This question has been, to a certain extent, before debated by Mr. Johnson
in his addenda to his _Clergyman's Vade Mecum_, pp. 106, 107., and
_Ecclesiastical Law_, as quoted by Wheatly, who combated his reasoning of
Sunday beginning at six o'clock on the Saturday evening. Johnson rests his
argument upon Deuteronomy xvi. 6., where the sacrifice of the passover is
ordered "at even, on the going down of the sun;" upon Exodus xii. 6., where
the whole "congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening;" and I
think he might have also taken Genesis i. 5., "And the evening and the
morning were the first day." Johnson says that
"The Church of England has divided her nights and days according to the
Scriptural, not the civil account: and that though our civil day begins
from midnight, yet our ecclesiastical day begins at six in the
evening.... The proper time for vesper, or evening song, is six of the
clock, and from that time the religious day begins."
Wheatly admits that "the festival is not past till evensong is ended," but
does not agree to its commencing on the preceding evensong; for if it does,
he cannot reconcile the rubric at the end of the Table of Vigils.
On the whole, I think Johnson has the best of the argument: and that Sunday
begins ecclesiastically at six in the evening on Saturday; civilly, at
midnight.