PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. (continued 10)

CHOREUTÆ. A sect of heretics, who, among other errors, persisted in keeping the Sunday as a fast.

CHORISTER. A singer in a choir. It properly means a singing boy; and so it is used in all old documents and statistics.

CHRISM. (Χρίσμα, oil.) Oil consecrated in the Romish and Greek Churches by the bishop, and used in baptism, confirmation, orders, and extreme unction. This chrism is consecrated with great ceremony upon Holy Thursday. There are two sorts of it; the one is a composition of oil and balsam, made use of in baptism, confirmation, and orders; the other is only plain oil consecrated by the bishop, and used for catechumens and extreme unction. Chrism has been discontinued in the Church of England since the Reformation.

CHRISOME, in the office of baptism, was a white vesture, which in former times the priest used to put upon the child, saying, “Take this white vesture for a token of innocence.”

By a constitution of Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, A. D. 736, the chrisomes, after having served the purposes of baptism, were to be made use of only for the making or mending of surplices, &c., or for the wrapping of chalices.

The first Common Prayer Book of King Edward orders that the woman shall offer the chrisome, when she comes to be churched; but, if the child happens to die before her churching, she was excused from offering it; and it was customary to use it as a shroud, and to wrap the child in it when it was buried. Hence, by an abuse of words, the term is now used not to denote children who die between the time of their baptism and the churching of the mother, but to denote children who die before they are baptized, and so are incapable of Christian burial.

CHRIST. From the Greek word (Χριστος) corresponding with the Hebrew word Messiah, and signifying the Anointed One. It is given pre-eminently to our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. As the holy unction was given to kings, priests, and prophets, by describing the promised Saviour of the world under the name of Christ, Anointed, or Messiah, it was sufficient evidence that the qualities of king, prophet, and high priest would eminently centre in him; and that he would exercise them not only over the Jews, but over all mankind, and particularly over those whom he should elect into his Church. Our blessed Saviour was not, indeed, anointed to these offices by oil; but he was anointed by the power and grace of the Holy Ghost, who visibly descended upon him at his baptism. Thus, (Acts x. 38,) “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.”—See Matt. iii. 16, 17. John iii. 34. (See Jesus and Messiah.)

CHRISTEN, To. To baptize; because, at baptism, the person receiving that sacrament is made, as the catechism teaches, a member of Christ.

CHRISTENDOM. All those regions in which the kingdom or Church of Christ is planted.

CHRISTIAN. The title given to those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. It was at Antioch, where St. Paul and St. Barnabas jointly preached the Christian religion, that the disciples were first called Christians, (Acts xi. 26,) in the year of our Lord 43. They were generally called by one another brethren, faithful, saints, and believers. The name of Nazarenes was, by way of reproach, given them by the Jews. (Acts xxiv. 5.) Another name of reproach was that of Galilæans, which was the emperor Julian’s style whenever he spoke of the Christians. Epiphanius says, that they were called Jesseans, either from Jesse, the father of David, or, which is more probable, from the name of Jesus, whose disciples they were. The word is used but three times in Holy Scripture: Acts xi. 26; xxvi. 28; 1 St. Pet. iv. 16.

CHRISTIAN NAME. (See Name.) The name given to us when we are made Christians, i. e. at our baptism.

The Scripture history, both of the Old and New Testament, contains many instances of the names of persons being changed, or of their receiving an additional name, when they were admitted into covenant with God, or into a new relation with our blessed Lord; and it was at circumcision, which answered, in many respects, to baptism in the Christian Church, that the Jews gave a name to their children. This custom was adopted into the Christian Church, and we find very ancient instances of it recorded. For example, Thascius Cyprian, at his baptism, changed his first name to Cæcilius, out of respect for the presbyter who was his spiritual father. The custom is still retained, a name being given by the godfather and godmother of each child at baptism, by which name he is addressed by the minister when he receives that holy sacrament. (See Baptismal Service.)

Our Christian names serve to remind us 176of the duties and privileges on which we entered at baptism. Our surname is a memorial of original sin, or of the nature which we bring into the world.

CHRISTIANS OF ST. THOMAS. (See Thomas, St., Christians of.)

CHRISTMAS DAY. The 25th December; the day on which the universal Church celebrates the nativity or birthday of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The observance of this day in the Western Church is most ancient, although we may not give much belief to the statement of the forged decretal epistles, that Telesiphorus, who lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, ordered Divine service to be celebrated, and an angelical hymn to be sung, the night before the nativity. While the persecution raged under Diocletian, who kept his court at Nicomedia, that tyrant, among other acts of cruelty, finding multitudes of Christians assembled together to celebrate the nativity of Christ, commanded the church doors to be shut, and fire put to the building, which soon reduced them and the place to ashes. In the East it was for some time confounded with the Epiphany; and St. Chrysostom mentions that it was only about his time that it became a distinct festival at Antioch.

The Athanasian Creed is ordered to be said or sung on this day. This is one of the days for which the Church of England appoints special psalms, and a special preface in the Communion Service; and if it fall on a Friday, that Friday is not to be a fast day.—Cave. Bingham.

It is one of the scarlet days at Oxford and Cambridge: and in cathedrals and choirs the responses and litany (if to be used) ought to be solemnly sung to the organ. In the First Book of King Edward, there were separate Collects, Epistles, and Gospels appointed for the first and second communion on this and on Easter day.

The chronological correctness of keeping the birthday of our Lord on the 25th of December, has been demonstrated in a most careful analysis, by the late lamented Dr. Jarvis, in his Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church.—Jebb.

CHRISTOLYTES. (Χριστολύται, separators of Christ.) A sect in the sixth century, which held, that when Christ descended into hell, he left his soul and body there, and only rose with his Divinity to heaven.

CHRISTOPHORI and THEOPHORI, (Χριστοφόροι και Θεοφόροι, Christ-bearers and God-bearers,) names given to Christians in the earliest times, on account of the communion between Christ, who is God, and the Church. Ignatius commences his Epistles thus, Ἰγνάτιος ὁ καὶ Θεοφόρος: and it is related in the acts of his martyrdom, that hearing him called Theophorus, Trajan asked the meaning of the name; to which Ignatius replied, it meant one that carries Christ in his heart. “Dost thou then,” said Trajan, “carry him that was crucified in thy heart?” “Yes,” said the holy martyr, “for it is written, I will dwell in them, and walk in them.”

CHRONICLES. Two canonical books of the Old Testament. They contain the history of about 3500 years, from the creation until after the return of the Jews from Babylon. They are fuller and more comprehensive than the Books of Kings. The Greek interpreters hence call them Παραλειπομένα, supplements, additions. The Jews make but one book of the Chronicles, under the title Dibree hajamin, i. e. journal or annals. Ezra is generally supposed to be the author of these books. The Chronicles, or Paraleipomena, are an abridgment, in fact, of the whole Scripture history. St. Jerome so calls it, “Omnis traditio Scripturarum in hoc continetur.” The First Book contains a genealogical account of the descent of Israel from Adam, and of the reign of David. The Second Book contains the history of Judah to the very year of the Jews’ return from the Babylonish captivity—the decree of Cyrus granting them liberty being in the last chapter of this Second Book.

CHURCH. (See Catholic.) The word church is derived from the Greek κυριακὸς (belonging to the Lord)—the Teutonic nations having, at their first conversion, generally adopted the Greek ecclesiastical terms. The truth of this etymology is confirmed by the fact, that in the Sclavonic languages the names for the Church resemble the Teutonic, evidently because derived from a common Greek original. The Church, meaning by the word the Catholic or Universal Church, is that society which was instituted by our blessed Lord, and completed by his apostles, acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to be the depository of Divine truth and the channel of Divine grace. Every society, or organized community, may be distinguished from a mere multitude or accidental concourse of people, by having a founder, a form of admission, a constant badge of membership, peculiar duties, peculiar privileges, and regularly appointed officers. Thus the Catholic Church has the Lord Christ for its founder; its prescribed form of admission is the holy sacrament of baptism; its constant 177badge of membership is the holy sacrament of the eucharist; its peculiar duties are repentance, faith, obedience; its peculiar privileges, union with God, through Christ its Head, and hereby forgiveness of sins, present grace, and future glory; its officers are bishops and priests, assisted by deacons, in regular succession from the apostles, the first constituted officers of this body corporate. It has the Bible for its code of laws, and tradition for precedents, to aid its officers in the interpretation of that code on disputed points. It is through the ordinances and sacraments of the Church, administered by its divinely appointed officers, that we are brought into union and communion with the invisible Saviour; it is through the visible body that we are to receive communications from the invisible Spirit; and, says the apostle, in the fourth chapter to the Ephesians, “There is,” not merely one Spirit, “there is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” Again, (1 Cor. x. 17,) “We being many are one bread and one body.” And in the first chapter to the Colossians, the same apostle tells us that this body is the Church. And thus we must, if we are scriptural Christians, believe that there is one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Of this one Church there are many branches existing in various parts of the world, (not to mention the great division of militant and triumphant,) just as there is one ocean, of which portions receive a particular designation from the shores which they lave. But of this one society there cannot be two branches in one and the same place opposed to each other, either in discipline or in doctrine. Although there be two opposing societies or more in one place, both or all claiming to be Christ’s Church in that place, yet we are quite sure that only one of them can be the real Church. So here, in this realm of England, speaking nationally, there is but one Church, over which the archbishops of Canterbury and York, with their suffragans, preside: and in each diocese there is only that one Church, over which the diocesan presides, a branch of the national Church, as the national is a branch of the universal Church: and again, in each parish there is but one Church, forming a branch of the diocesan Church, over which the parochial minister presides.

“Religion being, therefore, a matter partly of contemplation, partly of action, we must define the Church, which is a religious society, by such differences as do properly explain the essence of such things; that is to say, by the object or matter whereabout the contemplation and actions of the Church are properly conversant; for so all knowledge and all virtues are defined. Whereupon, because the only object which separateth ours from other religions is Jesus Christ, in whom none but the Church doth believe, and whom none but the Church doth worship, we find that accordingly the apostles do everywhere distinguish hereby the Church from infidels and from Jews, accounting them which call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to be his Church.”—Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. Hooker’s assertion as to the Church in this country must be so far modified, that now, by change of political circumstances, the Churches of England and Ireland are politically united, and form but one Church, over which two primates, that of Canterbury and Armagh, of co-ordinate jurisdiction, preside, with other archbishops and suffragans, &c.—Jebb.

CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA. It is not possible, in such a publication as this, to give an account of the various branches of the one Catholic Church, which are to be found in the various parts of the world; but it would be improper not to notice the Church in the United States of America, since it is indebted for its existence, under the blessing of the Great Head of the Church Universal, to the missionary labours of the Church of England; or rather we should say, of members of that Church acting under the sanction of their bishops, and formed into the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Before the American Revolution it can scarcely be said that the Church existed in our American colonies. There were congregations formed chiefly through the Society just mentioned, and the clergy who ministered in these congregations were under the superintendence of the bishop of London. We may say that the first step taken for the organization of the Church was after the termination of the revolutionary war, at a meeting of a few of the clergy of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, at New Brunswick, N. Y., in May, 1784. Though this meeting was called on other business, yet the project of a general union of the churches throughout the States became a topic of sufficient interest to lead to the calling of another meeting, to be held in October following, in the city of New York. At this latter meeting, “although the members composing it were not vested with powers 178adequate to the present exigencies of the Church, they happily, and with great unanimity, laid down a few general principles to be recommended in the respective States, as the ground on which a future ecclesiastical government should be established.” It was also recommended that the several States should send clerical and lay deputies to a future meeting in Philadelphia, on September the twenty-seventh, of the following year. In the interim, the churches of Connecticut, having made choice of the Rev. Dr. Seabury for a bishop, he had proceeded to England with a view to consecration. In this application he was not successful, the English bishops having scruples, partly of a political nature, and partly relative to the reception with which a bishop might meet, under the then imperfect organization of the Church in America. Resort was therefore had to the Church in Scotland, where Dr. Seabury received consecration in November, 1784.

According to appointment, the first general convention assembled in 1785, in Philadelphia, with delegates from seven of the thirteen States. At this convention measures were taken for a revisal of the Prayer Book, to adapt it to the political changes which had recently taken place; articles of union were adopted; an ecclesiastical constitution was framed; and the first steps taken for the obtaining of an episcopate direct from the Church of England.

In June, 1786, the convention again met in Philadelphia. A correspondence having meanwhile been carried on with the archbishops and bishops of the English Church, considerable dissatisfaction was expressed on their part relative to some changes in the liturgy, and to one point of importance in the constitution. The latter of these was satisfied by the proceeding of the then session, and the former were removed by reconsideration in a special convention summoned in October in the same year. It soon appearing that Dr. Provoost had been elected to the episcopate of New York, Dr. White to that of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Griffith for Virginia, testimonials in their favour were signed by the convention. The two former sailed for England in November, 1786, and were consecrated at Lambeth on the 4th of February in the following year, by the Most Reverend John Moore, archbishop of Canterbury. Before the end of the same month they sailed for New York, where they arrived on Easter Sunday, April 7th, 1787.

In July, 1789, the general convention again assembled. The episcopacy of Bishops White and Provoost was recognised; the resignation of Dr. Griffith, as bishop elect of Virginia, was received; and in this and an adjourned meeting of the body, in the same year, the constitution of 1786 was remodelled; union was happily effected with Bishop Seabury and the northern clergy; the revision of the Prayer Book was completed; and the Church already gave promise of great future prosperity. In September, 1790, Dr. Madison was consecrated bishop of Virginia at Lambeth in England, by the same archbishop, who, a few years before, had imparted the apostolic commission to Drs. White and Provoost. There being now three bishops of the English succession, besides one of the Scotch, everything requisite for the continuation and extension of the episcopacy was complete. Accordingly the line of American consecration opened in 1792, with that of Dr. Claggett, bishop elect of Maryland. In 1795 Dr. Smith was consecrated for South Carolina; in 1797 the Rev. Edward Bass, for Massachusetts, and in the same year Dr. Jarvis, for Connecticut, that diocese having become vacant by the death of Bishop Seabury. From that time the consecration of bishops has proceeded according to the wants of the Church, without impediment, to the present day. At the beginning of the present century the Church had become permanently settled in its organization, and its stability and peace were placed on a secure footing. In 1811 there were already eight bishops and about two hundred and thirty other clergymen distributed through thirteen States. A spirit of holy enterprise began to manifest itself in measures for the building up of the Church west of the Alleghany Mountains, and in other portions of the country, where heretofore it had maintained but a feeble existence. The ministry numbers in its ranks men of the first intellectual endowments, and of admirable self-devotion to the cause of the gospel. With a steady progress, unawed by the assaults of sectarianism and the reproaches of the fanatic, the Church gradually established itself in the affections of all who came with a spirit of candour to the examination of her claims. The blessing of her Great Head was apparent, not only in the peace which adorned her councils, but in the demands which were continually made for a wider extension of her influence. Hence the establishment of the General Theological 179Seminary by Bishop Hobart (1817–1821), and afterwards of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (1835); both of which institutions were instrumental in providing heralds of the gospel for the distant places of the West. These were followed by the diocesan seminaries of Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, and efforts for the founding of several in other dioceses. At the general convention of 1835, the whole Church assumed the position of one grand missionary organization, and has already her bands of missionaries labouring in the cause of the Church in the remotest districts of the country; and her banner has been lifted up in Africa, China, Greece, and other foreign parts. The year 1852 was distinguished by remarkable demonstrations of communion between the Churches of England and America. The American Church, in token of her connexion with the mother Church, and of gratitude for benefits received from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel while the American States were part of the British dominions, deputed Bishop M’Coskry, of Michigan, and Bishop De Lancey, of Western New York, to attend the third Jubilee of the Society. These bishops were received in England with cordial affection, and the bishop of Michigan preached the Jubilee Sermon at St. Paul’s cathedral. A few months later the English bishop Fulford, of Montreal, shared in consecrating Dr. Wainwright, who had been a member of the deputation to England, coadjutor bishop of Eastern New York. In 1853 Bishop Spenser, Archdeacon Sinclair, and the Rev. Ernest Hawkins, were deputed by the Society for Propagating the Gospel to return the visit of the American prelates, and were received with great cordiality by the general convention of the American Church. An attempt to excite a Romanizing spirit on the part of a few half-educated persons has signally failed, by the suppression, for want of support, of the Journal they established. With her 37 bishops, 2000 clergy, and more than 2,000,000 of lay members; with her numerous societies for the spread of the Bible and the Liturgy; and with her institutions of learning, and presses constantly pouring out the light of the truth, may we not predict, under the Divine protection, a day of coming prosperity, when Zion shall be a praise in all the earth; when her temples and her altars shall be seen on the far-off shores of the Pacific; when even “the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose?”

For a more detailed history of the Church in America, the reader may consult Bishop White’s Memoirs of the Protestant and Episcopal Church in America; Caswall’s America and the American Church; the History of the Church in America in the Christian’s Miscellany: and the more recent History by Bishop Wilberforce, published in the Englishman’s Library.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND. (See Anglo-Catholic Church.) By the Church of England we mean that branch of the Catholic Church which is established under its canonical bishops in England. Properly speaking, at present it forms only a branch of the united Church of England and Ireland. When and by whom the Church was first introduced into Britain is not exactly ascertained, but it has been inferred from Eusebius that it was first established here by the apostles and their disciples; some have supposed, by St. Paul. According to Archbishop Usher, there was a school of learning to provide the British churches with proper teachers in the year 182. But when the Britons were conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, who were heathens, the Church was persecuted, and the professors of Christianity were either driven to the mountains of Wales, or reduced to a state of slavery. The latter circumstances prepared the way for the conversion of the conquerors, who, seeing the pious and regular deportment of their slaves, soon learned to respect their religion. We may gather this fact from a letter written by Gregory, the bishop of Rome, in the sixth century, to two of the kings of France, in which he states that the English nation was desirous of becoming Christian; and in which he, at the same time, complains to those monarchs of the remissness of their clergy in not seeking the conversion of their neighbours. And hence it was that Gregory, with that piety and zeal for which he was pre-eminently distinguished, sent over Augustine, and about forty missionaries, to England, to labour in the good work. The success of these missionaries, the way having thus been paved before them, was most satisfactory. They converted Ethelbert, who was not only king of Kent, but Brætwalda, or chief of the Saxon monarchs. His example was soon followed by the kings of Essex and East Anglia, and gradually by the other sovereigns of England.

The successful Augustine then went over to Arles in France, where he was consecrated by the prelate of that see; and, returning, became the first archbishop 180of Canterbury, the patriarch and metropolitan of the Church of England. His see was immediately endowed with large revenues by King Ethelbert, who likewise established, at the instance of the archbishop, the dioceses of Rochester and London. Another portion of the Anglo-Saxons were converted by the Scottish bishops. And thus gradually the Anglo-Saxon kings created bishoprics equal in size to their kingdoms. And the example was followed by their nobles, who converted their estates into parishes, erecting fit places of worship, and endowing them with tithes.

It is a great mistake to suppose, as some do, that the old churches in England were built or endowed by laws of the state or acts of parliament. They were the fruit of the piety of individuals of all ranks, princes and nobles, and private citizens. This fact accounts for the unequal sizes of our dioceses and parishes: the dioceses were (though subsequently subdivided) of the same extent as the dominions of the respective kings; the parishes corresponded with the estate of the patrons of particular churches. Nor was the regard of those by whom the Church was established and endowed, confined to the spiritual edification of the poor; no, they knew that righteousness exalteth a nation, and estimating properly the advantages of infusing a Christian spirit into the legislature, they summoned the higher order of the clergy to take part in the national councils.

From those times to these, an uninterrupted series of valid ordinations has carried down the apostolical succession in our Church.

That in the Church of England purity of doctrine was not always retained may be readily admitted. In the dark ages, when all around was dark, the Church itself suffered from the universal gloom: this neither our love of truth, nor our wishes, will permit us to deny. About the seventh century the pope of Rome began to establish an interest in our Church. The interference of the prelate of that great see, before he laid claim to any dominion of right, was at first justifiable, and did not exceed just bounds, while it contributed much to the propagation of the gospel. That the bishop of Rome was justified as a Christian bishop, of high influence and position, in endeavouring to aid the cause of Christianity here in England, while England was a heathen nation, will not be disputed by those who recognise the same right in the archbishop of Canterbury with respect to foreign heathens. But, in after ages, what was at first a justifiable interference was so increased as to become an intolerable usurpation. This interference was an usurpation because it was expressly contrary to the decisions of a general council of the Church, and such as the Scripture condemns, in that the Scripture places all bishops on an equality; and so they ought to continue to be, except where, for the sake of order, they voluntarily consent to the appointment of a president or archbishop, who is nothing more than a primus inter pares, a first among equals. This usurpation for a time continued, and with it were introduced various corruptions, in doctrine as well as in discipline.

At length, in the reign of Henry VIII., the bishops and clergy accorded with the laity and government of England, and threw off the yoke of the usurping pope of Rome. They, at the same time, corrected and reformed all the errors of doctrine, and most of the errors of discipline, which had crept into our Church during the reign of intellectual darkness and papal domination. They condemned the monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation, the worship of saints and images, communion in one kind, and the constrained celibacy of the clergy; having first ascertained that these and similar errors were obtruded into the Church in the middle ages. Thus restoring the Church to its ancient state of purity and perfection, they left it to us, their children, as we now find it. They did not attempt to make new, their object was to reform, the Church. They stripped their venerable mother of the meretricious gear in which superstition had arrayed her, and left her in that plain and decorous attire with which, in the simple dignity of a matron, she had been adorned by apostolic hands.

Thus, then, it seems that ours is the old Church of England, tracing its origin, not to Cranmer and Ridley, who only reformed it; but that it is the only Church of England, which traces its origin up through the apostles to our Saviour Himself. To adopt the words of a learned and pious writer: “The orthodox and undoubted bishops of Great Britain are the only persons who, in any manner, whether by ordination or possession, can prove their descent from the ancient saints and bishops of these isles. It is a positive fact that they, and they alone, can trace their ordinations from Peter and Paul, through Patrick, Augustine, Theodore, Colman, Columba, David, Cuthbert, Chad, Anselm, Osmund, and all the other worthies of our 181Church.” “It is true that there are some schismatical Romish bishops in these realms, but they are of a recent origin, and cannot show the prescription and possession that we can. Some of these teachers do not profess to be bishops of our churches, but are titular bishops of places we know not. Others usurp the titles of various churches in these islands, but are neither in possession themselves, nor can prove that their predecessors ever occupied them. The sect (the sect of English Papists or Roman Catholics) arose in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when certain persons, unhappily and blindly devoted to the see of Rome, refused to obey and communicate with their lawful pastors, who, in accordance with the laws of God and the canons, asserted the ancient independence of the British and Irish Church; and the Roman patriarch then ordained a few bishops to sees in Ireland, which were already occupied by legitimate pastors. In England this ministry is of later origin; for the first bishop of that communion was a titular bishop of Chalcedon in the seventeenth century.

The ecclesiastical state of England, as it stands at this day, is divided into two provinces or archbishoprics, of Canterbury and York, which are again subdivided into several dioceses. (See Archbishop.)

For the safeguard of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, many provisions are made both by the civil and canon law.

Whoever shall come to the possession of the crown of England shall join in communion with the Church of England, as by law established. (12 & 13 Will. III. c. 2, s. 3.)

By the 1 Will. III. c. 6, an oath shall be administered to every king or queen who shall succeed to the imperial crown of this realm, at their coronation; to be administered by one of the archbishops or bishops, to be thereunto appointed by such king or queen; that they will do the utmost in their power to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and Protestant reformed religion established by law; and will preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of them.

And by the 5 Anne, c. 5, the king, at his coronation, shall take and subscribe an oath to maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established. (s. 2.)

By Canon 3, whoever shall affirm that the Church of England, by law established, is not a true and apostolical Church, teaching and maintaining the doctrine of the apostles, let him be excommunicated ipso facto, and not restored but only by the archbishop, after his repentance and public revocation of this his wicked error.

And by Canon 7, whoever shall affirm that the government of the Church of England under Her Majesty, by archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, and the rest that bear office in the same, is antichristian, or repugnant to the word of God, let him be excommunicated ipso facto, and so continue until he repent, and publicly revoke such his wicked errors.

And moreover, seditious words, in derogation of the established religion, are indictable, as tending to a breach of the peace.

CHURCH OF IRELAND. Of the first introduction of the Church into Ireland we have no authentic records; nor is it necessary to search for them, since, of the present Church, the founder, under God, was St. Patrick, in the fifth century. From him it is that the present clergy, the reformed clergy, and they only, have their succession, and through him from the apostles themselves. That, by a regular series of consecrations and ordinations, the succession from Patrick and Palladius, and the first Irish missionaries, was kept up until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, our opponents, the Irish Papists, will allow. The question, therefore, is whether that succession was at that time lost. The onus probandi rests with our opponents, and we defy them to prove that such was the case. It is a well-known fact, that of all the countries of Europe, there was not one in which the process of the Reformation was carried on so regularly, so canonically, so quietly, as it was in Ireland. Carte, the biographer of Ormond, having observed that the Popish schism did not commence in England until the twelfth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but that for eleven years those who most favoured the pretensions of the pope conformed to the reformed Catholic Church of England, remarks, “The case was much the same in Ireland, where the bishops complied with the Reformation, and the Roman Catholics (meaning those who afterwards became Roman, instead of remaining reformed Catholics) resorted in general to the parish churches in which the English service was used, until the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.” It is here stated that the bishops of the Church of Ireland, that is, as the Papists 182will admit, the then successors of St. Patrick and his suffragans, those who had a right to reform the Church of Ireland, consented to the Reformation; and that, until the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, (and she reigned above forty-four years,) there was no pretended Church, under the dominion of the pope, opposed to the true Catholic Church, as is unfortunately now the case. The existing clergy of the Church of Ireland, whether we regard their order or their mission, and consequently the Church itself, are the only legitimate successors of those by whom that Church was founded. That in the Church of Ireland, as well as in the Church of England, corruptions in doctrine as well as in practice prevailed before the Reformation, and that the pope of Rome gradually usurped over it an authority directly contrary to one of the canons of a general council of the Church Universal, (that of Ephesus,) we fully admit. But that usurpation was resisted and renounced, and those corruptions removed and provided against at the Reformation. After the English Reformation the Irish Church received the English liturgy, in conformity with the principle now professed by the English government, though not always consistently or fairly carried out, of promoting a close ecclesiastical unity between the two countries. Articles of Religion, of a Calvinistic tendency, were passed by the Irish convocation of 1615, but in 1635 the English Articles were received and approved by a canon of convocation, and have ever since been subscribed by Irish clergymen. In 1662 the revised Prayer Book of England was adopted by the Irish convocation. At the time of the union of the two kingdoms, the two Churches were united under the title of the United Church of England and Ireland. Doubts have been expressed as to what this union means. It does not mean union in doctrine. The Churches were in full communion in every respect before; and still are, except in a few particulars, merely circumstantial. It does not mean distinct synodical rights, for the two English provinces have their convocations distinct one from the other, and the decrees of the one do not, of necessity, bind the other. The union is national and political. When the two kingdoms became politically and legislatively one, the two Churches, in conformity with the ancient and avowed principles of English government, were declared to be identified. This identification was solemnly declared by the sovereign and parliament of both countries, as an indispensable and fundamental article of union, asserted by the spiritual lords of each; without the slightest reclamation on the part of the clergy or laity. Now this declaration of legislative union is in fact a solemn declaration on the part of the state of identification of interests. If each of the English provinces of the United Church claim synodical rights, a right of advising when the great interests of the Church are concerned, the claim of the Irish provinces of the same Church are equally strong, are strictly parallel. If the property and rights of the English clergy are to be protected, the Irish clergy have as strong a claim to protection. How far the avowed principle has been acted upon, it is not difficult to determine. The property of the Irish clergy has been dealt with upon principles altogether different from those which still protected the property of their English brethren. No provision whatever was made for perpetuating the Irish convocations, which are still in abeyance, even as to outward form, though formerly they had as defined a system as in England. (See Convocation.) In an age, when the multiplication of bishops has been urged, and generally admitted as necessary, the Church in Ireland has been disheartened by a retrograde movement. For, in opposition to the earnest reclamation of her clergy, ten of her bishops were, by a very tyrannical act of the state, suppressed; and two of her archiepiscopal sees (Cashel and Tuam) reduced to the rank of suffragans; and this to meet a mere fiscal exigency, to provide for the Church Rates; for which, be it observed, the clergy of Ireland, whose revenues have been in many other ways legislatively curtailed, are now taxed.

The words of the fifth article of the Union with Ireland are these: “That it be the fifth article of Union, that the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called, The United Church of England and Ireland; and that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be, and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England; and that the continuance and preservation of the said United Church, as the established Church of England and Ireland, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union.”

The Church in Ireland had till lately four archbishops: 1. Armagh, with seven suffragans, viz. Meath, Down, ‡Dromore, Derry, Kilmore, ‡Raphoe, and ‡Clogher. 1832. Dublin, with three suffragans, viz. ‡Kildare, ‡Ferns, and Ossory. 3. Cashel, with five suffragans, viz. Limerick, Cork, ‡Cloyne, Killaloe, and ‡Waterford. 4. Tuam, with three suffragans, viz. ‡Clonfert, ‡Elphin, and ‡Killala. [Those which are marked thus ‡ are now suppressed.] Formerly there had been 32 bishops in all; but the sees had become so impoverished that it became necessary from time to time to unite some of these to others, (but for reason and under sanction far different from those which influenced the late innovations,) so that in the 17th century they were much the same as stated above. The bishops of Meath and Kildare had precedence over the other bishops.—See Jebb’s Charge to the Clergy of Limerick.

CHURCH OF ROME. (See Pope, Popery, Council of Trent, Romanism.) The Church of Rome is properly that particular Church over which the bishop of Rome presides, as the Church of England is that Church over which the bishop of Canterbury presides. To enter into the history of that foreign Church, to describe its boundaries, to explain those peculiar doctrines, which are contrary to Catholic doctrines, but which are retained in it, to discuss its merits or its corruptions, would be beside the purpose of this Dictionary. But there are certain schismatical communities in these kingdoms which have set up an altar against our altar, and which are designated as the Church of Rome in England, and the Church of Rome in Ireland; and with the claims of these schismatical sects, in which the obnoxious doctrines of the Church of Rome, as asserted in the so-called general Council of Trent, are maintained, and in which the supremacy of the pope of Rome is acknowledged, we are nearly concerned. It will be proper, therefore, to give an account of the introduction of Romanism or Popery into this country and into Ireland, subsequently to the Reformation. From the preceding articles it will have been seen that the Churches of England and Ireland were canonically reformed. The old Catholic Church of England, in accordance with the law of God and the canons, asserted its ancient independence. That many members of the Church were in their hearts opposed to this great movement, is not only probable, but certain; yet they did not incur the sin of schism by establishing a sect in opposition to the Church of England, until the twelfth year of Elizabeth’s reign, when they were hurried into this sin by foreign emissaries from the pope of Rome, and certain sovereigns hostile to the queen. Mr. Butler, himself a Romanist, observes, that “Many of them conformed for a while, in hopes that the queen would relent, and things come round again.”—Memoirs, ii. p. 280. “He may be right,” says Dr. Phelan, “in complimenting their orthodoxy at the expense of their truth; yet it is a curious circumstance, that their hypocrisy, while it deceived a vigilant and justly suspicious Protestant government, should be disclosed by the tardy candour of their own historians.” The admission, however, is important; the admission of a Romanist that Romanism was for a season extinct, as a community, in these realms. The present Romish sect cannot, therefore, consistently claim to be what the clergy of the Church of England really and truly are, the representatives of the founders of the English Church. The Romish clergy in England, though they have orders, have no mission, on their own showing, and are consequently schismatics. The Romanists began to fall away from the Catholic Church of England, and to constitute themselves into a distinct community or sect, about the year 1570, that is, about forty years after the Church of England had suppressed the papal usurpation. This act was entirely voluntary on the part of the Romanists. They refused any longer to obey their bishops; and, departing from our communion, they established a rival worship, and set up altar against altar. This sect was at first governed by Jesuits and missionary priests, under the superintendence of Allen, a Roman cardinal, who lived in Flanders, and founded the colleges at Douay and Rheims. In 1598, Mr. George Blackwell was appointed archpriest of the English Romanists, (see Archpriest,) and this form of ecclesiastical government prevailed among them till 1623, when Dr. Bishop was ordained titular bishop of Chalcedon, and sent from Rome to govern the Romish sect in England. Dr. Smith, the next bishop of Chalcedon, was banished in 1628, and the Romanists were without bishops till the reign of James II.—Palmer, ii. 252. During the whole of the reign of James I., and part of the following reign, the Romish priesthood, both in England and in Ireland, were in the interest, and many of them in the pay, of the Spanish monarchy. The titulars of Dublin and Cashel are particularly mentioned as pensioners of Spain. The general memorial of the Romish hierarchy in Ireland, in 1617, was addressed to the Spanish court, and we are told by Berrington, himself a Romanist, that the English Jesuits, 300 in number, were all of the Spanish faction. In 184Ireland, as we have seen before, the bishops almost unanimously consented, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, to remove the usurped jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, and consequently there, as in England, for a great length of time there were scarcely any Popish bishops. But “Swarms of Jesuits,” says Carte, “and Romish priests, educated in the seminaries founded by King Philip II., in Spain and the Netherlands, and by the cardinal of Lorraine in Champagne, (where, pursuant to the vows of the founders, they sucked in, as well the principles of rebellion, as of what they call catholicity,) coming over to that kingdom, as full of secular as of religious views, they soon prevailed with an ignorant and credulous people to withdraw from the public service of the Church.” Macgauran, titular archbishop of Armagh, was sent over from Spain, and slain in an act of rebellion against his sovereign. In 1621 there were two Popish bishops in Ireland, and two others resided in Spain. These persons were ordained in foreign countries, and could not trace their ordinations to the ancient Irish Church. The audacity of the Romish hierarchy in Ireland has of late years been only equalled by their mendacity. But we know them who they are; the successors, not of St. Patrick, but of certain Spanish and Italian prelates, who, in the reign of James I., originated, contrary to the canons of the Church, the Romish sect—a sect it truly is in that country, since there can be but one Church, and that is the Catholic, in the same place, (see article on the Church,) and all that they can pretend to is, that without having any mission, being therefore in a state of schism, they hold peculiar doctrines and practices which the Church of Ireland may have practised and held for one, two, three, or at the very most four hundred out of the fourteen hundred years during which it has been established; while even as a counterpoise to this, we may place the three hundred years which have elapsed between the Reformation and the present time. Since the above article was written, the Romish sect has assumed a new character in England. The pope of Rome has added to his iniquities by sending here, in 1850, schismatical prelates, with a view of superseding the orthodox and catholic bishops of the English Church; an act which has increased the abhorrence of Popery in every true Englishman’s heart, and which should lead to greater union among all who repudiate idolatry, and love the Lord Jesus.

CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. The early history of the ancient Church of Scotland, like that of Ireland, is involved in much obscurity; nor is it necessary to investigate it, since, at the period of our Reformation, it was annihilated; it was entirely subverted; not a vestige of the ancient Christian Church of that kingdom remained. Meantime the Scottish nation was torn by the fiercest religious factions. The history of what occurred at the so-called Reformation of Scotland—the fierceness, the fury, the madness of the people, who murdered with Scripture on their lips—would make an infidel smile, and a pious Christian weep. It is probable that a sense of the danger to his throne may have led King James I. to his first measures, taken before his accession to the English crown, for the restoration of episcopacy in his own dominion. His first step was to obtain, in December, 1597, an act of the Scottish parliament, “that such pastors and ministers as the king should please to provide to the place, title, and dignity of a bishop, abbot, or other prelate, should have voice in parliament as freely as any ecclesiastical prelate had at any time by-past.” This act was followed by the appointment of certain ministers, with the temporal title of bishops, in the next year.—Abp. Spottiswood’s Hist. 449, 456. But the assembly of ministers at Montrose, in March, 1599, jealous of the king’s intention, passed a resolution of their own, “that they who had a voice in parliament should have no place in the general assembly, unless they were authorized by a commission from the presbyters.” The bishops, however, took their seats in parliament, and voted in the articles of union for the two kingdoms, A. D. 1601. At length, in A. D. 1610, the bishops were admitted as presidents or moderators in the diocesan assemblies; and, in 1612, “after fifty years of confusion, and a multiplicity of windings and turnings, either to improve or set aside the plan adopted in 1560,” (to use Bishop Skinner’s words,) “we see an episcopal Church once more settled in Scotland, and a regular apostolical succession of episcopacy introduced, upon the extinction of the old line which had long before failed, without any attempt, real or pretended, to keep it up.” For in this year the king caused three of them to be consecrated in London; “and that,” says Bishop Guthrie, “not without the consent and furtherance of many of the wisest amongst the ministry.” Now in common justice to Episcopalians it must be remembered, as Bishop Skinner observes, that the restoration of the primitive order was 185strictly legal. “A regular episcopacy by canonical consecration had been adopted by the general assemblies of the Church, and confirmed by unquestionable acts of parliament.” King Charles I. endeavoured to complete the good work which his father had begun, but, for the sins of the Scottish people, he was not permitted to succeed in his labour of love; nay, rather, the attempt to introduce the English Prayer Book so exasperated the Scots against him, that they finally proved their ignorance of Scripture, and their want of true Christian principles, by assenting to the parricide of their sovereign, when it was effected by their disciples in England. The general assembly of 1638 was held in opposition to the sovereign, and to the law; it declared all assemblies since 1605 void; proscribed the service book; and abjured Episcopacy, condemning it as antichristian, and the bishops were excommunicated and deposed. In 1613, the Scotch general assembly passed the Solemn League and Covenant, adopted by that assembly of divines at Westminster, who drew up the Confession, which afterwards was established by law as the Faith of the Kirk of Scotland. The Catholic Church, after the martyrdom of Charles, became extinct in Scotland; but it was once more restored at the restoration of his son. By the solemn act of parliament, Episcopacy was reestablished, and declared to be most agreeable to the word of God; and synods were constituted, very much upon the system of the English convocation. Four Scottish divines were again consecrated in London in 1661. These prelates took possession of the several sees to which they had been appointed, and the other ten sees were soon canonically filled by men duly invested with the episcopal character and function. So things remained until the Revolution of 1688. The bishops of Scotland, mindful of their oaths, refused to withdraw their allegiance from the king, and to give it to the Prince of Orange, who had been elected by a portion of the people to sovereignty, under the title of William III. The Prince of Orange offered to protect them, and to preserve the civil establishment of the Church, provided that they would come over to his interest, and support his pretensions to the throne. This they steadily refused to do; and consequently, by the prince and parliament, the bishops and the clergy were ordered either to conform to the new government, or to quit their livings. There were then fourteen bishops in Scotland, and nine hundred clergy of the other two orders. All the bishops, and by far the greater number of the other clergy, refused to take the oaths; and in the livings they were thus compelled to relinquish, Presbyterian ministers were in general placed. And thus the Presbyterian sect was established (so far as it can be established by the authority of man) instead of the Church in Scotland. It was stated that this was done, not because bishops were illegal and unscriptural, but because the establishment of the Church was contrary to the will of the people, who, as they had elected a king, ought, as it was supposed, to be indulged in the still greater privilege of selecting a religion. And yet it is said, in the Life of Bishop Sage, “it was certain, that not one of three parts of the common people were then for the presbytery, and not one in ten among the gentlemen and people of education.” The system of doctrine to which the established Kirk of Scotland subscribes is the Westminster Confession of Faith, and to the Kirk (for it was passed in 1643 by the general assembly of the Kirk) belongs the national and solemn League and Covenant, (a formulary more tremendous in its anathemas than any bull of Rome,) to “endeavour the extirpation of Popery and prelacy,” i. e. “Church government by archbishops, bishops, and all ecclesiastical officers dependent upon the hierarchy.” This League was approved by that very assembly at Westminster, whose Confession was now nationally adopted. And certainly, during their political ascendency, the members of that establishment have done their best to accomplish this, so far as Scotland is concerned, although, contrary to their principles, there are some among them who would make an exception in favour of England, if the Church of England would be base enough to forsake her sister Church in Scotland. That Church is now just in the position in which our Church would be, if it pleased parliament, in what is profanely called its omnipotence, to drive us from our sanctuaries, and to establish the Independents, or the Wesleyans, in our place.

The bishops of the Scottish Church, thus deprived of their property and their civil rights, did not attempt to keep up the same number of bishops as before the Revolution, nor did they continue the division of the country into the same dioceses, as there was no occasion for that accuracy, by reason of the diminution which their clergy and congregations had suffered, owing to the persecutions they had to endure. They have also dropped the designation of archbishops, now only making 186use of that of Primus, (a name formerly given to the presiding bishop,) who being elected by the other bishops, six in number, is invested thereby with the authority of calling and presiding in such meetings as may be necessary for regulating the affairs of the Church. The true Church of Scotland has thus continued to exist from the Revolution to the present time, notwithstanding those penal statutes, of the severity of which some opinion may be formed when it is stated, that the grandfather of the present venerable bishop of Aberdeen, although he had taken the oaths to the government, was committed to prison for six months; and why? for the heinous offence of celebrating Divine service according to the forms of the English Book of Common Prayer, in the presence of more than four persons! But in vain has the Scottish establishment thus persecuted the Scottish Church; as we have said, she still exists, perhaps, amidst the dissensions of the establishment, to be called back again to her own. The penal statutes were repealed in the year 1792. But even then the clergy of that Church were so far prohibited from officiating in the Church of England, that the clergyman, in whose church they should perform any ministerial act, was liable to the penalties of a premunire. Although a clergyman of any of the Greek churches, although even a clergyman of the Church of Rome, upon his renouncing those Romish peculiarities and errors, which are not held by our Scottish brethren, could serve at our altars, and preach from our pulpits, our brethren in Scotland and America were prevented from doing so. This disgrace however has now been removed by the piety of the late archbishop of Canterbury, who has obtained an act which restores to the Church one of her lost liberties. At the end of the last century, the Catholic Church in Scotland adopted those Thirty-nine Articles which were drawn up by the Church of England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They, for the most part, make use of our liturgy, though in some congregations the old Scotch liturgy is used, and it is expressly appointed that it shall always be used at the consecration of a bishop.

The Church of Scotland, before the political recognition of Presbyterianism, had fourteen bishops: viz. The archbishop of St. Andrew’s, primate of Scotland, with nine suffragans; viz. Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Moray, Dunkeld, Brechin, Caithness, Dunblane, Orkney, and Ross. The archbishop of Glasgow, with three suffragans; viz. Galloway, Argyle, and the Isles. The bishops of Edinburgh and Galloway had precedence over the others. All the bishops sat in the Scottish parliament, but they had no convocation, like those of the Church of England in ancient times, their synods being episcopal. After the Reformation, their assemblies were long of an anomalous kind, and bore witness to a continual struggle between the episcopal and presbyterian, or rather democratic, principle, which finally prevailed. In 1663, however, an act of parliament was passed regulating their national synod. (See Convocation.)

CHURCH, GALLICAN, or THE CHURCH OF FRANCE, although in communion with the see of Rome, maintained in many respects an independent position. (See Concordat and Pragmatic Sanction.) This term is very ancient, for we find it used in the Council of Paris, held in the year 362, and the Council of Illyria, in 367.

This Church all along preserved certain ancient rites, which she possessed time out of mind; neither were these privileges any grants of popes, but certain franchises and immunities, derived to her from her first original, and which she will take care never to relinquish. These liberties depended upon two maxims, which were always looked upon in France as indisputable. The first is, that the pope had no authority or right to command or order anything, either in general or particular, in which the temporalities or civil rights of the kingdom were concerned. The second was, that, notwithstanding the pope’s supremacy was owned in cases purely spiritual, yet, in France, his power was limited and regulated by the decrees and canons of ancient councils received in that realm. The liberties or privileges of the Gallican Church were founded upon these two maxims, and the most considerable of them are as follows:

I. The king of France has a right to convene synods, or provincial and national councils, in which, amongst other important matters relating to the preservation of the state, cases of ecclesiastical discipline are likewise debated.

II. The pope’s legates à latere, who are empowered to reform abuses, and to exercise the other parts of their legantine office, are never admitted into France unless at the desire, or with the consent, of the king: and whatever the legates do there, is with the approbation and allowance of the king.

III. The legate of Avignon cannot exercise his commission in any of the king’s dominions, till after he hath obtained his Majesty’s leave for that purpose.

187IV. The prelates of the Gallican Church, being summoned by the pope, cannot depart the realm upon any pretence whatever, without the king’s permission.

V. The pope has no authority to levy any tax or imposition upon the temporalities of the ecclesiastical preferments, upon any pretence, either of loan, vacancy, annates, tithes, procurations, or otherwise, without the king’s order, and the consent of the clergy.

VI. The pope has no authority to depose the king, or grant away his dominions to any person whatever. His Holiness can neither excommunicate the king, nor absolve his subjects from their allegiance.

VII. The pope likewise has no authority to excommunicate the king’s officers for their executing and discharging their respective offices and functions.

VIII. The pope has no right to take cognizance, either by himself or his delegates, of any pre-eminencies or privileges belonging to the crown of France, the king being not obliged to argue his prerogatives in any court but his own.

IX. Counts palatine, made by the pope, are not acknowledged as such in France, nor allowed to make use of their privileges and powers, any more than those created by the emperor.

X. It is not lawful for the pope to grant licences to churchmen, the king’s subjects, or to any others holding benefices in the realm of France, to bequeath the titles and profits of their respective preferments, contrary to any branch of the king’s laws, or the customs of the realm, nor to hinder the relations of the beneficed clergy, or monks, to succeed to their estates, when they enter into religious orders, and are professed.

XI. The pope cannot grant to any person a dispensation to enjoy any estate or revenues, in France, without the king’s consent.

XII. The pope cannot grant a licence to ecclesiastics to alienate church lands, situate and lying in France, without the king’s consent, upon any pretence whatever.

XIII. The king may punish his ecclesiastical officers for misbehaviour in their respective charges, notwithstanding the privileges of their orders.

XIV. No person has any right to hold any benefice in France, unless he be either a native of the country, naturalized by the king, or has royal dispensation for that purpose.

XV. The pope is not superior to an œcumenical or general council.

XVI. The Gallican Church does not receive, without distinction, all the canons, and all the decretal epistles, but keeps principally to that ancient collection called Corpus Canonicum, the same which Pope Adrian sent to Charlemagne towards the end of the eighth century, and which, in the year 860, under the pontificate of Nicolas I., the French bishops declared to be the only canon law they were obliged to acknowledge, maintaining that in this body the liberties of the Gallican Church consisted.

XVII. The pope has no power, for any cause whatsoever, to dispense with the law of God, the law of nature, or the decrees of the ancient canons.

XVIII. The regulations of the apostolic chamber, or court, are not obligatory to the Gallican Church, unless confirmed by the king’s edicts.

XIX. If the primates or metropolitans appeal to the pope, his Holiness is obliged to try the cause, by commissioners or delegates, in the same diocese from which the appeal was made.

XX. When a Frenchman desires the pope to give him a benefice lying in France, his Holiness is obliged to order him an instrument, sealed under the faculty of his office; and, in case of refusal, it is lawful for the person pretending to the benefice to apply to the parliament of Paris, which court shall send instructions to the bishop of the diocese to give him institution, which institution shall be of the same validity as if he had received his title under the seals of the court of Rome.

XXI. No mandates from the pope, enjoining a bishop, or other collator, to present any person to a benefice upon a vacancy, are admitted in France.

XXII. It is only by sufferance that the pope has what they call a right of prevention, to collate to benefices which the ordinary has not disposed of.

XXIII. It is not lawful for the pope to exempt the ordinary of any monastery, or any other ecclesiastical corporation, from the jurisdiction of their respective diocesans, in order to make the person so exempted immediately dependent on the holy see.

These liberties were esteemed inviolable, and the French kings, at their coronation, solemnly swore to preserve and maintain them. The oath ran thus: “Promitto vobis et perdono quod unicuique de vobis et ecclesiis vobis commissis canonicum privilegium et debitam legem atque justitiam servabo.”

The bishoprics were entirely in the hands of the Crown. There were, in France, 18 188archbishops, 112 bishops, 160,000 clergymen of various orders, and 3400 convents.

The archbishops were: 1. Rheims, (primate of France,) eight suffragans. 2. Lyons, (primate of Gaul,) five suffragans. 3. Rouen, (primate of Normandy,) six suffragans. 4. Paris, four suffragans. 5. Sens, three suffragans. 6. Tours, eleven suffragans. 7. Bordeaux, nine suffragans. 8. Bourges, five suffragans. 9. Toulouse, seven suffragans. 10. Narbonne, eleven suffragans. 11. Besançon, one suffragan. 12. Arles, four suffragans. 13. Auch, ten suffragans. 14. Aix, five suffragans. 15. Alby, five suffragans. 16. Embrun, six suffragans. 17. Vienne, four suffragans. 18. Cambray, two suffragans, with six other bishops under foreign archbishops. The archbishop of Cambray and his suffragans, and the archbishop of Besançon with his suffragan, and eight other bishops, were not considered properly to form part of the Gallican Church.

Such was the Church of France with the “Gallican Liberties,” previously to the great French Revolution of 1789–1793.

Jansenism (see Jansenists) became very prevalent in the Gallican Church before the Revolution; and the antipapal principle of Jansenism, combined with the revolutionary mania, developed in 1790 the civil constitution of the clergy in France, under which false appellation the constituent assembly affected extraordinary alterations in spiritual matters. M. Bouvier, the late bishop of Mans, remarks, that this constitution “abounded with many and most grievous faults.” “First,” he says, “the National Convention, by its own authority, without any recourse to the ecclesiastical power, changes or reforms all the old dioceses, erects new ones, diminishes some, increases others, &c.; (2.) forbids any Gallican church or citizen to acknowledge the authority of any foreign bishop, &c.; (3.) institutes a new mode of administering and ruling cathedral churches, even in spirituals; (4.) subverts the divine authority of bishops, restraining it within certain limits, and imposing on them a certain council, without whose judgment they could do nothing,” &c. The great body of the Gallican bishops naturally protested against this constitution, which suppressed 135 bishoprics, and erected 83 in their stead, under different titles. The Convention insisted that they should take the oath of adhesion to the civil constitution in eight days, on pain of being considered as having resigned; and, on the refusal of the great majority, the new bishops were elected in their place, and consecrated by Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, assisted by Gobel, bishop of Lydda, and Miroudet of Babylon.

M. Bouvier proves, from the principles of his Church, that this constitution was schismatical; that all the bishops, rectors, curates, confessors, instituted by virtue of it, were intruders, schismatics, and even involved in heresy; that the taking of the oath to observe it was a mortal sin, and that it would have been better to have died a hundred times than to have done so. Certainly, on all the principles of Romanists at least, the adherents of the civil constitution were in schism and heresy.

Nevertheless, these schismatics and heretics were afterwards introduced into the communion of the Roman Church itself, in which they propagated their notions. On the signature of the Concordat between Bonaparte and Pius VII. in 1801, for the erection of the new Gallican Church, the first consul made it a point, that twelve of these constitutional bishops should be appointed to sees under the new arrangements. He succeeded. “He caused to be named to sees twelve of those same constitutionals who had attached themselves with such obstinate perseverance, for ten years, to the propagation of schism in France.... One of the partisans of the new Concordat, who had been charged to receive the recantation of the constitutionals, certified that they had renounced their civil constitution of the clergy. Some of them vaunted, nevertheless, that they had not changed their principles; and one of them publicly declared that they had been offered an absolution of their censures, but that they had thrown it into the fire!” The government forbad the bishops to exact retractations from the constitutional priest, and commanded them to choose one of their vicars-general from among that party. They were protected and supported by the minister of police, and by Portalis, the minister of worship. In 1803, we hear of the “indiscreet and irregular conduct of some new bishops, taken from among the constitutionals, and who brought into their dioceses the same spirit which had hitherto directed them.” Afterwards it is said of some of them, that they “professed the most open resistance to the holy see, expelled the best men from their dioceses, and perpetuated the spirit of schism.” In 1804, Pius VII., being at Paris, procured their signature to a declaration approving generally of the judgments of the holy see on the ecclesiastical affairs of France; but this vague and general formulary, which Bouvier and other Romanists pretend to represent as a recantation, 189was not so understood by these bishops; and thus the Gallican Church continued, and probably still continues, to number schismatical bishops and priests in her communion. Such is the boasted and most inviolable unity of the Roman Church!

We are now to speak of the Concordat of 1801, between Bonaparte, first consul of the French republic, and Pope Pius VII. The first consul, designing to restore Christianity in France, engaged the pontiff to exact resignations from all the existing bishops of the French territory, both constitutional and royalist. The bishoprics of old France were 130 in number; those of the conquered districts (Savoy, Germany, &c.) were 24; making a total of 154. The constitutional bishops resigned their sees; those, also, who still remained in the conquered districts, resigned them to Pius VII. Eighty-one of the exiled royalist bishops of France were still alive; of these forty-five resigned, but thirty-six declined to do so. The pontiff derogated from the consent of these latter prelates, annihilated 159 bishoprics at a blow, created in their place 60 new ones, and arranged the mode of appointment and consecration of the new bishops and clergy, by his bull Ecclesia Christi and Qui Christi Domini. To this sweeping Concordat the French government took care to annex, by the authority of their “corps législatif,” certain “Organic Articles,” relating to the exercise of worship. According to a Romish historian, they “rendered the Church entirely dependent, and placed everything under the hand of government. The bishops, for example, were prohibited from conferring orders without its consent; the vicars-general of a bishop were to continue, even after his death, to govern the diocese, without regard to the rights of chapters; a multitude of things which ought to have been left to the decision of the ecclesiastical authority were minutely regulated,” &c. The intention was, “to place the priests, even in the exercise of their spiritual functions, in an entire dependence on the government agents!” The pope remonstrated against these articles—in vain: they continued, were adopted by the Bourbons, and, with some modifications, are in force to this day; and the government of the Gallican Church is vested more in the conseil d’ etat, than in the bishops. Bonaparte assumed the language of piety, while he proceeded to exercise the most absolute jurisdiction over the Church. “Henceforward nothing embarrasses him in the government of the Church; he decides everything as a master; he creates bishoprics, unites them, suppresses them.” He apparently found a very accommodating episcopacy. A royal commission, including two cardinals, five archbishops and bishops, and some other high ecclesiastics, in 1810 and 1811, justified many of the “Organic Articles” which the pope had objected to; acknowledged that a national council could order that bishops should be instituted by the metropolitan or senior bishop, instead of the pope, in case of urgent circumstances; and declared the papal bull of excommunication against those who had unjustly deprived the pope of his states, was null and void.

These proceedings were by no means pleasing to the exiled French bishops, who had not resigned their sees, and yet beheld them filled in their own lifetime by new prelates. They addressed repeated protests to the Roman pontiff in vain. His conduct in derogating from their consent, suppressing so many sees, and appointing new bishops, was certainly unprecedented. It was clearly contrary to all the canons of the Church universal, as every one admits. The adherents of the ancient bishops refused to communicate with those whom they regarded as intruders. They dwelt on the odious slavery under which they were placed by the “Organic Articles;” and the Abbés Blanchard and Gauchet, and others, wrote strongly against the Concordat, as null, illegal, and unjust; affirmed that the new bishops and their adherents were heretics and schismatics, and that Pius VII. was cut off from the Catholic Church. Hence a schism in the Roman churches, which continues to this day, between the adherents of the new Gallican bishops and the old. The latter are styled by their opponents, “La Petite Eglise.” The truly extraordinary origin of the present Gallican Church sufficiently accounts for the reported prevalence of ultramontane or high papal doctrines among them, contrary to the old Gallican doctrines, and notwithstanding the incessant efforts of Napoleon and the Bourbons to force on them the four articles of the Gallican clergy of 1682. They see, plainly enough, that their Church’s origin rests chiefly on the unlimited power of the pope.—Broughton. Palmer.

CHURCH, GREEK. The Oriental (sometimes called the Greek) Church, prevails more or less in Russia, Siberia, North America, Poland, European Turkey, Servia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Greece, the Archipelago, Crete, Cyprus, the Ionian 190Islands, Georgia, Circassia, Mingrelia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt. The vast and numerous Churches of the East, are all ruled by bishops and archbishops, of whom the chief are the four patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The Russian Church was subject to a fifth patriarch, from the latter part of the sixteenth century, [1588,] but since the reign of Peter the Great, the appointment to this high office has been suspended by the emperor, who deemed its power too great, and calculated to rival that of the throne itself. It was abolished in 1721. In its place Peter the Great instituted the “Holy Legislative Synod,” which is directed by the emperor.... Many of these Churches still subsist after an uninterrupted succession of eighteen hundred years: such as the Churches of Smyrna, Philadelphia, Corinth, Athens, Thessalonica, Crete, Cyprus. Many others, founded by the apostles, continued to subsist uninterruptedly, till the invasion of the Saracens in the seventh century, and revived again after their oppression had relaxed. Such are the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and others; from these apostolical Churches the whole Oriental Church derives its origin and succession; for wherever new Churches were founded, it was always by authority of the ancient societies previously existing. With these all the more recent Churches held close communion; and thus, by the consanguinity of faith and discipline and charity, were themselves apostolical. They were also apostolical in their ministry; for it is undeniable, that they can produce a regular uninterrupted series of bishops, and of valid ordinations in their churches, from the beginning. No one denies the validity of their ordination.—Palmer.

The descendants of the ancient Christians of the East, who still occupy the Oriental sees, are called the Greek Church. The Greek Church was not formerly so extensive as it has been since the emperors of the East thought proper to lessen or reduce the other patriarchates, in order to aggrandize that of Constantinople; a task which they accomplished with the greater ease, as they were much more powerful than the emperors of the West, and had little or no regard to the consent of the patriarchs, in order to create new bishoprics, or to confer new titles and privileges. Whereas, in the Western Church, the popes, by slow degrees, made themselves the sole arbiters in all ecclesiastical concerns; insomuch, that princes themselves at length became obliged to have recourse to them, and were subservient to their directions on every momentous occasion.

The Greek Churches, at present, deserve not even the name of the shadow of what they were in their former flourishing state, when they were so remarkably distinguished for the learned and worthy pastors who presided over them; but now nothing but wretchedness, ignorance, and poverty are visible amongst them. “I have seen churches,” says Ricaut, “which were more like caverns or sepulchres than places set apart for Divine worship; the tops thereof being almost level with the ground. They are erected after this humble manner for fear they should be suspected, if they raised them any considerable height, of an evil intention to rival the Turkish mosques.” It is, indeed, very surprising that, in the abject state to which the Greeks at present are reduced, the Christian religion should maintain the least footing amongst them. Their notions of Christianity are principally confined to the traditions of their forefathers and their own received customs; and, among other things, they are much addicted to external acts of piety and devotion, such as the observance of fasts, festivals, and penances: they revere and dread the censures of their clergy; and are bigoted slaves to their religious customs, many of which are absurd and ridiculous; and yet it must be acknowledged, that, although these errors reflect a considerable degree of scandal and reproach upon the holy religion they profess, they nevertheless prevent it from being entirely lost and abolished amongst them. A fire which lies for a time concealed under a heap of embers, may revive and burn again as bright as ever; and the same hope may be conceived of truth, when obscured by the dark clouds of ignorance and error.

Caucus, archbishop of Corfu, in his Dissertation on what he calls the erroneous doctrines of the modern Greeks, dedicated to Gregory XIII., has digested their tenets under the following heads:

I. They rebaptize all Romanists who are admitted into their communion.

II. They do not baptize their children till they are three, four, five, six, ten, and even sometimes eighteen years of age.

III. They exclude confirmation and extreme unction from the number of the sacraments.

IV. They deny there is any such place as purgatory, although they pray for the dead.

V. They deny the papal supremacy, and assert that the Church of Rome has abandoned the doctrines of her fathers.

191VI. They deny, by consequence, that the Church of Rome is the true Catholic mother Church, and on Holy Thursday excommunicate the pope and all the Latin prelates, as heretics and schismatics, praying that all those who offer up unleavened bread in the celebration of the sacrament may be covered with confusion.

VII. They deny that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son.

VIII. They refuse to receive the host consecrated by Romish priests with unleavened bread. They likewise wash the altars on which Romanists have celebrated mass, and will not suffer a Romish priest to officiate at their altars.

IX. They assert that the usual form of words, wherein the consecration, according to the Church of Rome, wholly consists, is not sufficient to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

X. They insist that the sacrament of the Lord’s supper ought to be administered in both kinds to infants, even before they are capable of distinguishing this spiritual food from any other, because it is a Divine institution. For which reason they give the eucharist to infants immediately after baptism, and look upon the Romanists as heretics for not observing the same custom.

XI. They hold that the laity are under an indispensable obligation, by the law of God, to receive the communion in both kinds, and look on the Romanists as heretics who maintain the contrary.

XII. They assert that no members of the Church, when they have attained to years of discretion, ought to be compelled to receive the communion every Easter, but should have free liberty to act according to the dictates of their own conscience.

XIII. They pay no religious homage, or veneration, to the holy sacrament of the eucharist, even at the celebration of their own priests; and use no lighted tapers when they administer it to the sick.

XIV. They are of opinion that such hosts as are consecrated on Holy Thursday are much more efficacious than those consecrated at other times.

XV. They maintain that matrimony is a union which may be dissolved. For which reason they charge the Church of Rome with being guilty of an error, in asserting that the bonds of marriage can never be broken, even in case of adultery, and that no person upon any provocation whatsoever can lawfully marry again.

XVI. They condemn all fourth marriages.

XVII. They refuse to celebrate the solemnities instituted by the Romish Church in honour of the Virgin Mary and the Saints. They reject likewise the religious use of graven images and statues, although they admit of pictures in their churches.

XVIII. They insist that the canon of the mass of the Roman Church ought to be abolished, as being full of errors.

XIX. They deny that usury is a mortal sin.

XX. They deny that the subdeaconry is at present a holy order.

XXI. Of all the general councils that have been held in the Catholic Church by the popes at different times, they pay no regard to any after the sixth, and reject not only the seventh, which was the second held at Nice, for the express purpose of condemning those who rejected the use of images in their Divine worship, but all those which have succeeded it, by which they refuse to submit to any of their institutions.

XXII. They deny auricular confession to be a Divine precept, and assert that it is only a positive injunction of the Church.

XXIII. They insist that the confession of the laity ought to be free and voluntary; for which reason they are not compelled to confess themselves annually, nor are they excommunicated for the neglect of it.

XXIV. They insist that in confession there is no Divine law which enjoins the acknowledgment of every individual sin, or a discovery of all the circumstances that attend it, which alter its nature and property.

XXV. They administer the communion to their laity both in sickness and in health, though they have never applied themselves to their confessors; the reason of which is, that they are persuaded all confessions should be free and voluntary, and that a lively faith is all the preparation that is requisite for the worthy receiving of the sacrament of the Lord’s supper.

XXVI. They look down with an eye of disdain on the Romanists for their observance of the vigils before the nativity of our blessed Saviour, and the festivals of the Virgin Mary and the apostles, as well as for their fasting in Ember-week. They even affect to eat meat more plentifully at those times than at any other, to testify their contempt of the Latin customs. They prohibit, likewise, all fasting on Saturdays, that preceding Easter only excepted.

XXVII. They condemn the Romanists as heretics, for eating such things as have been strangled, and such other meats as are prohibited in the Old Testament.

192XXVIII. They deny that simple fornication is a mortal sin.

XXIX. They insist that it is lawful to deceive an enemy, and that it is no sin to injure and oppress him.

XXX. They are of opinion that, in order to be saved, there is no necessity to make restitution of such goods as have been stolen or fraudulently obtained.

XXXI. To conclude: they hold that such as have been admitted into holy orders may become laymen at pleasure. From whence it plainly appears that they do not allow the character of the priesthood to be indelible. To which it may be added, that they approve of the marriage of their priests, provided they enter into that state before their admission into holy orders, though they are never indulged in that respect after their ordination.

The patriarch of Constantinople assumes the honourable title of Universal or Œcumenical Patriarch. As he purchases his commission of the Grand Seignior, it may be easily supposed that he makes a tyrannical and simoniacal use of a privilege which he holds himself by simony. The patriarchs and bishops are always single men; but the priests (as observed before) are indulged in marriage before ordination; and this custom, which is generally practised all over the Levant, is very ancient. Should a priest happen to marry after ordination, he can officiate no longer as priest, which is conformable to the injunctions of the Council of Neocesarea. The marriage, however, is not looked upon as invalid; whereas, in the Romish Church, such marriages are pronounced void and of no effect, because the priesthood is looked upon as a lawful bar or impediment.—Broughton.

Their Pappas, or secular priests, not having any settled and competent livings, are obliged to subsist by simoniacal practices. “The clergy,” says Ricaut, “are almost compelled to sell those Divine mysteries which are intrusted to their care. No one, therefore, can procure absolution, be admitted to confession, have his children baptized, be married or divorced, or obtain an excommunication against his adversary, or the communion in time of sickness, without first paying down a valuable consideration. The priests too often make the best market they can, and fix a price on their spiritual commodities in proportion to the devotion or abilities of their respective customers.”

The national Church of the kingdom of Greece has lately been reconstructed similarly to that of Russia, by the establishment of a synod.—See King’s Rites of the Greek Church, and Cowel’s Account of the Greek Church, 1722.

CHURCH, ARCHITECTURE OF. There seems to be an absurdity in the modern practice of building churches for the ritual of the nineteenth century, on the model of churches designed for the ritual of the fourteenth century. And for a service such as ours, nothing more is required than a nave and a chancel; the only divisions which we find in the primitive Eastern churches. But as we have inherited churches which were erected during the middle ages, it is rather important that we should understand their designed arrangement. We find in such churches a nave (navis) with its aisles (alæ); a chancel; a tower, generally at the west end; and a porch, generally to the second bay of the south aisle. The uses of the nave and chancel are obvious; the aisles were added in almost all cases perhaps, prospectively at least in all, that they might serve for places for the erection of chantry altars, and for the same end served the transepts and chancel aisles, or side chapels, to the chancels, sometimes found even in small churches. To the chancel, generally at the north, a vestry was often attached; and this was sometimes enlarged into a habitation for the officiating priest, by the addition of an upper chamber, with fire-place and other conveniences. But the more frequent place for this domus inclusa was over the porch, when it is commonly called parvise; and sometimes the tower has evidently been made habitable, though, in this case, it may be rather suspected that means of defence have been contemplated. In the domus inclusa, in the vestry, and in the parvise, was often an altar, which not unfrequently remains. (See Altar.)

The chancel was separated from the nave by a screen, cancelli, from which the word chancel is derived, and over the screen a loft was extended, bearing the rood—a figure of our blessed Lord on the cross, and, on either side, figures of the Blessed Virgin and of St. John. But few rood lofts remain, but the screen is of frequent occurrence, especially in the northern and eastern counties. The loft was generally gained by a newel stair running up the angle between the chancel and the nave, but sometimes apparently by moveable steps. The side chapels were generally parted off from the adjoining parts of the church by screens, called parcloses. The chancel, if any conventual body was attached to the church, was furnished with stalls, which were set against the north 193and south walls, and returned against the rood screen, looking east. Connected with the altar, and sometimes, also, with some of the chantry altars, were sedilia, in the south wall of the chancel, varying in number from one to five, for the officiating clergy; and, eastward of these, the piscina; also an aumbrie, or locker, in the north chancel wall. The altar and these accessories were generally raised at least one step above the level of the rest of the chancel floor, and the chancel itself the like height from the nave. The font stood against the first pillar to the left hand, entering at the south porch; it was often raised on steps, and furnished with an elaborate cover. (See Baptistery.) The pulpit always stood in the nave, generally against a north pillar in cathedrals; but in other churches, generally against a south pillar, towards the east. The seats for the congregation were placed in a double series along the nave, with an alley between, and looking east. There are a few instances of seats with doors, but none of high pews till the time of the Puritans.

The doors to the church were almost always opposite to one another in the second bay of the aisles: besides these, there was often a west door, and this is generally supposed to denote some connexion with a monastic body, and was, perhaps, especially used on occasions of greater pomp, processions, and the like. What is usually called the priest’s door, at the south side of the chancel, opens always from within, and was, therefore, not (as is usually supposed) for the priest to enter by: in which case, moreover, it would rather have been to the north, where the glebe house usually stands. Was it for the exit of those who had assisted at mass? A little bell-cot is often seen over the nave and altar, or on some other part of the church, called the service-bell-cot; for the bell rung at certain solemn parts of the service of the mass; as at the words “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Deus Sabaoth,” and at the elevation of the Host. If, as is supposed, those who were not in the church were accustomed to kneel at this time, there is an obvious reason for the external position of this bell.

CHURCHING OF WOMEN. The birth of man is so truly wonderful, that it seems to be designed as a standing demonstration of the omnipotence of God. And therefore that the frequency of it may not diminish our admiration, the Church orders a public and solemn acknowledgment to be made on every such occasion by the woman on whom the miracle is wrought; who still feels the bruise of our first parents’ fall, and labours under the curse which Eve then entailed upon her whole sex.

As to the original of this custom, it is not to be doubted but that, as many other Christian usages received their rise from other parts of the Jewish economy, so did this from the rite of purification, which is enjoined so particularly in the twelfth chapter of Leviticus. Not that we observe it by virtue of that precept, which we grant to have been ceremonial, and so not now of any force; but because we apprehend some moral duty to have been implied in it by way of analogy, which must be obligatory upon all, even when the ceremony is ceased. The uncleanness of the woman, the set number of days she is to abstain from the tabernacle, and the sacrifices she was to offer when she first came abroad, are rites wholly abolished, and what we no ways regard; but then the open and solemn acknowledgment of God’s goodness in delivering the mother, and increasing the number of mankind, is a duty that will oblige to the end of the world. And therefore, though the mother be now no longer obliged to offer the material sacrifices of the law, yet she is nevertheless bound to offer the evangelical sacrifice of praise. She is still publicly to acknowledge the blessing vouchsafed her, and to profess her sense of the fresh obligation it lays her under to obedience. Nor indeed may the Church be so reasonably supposed to have taken up this rite from the practice of the Jews, as she may be, that she began it in imitation of the Blessed Virgin, who, though she was rather sanctified than defiled by the birth of our Lord, and so had no need of purification from any uncleanness, whether legal or moral; yet wisely and humbly submitted to this rite, and offered her praise, together with her blessed Son, in the temple. And that from hence this usage was derived among Christians seems probable, not only from its being so universal and ancient, that the beginning of it can hardly anywhere be found; but also from the practice of the Eastern Church, where the mother still brings the child along with her, and presents it to God on her churching-day. The priest indeed is there said to “purify” them: and in our first Common Prayer, this office with us was entitled “the Order of the Purification of Women.” But that neither of these terms implied, that the woman had contracted any uncleanness in her state of child-bearing, may not only be inferred from the silence of the offices both in the Greek Church and ours, in 194relation to any uncleanness; but is also further evident from the ancient laws relating to this practice, which by no means ground it upon any impurity from which the woman stands in need to be purged. And therefore, when our own liturgy came to be reviewed, to prevent all misconstructions that might be put upon the word, the title was altered, and the office named, (as it is still in our present Common Prayer Book,) “The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-birth, commonly called, The Churching of Women.”—Dean Comber, Wheatly.

When Holy Scripture describes excessive sorrow in the most expressive manner, it likens it to that of a woman in travail. And if this sorrow be so excessive, how great must the joy be to be delivered from that sorrow! commensurate certainly, and of adequate proportion: and no less must be the debt of thankfulness to the benefactor, the donor of that recovery; whence a necessity of “thanksgiving of women after child-birth.” If it be asked, why the Church hath appointed a particular form for this deliverance, and not for deliverance from other cases of equal danger? the answer is, the Church did not so much take measure of the peril, as accommodate herself to that mark of separation which God himself hath put between this and other maladies. “To conceive and bring forth in sorrow” was signally inflicted upon Eve; and, in her, upon all mothers, as a penalty for her first disobedience (Gen. iii. 16); so that the sorrows of child-birth have, by God’s express determination, a more direct and peculiar reference to Eve’s disobedience than any other disease whatsoever; and, though all maladies are the product of the first sin, yet is the malediction specifically fixed and applied to this alone. Now, when that which was ordained primarily as a curse for the first sin, is converted to so great a blessing, God is certainly in that case more to be praised in a set and solemn office.—L’ Estrange.