-The antiquity of such prefaces may be estimated from the fact that they are mentioned and enjoined by the 103d canon of the African code, which code was formed of the decisions of many councils prior to the date of 418. The decay of devotion let fall the apostol- ical and primitive use of daily and weekly communions, and the people in the later ages did not receive but at the greater festivals; upon which custom there were. added to the general preface mentioned before some special prefaces relating to the peculiar mercy of that feast on which they did communicate, the Church think- ing it fit that, since every festival was instituted to re- member some great mercy, therefore they who received on such a day. besides the general prai-es offered for all God's mercies, should at the Lord's table make a special memorial of the mercy proper to that festival; and this seemed so rational to our reformers that they have re- tained those proper prefaces which relate to Christmas,
Easter, Ascension-day, Whit-Sunday, and Trinity-Sun- day, so as to praise God for the mercies of Christ's birth, resurrection, and ascension, lor the sending of the Holy Ghost, and for the true faith of the holy Trinity, (hi the greater festivals there are proper prefaces appointed, which are also to be repeated, in case there be a com- munion, for seven days after the festivals themselves (excepting that for Whit-Sunday, which is to be r< peal- ed only six days after, because Trinity-Sunday, which i- t he bi \ eiith. hath a preface peculiar to it-, ll | ; to the end that the mercies may be the belter remembered by often repetition, and also that all the people (who in most places cannot communicate all in one day) may have other opportunities, within those eight days, to join in praising God for such great blessings." "The reason." says bishop Sparrow, "of the Church's length* ening out these high feasts tor several days is plain;
the subject-mailer ol' them is of so high a nature, and so nearly concerns our salvation, that one day would
be too little to meditate upon them, and praise God
lor I hem as w e ought. A bodibj d< li\ (lance may ju-l- ly require one day of thanksgiving and joy: but the deliverance of the soul by the blessings commemorated
on tllOSI lime- de-c i\ es a much longer lime ol praise
and acknowledgment. Since, therefore, it would be in- jurious to Christians to have their joy and thankful- ness tor such mercies confined to one day. the Church, upon the limes when these unspeakable blessings were wrou-ht for us, invites us, by her most seasonable com- mands and counsels, lo tiil our hearts with joy and thankfulness, ami let them overflow eight days togeth- er." "The reason of their being fixed lo eight days,"
says Wheatley (Book of Common Prayer i,"is taken
PREHISTORIC MAN
from the practice of the Jews, who by God's appoint- ment observed their greater festivals, some of them for seven, and one— namely, the Feast of Tabernacles— for eight days. And therefore the primitive Church, think- ing that the observation of Christian festivals (of which the Jewish feasts were only types and shadows) ought not to come short of them, lengthened out their higher feasts to eight days."
These prefaces are very ancient, though there were some of them as they stood in the Latin service of later date. For as there are ten in that service, whereof the last, concerning the Virgin Mary, was added by pope Urban (1095)," so it follows that the rest must be of a more remote antiquity. The Church of Rome holds that they were composed by Gelasius in memory of Christ's singing a hymn with his disciples after the Last Supper, the Jews at their Paschal supper singing seven Psalms (Psa. cxiii-cxix). Pope Sixtus added to them the Ter Sanctus. Pope Victor calls them capitula. From the 6th to the 11th century the Western Church had prefaces for every festival, but after that date they were reduced to nine, and are enumerated by pope Pela- gius and Alexander as Easter, the Ascension. Pentecost, Christmas, the Apparition of Christ (Epiphany), the Apostles, Holy Trinity, Cross, and Quadragesima. The eucharist of Paul (1 Cor. xiv, 16) and St. Justin is prob- ably the germ of the Western preface and the long thanksgiving prayer corresponding to it in the Greek Church. The Greeks, by the way, use only one pref- ace. The Church of England has retained five, and those upon the principal festivals of the year, which re- late only to the Persons of the Trinity, and not to any saint. " In this • preface' a distinction is made between ceremonies which were introduced with a good design, and in process of time abused, and those which had a corrupt origin, and were at the beginning vain and in- significant. The last kind the Reformers entirely re- jected, but the first were still used for decency and edi- fication. Some well-disposed Christians were so attached to ancient forms that they would, on no account, suffer the least deviation from them; others were fond of in- novation in everything. Between these extremes a middle way had been carefully observed by the Re- formers. Many ceremonies had been so grossly abused by superstition and avarice that it was necessary to re- move them altogether; but since it was fit to use some ceremonies for the sake of decency and order, it seemed better to retain those that were old than to invent new. Still, it must be remembered that those which were kept rested not on the same foundation as the law of God, and might be altered for reasonable causes; and the English Reformers, in keeping them, neither condemned those nations which thought them inexpedient, nor prescribed them to any other nation than their own" (Carwithen, Hist, of the Church of England). See, besides the authorities already referred to, Walcott, Sacred Archeology, s. v.; Hook, Church Dictionary, s. v.