Purple Heath. _Erica purpurea._
Dedicated to _St. Stephen_.
[428] Mr. Nichols’s Illustration of Anc. Times.
[429] In Lansdowne MS. 226. British Museum.
[430] Tooke’s Russia.
[431] Frere’s T. ed. Tyrwh. Chaucer.
[432] Brand.
[433] Cited in Malcolm’s London, 18th Cent.
~December 27.~
_St. John_ the Apostle and Evangelist. _St. Theodorus Grapt_, A. D.
822.
~St. John.~
This festival of St. John is observed by the church of England, and
consequently his name is in the church calendar and the almanacs. The
church of Rome, from whence the celebration is derived, also keeps
another festival to St. John on the 6th of May, concerning which, and
the evangelist, there are particulars at p. 617. Mr. Audley says of him,
“Tradition reports, that when he was a very old man, he used to be
carried into the church at Ephesus, and say, ‘little children, love one
another.’ He returned from his banishment, and lived till the third or
fourth year of Trajan; so that he must have been nearly a hundred years
of age when he died. The appellation of _divine_ given to St. John is
not canonical; but was first applied to him by Eusebius, on account of
those mysterious and sublime points of divinity, with the knowledge of
which he seems to have been favoured above his fellow apostles. Perhaps
this may explain the etymology of the word _divine_, as applied to
christian ministers.”
* * * * *