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 Communion.—God commands, that we mortify the deeds of the flesh, that we chastise the body, and bring it into subjection : the Church, that we may comply with this, appoints certain times and days to be devoted to abstinence and fasting.

Catholics observe the Fast of Lent, as a primitive institution, coming down to them, by an uninterrupted Tradition from the Apostolic Ages.

TERTULLIAN, L. C. When a Monatist, writing against the Catholics, he says: “They, indeed, fancy, that those days in the Gospel are appointed for fasting, in which the bridegroom was taken away (Matt. ix. 15.) and that these are the only legitimate fasts of Christians, the legal observances of the Jews being abolished.” L. de Jejuniis. c. ii. p. 982.