If we look at the [Jewish Pentecost], between it and that first [Pentecost] of ours there is likewise the highest agreement. For the Jews had then begun theirs from the 17th day of the first month — either for the ordinary and fixed cause, or for that [cause] which Bellarmine hands down at the cited place (and which I shall sift a little more diligently [at] Joshua 5, q. 30): namely, that when the second day of the Unleavened, which was the 16th of the first month, fell on a Sabbath, the offering of the sheaf was deferred to the next day — that is, the third of the Unleavened, or the 17th of the month; and therefore also the first of the fifty days, which by the law (Leviticus 23) always cohered with that [offering], [was deferred with it] — so that the offered sheaf and Pentecost (or the 50th [day]) always held one and the same day…
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…[held one and the same day…the offered sheaf and Pentecost, or the 50th day, was] the beginning of the [fifty] days. For that delay, on his [Bellarmine’s] opinion, came about because, in order that the sheaf be offered, the scythe had to be put to the standing grain; and this was reckoned a servile work. Therefore neither on the first day of the Unleavened, nor on the following day (if it was a sabbath), could that reaping be done — by the laws written in the same place.
But P. Suarez (tom. 2, disput. 46, sect. 1) objects three [things] to this opinion. First. To reap the sheaf for the offering was a religious work; but works of this kind were not forbidden — as [it was] also [permitted] to slay sheep for the sacrifices, and to flay oxen and wash [them]. Secondly. That sheaf could have been reaped on the earlier days. 3. By no one is an exception of this kind handed down. I answer, to the first: [that] it was truly lawful to cut such a sheaf on that day for the offering; yet [that] the Hebrews shunned this — as they shunned many other things of the kind — because they had a certain look of servile work, and that reaping did not seem to pertain immediately and nearly to the worship of God. For in these and like [matters] the Jews reckon [there is] what they call the “hedge of the Law,” or géder hattorah [גדר התורה]. For I myself saw [it], when, on the Day of Expiation, they did not dare, in their synagogues, either to snuff the burning candles, or, if the wax flowed down even onto their books or garments, to arrange it a little better — but for that matter would either beg a Christian’s help, or hire [him] for a fee. And on another feast-day — that of Tabernacles, namely — when some one of them had received a letter, he would ask a Christian to open and unseal it. And when [the Christian] refused, and demanded the cause of so great a superstition, [the Jew] would answer, out of the Mishnah, that this and other things of the kind are géder hattorah — as I repeat also elsewhere, Joshua ch. 5. To the second: Truly, on the first day of the Unleavened itself it was not lawful, as [was] said above, because it too was very much a feast. The doubt can only be about the very day of the lamb’s immolation — at least before evening, or the afternoon time. For why, even on that day in the forenoon hours, or even on the earlier days, would it not have been lawful to reap that sheaf beforehand? I would think they wished, and thought it seemly, that that sheaf be the freshest — so that, as it were, [it be] carried from the field to the temple before they entered either the barn or another house; [that] those very firstfruits of the harvest ought to be brought [thither straightway]. To the third: Bellarmine admits this very [thing]. But the most illustrious Baronius (tom. 1) cites St. Epiphanius (Heresy 51) as the author of that opinion. But as to the other Pentecosts of ours, the reckoning of them is the same — if they be compared to the day of the Jewish Pentecost, as [is that] of our Passovers to their Passover. For just as the 14th [of the] moon is always their Passover, [but] never ours — so, from that day inclusive, always the [fiftieth] day is their Pentecost, [but] never ours. Although [it is] most likely [that] they kept the fixed and ordinary day of eating the Lamb [as] the 14th day of the first month, the first day of the Unleavened [as] the 15th, the offering of the sheaf [as] the 16th; and, from this [day] taken inclusive (as it is taken by Scaliger, Isagoge bk. 3, p. 218), the fifty days [as] numbered to Pentecost itself. But I would prefer [to count] from the [15th] inclusive rather, because the months as yet all seem to have been full and equal. And thus, from the second day of Passover exclusive, some Jews began Pentecost, or the 50th day (as Josephus will have it) — but [others] from the third…
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…inclusive: unless we call the 15th day of the first month “Passover,” and call the 16th “the first [day] of Passover,” [and] the 17th “the second” — as I again touch [in] the Acts of the Apostles, ch. 2, q. 2. Yet for the festal and useful memory of those mysteries, this itself matters nothing.
The Jewish Pentecost first received the Law divinely; the rest thereafter, year by year, renewed the memory of that thing. Our first [Pentecost] received the Law, likewise spiritual and Evangelical — namely, the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which all precepts are readily fulfilled; and the various endowments of tongues and of wisdom, by which that Law was propagated into all lands and nations. And of those gifts the anniversary memory is always on that day. And thus that Jewish Pentecost was a certain type and figure of ours, since in ours is the truth, and the very thing signified — as our [writers] noted long ago: St. Jerome (Epistle 127 to Fabiola, at that mansion 12, cited); St. Leo (Sermon 1 on Pentecost); St. Cyprian (Sermon on [the number]); Severian (in Theophylact, on Acts 2); Theophylact himself, and Venerable Bede (there); and above all St. Augustine (Epistle 119, ch. 16). But Calvin (on Acts 2) says: “In this I could wish Augustine were more sober and modest.” Is it so, indeed? To you, Calvin, is Augustine drunken and immodest? But that you may accuse him, you are perhaps pressed by some necessary reason. Come, what is it? You bring none? And who would not wish you rather “more sober and modest” in slandering this and other most learned, most holy Fathers? On the same day, too, the firstfruits of the bread which the Lord had given from the field of his own heaven were offered by the Apostles, when to all the nations that are under heaven they began to speak in various tongues the wonderful works of God; and that great priest himself, Peter, sacrificed the hecatombs of the firstfruits of three thousand men joined to CHRIST the Lord.
It could here also be considered how the Law was given on Sinai in the morning time, and this Evangelical grace given on Sion about the third hour before noon; how, there and here, the crashes of thunder were heard, the blazings of flame beheld, [and] wondrous changes of minds wrought. But of these [let it] now [be] enough — of which [I shall say] something again [at] ch. 2 of the Acts of the Apostles, q. 5.