Canonical Hours. 38
as also often elsewhere, Augustine proves the Holy Ghost to be God, because He has a temple. Which argument both Basil (Epistola 14) and Ambrose (De Spiritu Sancto, lib. tertio, cap. 13) do use.
3. The ancient consecration of the churches was with mere words and prayers, not with crossing, or such like rites. And dedication of churches began about the 300th year after Christ.
4. The fathers of the first 200 years never talk of adorning churches, but about Constantine's time this error got root, and so custom bearing sway, the fathers began to look for ornaments for the church.
"Then first of all," says Otho Frising, lib. quarto, cap. tertio, "(in Constantine's time) were public edicts given out for building of churches, that is, more stately rooms or temples; for before they used holy houses to pray in."
Canonical Hours The fathers observed hours both diversely and freely; but that all should be bound unto the same and to so many hours is a tyrannical superstition. And Walfridus oftentimes repeats that it was a long time after the apostles that these hours were instituted and ordained.
"We must know," says he, in De reb. eccl., cap. 25, "that there passed many ages after the revelation of the gospel before these hours were ordained to be the solemnities of certain hours in the day and night as they are now." And the purer primitive church had not seven canonical hours. Neither Athanasius, Basil, nor Jerome do at any time mention the first hour; Cassianus indeed does, saying it was ordained about his time, De insti. Caenob., lib. 10, quest. 5, articul. 1.
Wherefore Baronius says falsely, when he affirms that Chrysostom and Basil do often mention the four hours of the day. Besides, the