by the years of our Lord. For before that age the Christians use was, either to note times by the Consuls of the year, as the ancient course of Rome was; and as we see in old General Councils, and in Receipts of the Emperours, in the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian; whence also Constantine ordained it for a C. Theodos. tit. de constit. prim. l. 1. si qud. Law; that if any Edicts or Constitu­tions [Page 68]of the Emperours should be found fine die & Consule, they should be held of no au­thority; or else by that Aera (commonly called Aera Hispanica) which began under Augustus 38. years before the Dionysian Epo­cha of our Saviour, and was chiefly used in Spain; as we see both in the Titles of the old Councils of Sivil, Bracara and Toledo, and in the Inscriptions of that Country; but also it was in use in Africk and France, as we may collect by most of the Titles of the Councils of Carthage, of Arles, and Valence; unless we suppose that Isidore (from whose Volumes of Councils we have these) being a Spariard, used the supputation by that Aera in the Ti­tles, without warrant of the original Copies. But we have in the very Acts of the fourth Council of Arles use of this Aera; which was also in the accounts of time at Rome, as is seen in the Epistles of Pope Leo subscribed with the years of it. Others denoted the years by an account from some regaining of their freedom; as those of Antiochia did from Epocha 48. years before our Saviour, which is the [...], so frequently spoken of in Evagrius his Church­story; or from that of Seleucus or Dhilkarnun, beginning after Alexanders death. Others from the year of the Creation as the Greek Church: others from a time that fell 283. years after our Saviour (as those of Aegypt, and the adjoyning Churches) that is, from [Page 69] Dioclesians persecution; which in Aegypt and Aethiopia is to this day Jos. Scalig. de emendat. Temp. p. 465, & 629. retained; and by the Christians that use Arabique cal­led [...] Tarick Alshehu­da, The Epocha of the Martyrs; and among the Aethiopians [...]: a­math Michrath, i. The year of Grace. So was also that of Spain in common use there, till somewhat above 300. years since it was by special constitution abrogated, and the year of our Lord made the beginning of the account of time; and this alteration is by the Spanish Lawyers referred to Iohn the first King of Castile. Duravit (Aera) usque ad tempora Iohannis primi (saith ad l. 52. par­tit. 3. tit. 18. de las escrituras. Lopez) qui jussit apponi annos Nativitatis Domini. So also writes Aze­vedo, ad l. 3. Reco­pil. l. 2. tit. 1. de las leges. so others of them; whence it appears, that anciently, till long after our Saviour, no account was vulgarly made by the years of his birth in which the true year might be by a continuall tradition retain'd: and also, that although about the time of Iustinian (that is, when Dionysius began his cycle) the course of reckoning from the Birth was brought into use, yet it was received but in few parts of Christendom, & that principally within Ita­ly, in the instruments, it seems, of the Court of Rome. And it is observable here also, that with us in England however our ancientest Stories of the time since Christianity, both in Saxon [Page 70]and Latine, are deduced by distinction made out of the years of our Saviour, and that ac­cording to the Court of Rome; our Church-proceedings and instruments belonging to that jurisdiction they have anciently had, and still retain an account by those years; yet the characters of time, both in the plead­ings and instruments of the secular jurisdicti­on, hath been ever and is chiefly by the years only of our Sovereigns, Kings or Queens; so are our Records distinguished, of Pleas, Pa­tents, Parlaments, and the like; so are the instruments of conveyance, and what else is of that nature: In which, doubtless, the an­cient course of computation is so retained, that it shews us that none other hath been ever proper to the practice of our secular ju­risidiction. And although indeed at this day clearly it be not of exception or erroneous, if the times in a pleading or instrument be di­stinguished onely by the year of our Lord, yet anciently it was much stood upon under 23 Ed 3. fol. 21 b. 24 Ed. 3. fol. 51 a. & 53 b. Edward the Third, when in a Writ of An­nuity brought by the Prior of St. Trinity of London against an Abbot, the Prior declared upon a composition bearing date in such a year of the Lord, and the Defendants Coun­sel took exceptions to it, supposing that none should declare at the Common Law of the year of our Lord, but of the King; but upon deliberation it was resolved good, for this reason onely, because the composition [Page 71]had onely the date of the Lord; as if proper­ly and necessarily otherwise it should have been of the year of the King: And so, doubt­less, did they think who in the times of King Henry the Third, and King Iohn, not onely carefully used the years of the King onely, as at this day; but also in Recogni­sances entred Archia. de temp. reg. Joh. & Hen. 3. for payment of money a year or two after the entry, they denoted the time of payment by the year of the King, that should happen onely if he reigned so long; as in the 41. of Henry the Third the Recognisance should bind the Recognisor to pay money in 42. or 43. of his Reign. All which further consirms, that the computati­on of time by the years of our Lord, even after such time as it came at all to be in use, hath not been near so vulgarly received as the anniversary celebration of the day of the birth, under the name of the old civil Sol­stice or the 25. of December; and therefore it may easily be, that the very year may be uncertain for want of such a continuance of tradition, which might have come to us from the time of the birth, if from thence a com­putation received at first in the Church had continued it. But the yearly celebration or memory continued even from the eldest of Christian time, hath taught us the exact day of the Moneth; therefore we have reason e­nough still to resolve on it.

But also for farther search into what may [Page 72]at all afford us any [...]ertainty of the [...]o [...]se that Ministred at the time of St. Jol [...] Co [...] ­ception; if we first believe the perpetual continuance of them according to the succes­sion in their cycles, and then also the testi­mony of an old Jew touching the course that serv'd at the second destruction of the Tem­ple under Vespasian, shall so have another time then hath been yet mentioned for the course of Abia in the conception of St. John, and by consequence another Birth-day of our Saviour, if we keep still the vulgar supputa­tion of time collected out of St. Luke. That Jew is Rabbi Jose, whose words in the Seder Olam Edit. Basil. p. 125.Rabba are these; when the Temple was first destroyed, it was Evening of the Sab­bath, and the end also of the Sabbatical year, [...], that is, and the weekly course was that of Jehoiarib, and it was day of Ab; and so it was also in the time of the se­cond destruction. If we find the course of Jehoiarib fixed at the second destruction un­der Vespasian, that is, in the 70. year of the vulgar account from the birth, and that a­bout the beginning of August, to which the 9. day of Ab answers: From hence there­fore reckon by the cycles backwards into the year that precedes the Julian year, in which our Saviours birth is commonly fixed, and so between the beginning of this August in the year of the destruction, and the begin­ning [Page 73]of August preceding the vulgarly sup­posed time of the conception of St. John, will intercede [...]1. complete years, that is, 154. cycles of those courses of 24. and 9. courses over; therefore plainly in that year the course of Ichoiarth is about the 9. week from the be­ginning of August, that is, in the end of Sep­tember; and so it follows, that the end of the course of Abia, being the 8. fell in the end of November, or 8. weeks later than in the old calculation, which placed it in the end of September: And the birth of St. Iohn (as it is now celebrated) would thus have been in the 7. Moneth from the conception, which in nature were reasonable enough; but the ho­ly D. L [...]c: c. 1. com. 36. & 56. Text well endures the common and most ancient interpretation, which denotes it to be in the 9. at least. And were this autho­rity of Rabbi Iose to be insisted on, and the perpetual succession in the cycles of those courses in this age preceding the destruction to be resolved on, there were cause enough here to seek for another exposition of the time of the birth out of the words of the ho­ly Text▪ For the common account from Zacharies Ministration will so fall wholly, unless we change the vulgarly-received year of our Saviours birth, and (as some do) place three or four years back more than the Dio­nysian account doth; for so will the course of Abia be brought into September: and if we make it fall four years sooner (as Susligd [Page 74]doth) that course with and also in the end of Septemb. according to the common calculation herein used by the Fathers: But I will avoid here the making of such uncertainties of thronology of years to be arguments to justi­ste what is otherwise certain enough in the day. Neither can we rely here, either upon the perpetual succession of the course, or on the testimony of that Rabbi; for the con­stant continuance of the courses in their suc­cession, there is great reason in this time af­ter Augustus to doubt of it, in regard both of the Jews doing frequently otherwise than their Canons bind them, as also in regard of some meer necessity which might occasion some change in the succession, when they were in those later dayes subject to the State of Rome. And for that of the course of Ie­hoiarib then ministring, there is not credit enough in the Author to make us believe him: For, besides that while he tels us so, he is mistaken in the true day of the second destruction of the Temple, which fell on the 10. of Lous or August, in that Joseph [...]. year, not on the 4. which answers to his 9. of Ab; the Sacrifices, and so the courses of the Priests ceased about three weeks before, that is, on the 17 day of the Moneth Tamuz, and this for the want of Priests, as Iosephus, who knew it of himself, expresly hath written: But he tels us not a word of what course then ministred, no more doth Abraham Ben Da­vid [Page 75]in his Cabala, or he that extracted the Se­der Olam Zuta out of the Seder Olam Rabba, where this is reported from Rabbi Iose; al­though both these Authors speak most parti­cularly of the second destruction of the Tem­ple, but they abstain from this of the course then in service, as from what had been deli­vered without warrant by Rabbi Iose, who indeed had learned from an old groundless tradition, that at the first destruction under Nebuchadnezzar, the course of Iohoiarib ser­ved in the Temple, and that this second de­struction was upon the same day of the same Moneth which the first was on; and because he would have all in both destructions alike, he added also, that the course of Iehoiarib ser­ved now at the second destruction, when in­deed no service at all was in the Temple, and that the Sacrifices and Ministration were en­ded: So before the destruction other testi­mony is in the Iews Liturgy, which con­firms that of Iosephus to be infallible; on the Fast of their seventeenth of Tamuz they sing [...] i. Because in this day the continual Sacrifice cea­sed, this day the continual Sacrifice was taken a­way: If the Sacrifices then, and the courses with them (for the one of them is not with­out the other) ceased on the 17. day of Ta­muz, what credit is to be given to him that tels us what course ministred in the Sacrifices three weeks after? which being so cleared, [Page 76]there is nothing remaining in the cycles of those courses that can impugne the received tradition of this birth-day.

And for that other argument of the Shep­herds watching in the night, what makes that against this of December? as if the shep­herds might not properly be in the fields watching their sheep in the night at the midst of Winter, especially in so warm and con­tinually temperate a Climate: For, although in Italy the precepts of Husbandry were, that in the Winter their sheep should be kept in Coats Virgil. Georg. 3. & vide Co­lumel. l. 7. c. 4. Varre. l. 2. c. 2. & Pallad. in Novemb. rather than in Fields, yet they had their Winter-feedings abroad also; and the Climate of Bethlehem is of less latitude by ten degrees than that of Rome, and is also by so much the more temperate alwayes; and e­ven in our Climate, which is much colder than either of them, we have watching of sheep, feeding, or remaining in the fields, at this time of the year. The rest objected out of the circumstances of time, as that the birth of the Redeemer of all men should be on that day on which the creation of the first man was, that is, as they without ground sup­pose, on the 25. of March, and such like, are far more vain, and not worthy of menti­on. These things being at length cleared, we need not, I trust, be at all moved by the opposition of those learned men, Beroald, Paulus de Midleburgo, Suslyga, Ioseph Scali­ger, Kepler, (although he stands fot the same [Page 77]time of the year, but relies on the tradition of the day) Wolfius, Hospinian, Lidiat, Cal­visius, Casaubon, and the rest that have both made it a question, and shewed also their o­pinions against it.

SECT. VIII. Some other opinions among the ancients touch­ing it, and how some of them may agree with what we have received, and the rest are of no weight against it; and there more especially of the ancient confusion of this Feast with that of the Epiphany.

BUt we have hitherto omitted the diffe­rent opinions among the ancients, touch­ing the day of this Birth; which shall be therefore next collected, and then also it shall be shewed, that they bear no weight a­gainst what is before concluded. Those opi­nions (as they are delivered) are various, and chiefly five. The first is of them who taught it to be on the 25. day of the Aegyptian Moneth Pachon, which is the 20. of May in the first Aegyptian year. For after that the Egyptian Moneth Thoth was fixed in the end of August, and so the rest of the following Moneths (30. days being allowed to a Moneth, which with the five [...] make up the whole common year) both the Fathers, and the most of prophane writers [Page 78]commonly used the Egyptian Moneths as fixed; and not as they are wandring in the years of Nabonassar in the Almagest, this of the 25. of Pachon is delivered in Clemens A­lexandrinus, that lived some eighty years af­ter the Stremat. 1. Apostles. [...] (saith he) [...]. There are some also that more curiously de­note, not only the year, but the very day also of the Birth of our Saviour; which they say was on the 25. of Pachon in the 28. year of Augustus, where the account is not by the common years of Augustus deduced from the death of Julius Caesar, but by the years that were past from the Vide sis Cen­sorin. de die Natali c. 21. taking of Alexan­dria, and the death of Anthony. The second (that seems to differ here) is in the Chroni­cle (of Edit. Rader. p. 533. Alexandria, where it is delivered that the birth was on the 25 day of the E­gyptian Moneth Choiac, which is the 21. of the Iulian December. The third is of those which supposed the day to have been Clem. Alex. Stremat. 1. on the 24. or 25. of Pharmathi, (that is, the Moneth preceding Pachon) which agrees with the 19. or 20. of April: And with this may be reckoned the 4. which is found in Mahomet, that saies it was upon the 23. of the Arabique Moneth Rumadhau, but in what year he designes not. But how­ever in the Hagaren or Arabian year, this [Page 79]cannot come near our December, for accor­ding to that year of the Moneth Ramadhau falls in Iune and Iuly, about the time of our Saviours birth, Vigesimo tertio die Ramadhan (are the words in the Translation of a most impious Book of his long since done by Her­mannus) natus est Christus filius Mariae, ora­tiones Dei super eum, For the Mahumedans celebrate our Saviour as a great Prophet, and his Birth, of the Virgin Mary Alcor. Azoar. 5. Cantacuzon [...]. & 4. & Po­stel. de Orbis concord. l. 1. c. 3 & l. 2. c. 2. ad cap. Eltur. also is re­lated in their Alcoran; although with much difference from the holy Story, as most o­ther things are which occurre there with re­ference to either of the Testaments. A fifth is of those who thought the day to be the 11 of the Egyptian Moneth Tybi, that is, the 6. of our Ianuary, on which we celebrate the Epiphany: So Epiphanius, l. 2. tom. 1. haeres. 51. ita etiam ad extr. l. 3. [...]. The Birth-day (of our Saviour) that is, the Epiphaby fell upon the 6. day of Ianuary, being the 11. of the Egyptian Moneth Tybi; which opinion is remembred by Stephanus Gobarus Apud Phot. cod. 232.Tritheithes, where yet the fifth of Ia­nuary is in the stead of the 6. as also in some places of some Editions of Epiphanius: But Stephanus plainly meant the 6. day, for he in­terprets it by the 8. Ides of Ianuary, which is the 6. day; and herewith agrees the com­mon opinion of the ancient Church of Egypt, which kept the Feast of the Birth on the 6. [Page 80]of Ianuary, so confounding it with the Feast of his Baptism: Callian Collat. 10. c. [...] & vid [...] sis O­rig. homil. de divers. 8. relates so of him; In­trae Egypti regionem mos iste antiquâ traditione servatur, ut peracto Epiphaniorum die, quem provinciae illius sacerdotes, vel Dominici Bap­tismi, vel secundum carnem Nativitatis esse defi­niunt; & idcircò utriusque Sacramenti solenni­tatem, non bifariam, ut in occiduis provinciis, sed sub unâ diei hujus festivitate concelebrant, &c. And other D. Hier [...]. ad Ezethiel l. 1: D. Chrys. tom. 2: edit. Erasmianâ p. 119: testimonies there are of this ob­servation of the Feast on the 6. day with the Epiphany. But there is none of these opi­nions but that may be either so interpreted, that they may stand with what is before delivered of the 25. of December, or else so shewed to insist upon false, or no grounds, that they are no authority at all against it. For the first, which casts it on the 25. of Pa­chan, and is very ancient; it may be well interpreted to agree with this of December, for in consideration of it we must, first, re­member that according to the old Iews, there was among the Fathers of the Primi­tive times a reckoning of their Moneths as well by the order of enumeration as by proper names; so that September and Octo­ber were known as well by the names of the 7. and 8. Moneths (as also their names de­note) as by their names themselves being accounted from March, which was the first. But the Greek Fathers frequently took A­pril, instead of March, for the first Moneth of [Page 81]the year, as we see expresly in St. In Panegyr. [...]. Chryso­stom, in Anastasius MS. apud Scal. deemend. p. 509.Patriarch of Antioch, in those Constitutions Lib. [...]. 4 Cedren. p. 143 &c. attributed to the Apo­stles in Homilia 5. Macarius Apud Photi­um cod. 232.Stephanus, Gobarus, and in other testimonies of the ancients, where the Iulian April is made the first, as the Hebrew Moneth Nisan was; and therefore also they had the very day of this Birth known by the name of the 25. day of the 9. Moneth De­cember, being the 9. from April; and this kind of noting it is like enough to have de­ceived those which said it was on the 25. of Pachon; for Pachon is the 9. Moneth rec­koned from Thoth, being the first among the Egyptians, as December is, being accounted from April; so that when the tradition was delivered in those terms of the 9. Moneth, no desighation being of the account of the Moneths, nor of what Moneths were meant, it was perhaps rashly received by some, and instead of the 25. of the 9. Moneth in the Roman year (account to that account of the Fathers) it was apprehended to be, and so by miltaking placed on the 25. of the 9. of the Egyptian year; neither is this conjecture for intetpretation of the originall of that mi­staking so new, but the others, and those which are very learned and Herword & Replerus. Vide Repler. de anno natali c. 15. judicious, have also used it; and by a like or easier way may the second which is before related be under­stood: For though the 25. of Choiac fall up­on the 21. of December, taken strictly accor­ding [Page 82]to the Egyptian account from the first of Thoth, being the 29. of August; yet in regard that all December, except the last five days, falls within Choiac, and so the very Birth-day in the same Moneth, that is, on the 29. of Choiac (which truly answers to the 25. of December) it is reason enough that we suppose that Choiac was taken there for December it self, so that the 25 of the one and the other-went with the Author for the same day: And such examples are fre­quent, as applying of Hebrew, Arabique, Greek and Egyptian Moneths to the Roman; and therefore also the Translator of that Chronicle hath well expressed it (pref [...] ­ [...]ing upon this reason) by the 25. of De­cember; For the third and fourth neither of them having any ground at all, are as easily and as reasonably denyed as affirmed, nothing is brought to justifie them, there­fore as little will serve to confute them; especially that of Mahome [...] can have little weight here, when as he is so false in the whole relation of the Birth of our Saviour, in his Alcoran, that he makes the Virgin Ma­ry to be the same with Marre, or M [...]riam Az [...]r. 5. & 29. the Sister of Aharon; and talks of Zach [...] ­ries being three days onely dumb; and of our Saviours precepts given as soon as he was born, touching Prayers and Al [...]es (as Robert Reading, that anciently translated the Alcoran, turnes it; but the word be­ing [Page 83] [...] Zachawath, frequent­ly occurring in the Alcoran for Alms or good works, is in that place by Postellus a De O bis con­cordiâ l. 2. c. 2. translated Tithes; it being indeed in the Arabique Testament Fpist; ad E­bud. c. 7. comm. 4. expresly used for first fruits also) with other impudent falshoods like the rest which are every where in that absurd Volume of his Law; and there also the season of the year is noted by a tale of the Blessed Virgins having dates pre­sently upon the Birth (which as the Mu­sulmans say) Postellus de Orbis concer­diâ l. 2. c. 2. is yet growing. But for the fifth opinion, which is from confounding of the Feasts of the Epiphany with this of the Birth, (a custom also retained in the latter ages Catholicus Armen an legat. ad Armenios. in the Churches of Armenia) and made by Stephanus, Gobarus, Treitheites in his Contrarieties of ancient opinions of the Church, to be the main and as the one­ly one that crosses that of the 25. of De­cember; however it be so often taken clear in Epiphanius, and rashly also affirmed by the Generall or Patriarch of the Armeni­ans, that all Churches had observed it so even from the Apostles: yet doubtlesse there is great reason that we should think that this confusion began both without any sufficient ground, and was also bred by some such mistakings as may be observed to have been in their consideration, both of [Page 84]the name and time of the Feast of the Epi­phany. For their grounds (besides what is in mistaking the name and circumstances of the time of this Feast) there appears none that hath any colour of power of truth a­mong those which have so noted it: But for the name first of the Epiphany, the Feast being anciently observed for the Vide sis A [...]m. Marcel­ [...]. l. 21. in [...]stantio & [...]tano. & [...] homil. de [...] 8. Baptism of our Saviour in January as at this day; and that in the Eastern Churches, before such time as they had learned of the Western the true day of the Birth, they first thought that the tradition of the Feast under the name of [...], or [...], might well denote the Birth it self, and so teach them that on this very day our Sa­viour was born; for the Birth being of it self the first apparition of the Son of God in the Flesh, and Epiphania denoting in the language of the then both past and present ages the apparition of a Deity (as is especially noted also by the most learned Casaubon) they took it at length here to de­note also the first apparition of our Savi­out to the World, and that in the Feast-day kept on the 6. of January; and so con­concluded that this was the Birth-day. Now for the circumstance of the time of the Epiphany, this confusion of the Feasts doubtlesse was much confirmed to them by an interpretation of a passage of Saint Luke, where the Baptism of our Savi­our [Page 85](which is celebrated in the Epiphany, though Epiphanius place that also upon ano­ther day in November) is delivered to have been, when he was [...], i. beginning to be about 30. years of age; which words are interpre­ted by some as if he had been of 30. com­plete, and beginning to be 31. on that day, which must so of necessity be on his birth-day: And so this way also one and the same day became sacred among them to the Baptism and the Birth. But all this and what other mistakings the Greek Church herein had was embraced by the most of them, but till they were better informed from the Western Church: and the Generall of the Armenians In leg [...] ad Armen [...]n. expresly tells Theorianus (who objects to him that Sermon of Saint Chysostom touching it) that they knew not yet, nor had not heard of any Sermon of St. Chrysostoms to this pur­pose: So that want of instruction onely continued this errour among them, which hath been long since reformed in the Syri­an, Egyptian, and Ethiopian Churches, as well as in the Greek; as is before shewed in their agreement with us in the celebration of this Birth: But for those collections out of the name of the Epiphany, and circum­stances of time of the Baptism, it will soon appear that they justifie nothing here against the received tradition. And first [Page 86]for that of the name of Epiphania, deno­ting the apparition of a Deity, it is other­wise enough satisfied; and there was no need at all to have it restrained to the no­ting of the Birth-day: For though the work [...] be used in the holy Epist. 2. ad Timoth. c. 1. comm. 10. Text, both for the first appearing of our Savi­our, or his Incarnation, as also for his coming at the Panegyr. [...] tom. 5. edit. Savil. p. 525. last day; yet in the first institution of this Feast of the Epiphany, it was used (I suppose) for neither, but for that publick apparition or Manifestation (by which the Latin Fathers denote Epi­phania) of him to the World at his Bap­tism, in regard whereof he was before but privately known. So expresly Saint Chrysostom, whose authority is here beyond exception; [...], saith he, [...]. Why then is it called Epiphanie? (in regard, as he before had said, it is not the celebration of the Birth-day, but of the day of the Baptism;) because (saith he) when he was born, he was not then ma­nifested to all men, but when he was bap­tized; for till then he was unknown to the multitude: and to this purpose also he brings that of Saint John, I baptize with water, but there standeth one among you whom ye know not, speaking of our Saviour and the same E­vangelist [Page 87]expresly; I knew him not, but [...], i. That he might be manifested to Israel; therefore I came bap­tizing with water. So Saint Jerom tells In commen [...]. ad Ezechiel. l. 1. us what the name of Epiphany denotes; Signi­ficat (saith he) baptisma in quo aperti sunt Christo Coeli, & Epiphaniorum dies hucusque venerabilis est, non, ut quidem putant, nata­lis in carne, tunc enim absconditus est & non apparuit. Others of the Fathers have as much.

Hereto may be added the consent of po­sterity, after such time as the true day of the birth was discovered to them in the Eastern Church; and in a Poem (as they call it) u­sed in the Service of the Epiphany in the Greek Church, made by Euchologium p. 93 b. Sophronius Patri­arch of Jerusalem, an express passage is ful­ly to this purpose; [...]. i. We glorifie thee that art with­out Father of a Mother, and without Mother of a Father; and in a preceding Feast (of the Nativity) we knew thee an Infant, but in this present Feast (of the Epiphany) we see thee at full growth, appearing to be our most perfect God. According whereto also St. Augustine Serm. in E [...]i­phan. & [...] diversis 64. hath express words, and that often: For howe­ver they had anciently in the Greek Church confounded the Feasts of the Baptism, or [Page 88] Epiphany, and the Nativity; yet, being admonished from the Western Church, they confessed their error in this, that they se­ver'd the commemoration of the Baptism from this of the Birth, and placed the Birth on his proper day in December; and yet they retained still for the Baptism the name of Epiphania, which also is sometimes Vide sis The­onhil. Alexand. in edicto tom. bibl. Patrum edit. Paris. p. 161. [...], as in the Menology, and in the Aposto­loevangela of the Greek Church, [...], i.e. On the sixth of the same moneth the holy Theopha­nia of our Lord Jesus Christ; for then was the first publick apparition of his Godhead. In the Church of Egypt also this day is seve­rally kept by the Comput. El­cophi apud Sca­lig. de emendat. l. 7. p. 661. name of [...] Alchamim, i. the Feast of Washing or Ba­thing; Quod Ecclesia vetus Aegyptiaca bap­tismum eo dic iteraret, sayes Ioseph Scaliger; though perhaps that name may have refe­rence to that old custom used in the Church, of providing water in the night of that day for the holy uses of the whole year follow­ing; which St. Chrysostom [...]. edit. Savil. p. 524. tom 5. remembers, and is yet retained in the Greek Church (as it appears by their Euchologium or Common-Prayer-Book) as also in the Syriack Church, which hath this Feast severed (as ours here) from the Birth, and keeps it iridimonstad. in subaexis Tast. Syriaco. under the [Page 89]name of [...] Ilhada di­nohora, i. [...], (as Nazianzen calls it) or the Feast of Lights; and [...] Didinacha, i. e. Of Light ap­pearing in the East; according where­to also they, as others, use in this Feast great store of Lights; which hath reference to the very word Epiphania doubtless, which denotes Enlightning also, or Illumination in the Vulgar Translation of the New Te­stament; and both in that sense, as also in the other of Apparition or Manifestation, it may verbally besides signifie the apparition of the Star to the Wise men:

As Prudentius of it: and Sedulius of the Wise men,

Both in their Hymnes made proper to this of the Epiphany.

So that the name of the Epiphany is from the ancient and primitive times fully satis­fied, either in that of the Baptism, or in the apparition of the Star: Whence also the [Page 90] Dutch, French, Italian and Spaniard note it by The day of the three Kings, for so those wise men are commonly reputed to have been; and also the Feast it self hath been long since, after the truth learned from the Western Church, observed apart by it self, as having in the first observation of it no community with this of the Birth-day; and that among those which before had con­founded them. It follows then, that even by their own confession that had been the Authors of this confusion, they had been de­ceived in application of the name of Epipha­ny to the birth of our Saviour: and for that collection of time out of the testimony of St. Luke, it is clear that no certainty of the day can be thence extracted; the word [...], i. as it were about, expresly excludes such certainty: So St. Iohn, [...], i. it was about the tenth hour, which clearly de­notes not the beginning or end of the hour; neither needs there farther proof of the weakness of that collection.

At length to conclude therefore, the Au­thorities of the Ancients, and the consent of Christian Churches for this Birth-day, as it is now anniversarily kept, being as before declared, the mistaken reasons being reje­cted (lest their falshoods might prejudice the clearness of the Truth) the Objections of la­ter time being answered, and the different Opinions of the Ancients touching it being [Page]either groundless, or not in truth opposing it; it rests that we resolve on it, as upon as certain and clear a Truth of Tradition, as by rational inference, by express testimo­ny of the Ancients, by common and conti­nual practice of severall Churches, and by accurate inquiry, may be discovered.