Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 15, 16 April 1908, Page 23

Notes

Easter \ To all 'our readers, a happy Easter, and the best'" gifts from the treasury of the Risen Saviour ! For Holy Week 'They -who pink and pamper the body ''says Sir Matthew Hale, ' and neglect .the soul, are lUte* one - who having a nightingale in his house, is more; fond oi tWe^' cage than of- the bird '. A Fasting Proclamation . .... A letter in a Northern contemporary— apropos- of the Lenten fast— refers to the proclamation of Queen Elizabeth prohibiting the consumption of meat- on certain days." This prohibition (says' the writer-) 'was. political, and was intended as a measure of protection for the fishing industry r . This statement is one of the half-truths • that are half-falsehoods. Elizabeth's - proclamations had . a decidedly religious object also. For the proclamation (as quoted by Hallam in" his ' Constitutional History ', chapter vii.) describes ' easing flesh *n the season of Lent ' a s ' licentious and carnal disorder, in contempt of God. and man, and only to the satisfaction of devilish and carnal appetite ' ; and butchers selling meat unlawfully are "referred to as ' ministering such foul lust to the flesh '. ' These i proclamations', says Hallam, 'for the^. observance of "Lent continued under James and Charles, as 1 late, I presume, as the comiriencement of the Civil War. They were diametrically opposed to the Puritan ■ tenets, . for, notwithstanding the pretext about the fishery,! there is< no doubt that "the dominant ecclesiastics maintained "Wie observance of Lent as an ordinance of the Church. ,