Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

28 G Ritualism in its relation to Re-union.
Church orders communicants to be fasting from
the midnight previous, the Eastern Church from
six o clock or sunset of the day before; and
because the greater must include the less, the
absolute and invariable general rule of both
East and West is, Fasting Communicating.
Both East and West say that the practice was
commanded by the Holy Apostles of the LORD
JESUS; and if you ask both East and West
how they know this, they will tell you that they
have received it from those who went before
them by an unbroken tradition ascending up to
apostolic
times. What can it matter then to a
Catholic, to any one who has learned the ABC
of Catholicity, who has grasped its merest
rudiments, / whether a Provincial Synod three
*/
hundred years ago enjoined it or not ? If the
English Church at the time of the Reformation
o
enjoined it, well and good. If she did not, I
cannot see that it matters one iota ; supposing,
that is, that we wish to be Catholics and not
mere Anglicans. Only, above all things, do
not let us trifle with our reason and conscience
by saying that it is a Western usage, when it is
as much Catholic as anything well can be. I
hope Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridlev
were not uncatholic in this matter ;
but if they
were, and I follow them, I am simply becoming
a Protestant under the shelter of lofty titles : I
am, either on my own responsibility,
or on