"The cold and hardness of a deep winter season": traditional piety, Prayer Book, and the Epiphany

It is perhaps an indication of how the description of the journey of the Magi by Lancelot Andrewes in his 1622 Christmas sermon captured imaginations long before T.S. Eliot's poem, that Caroline theologian Mark Frank in an Epiphany sermon (either from the early 1640s or after the Restoration) appears to echo the account given by Andrewes.

What is more, it is also suggestive of how the traditional piety surrounding the Epiphany - similarly evident in a Christmas sermon by Donne, "a supernatural and extraordinary star, which appeared to the wise men of the East, this day, and brought them to Christ, at Bethlehem, upon Twelfth Day. That day, Twelfth Day, the church now calls the Epiphany" - was sustained by the Prayer Book's provision for the feast.

Many a weary step had they trod, many a fruitless question had they asked, many an unprofitable search had they made to find him; and, behold, yet they will not give over. Twelve days it had cost them to come to Jerusalem, through the Arabian deserts, over the Arabian mountains, both Arabia Deserta and Petrea: the difficulty of the way, through sands and rocks - the danger of the assages, being infamous for robbers - the cold and hardness of a deep winter season - the hazard and inconvenience of so long, so hard, so unseasonable, so dangerous, and I may say so uncertain a could not whit deter them from their purpose: to Jerusalem they will, through all these difficulties ...

How would a winter journey scare us from our faith! A cold or rainy morning will do it; a little snow, or wind, or rain, or cold, wild easily keep us from coming to the house where Jesus is, from coming out to worship him. How would so long a voyage make us faint to hear of it! how would the least danger turn us back from the house of God! Alas! should it have been our cases, which was theirs here - we could not presently have found Him at Jerusalem, the royal city, or had we lost the star that led us - how had we sat down in sorrow, or returned in despair! We would have thus reasoned with ourselves: - Alas! we are come hither and have lost our labour: certainly, had this king been born, it would have been in the royal city, or there certainly the news had been.

(The painting is Stefano di Giovanni, 'The Journey of the Magi', c.1433-35.)