an office in the liturgy of the church of England, appointed to be read on Ash Wednesday, or the first day of Lent. It is substituted in the room of that godly discipline in the primitive church, by which, as the introduction to the office expresses it, "such persons as stood convicted of notorious sins were put to penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend." This discipline, in after ages, degenerated in the church of Rome into a formal confession of sins upon Ash Wednesday, and the empty ceremony of sprinkling ashes upon the heads of the people. But our reformers rejected the ceremony as mere show and shadow, and substituted in its room this office, which is a denunciation of God's anger and judgment against sinners, that the people, being apprised of God's wrath and indignation against sin, may not, through want of discipline in the church, be encouraged to pursue it, but rather be moved to supply that discipline to themselves, and so as to avoid being judged and condemned at the tribunal of God.