service or tlie celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice. This was the divine service in the proper sense of the term, to which all other parts were subordinate. AYe shall speak of it more fullv hereafter.' We have to do at present with those parts wliich were intro- ductory to the communion and belong to the service of the catechumens as well as to that of the communicants. The reading of a portion of the Holj Scriptm-es continued to be an essential constituent of divine sei-vice. Upon the close of the church canon, after the Council of Carthage in 397, and other synods, the reading of imcanonical books (such as wi'itings of the apostolic fathers) was forbidden, with the exception of the legends of the martyrs on their memorial days. There was as yet no obligatory system of j^ericopes, like that of the later Greek and Koman churches. The Uctio con- tcRua, or the reading and exposition of whole books of the Bi- ble, remained in practice till the fifth century, and the selection - of books for the diflerent parts and services of the church year was left to the judgment of the bishop. At high festivals, however, such portions were read as bore special reference to the subject of the celebration. By degi'ees, after the example of the Jewish synagogue,^ a more complete yearly course of selections from the New Testament for liturgical use was arranged, and the selections were called lessons or pericopes.^ sia). After the first part of the service the catechumens were thus dismissed by the deacon, after the second part the faithful. But with the fusion of the two parts in one, the formida of dismission was used only at the close, and then it came to signify also the seiTice itself, more especially the eucharistic sacrifice. In the Greek church the corresponding formula of dismission was : InroKveaBi iv elpriyr;, i. e., ite in pace (Apost. Const, lib. viii. c. 15). Ambrosius is the first who uses 7nissa, mijisam fa- cere (Ep. 20), for the eucharistic sacrifice. Other derivations of the word, from the Greek nmtais or the Hebrew verb iTi'5 , to act, etc., are too far fetched, and cut off by the fact that the word is used only in the Latin church. Comp. vol. i. § 101, p. 383 ff. ' Comp. below, §§ <)6 and 97. - The Jews, perhaps from the time of Ezra, divided the Old Testament into sec- tions, larger or smaller, called Parashioth (r">"i'~S), to wit, the Pentateuch into 54 Parashioth, and the Prophets (i. e., the later historical books and the prophets proper) into as many Ilaphtharoth ; and these sections were read in course on the different Sabbaths. This division is much older than the division Lato verses. ^ Lectiones, avayvwcrfi-aTa, avayvtifftis, tt € piKOirai. I § 90. PUBLIC AVOKSIIIP OF TUE LORd's DAY. 471 In tlie Latin cliurcli this was done in tlie fifth century ; in tlie Greek, in the eighth. The