Hippolytus, instructed that Christians pray at the third, sixth, and ninth hours (9:00 a.m., 12:00 noon, 3:00 p.m.), and it cited the events surrounding the death of Christ to explain why. In the third hour “Christ was displayed nailed to the tree.” In the sixth “as Christ was fixed on the wood of the cross that day was divided, and a great darkness descended.” Finally, in the ninth hour, for “at that hour Christ, pierced in the side, poured forth water and blood and lit up the rest of that day and brought it so to the evening.”12 In what he called the “3+2” principle, Tertullian urged that
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