Note 106 — Chapter II · —EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE WRITERS.
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Footnote 106:
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Very different opinions are held by Roman Catholic writers as to the antiquity of this feast. All, indeed, maintain that it is of very ancient introduction; but whilst some, with Lambecius (lib. viii. p. 286), maintain the antiquity of the festival to be so remote, that its origin cannot be traced; and thence infer that it was instituted by a silent and unrecorded act of the Apostles themselves; others (among whom Kollarius, the learned annotator on the opinion of Lambecius) acknowledged, that it was introduced by an ordinance of the Church, though not at the same time in all countries of Christendom. That annotator assigns its introduction at Rome to the fourth century; at Constantinople to the sixth; in Germany and France to the ninth.