Note 24 — Chapter III · THE QUIRAING.

“We deem it impious to fast on the Lord’s day, or to pray kneeling.”—Tertullian, De Coronâ Militis.

“The Church instructs her nurselings to make their prayers standing on the Lord’s Day.”—Basil. De Spiritu Sancto.

Justin Martyr says:—“Forasmuch as we ought to remember both our fall by sin, and the grace of Christ by which we rise again from our fall, therefore we pray kneeling six days, as a symbol of our fall by sin; but our not kneeling on the Lord’s Day, is a symbol of the resurrection, whereby, through the grace of Christ, we are delivered from our sins and from death, that is mortified thereby.”—Constantine enacted a law, that on festival days prayers were to be offered by the congregation, not kneeling, but standing.—Hilary speaks of it, as an apostolic practice, neither to fast, nor worship kneeling on the Lord’s Day, or the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.—Jerome reckons it among the traditions of the universal Church.—Cassian says of the Egyptian Churches, that from Saturday night to Sunday night, and all the days of Pentecost, they neither kneeled nor fasted.