PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. (continued 4)

ASCETICS. Men in the second century, who made profession of uncommon degrees of sanctity and virtue, and declared their resolution of obeying all the counsels of Christ, in order to their enjoying communion with God here; and also, in expectation that, after the dissolution of their mortal bodies, they might ascend to him with the greater facility, and find nothing to retard their approach to the supreme centre of happiness and perfection. They looked upon themselves as prohibited the use of things which it was lawful for other Christians to enjoy, such as wine, flesh, matrimony, and commerce. They thought it their indispensable duty to attenuate the body by watchings, abstinence, labour, and hunger. They looked for felicity in solitary retreats, in desert places, where, by severe and assiduous efforts of sublime meditation, they thought to raise their souls above all external objects and all sensual pleasures. Both men and women imposed upon themselves the most severe tasks, the most austere discipline; all which, however it might be the fruit of pious intention, was in the issue extremely detrimental to Christianity, and tended to introduce the doctrine of justification by inherent righteousness. These persons were called ascetics (from ἀσκησις, exercise or discipline) and philosophers; nor were they only distinguished by their title from other Christians, but also by their garb. In the second 59century, indeed, such as embraced this austere kind of life submitted themselves to all these mortifications in private, without breaking asunder their social bonds, or withdrawing themselves from the concourse of men. But in process of time, they retired into deserts; and, after the example of the Essenes and Therapeutæ, they formed themselves into certain companies.—See Origen, contr. Cels. lib. v.; Can. Apostol. cap. 51; Cyril, Catech. 10, n. 9; Bingham, Antiq. Chr. Ch.

ASCETICISM. The practice of the Ascetics. We do not consider neglect of the body—meaning by the term our present material organization—a rule of Christianity. The abnegation of sin is, of course, the root of all religion, and the body of sin is a scriptural phrase for our nature in its unredeemed and antagonistic state; but it ceases to be a body of sin, in this sense, when it becomes a member of Christ: it becomes in baptism a temple of the Holy Ghost. But how are we to judge that the spirit within is indeed regenerated? Principally by the works of the body. The existence of good works manifests the operation of the spirit of good, and the Christian character therefore takes for its physical development—labour, activity, perseverance, energy, fortitude, courage; to all of which qualities self-denial is the preliminary. Christianity, therefore, does not eradicate the powers of the body any more than it does the feelings of the heart, or the faculties of the mind; it eradicates their misdevotion. What it aims at effecting is, to assign to each in its sanctified character its proper place and province. It defines legitimate objects for the passions, legitimate ambitions for the mind, legitimate aspirations for the soul. Simply, Christianity is human nature in rectitude, not lethargy, of action. Nature in every instance tells us that we possess such and such powers; the gospel directs their application, and reveals the important results dependent on their use or abuse. The right discipline, therefore, not the destruction, of human capabilities, is inculcated by the Scriptures. God has for the wisest reasons placed the extirpation of these internal organs of action beyond our power, but within our power the regulating them for good or evil, happiness or misery. The choice is ours; the consequences attendant on the choice are not ours: these have been fixed from, and will extend into, eternity.—Morgan.

ASCODRUTES, or ASCODROUTES. An heretical sect of the Marcosians. They rejected the sacraments, alleging that things spiritual cannot be conveyed in corporeal symbols.—Bingham, Antiq. Chr. Ch.

ASHES. Several religious ceremonies depend upon the use of ashes. St. Jerome relates, that the Jews, in his time, rolled themselves in ashes, as a sign of mourning. To repent in sackcloth and ashes is a frequent expression in Scripture, for mourning and being afflicted for our sins. Numb. xix. 17. There was a sort of lustral water, made with the ashes of an heifer, sacrificed on the great day of atonement, the ashes whereof were distributed among the people. In the Romish Church, ashes are given among the people on Ash-Wednesday: they must be made from branches of olive, or some other trees, that have been blessed the foregoing year. (Pescara Cerem. Eccles. Rom.) The sacristan, or vestry-keeper, prepares these ashes, and lays them in a small vessel on the altar: after which the officiating priest blesses the ashes, which are strewed by the deacons, and assistants, on the heads of all that are present, accompanied with these words, Memento, homo, quod pulvis es, &c.; Remember, man, that thou art dust, &c.—Religious Ceremonies of all Nations, vol. iii. (See Ash-Wednesday.)

ASH-WEDNESDAY. (See Lent and Commination.) This day seems to have been observed as the first day of Lent in the time of Gregory the Great. It is supposed by some, that Gregory added three days at the beginning of Lent, to make the number forty, in more exact imitation of the number of days in our blessed Saviour’s fast; and that before his time there were only thirty-six days, the Sundays being always kept as festivals. It was called, in his time, Dies cinerum, the day of sprinkling ashes, or Caput jejunii, the beginning of the fast. The custom of open penance, which the name of the day reminds us of, is one of those things which the Church of England, at the time of the Reformation, wished to see restored; but on account of the prejudices of the time, she could not carry out her wishes. (See the Commination Service in the Prayer Book.)

ASPERGILLUM. An instrument resembling a brush, used in the Roman Catholic Church for the purpose of sprinkling holy water over objects to be blessed.

ASPERSION. (See Affusion.) The sprinkling with water in the sacrament of baptism. This our rubric permits.

Then the priest shall take the child into his hands, and say to the godfathers and godmothers,

60Name this child.

And then naming it after them (if they shall certify him that the child may well endure it) he shall dip it in the water discreetly and warily, saying,

N. I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

But if they certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it, saying the aforesaid words.

N. I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

It is said by the Anabaptists that there is no authority in Scripture for thus administering the sacrament of baptism. But we find in the primitive Church, that although baptism was regularly administered by immersion, yet in cases of sickness, where clinic baptism was administered, aspersion was used. We conclude, then, that immersion is not essential to the sacrament; and if sickness were an excuse for not immersing under certain circumstances, it is still a sufficient excuse, if in our cold climate to immerse our children would be attended with danger.—See Bingham’s Origines Ecclesiasticæ.

ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES. The title given to a notable assembly held at Westminster, 1st July, 1643, convoked by an ordinance of the Lords and Commons, but forbidden to be held by the king, to take the liturgy, government, and doctrines of the Church under consideration. The members were elected by the knights and burgesses, two being returned for each county. According to Clarendon, they were most of them men of mean learning, and some of them of scandalous morals. Among the exceptions to this condemnatory sentence were Lightfoot and Selden. Usher was nominated, but with the few Episcopalians elected did not serve. The Scottish covenant was taken by this assembly: the confession of faith still received in the Scottish Presbyterian establishment, and the larger and shorter catechisms, were drawn up. But the opinions of the members differed so widely on many points, that the assembly broke up without accomplishing the principal end for which it was convened. (See Confessions of Faith.)

ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY. A festival of the Romish Church, instituted in the seventh century, and fixed to the 15th of August, in honour of the imaginary ascension of the Virgin Mary into heaven, which, without any authority from Scripture or tradition, some sects in that corrupt Church teach to have occurred in a miraculous manner, some years after her death. Such is the corrupt practice of the Romanists, that in many places higher honour is paid to this legendary festival than even to the anniversary of the crucifixion of our Lord. (See Virgin Mary.)

ASYLUM. A place of refuge. This began to be a privilege of churches in the time of Constantine. No persons could be arrested in churches. In the middle ages this was a great advantage, to prevent the excesses of private revenge. In times of great civilization it became an abuse, and the privilege was taken away. (See Sanctuary.)

ATHANASIAN CREED. The learned, at this day, however they may differ in their opinions about the age, or author, make no question but that the composition was originally in Latin. The style and phraseology—its early acceptance with the Latins, while unknown to the Greeks—the antiquity and number of the Latin MSS., and their general agreement with each other, compared with the lateness, the scarceness, and the disagreement of the Greek copies—all seem to demonstrate this.

As to the antiquity of the Athanasian Creed, it was certainly become so famous in the sixth century as to be commented upon, together with the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, about the year 570, by Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, in France. This is certain evidence for the time specified, and presumptive for much greater antiquity. For who can imagine that it should grow into such repute of a sudden?

From the doctrines contained in the Creed, and from its manner of expressing them, it is probable that it is earlier than the times of Nestorius, or the Ephesine council, in 431; the Creed not condemning the heresy of the Nestorians in such full, direct, critical terms as the Catholics found to be necessary against the wiles and subtleties of those men.

From the doctrine of the incarnation, as expressed therein, we may be confident that it is not earlier than the rise of the Apollinarian heresy, which appeared at first about the year 360, and grew to a head about 370, or a little later. And this consideration is against the opinion that Athanasius made it, either during his banishment at Treves, which ended in the year 338, or during his stay at Rome, in the year 343; or that he presented it to 61either Pope Julius, or Liberius, who were both dead before the year 367. And Dr. Waterland, whose researches were so extensive, infers that the Athanasian Creed is not earlier than the year 420.

It is observable that, about the year 426, St. Augustine, then bishop of Hippo, in Africa, held a close and intimate correspondence with the Gallican Churches. For one Leporius, a presbyter, having spread false doctrine in Gaul, chiefly relating to the incarnation, and being censured for it, fled to Africa, and was there brought to a sense of his errors by St. Augustine and some other African bishops. The lives and characters suiting extremely well with place, time, occasion, and other circumstances, all these concur to persuade that the Creed was composed in Gaul, between the years 426 and 430. And as Honoratus of Marseilles tells us that Hilary, archbishop of Arles, from 429, composed an admirable “Exposition of the Creed,” and as among the ancient titles given to this Creed are, “An Exposition of the Catholic Faith,” or, yet nearer, “An Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed,” Hilary was probably the author of this work: or else his Creed is lost.

As to the name of Athanasius, now generally prefixed to it, it may be remarked, that upon the revival of the Arian controversy in Gaul, under the influence of the Burgundian kings, it was natural to call one side Athanasians, and the other side Arians; and so also to name the orthodox faith the Athanasian faith, as the other, the Arian. This Creed, therefore, being an excellent summary of the Catholic faith, as maintained by Athanasius, might in process of time acquire the name of the Athanasian faith, and so in a little while occasion the mistake of ascribing it to him as his composition.

His name, together with the intrinsic worth and value of the form itself, gave it credit enough to be received in France as an orthodox formulary, or system of belief, about the middle of the sixth century, and into the public offices of the Gallican Church about the year 670. In Spain it was known and approved as a rule of faith about the year 633, and was soon after taken into the offices of the Church in that kingdom. In Germany it was received at lowest about 787. As to our own country, we have proof of the Creed’s being sung alternately in our churches in the tenth century, when Abbo of Fleury, an ear-witness of it, was here; and when the Saxon versions, still extant, were of standing use, for the instruction and benefit both of clergy and people. These evidences alone will prove the reception of this Creed in England to have been as early as 950, or 930, or the time of Athelstan, whose Latin Psalter has the Creed in it. But other circumstances make it probable it was used as early as 880. About fourscore years after this, it was received in Italy. And in Rome itself (which was always more desirous of imposing her own offices upon other churches, than of receiving any from them) it was received in the tenth century, and probably about the year 930. From which time forwards this Creed has been publicly recited in the Church offices all over the West; and it seems in some parts of the Greek Church also.—Waterland’s Critical History of the Athanasian Creed, &c.

Its reception has been both general and ancient. It has been received by Greeks and Latins all over Europe; and if it has been little known among the African and Asian Churches, the like may be said of the Apostles’ Creed, which has not been admitted, scarce known, in Africa, and but little in Asia, except among the Armenians, who are said to receive it. So that, for generality of reception, the Athanasian Creed may vie with any, except the Nicene, or Constantinopolitan, the only general Creed common to all the Churches.

As to the antiquity of its reception into the sacred offices, it was received in several countries, France, Germany, England, Italy, and Rome itself, as soon as the Nicene, or sooner; which is a high commendation of it, as gaining ground by its own intrinsic worth, and without the authority of any general council to enforce it. And there is this further to be observed, that while the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds were growing up to their present perfection, in a course of years, or centuries of years, and not completed till about the year 600, this Creed was made and perfected at once, and is more ancient, if considered as an entire form, than either of the others, having received its full perfection while the others wanted theirs.—Waterland.

In the Greek and Roman Churches it survived in the midst of all the corruptions that arose: upon the Reformation there was not a Protestant Church but what received it in its fullest extent: Luther, Calvin, Beza, and all the wisest and best reformers, acknowledged the Athanasian Creed, and made it their profession of faith: the Puritans, in our own country, the parent stock of all our modern dissenters, embraced it as readily as the 62Church of England herself.—Dean Vincent.

This admirable summary of the Christian faith, as to the great doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, has met with the esteem it deserves among all that have at heart the welfare of Christianity. The faith into which Christians are baptized is this,—there is but one God, yet there are three persons,—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are equally Divine, and must be together the one God, since God is but one. This is the faith which has been received in the Christian Churches from the beginning; and this faith, I doubt not, will continue universally to prevail, till all the chosen people are gathered in, and united in one general assembly and church, in the pure realms of blessedness above. In that happy country, the noise of controversies will cease. All who are brought to stand in the presence of God, dressed in the unblemished robes of innocence and immortality, will know, that all the three Divine persons were concerned in bringing them thither; and as they owe their happiness to the sacred three, they will join in directing the same songs of praise to God, the Father of mercies, who chose them to himself before the foundation of the world; to God the Son, who redeemed them from wrath, by shedding his own precious blood; and to God the Holy Spirit, who renewed and sanctified them, and conducted them safe through the wilderness of this world, into the land of uprightness, the country of rest and pure delight.—Taylor on the Trinity.

On the clauses called damnatory, we may offer the following observations from several of our standard writers. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark xvi. 16.) These are the words of him who is ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead; of him who himself shall pronounce the final doom of all men; spoken by him at the time when he was taking his solemn leave of his apostles, giving them his last and final charge, and in which the fate of all the world is determined. The meek and humble Jesus makes use of very sharp expressions, when he warns his disciples against those who should oppose or dispute those truths: “Beware (saith he) of false prophets;” beware of false teachers, such as corrupt sound doctrine in the essential and fundamental articles of faith.—Wheatly.

Many unbelievers, and some Christians, suppose opinions to be involuntary, and therefore harmless. But let them consider how far this will carry them. Nothing is more expressly revealed in Holy Scripture, than that he who does not believe the Christian religion shall be condemned. If it be said, that unbelief may arise from a disorder or from a defect in the understanding, every such case is, by implication, excepted. This sentence is deemed by us declaratory of the general will of God, and does not imply an absolute exclusion of every culpable individual from his mercy.—Croft.

The denial of our Lord’s Divinity, as it stands condemned by the laws both of our Church and State, so it has, from the very beginning, been esteemed a “damnable heresy;” and all impugners of it have been always excluded from the communion of the Church. Primitive writers call it an “abominable heresy,” “a God-denying apostasy,” and, in those ages, those who broached such doctrines were constantly deposed and excommunicated.—Randolph on the Trinity.

One sometimes finds in persons a wonderful inattention and a strange indifference with regard to the first and most fundamental doctrines of their religion. It might possibly be with some view to this kind of conduct, that the compiler of the Creed inserted what are called the damnatory clauses. He was desirous to excite their attention, and to rouse them from this unmeaning slumber; to convince them that something is to be believed, as well as practised; and that in matters of this importance men should not trifle with God and their own consciences, and halt between two opinions.—Horbery.

These clauses have occasioned much needless uneasiness. When such men, I say not as Chillingworth, for we have judged him weak in religious reasoning, but as Clarke, Tillotson, Secker, could be uneasy under them, I can ascribe it to nothing but the influence of religious terror; a sentiment which operates in all possible degrees; which makes us scruple to admit in religion what would occasion no difficulty in common affairs, lest our acquiescence should be owing to some corrupt or indirect motive. Scruples of this kind are owing to not freely admitting those limitations which common sense suggests in the application of every general proposition. Heresies are very numerous; defiling the purity of the faith, making men act on wrong principles, affording handles to infidelity, and dividing Christians amongst themselves, so as to defeat the ends of religious society, and probably 63lose some degree of future happiness; it seems needful, therefore, to draw the erroneous notions, which are so pernicious, into a small compass, and solemnly reject them; that the unwary may be cautioned, and the bold and busy innovator discouraged. And lest the unstable, who are tossed about with every wind of doctrine, should continue to indulge their childish fondness for novelty, and live on without any regular and permanent principles, it seems also needful to remind them of the last solemn declaration of our blessed Lord, not surely with a view to bias the judgment, but only to enforce the duty of a sober and serious attention to sacred truth, uninfluenced by passion or caprice.—Hey’s Lectures.

These clauses were inserted in this Creed, and in most of the ancient Creeds, the Arian as well as others, by no means to intimate the condemnation, for want of faith, of such as had no opportunity of receiving the Christian religion; but of such only as, having it duly preached to them, should receive it in an evil heart of unbelief, and, holding it in unrighteousness, should mutilate or corrupt its essentials. There is, surely, a wide difference between condemning with severity, and believing with sorrow and compassion that another is condemned. A man who pronounces this sentence, because he sees it pronounced in the word of God, might die for the conversion and retrieval of those on whom he is forced, by the conviction of his faith, to pronounce it.—Skelton.

Damnatory clauses, or anathemas, as they are angrily called, deriving their authority from Scripture, should be considered as awful admonitions, which it hath seemed good to Divine wisdom to announce generally, in order to condemn an indifference of mind in matters of religious principle; to correct a fond admiration of change or novelty; and to intimidate, under the severest penalties of God’s displeasure, the vain or interested from broaching their wild and pernicious heresies.—Bishop Cleaver.

Many have argued against the use of this Creed; and some, with strange vehemence, partly from the doctrines which it teaches, but chiefly from the condemnation which it pronounces on all who disbelieve them. Now the doctrines are undeniably the same with those that are contained in the Articles of our Church, in the beginning of our litany, in the conclusions of many of our collects, in the Nicene Creed, and, as we conceive, in that of the Apostles; in the doxology, in the form of baptism, and in numerous passages of both Testaments; only here they are somewhat more distinctly set forth, to prevent equivocation.—Archbishop Secker.

Whenever we go contrary to a stream, which has run in one channel for seventeen centuries, we ought to doubt our own opinions, and at least treat the general and concurring testimony of mankind with respect. If any one has his doubts on the intricacies of this question, let him first search the Scripture, and settle his principles from thence; if he afterwards wishes to pursue his researches, let him not recur to the crude and hasty publications of the present day, in which assertions are rashly made, without foundation in Scripture, antiquity, or the principles of any Church, but to those learned writers who managed this controversy fifty years ago in our own country; or, if he has learning and leisure sufficient, to the primitive fathers themselves.—Dean Vincent.

Whoever wrote this Creed, he meant nothing more than to collect things said in various Catholic writers, against the various heresies subsisting, and to simplify and arrange the expressions, so as to form a confession of faith the most concise, orderly, and comprehensive, possible. Not with any view of explaining any mysterious truths, but with the sole design of rejecting hurtful or heretical errors. And it may have been adopted on account of its excellence, in bringing the errors which were to be shunned into a small compass, in exposing them in a kind of poetic numbers, which strike and possess the ear; and may have been called “Athanasian,” only on account of its containing doctrines which have been defended with peculiar force and brilliancy by the great prelate of Alexandria.—Hey’s Lectures.

The Athanasian Creed only tells us what we must believe, if we believe a Trinity in unity, three persons and one God: and I challenge any man, who sincerely professes this faith, to tell me, what he can leave out of this exposition, without destroying the Divinity of some of the three persons, or the unity of the Godhead. If each person must be God and Lord, must not each person be uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty? If there be but one God, and one Lord, can there be three separated, uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty Gods; which must of necessity be three Gods, and three Lords! This Creed does not pretend to explain how there are three persons, each of which is God, and yet but one God, but only asserts the thing, that thus it is, and thus it 64must be, if we believe a Trinity in unity; which should make all men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious how they express the least dislike of it.—Sherlock on the Trinity.

Every Divine perfection and substantial attribute of Deity is common to the three: what is peculiar applies only to their relations, order, or office; paternity, filiation, procession—first, second, third persons—creation, redemption, sanctification. The Athanasian Creed is altogether illustrative of this economy; and if it be carefully considered under this point of view, I am persuaded it will appear to be exceedingly reasonable and judicious. There is something in the mere sound of the clauses which I doubt not beguiles it of its just praise. Some have forgotten, perhaps, and some have never known, its proper history. The numerous sects whose different apprehensions of the precise nature of the holy Trinity led men in those distant days into one, at least, of the two great errors, either that of “confounding the persons” or “dividing the substance,” are now perhaps no more. They may indeed subsist under other names; but men have long since ceased to talk of the Sabellians, Noëtians, Patripassians, Praxeans, Eunomians, Apollinarians, Photinians, Cerinthians, and even Arians, Nestorians, and Eutychians; for these latter are the sects chiefly opposed in the Athanasian Creed. But there is not one clause of this ancient formulary that is not directed, in the simplest manner possible, against the different errors of all these several sects; their wild and discordant notions are all met by the constant reiteration of that one great truth, that though the Christian verity compels us to acknowledge every person of the holy Trinity to be God and Lord, yet the Catholic religion equally forbids us to say there be three Gods, or three Lords; though, therefore, each is uncreate, each eternal, each almighty, each God, and each Lord, yet these attributes, as the exclusive attributes of Deity, are common to the three; the omnipotence, the eternity, the Divinity, the power and dominion, the glory and majesty, is one; “such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.”—Nares on the Creeds.

Whilst the Apostles’ Creed compendiously sums up and declares the main articles of our Christian faith, and the Nicene Creed explains more fully the articles relating to the Son and the Holy Ghost, the Athanasian Creed stands as an excellent guard and defence against the subtleties of most kinds of heretics, who, were it once removed, would soon find means to enervate and evade the shorter Creeds, where the Christian faith is more simply declared.—Wheatly.

The intention of the Creed, as well as of our Lord in the Gospel, is only to say, that whoever rejects the doctrine of it, from presumptuous self-opinion, or wilful negligence, the case of such an one is desperate. But though we pass judgment on his errors without reserve, and, in general, on all who maintain them, yet personally and singly we presume not to judge of his condition in the next world.—Archbishop Secker.

The use of it is, to be a standing fence and preservative against the wiles and equivocations of most kinds of heretics. This was well understood by Luther when he called it “a bulwark to the Apostles’ Creed;” much to the same purpose with what is cited of Ludolphus Saxo (“tria sunt symbola; primum Apostolicum, secundum Nicenum, tertium Athanasii; primum factum est ad fidei instructionem, secundum ad fidei explanationem, tertium ad fidei defensionem”). And it was this and the like considerations that have all along made it to be of such high esteem among all the Reformed Churches, from the days of their great leader.—Waterland.

The Church of England proposes no Creeds to be believed upon their own authority, but because they are agreeable to the word of God. The articles of the Creed indeed are proposed as articles of faith. But they are only collections of some important truths to which that testimony is given. They are, at the highest, but extracts which are to be believed because there contained; and so to be believed as there delivered. Whatever doctrines are consonant to the Scriptures, she recommends to our faith; but what are contrary to the word of God, she pronounces not lawful for the Church to ordain. She expects her members to believe nothing as of Divine revelation, but what the records of that revelation plainly contain. Nor of the truths there discovered, does she impose the belief of any as a necessary term of communion, but what she apprehends the sacred oracles themselves to represent as a necessary term of salvation. These were the creeds of the Western Church before the Reformation; and because, at the Reformation, she withdrew from nothing but what was corrupt, therefore, these being catholic and sound, she still retains them.—Wheatly.

Why, it is often said, are we so zealous in enforcing doctrines merely speculative? 65The answer is, we believe them to be inculcated in Scripture, essential to the Christian religion, and not merely speculative. The Son and the Holy Ghost are each of them said to be sent by the Father, each of them contributes to the great work of our salvation. To refuse them Divine honour, is unquestionably to deny their Divine power. We do not presume to fix limits to Divine mercy; but surely we endanger our title to it, when we reject the conditions upon which it is granted. The humble Christian hopes for no benefit from the gospel covenant, but from a firm reliance on the merits of his Saviour, and the aid of the Holy Spirit.—Croft.

In the sacred Scripture there is no mention but of two sorts of men, whereof some believe, so that they are saved; some believe not, and they are damned. (Mark xvi. 16; John iii. 18.) But neither the Church, nor the individual rehearsing the creed, is responsible for these denunciations. It is a formulary which happens to express suitably and well the exact opinions of the Church of England, in regard to the two great mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation, as far as they can be understood. True it is, indeed, that in her eighth Article she asserts, that the three creeds, Nicene, Athanasian, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, “ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” And has the Church of England no right to make this declaration? Is she to be the only society of Christians that shall not have permission to assert that her faith is the right faith? What dissenter from the Church of England would hesitate to assume this liberty? Who is there that scruples to speak thus exclusively of his own mode of thinking? Can anything be more candidly or unexceptionably stated, than her confidence that these creeds ought to be believed, because they may be proved by warrants of holy writ? In saying this, does she preclude any man from examination? Does she lock up the volume of holy writ? She appeals solely to Scripture for the truth of her doctrine, leaving all who oppose her to the mercies of God. She does not presume to say with those, whose cause has lately been strangely popular, and whose language in a sister kingdom is such to this day, that whoever presumes to separate from her, “eo ipso illis nulla est speranda salus!” She does not even venture to assert, with the celebrated reformer Calvin, whose famous Institutes were written on the model of the Apostles’ Creed, and who must, no doubt, have had a view, in saying it, to his own peculiar Church, “extra ecclesiæ gremium,” &c.; “out of the bosom of the Church there is no hope whatever of salvation, or remission of sins.” We may surely be permitted to admire that strange course of things, and confusion of circumstances, that have lately conspired to render those popular whose principles are truly exclusive and intolerant; and the Church in some respects unpopular, which is as truly tolerant. Her language is constantly the same, and perfectly apostolic: “Search the Scriptures.” “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”—Nares on the Creeds.

Let the gates of our communion be opened as wide as is consistent with the gospel of Christ; yet surely those will stand excluded, who hold errors expressly condemned in that gospel, and which that gospel was particularly and purposely wrote to guard against.—Randolph on the Trinity.

The commissioners in 1688, thirty eminent divines, appointed to review and correct the liturgy, close the rubric they had prepared in the following words,—“And the condemning clauses (viz. in the Athanasian Creed) are to be understood as relating only to those who obstinately deny the substance of the Christian faith.”

It is no hard matter for witty men to put very perverse senses on Scripture to favour their heretical doctrines, and to defend them with such sophistry as shall easily impose upon unlearned and unthinking men; and the best way in this case is, to have recourse to the ancient faith of the Christian Church, to learn from thence how these articles were understood and professed by them; for we cannot but think, that those who conversed with the apostles, and did not only receive the Scriptures, but the sense and interpretation of them, from the apostles, or apostolical men, understood the true Christian faith much better than those at a farther remove; and therefore, as long as we can reasonably suppose this tradition to be preserved in the Church, their authority is very venerable.—Sherlock on the Trinity.

These contentions were cause of much evil, yet some good the Church hath reaped by them, in that they occasioned the learned and sound in faith to explain such things as heresy went about to deprave. And in this respect the Creed of Athanasius, concerning that truth which Arianism so mightily did impugn, was 66both in the East and West Churches accepted as a treasure of inestimable price, by as many as had not given up even the very ghost of belief. That which heresy did by sinister interpretations go about to pervert in the first and most ancient apostolical creed, the same being by singular dexterity and plainness cleared from those heretical corruptions, partly by this creed of Athanasius. These catholic declarations of our belief, delivered by them who were so much nearer than we are unto the first publication thereof, and continuing needful for all men at all times to know, these confessions, as testimonies of our continuance in the same faith to this present day, we rather use than any other gloss or paraphrase devised by ourselves, which, though it were to the same effect, notwithstanding could not be of the like authority and credit.—Hooker.

The doctrinal part of the creed has been called a “bulwark;” and if it be maintained, it should be maintained as a fortification. In time of peace, the inconvenience of keeping up fortifications occasions their being sometimes neglected, but when war breaks out afresh, every one is clamorous in blaming the imprudence of such neglect. If we are at peace now with the powers which would attack us where our creed would be our defence, we are always liable to be at war with them again. We have seen how naturally all the heresies condemned in the creed arise, when men once become eager in solving the difficulties of the Trinity and the incarnation; and such eagerness might at any time arise, or any revolution, or great disturbance, or confusion; and in case of renewed attacks, our present creed would be a much better defence than any new one that would be made at the time it was wanted.—Hey’s Lectures.

What the consequence may be, should we part with our creed, may easily be inferred from what followed upon the dropping a single word (consubstantial, or, as expressed in our English creed, “being of one substance with the Father”) out of the [Nicene] creed at the Council of Ariminum. The Catholics, being deceived by the great and earnest importunity of the Arians for unity and peace, were at last prevailed upon. The word consubstantial was left out; and the Arians boasted over all the world, that the Nicene faith was condemned and Arianism established in a general council. It is candour, when good Catholics are divided about words, to bring them to a right understanding of one another, which will set them at peace and unity again. But it is tameness to give up the main bulwarks of the faith to fallacious adversaries and designing men, whose arts and aims, however disguised, are always known to strike at the foundation of religion.—Bingham and Wheatly.

To the sceptic, the Arian, and the Socinian, we do not expect to find such a creed acceptable, because it was designed to restrain the fantastic and pernicious opinions started on their part upon the subjects contained in it. But every firm and steady believer may still, and indeed ought to, hold high the value of the only creed delivered to us from antiquity, which states that first and great principle of Christian revelation, the importance and necessity of a just faith. Upon us, the ministers of the Church, especially, it is incumbent, as occasions offer, to explain and illustrate its design and uses to the more unlearned, as well as to obviate the crude exceptions made against its doctrines or language, to derive its due weight of authority from the venerable antiquity of its origin, and to draw an argument of its merits from the universal approbation with which it has been received. Who would not tremble at the proposal of laying waste a fence, which in any degree hath afforded protection to what was obtained for us at so inestimable a price; and of inviting, by a voluntary surrender of our present security, renewed instances of insult, in repeated and incessant attacks to be made upon the terms and obligations of our Christian covenant?—Bp. Cleaver.

There are no kinds of heretics but hope to make the vulgar understand their tenets respectively, and to draw them aside from the received faith of the Church: and, therefore, it behoves the pastors of the Church to have a standing form to guard the people against any such attempts. The Christian Churches throughout the world, ever since the multiplication of heresies, have thought it necessary to guard their people by some such forms as these in standing use amongst them. And they are not so much afraid of puzzling and perplexing the vulgar by doing it, as they are of betraying and exposing them to the attempts of seducers, should they not do it. The common people will be in no danger of running either into Sabellianism, or tritheism, if they attend to the Creed itself, (which fully obviates and confutes both those heresies,) instead of listening to those who first industriously labour to deceive them into a false construction of the Creed, and then complain of the 67common people’s being too apt to misunderstand it.—Waterland.

Those in authority should be very cautious how they give in to such schemes as, under the plausible pretence of pruning our vine, and reforming things in their own nature indifferent and alterable, would by degrees overturn our whole establishment.—Randolph on the Trinity.

We may, perhaps, be reminded, that some of our own most sanguine friends have wished to expunge it. But one of them lived to retract his opinion, and a friend of truth is not to be overawed by authority, however respectable, nor silenced by popular clamour.—Croft.

So long as there shall be any men left to oppose the doctrines which this Creed contains, so long will it be expedient, and even necessary, to continue the use of it, in order to preserve the rest; and, I suppose, when we have none remaining to find fault with the doctrines, there will be none to object against the use of the Creed, or so much as to wish to have it laid aside.—Waterland, Ath. Creed.

Whatever may be pretended, this is not a controversy about some metaphysical abstract notions of personality, subsistence, or moral distinctions in the Divine nature; in these there will be always room left for different speculations and sentiments. It is not a controversy about forms, but it is a controversy about the very object of religious worship. Should there be a falling away from this profession, should there be a denying of the Lord that bought us, or of the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier and Comforter, disowning them to be truly and properly by nature God, of the same essence and eternity as the Father, and with him the one God, not three Gods, with too much reason it might be said, the glory is departed from us, whether dissenters or of the Established Church, that hath been counted the head and great support of the Protestant Churches. Should we, or they, thus fall, those Protestants, whose confessions we have mentioned, yea, and all Christians abroad, must, upon their professed principles, renounce us as not holding the head.—London Ministers’ Cases, Trinity.

The Creed of Athanasius, and that sacred hymn of glory, than which nothing doth sound more heavenly in the ears of faithful men, are now reckoned as superfluities which we must in any case pare away, lest we cloy God with too much service. Yet cause sufficient there is why both should remain in use; the one as a most divine explication of the chiefest articles of our Christian belief, the other as an heavenly acclamation of joyful applause to his praises in whom we believe. Neither the one nor the other unworthy to be heard sounding, as they are, in the Church of Christ, whether Arianism live or die.—Hooker. For a detailed justification of the Athanasian Creed, see Redcliffe on the Athanasian Creed.

It is appointed to be said in the Church of England on the great festivals, and on certain holidays, in place of the Apostles’ Creed, at Morning Prayer. So that it may be said once a month at least.—Sparrow. Wheatly.

This Creed is called in the Roman offices the Psalm, Quicunque vult, and was printed for antiphonal chanting, as it is now recited in our choirs; being alternated, like the Psalms between minister and people in parish churches. The right notion that a creed is also a song of thanksgiving is thus significantly cherished. It has been objected to the Church of England, that she has disingenuously attributed this Creed to St. Athanasius: whereas in fact she has not decided the question. It is called indeed the Creed of St. Athanasius in the rubric before the Apostles’ Creed; but that is plainly an abbreviated term for the full designation prefixed to the Creed itself, “this confession of our Christian faith, commonly called the Creed of Saint Athanasius.” And even the running heading does not so designate it. The words “the Creed of Saint Athanasius,” was deliberately altered by the correctors of the sealed books for “at Morning Prayer,” the present heading, in which, as in all other corrections, the authentic copy was followed. See the fac-simile of the corrected sealed books in Stephens’s Book of Common Prayer with notes. The same remark may apply to the designation in the 8th Article, Athanasius’s Creed.

ATHEIST. (From ἀ and θέος, without God.) One who denies the being and moral government of God. There have been but few atheists in the strict sense of the word, under any system, and at any time. Some few perhaps still remain, and adopt the system of Spinosa, which supposes the universe to be one vast substance, impelled to all its movements by some internal force, which operates by a blind and irresistible necessity.

The heathen, who vied with heretics in giving names of opprobrium to true Christians, called the primitive Christians Atheists, because they did not worship their gods.

ATONEMENT. (See Propitiation, Covenant 68of Redemption, Sacrifice, and Jesus Christ.) The word atonement signifies the satisfying of Divine justice, as mentioned in the Article on the Covenant of Redemption. The etymology of the word conveys the idea of two parties, previously at variance, being set at one again, and hence at-one-ment, from originally signifying reconciliation, comes, by a natural metonymy, to denote that by which the reconciliation is effected. The doctrine of the atonement is thus stated by the Church: “The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.”—Article 2.

That our blessed Lord suffered is sufficiently clear from Scripture, and that it was not for himself, but for us, that this God-man lived so sorrowfully, and died so painfully, the Scripture is full and clear: and not only in general, that it was for our sakes he did it; but, in particular, it was for the reconciling his Father to us, and to purchase the pardon of our sins for us,—expressly telling us, that “he hath reconciled both (Jew and Gentile) unto God, in one body, by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” (Eph. ii. 16.) “Yea, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” (Rom. v. 10.) “So that us, who were sometimes alienated, and enemies in our minds by wicked works, now he hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present us holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight.” (Col. i. 21, 22.) And the reason is, because “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;” and, “having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in heaven or things in earth.” (Verse 19, 20.) And this reconciliation of God to us, he made by offering up himself a sacrifice for us. For “God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” (1 John iv. 10,) “and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (Chap. ii. 2.) And therefore when we see him sweating great drops of blood under the burden of sin, we must not think they were his own sins that lay so heavy upon him: no, they were our sins, which he had taken off from us and laid upon himself; for he bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows; “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah liii. 4, 5.) So undoubted a truth is this comfortable assertion, that Jesus Christ by his death and sufferings reconciled his Father to us, and therefore was a sacrifice, not only for “original guilt,” but also for “actual sins of men.”—Beveridge.

ATTRITION. (See Contrition.) The casuists of the Church of Rome have made a distinction between a perfect and an imperfect contrition. The latter they call attrition, which is the lowest degree of repentance, or a sorrow for sin arising from a sense of shame, or any temporal inconvenience attending the commission of it, or merely from fear of the punishment due to it, without any resolution to sin no more: in consequence of which doctrine, they teach that, after a wicked and flagitious course of life, a man may be reconciled to God, and his sins forgiven, on his death-bed, by confessing them to the priest with this imperfect degree of sorrow and repentance. This distinction was settled by the Council of Trent. It might, however, be easily shown that the mere sorrow for sin because of its consequences, and not on account of its evil nature, is no more acceptable to God than hypocrisy itself can be.—Conc. Trident. sess. xiv. cap. 4.

AUDIENCE, COURT OF. The Court of Audience, which belongs to the archbishop of Canterbury, was for the disposal of such matters, whether of voluntary or contentious litigation, as the archbishop thought fit to reserve for his own hearing. This court was afterwards removed from the archbishop’s palace, and the jurisdiction of it exercised by the master-official of the audience, who held his court in the consistory palace at St. Paul’s. But now the three offices of official-principal of the archbishop, dean or judge of the peculiars, and official of the audience, being united in the person of the dean of arches, its jurisdiction belongs to him. The archbishop of York has likewise his Court of Audience.

AUGSBURGH, or AUGUSTAN, CONFESSION. In 1530, a diet of the German princes was convened by the emperor Charles V., to meet in that city, for the 69express purpose of pacifying the religious troubles, by which most parts of Germany were then distracted. “In his journey towards Augsburgh,” says Dr. Robertson, “the emperor had many opportunities of observing the dispositions of the Germans, in regard to the points in controversy, and found their minds everywhere so much irritated and inflamed, that nothing tending to severity or rigour ought to be attempted, till the other methods proved ineffectual. His presence seems to have communicated to all parties an universal spirit of moderation and desire of peace. With such sentiments, the Protestant princes employed Melancthon, the man of the greatest learning, as well as the most pacific and gentlest spirit among the Reformers, to draw up a confession of faith, expressed in terms as little offensive to the Roman Catholics as a regard to truth would admit. Melancthon, who seldom suffered the rancour of controversy to envenom his style, even in writings purely polemical, executed a task, so agreeable to his natural disposition, with moderation and success.”

The singular importance of this document of Protestant faith seems to require, in this place, a particular mention of its contents. It consists of twenty-one articles. In the first, the subscribers of it acknowledge the unity of God and the trinity of persons; in the second, original sin; in the third, the two natures and unity of person in Jesus Christ, and all the other articles contained in the symbol of the apostles, respecting the Son of God. They declare in the fourth, that men are not justified before God by their works and merits, but by the faith which they place in Jesus Christ, when they believe that God forgives their sins out of love for his Son. In the fifth, that the preaching of the gospel and the sacraments are the ordinary means used by God to infuse the Holy Ghost, who produces faith, whenever he wills, in those that hear his word. In the sixth, that faith produces the good works to which men are obliged by the commandments of God. In the seventh, that there exists a perpetual Church, which is the assembly of saints; and that the word of God is taught in it with purity, and the sacraments administered in a legitimate manner; that the unity of this Church consists in the uniformity of doctrine and sacraments; but that an uniformity of ceremonies is not requisite. In the eighth, they profess that the word of God and the sacraments have still their efficacy, although administered by wicked clergymen. In the ninth, that baptism is requisite for salvation, and that little children ought to be baptized. In the tenth, that, in the sacrament of the last supper, both the body and blood of the Lord are truly present, and distributed to those who partake of it. In the eleventh, that confession must be preserved in the Church, but without insisting on an exact enumeration of sins. In the twelfth, that penance consists of contrition and faith, or the persuasion, that, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven us on our repentance; and that there is no true repentance without good works, which are its inseparable fruits. In the thirteenth, that the sacraments are not only signs of the profession of the gospel, but proofs of the love of God to men, which serve to excite and confirm their faith. In the fourteenth, that a vocation is requisite for pastors to teach in the Church. In the fifteenth, that those ceremonies ought to be observed which keep order and peace in the Church; but that the opinion of their being necessary to salvation, or that grace is acquired, or satisfaction done for our sins, by them, must be entirely exploded. In the sixteenth, that the authority of magistrates, their commands and laws, with the legitimate wars in which they may be forced to engage, are not contrary to the gospel. In the seventeenth, that there will be a judgment, where all men will appear before the tribunal of Jesus Christ; and that the wicked will suffer eternal torments. In the eighteenth, that the powers of free-will may produce an exterior good conduct, and regulate the morals of men towards society; but that, without the grace of the Holy Ghost, neither faith, regeneration, nor true justice can be acquired. In the nineteenth, that God is not the cause of sin, but that it arises only from the corrupt will of man. In the twentieth, that good works are necessary and indispensable; but that they cannot purchase the remission of sins, which is only obtained in consideration of faith, which, when it is sincere, must produce good works. In the twenty-first, that the virtues of the saints are to be placed before the people, in order to excite imitation; but that the Scripture nowhere commands their invocation, nor mentions anywhere any other mediator than Jesus Christ. “This,” say the subscribers of the Confession, “is the summary of the doctrine taught amongst us; and it appears from the exposition which we have just made, that it contains nothing contrary to Scripture; and that 70it agrees with that of the Catholic Church, and even with the Roman Church, as far as is known to us by their writers. This being so, those who wish that we should be condemned as heretics are very unjust. If there be any dispute between us, it is not upon articles of faith, but only upon abuses that have been introduced into the Church, and which we reject. This, therefore, is not a sufficient reason to authorize the bishops not to tolerate us, since we are agreed in the tenets of faith which we have set forth: there never has been an exact uniformity of exterior practice since the beginning of the Church, and we preserve the greater part of the established usages. It is therefore a calumny to say, that we have abolished them all. But, as all the world complained of the abuses that had crept into the Church, we have corrected those only which we could not tolerate with a good conscience; and we entreat your Majesty to hear what the abuses are which we have retrenched, and the reasons we had for doing it. We also entreat, that our inveterate enemies, whose hatred and calumnies are the principal cause of the evil, may not be believed.”

They then proceed to state the abuses in the Church of Rome, of which they complain. The first is the denial of the cup in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper; the second, the celibacy of the clergy; the third, the form of the mass. On this head their language is very remarkable: “Our Churches,” they say, “are unjustly accused of having abolished the mass, since they celebrate it with great veneration: they even preserve almost all the accustomed ceremonies, having only added a few German hymns to the latter, in order that the people may profit by them.” But they object to the multiplicity of masses, and to the payment of any money to a priest for saying them. The fourth abuse of which they complain, is the practice of auricular confession: but, they observe, that they have only taken from it the penitent’s obligation to make to the priest a particular enumeration of his sins, and that they had retained the confession itself, and the obligation of receiving absolution from the priest. The fifth abuse is the injunction of abstinence from particular meats. Monastic vows they represent as the sixth abuse. The seventh and last abuse of which they complain, is that of ecclesiastical power. They say that “a view of the attempts of the popes to excommunicate princes, and dispose of their states, led them to examine and fix the distinction between the secular and ecclesiastical power, to enable themselves to give to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar, and to the popes and bishops what belongs to them.” That “ecclesiastical power, or the power of the keys, which Jesus Christ gave to his Church, consisted only of the power of preaching the gospel, of administering the sacraments, the forgiveness of sins, and refusing absolution to a false penitent: therefore,” say they, “neither popes nor bishops have any power to dispose of kingdoms, to abrogate the laws of magistrates, or to prescribe to them rules for their government;” and that, “if there did exist bishops who had the power of the sword, they derived this power from their quality of temporal sovereigns, and not from their episcopal character, or from Divine right, but as a power conceded to them by kings or emperors.”

It is not a little remarkable, that considerable differences, or various readings, are to be found in the printed texts of this important document, and that it is far from certain which copy should be considered the authentic edition. The German copies printed in 1530, in quarto and octavo, and the Latin edition printed in quarto in 1531, are in request among bibliographical amateurs; but there is a verbal, and, in some instances, a material, discrepancy among them. The Wittenberg edition, of 1540, is particularly esteemed, and has been adopted by the publishers of the “Sylloge Confessionum Diversarum,” printed in 1804, at the Clarendon press. [Later editions of the Sylloge include also the form of 1531.] One of the most important of these various readings occurs in the tenth article. In some of the editions which preceded that of 1540, it is expressed, “that the body and blood of Christ are truly present, and distributed to those who partake of our Lord’s supper; and the contrary doctrine is reprobated.” The edition of 1540 expresses that, “with the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ are truly given to those who partake of our Lord’s supper.”

“In the Confession of Augsburgh,” says Dr. Maclaine, the learned translator of Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, “there are three sorts of articles; one sort, adopted equally by the Roman Catholics and Protestants; another, that consists of certain propositions, which the papal party considered as ambiguous and obscure; and a third, in which the doctrine of Luther was entirely opposite to that of Rome. This gave some reason to hope, that, by the means of certain qualifications and modifications, conducted mutually in a spirit of 71candour and charity, matters might be accommodated at last. For this purpose, select persons were appointed to carry on the salutary work; at first, seven from each party, consisting of princes, lawyers, and divines; which number was afterwards reduced to three. Luther’s obstinate, stubborn, and violent temper rendering him unfit for healing divisions, he was not employed in these conferences; but he was constantly consulted by the Protestant party.”

The Confession was read, at a full meeting of the diet, by the chancellor of the elector of Saxony. It was subscribed by that elector, and three other princes of the German empire, and then delivered to the emperor.—Butler’s Confessions of Faith. Robertson’s Sylloge Confessionum.

AUGUSTINES. A religious order in the Church of Rome, who followed St. Augustine’s pretended rule, ordered them by Pope Alexander IV., in 1256. It is divided into several branches, as hermits of St. Paul, the Jeronymitans, monks of St. Bridget, the Augustines called Chaussez, who go without stockings, begun in 1574, by a Portuguese, and confirmed in 1600 and 1602, by Pope Clement VIII. As for the pretended rules of St. Augustine, they are reduced to three classes, the first comprehending that the monks ought to possess nothing in particular, nor call anything their own; that the wealthy who became monks ought to sell what they had, and give the money to the poor; that those who sued for the religious habit ought to pass under trial before they were admitted; that the monks ought to subtract nothing from the monastery, nor receive anything whatsoever, without the leave of their superior, to whom they ought to communicate those points of doctrine which they had heard discoursed of without the monastery; that if any one was stubborn towards his superior, after the first and second correction in secret he should be publicly denounced as a rebel; if it happened in the time of persecution that the monks were forced to retire, they ought immediately to betake themselves to that place where their superior was withdrawn; and if for the same reason a monk had saved anything belonging to the monastery, he should give it up as soon as possible to his superior. The second class imported that they were to love God and their neighbour; how they were to recite the psalms, and the rest of their office; the first part of the morning they ought to employ in manual works, and the rest in reading, and to return in the afternoon to their work again until the evening; that they ought to possess nothing of their own, be obedient to their superior, keep silence in eating, have Saturday allowed to provide themselves with necessaries; and it was lawful for them to drink wine on Sundays; that when they went abroad they must always go two together; that they were never to eat out of the monastery; that they should be conscientious in what they sold, and faithful in what they bought; that they ought not to utter idle words, but work with silence; and, lastly, that whoever neglected the practice of these precepts ought to be corrected and beaten, and that the true observers of them must rejoice and be confident of their salvation. As for the third, after having enjoined them to love God and their neighbour, they ought to possess nothing but in common; the superior ought to distribute everything in the monastery, according to each man’s necessity, and they should not incline their hearts to temporal things; that they ought to honour God in one another as being become his holy temples; they must attend prayers at canonical hours, and were not to be hindered at any other time; that they should pray with attention, and sing only what was really appointed to be sung; that they ought to apply themselves to fasting and abstinence with discretion; and that if any of them was not able to fast, he ought not to eat between meals unless he was sick; that they must mind what was read to them while they were at their meals; that none ought to be envious to see the sick better treated than the rest were, or that something more delicate was given to those of a weaker constitution; that those who were recovering ought to make use of comfortable things, and, when recovered, to return to the common usage; to be grave and modest in their habits; never to be far from their companion; to express modesty and stayedness in their outward behaviour; not to cast a lustful eye upon women, nor wish to be seen by them; nor when at church to harbour any thoughts of women; that when it was known a friar courted any woman, after having been forewarned several times, he ought to be corrected; and that if he would not submit to the correction, he should be turned out of the monastery; that all correction should be inflicted with charity; that they ought not to receive letters nor presents in secret; they ought to be contented with those habits that were given them; that all their works should be rendered in common; that if some of their relations sent them clothes, it should be in 72the superior’s power to give them to whom he pleased; that he who concealed anything of his own should be proceeded against as guilty of robbery; they were to wash their own clothes, or have them washed by others, with the superior’s leave; those who were in any office should serve their brethren without grudging; that they ought to shun all lawsuits; that they ought to ask their brethren forgiveness for any injury done them; to forbear ill language one to another; the superior was to be obeyed, but not to be proud of his dignity; that the monks ought to observe these rules out of love, and not slavish fear; and that this rule ought to be read once a week in the presence of the monks.

The Augustine monks, (commonly called Black Canons,) according to Fuller, were established in England later than the Benedictines, that is, in 1105, though of older existence in Europe. They were next to the Benedictines in power and wealth. The members of these two orders and their branches were called Monks, those of the Mendicant orders, as Dominicans and Franciscans, were called Friars. (See Monastery.) But Canon was the title more usually assigned to the Augustinians. This order was more numerous and powerful in Ireland than the Benedictines, though inferior to them in England. The branches of this order were the Premonstrants, (or White Canons,) the Victorines, and the Gilbertines. The Arroasians were merely reformed Augustinians, not a separate branch of the order. The Augustinians possessed two mitred abbeys, Waltham and Cirencester; one cathedral priory, Carlisle; one abbey, afterwards converted into a cathedral by Henry VIII., Bristol.

AUGUSTINE, or AUSTIN, FRIARS. These are not to be confounded with the above, being one of the minor Mendicant orders, observing the rule of St. Augustine. Fuller says they first entered England in 1252: “and had (if not their first) their finest habitation at St. Peter’s the Poor, London, thence probably taking the denomination of poverty. They were good disputants; on which account they are remembered still at Oxford by an act performed by candidates for Mastership, called Keeping of Augustines.” This exercise, with other ancient forms, was abolished by the University Statute towards the beginning of the present century.—Jebb.

AURICULAR CONFESSION. (See Confession, Absolution.) The confession of sins at the ear of the priest. The following is the chapter on confession in the Council of Trent which is obligatory on the Romish Church.

“From the institution of the sacrament of repentance already set forth, the Church has always understood, that an entire confession of sins was also appointed by the Lord; and that it is of Divine right necessary to all who have lapsed after baptism. Because our Lord Jesus Christ, when about to ascend from earth to heaven, left his priests, his vicars, to be, as it were, the presidents and judges, to whom all mortal sins, into which Christ’s faithful people should fall, should be brought; in order that by the power of the keys they might pronounce sentence of remission or retention. For it is plain that the priests cannot exercise this judgment, without knowledge of the cause, nor can they observe equity in enjoining penalties, if men declare their sins only generally, and not rather particularly and separately. From this it is inferred that it is right that the penitents should recount in confession all the deadly sins of which, upon examination, their conscience accuses them, even though they be most secret and only against the two last commandments, which not unfrequently grievously wound the soul, and are more dangerous than those which are openly practised; for as to venial sins, by which we are not excluded from the grace of God, and into which we more frequently fall, although they may be declared in confession, rightly, usefully, and without any presumption, as the usage of pious men declares, yet they may be passed over in silence without offence, and can be expiated by many other remedies. But since all mortal sins, even thoughts, make men the children of wrath and the enemies of God, it is necessary to seek from God the pardon of all, with open and modest confession. When, therefore, Christ’s faithful people desire to confess all the sins which occur to their memory, they expose them all beyond all doubt to the mercy of God to be pardoned. But they who do otherwise, and knowingly keep back any, propose nothing to the Divine mercy to be pardoned by the priest; for if a sick man is ashamed to uncover his wound to the physician, he cannot with medicine cure that of which he has no knowledge. It is, moreover, inferred that those circumstances should be explained in confession, which change the kind of the sin; because, without these, neither can the sins themselves be entirely disclosed by the penitents, nor known to the judges; nor can they rightly judge of the grievousness of the sin, nor impose upon the penitents 73the fitting punishments. Whence it is unreasonable to teach that these circumstances were sought out by idle men, or that only one circumstance should be confessed, namely, to have sinned against a brother. But it is impious to call this confession impossible, which is appointed to be performed in this manner, or to style it the torture of consciences: for it appears that nothing else is required of penitents in the Church, than that, after a man has diligently examined himself, and explored the recesses and hiding-places of his conscience, he should confess those sins by which he remembers that he has mortally offended his Lord and God. But the other sins which do not occur to him when taking diligent thought, are understood to be included altogether in the same confession; and for these we faithfully say with the prophet, ‘Cleanse thou me, O Lord, from my secret faults.’ But the difficulty of this sort of confession, and the shame of uncovering sins, would, indeed, appear grievous, if it were not lightened by the so many and great conveniences and consolations which are most assuredly conferred by absolution upon all who rightly approach this sacrament. But as regards the manner of secretly confessing to the priest alone, although Christ has not forbidden any man from publicly confessing his faults, in revenge for his sins, and humiliation of himself, both by way of example to others, and for the edification of the Church which he has offended; this is not, however, a Divine command, nor may it be advisedly enjoined by any human law, that sins, especially secret ones, should be disclosed by open confession. Wherefore, since that secret sacramental confession which the holy Church has used from the beginning, and still uses, has always been approved of by the holiest and most ancient fathers, with great consent and unanimity, the empty calumny is plainly refuted of those who are not ashamed to teach that it is contrary to the Divine command, and a human invention, which had its origin with the fathers who were assembled in the Lateran Council. For the Church did not order by the Lateran Council that Christ’s faithful people should confess, which she always had understood to be necessary, and appointed by Divine right, but that the command of confession should be complied with at least once in the year, by all and each who have come to years of discretion; whence now, in the universal Church, that wholesome custom of confessing in the sacred, and especially acceptable, time of Lent, is observed with great benefit to the souls of the faithful; which custom this holy synod highly approves, and receives as pious and worthy to be retained.”

Here an attempt is made to invest the Christian priesthood with the prerogative of the Most High, who is a searcher of the hearts, and a discerner of the thoughts; in forgetfulness of the very distinction which God drew between himself and all men—“man looketh to the outward part, the Lord trieth the heart.” As Christ has invested his ministers with no power to do this of themselves, the Tridentine Fathers have sought to supply what they must needs consider a grievous omission on his part, by enjoining all men to unlock the secrets of their hearts at the command of their priest, and persons of all ages and sexes to submit not only to general questions as to a state of sin or repentance, but to the most minute and searching questions as to their most inmost thoughts.

The extent to which the confessors have thought it right to carry these examinations on subjects concerning which the apostle recommends that they be not once named among Christians, and which may be seen either in “Dens’ Theology,” or “Burchard’s Decrees,” c. 19, Paris, 1549, affords a melancholy, painful, and sickening subject for contemplation; especially when it is considered that they were Christian clergy who did this, and that it was done in aid, as they supposed, of the Christian religion. The fearful effects of these examinations upon the priests themselves, we will do no more than allude to; he who may think it necessary to satisfy himself upon the point, may consult the cases contemplated and provided for (among others) by Cardinal Cajetan, in his Opuscula, Lugd. 1562, p. 114. In the Bull of Pius IV., Contra solicitantes in confessione, dated Ap. 16, 1561, (Bullarium Magn. Luxemb. 1727, ii. p. 48,) and in a similar one of Gregory XV., dated Aug. 30, 1622, (Gregory XV. Constit. Rom. 1622, p. 114,) there is laid open another fearful scene of danger to female confitents from wicked priests, “mulieres pœnitentes ad actus inhonestos dum earum audiunt confessiones alliciendo et provocando.” Against which flagrant dangers, and the preparatory steps of sapping and undermining the mental modesty of a young person by examinations of particular kinds, it is vain to think that the feeble bulls of the bishops of Rome can afford any security. These observations apply to the system of the Roman Church, peculiar to itself, of compelling the disclosure of the most minute details of the 74most secret thoughts and actions. As to encouraging persons whose minds are burthened with the remembrance of fearful sins, to ease themselves of the burthen by revealing it to one at whose hands they may seek guidance, and consolation, and prayer, it is a totally distinct question, and nothing but wilful art will attempt to confound them. On this point we see no reason to withdraw a regret which we have before expressed as to its disuse in the Church of England; for we cannot but believe that, were it more frequently had recourse to, many a mind would depart the world at peace with itself and with God, which now sinks to the grave under a bond of doubt and fear, through want of confidence to make use of ghostly remedies.—Perceval.

In the sixth canon of the Council of Trent it runs thus:—“If any shall deny that sacramental confession was instituted and is necessary for salvation by Divine right, or shall say that the custom of confessing secretly to the priest alone, which the Catholic Church has always observed from the beginning, and continues to observe, is foreign to the institution and command of Christ, and is of human invention, let him be accursed.”

Here sacramental confession is affirmed to be of Divine institution, and auricular confession likewise, and he is accursed who shall deny it. This is bravely said; yet the Tridentine Fathers might have recollected that, in the Latin Church as late as 813, it was matter of dispute whether there was need to confess to a priest at all, as appears from the thirty-third canon of the Council of Cabaillon, which is as follows: “Quidam Deo solummodo confiteri debere dicunt peccata, quidam vero sacerdotibus confitenda esse percensent: quod utrumque non sine magno fructu intra sanctam fit Ecclesiam. Ita dumtaxat ut et Deo, qui Remissor est peccatorum, confiteamur peccata nostra, et cum David dicamus, Delictum meum cognitum tibi feci, &c., et secundum institutionem apostoli, confiteamur alterutrum peccata nostra, et oremus pro invicem ut salvemur. Confessio itaque quæ Deo fit, purgat peccata, ea vero quæ sacerdoti fit, docet qualiter ipsa purgentur peccata,” &c. (Conc. vii. 1279.) Was Leo the Third asleep, that he could suffer such heresy to be broached and not denounced? But all the world knows, that, till 1215, no decree of pope or council can be adduced enjoining the necessary observance of such a custom. Then, at the Council of Lateran, Innocent III. commanded it. As the Latin Church affords no sanction to the assertion of the Tridentine Fathers, so is it in vain to look for it among the Greeks, for there, as Socrates (Hist. Eccles. v. 19) and Sozomen (Hist. Eccles. vii. 16) inform us, the whole confessional was abolished by Nectarius, the archbishop of Constantinople, in the 4th century, by reason of an indecency which was committed on a female penitent, when pursuing her penance; which, sure, he would not have ventured to have done had he deemed it a Divine institution. Sozomen, in his account of the confessional, says, that the public confession in the presence of all the people, which formerly obtained, having been found grievous, φορτικὸν ὡς εἰκὸς, a wellbred, silent, and prudent presbyter was set in charge of it; thus plainly denoting the change from public to auricular confessions. It was this penitential presbyter whose office was abolished by Nectarius, who acted by the advice of Eudæmon, συγχωρῆσαι δὲ ἕκαστον, τῷ ἰδίῳ συνειδότι τῶν μυστηρίων μετέχειν. And the reason he assigned is one which the Church of Rome would have done well to bear in mind; οὕτω γὰρ μόνως ἔχειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τὸ ἀβλασφήμετον. (See Perceval on Roman Schism, Hooker, Eccl. Pol. book vi. Bp. Taylor, Ductor Dubit. part ii. sect. 11.)

AUMBRIE. A little closet or locker. (See Church.)

AURORA. The title of a Latin metrical version of several parts of the Bible, by Petrus de Riga, canon of Rheims, in the 12th century.

AUTOCEPHALI. Αὐτοκεφαλοι, selfheaded, or independent. A name originally given to all metropolitans, as having no ecclesiastical superior, and being amenable only to the judgment of a synod. After the division of the Church into patriarchates, it was given to such metropolitans as preserved their independence, and were not subject to any patriarch—as the bishop of Constantia, or Salamis, in Cyprus. Bingham, book ii. chap. 18, specifies three kinds of autocephali. 1. All metropolitans, before patriarchates were established. 2. Certain metropolitans after the establishment of patriarchates, as those of Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Iberia: and the Churches of Britain before the coming of St. Augustin. To which may be added the Church of Ireland, before its submission to Rome in the 12th century. 3. Bishops immediately subject to the patriarch of the diocese, who was to them as a metropolitan. There were twenty-five such subject to the bishop of Jerusalem. The immediate suffragans of Rome are of the same class. Bingham considers a fourth 75class mentioned by Valesius on Euseb. lib. v. c. 23, as very doubtful; viz. bishops wholly independent of all others.

AUTO DA FE (Spanish); an Act of Faith. In the Spanish Church a solemn day is held by the Inquisition for the punishment of heretics, and the absolution of the innocent accused. They usually contrive the Auto to fall on some great festival, that the execution may pass with the more awe; and it is always on a Sunday. The Auto da Fe may be called the last act of the inquisitorial tragedy; it is a kind of gaol delivery, appointed as often as a competent number of prisoners in the Inquisition are convicted of heresy, either by their own voluntary or extorted confession, or on the evidence of certain witnesses. The process is this; in the morning they are brought into a great hall, where they have certain habits put on, which they are to wear in the procession, and by which they know their doom. The procession is led up by Dominican friars, after which come the penitents, being all in black coats without sleeves, and barefooted, with a wax candle in their hands. These are followed by the penitents who have narrowly escaped being burnt, who over their black coats have flames painted, with their points turned downwards. Next come the negative and relapsed, who are to be burnt, having flames on their habits pointing upwards. After these come such as profess doctrines contrary to the faith of Rome, who, besides flames pointing upwards, have their picture painted on their breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all open-mouthed, about it. Each prisoner is attended by a familiar of the Inquisition; and those to be burnt have also a Jesuit on each hand, who are continually preaching to them to abjure. After the prisoners comes a troop of familiars on horseback; and after them the inquisitors, and other officers of the court, on mules; last of all the inquisitor-general on a white horse led by two men with black hats and green hatbands. A scaffold is erected large enough for two or three thousand people; at one end of which are the prisoners, at the other the inquisitors. After a sermon made up of encomiums of the Inquisition, and invectives against heretics, a priest ascends a desk near the scaffold, and, having taken the abjuration of the penitents, recites the final sentence of those who are to be put to death, and delivers them to the secular arm, earnestly beseeching at the same time the secular power not to touch their blood, or put their lives in danger. The prisoners, being thus in the hands of the civil magistrate, are presently loaded with chains, and carried first to the secular gaol, and from thence, in an hour or two, brought before the civil judge, who, after asking in what religion they intend to die, pronounces sentence on such as declare they die in the communion of the Church of Rome, that they shall be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes; on such as die in any other faith, that they be burnt alive. Both are immediately carried to the Ribera, the place of execution, where there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed, that is, such as persist in the heresy, are about four yards high, having a small board towards the top for the prisoner to be seated on. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed mount their stakes by a ladder, and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the Church, part with them, telling them that they leave them to the devil, who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them with him to the flames of hell. On this a great shout is raised, and the cry is, “Let the dogs’ beards be made,” which is done by thrusting flaming furzes, fastened to long poles, against their faces, till their faces are burnt to a coal, which is accompanied with the loudest acclamations of joy. At last fire is set to the furze at the bottom of the stake, over which the professed are chained so high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they sit on, so that they rather seem roasted than burnt. The same diabolical ceremony was observed in Portugal.

AVE MARIA. A form of devotion used in the Church of Rome, comprising the salutation addressed by the angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Luke i. 28.) The words “Ave Maria” are the first two, in Latin, of the form as it appears in the manuals of the Romish Church, thus: “Hail Mary, (Ave Maria,) full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” &c. To which is appended the following petition: “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death. Amen.” Here we find, first, a misapplication of the words of Scripture, and then an addition to them. It was not used before the Hours, until the 16th century, in the Romish offices. It was then introduced into the Breviary by Cardinal Quignon. Cardinal Bona admits that it is modern.

“I cannot but observe,” says Bingham, “that among all the short prayers used by 76the ancients before their sermons, there is never any mention made of an Ave Mary, now so common in the practice of the Romish Church. Their addresses were all to God; and the invocation of the Holy Virgin for grace and assistance before sermons was a thing not thought of. They who are most concerned prove its use can derive its original no higher than the beginning of the fifteenth century.” But Mosheim (Eccl. Hist. Cant. xiv. Part ii. ch. iv.) says that Pope John XXII. [1316–33] ordered Christians to add to their prayers those words with which the angel Gabriel saluted the Virgin Mary.

AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is where there is a want of a lawful incumbent on a benefice, during which vacancy the Church is quasi riduata, and the possessions belonging to it are in abeyance. There are many ways by which avoidance may happen; by death; by cession, or acceptance of a benefice incompatible; by resignation; by consecration; for when a clerk is promoted to a bishopric, all his other preferments are void the instant he is consecrated, and the right of presentation belongs to the Crown, unless he has a dispensation from the Crown to hold them in commendam: by deprivation, either first by sentence declaratory in the ecclesiastical court for fit and sufficient causes allowed by the common law, such as attainder of treason or felony, or conviction of other infamous crimes in the king’s courts; for heresy, infidelity, gross immorality, and the like; or secondly, in pursuance of divers penal statutes, which declare the benefice void, for some nonfeasance or neglect, or else some malfeasance or crime; as for simony; for maintaining any doctrine in derogation of the king’s supremacy, or of the Thirty-nine Articles, or of the Book of Common Prayer: for neglecting after institution to read the liturgy and articles in the church, or make the declarations against Popery, or take the abjuration oath; for using any other form of prayer than the liturgy of the Church of England: or for absenting himself sixty days in one year from a benefice belonging to a Popish patron, to which the clerk was presented by either of the universities; in all which, and similar cases, the benefice is ipso facto void, without any formal sentence of deprivation. No person can take any dignity or benefice in Ireland until he has resigned all his preferments in England; and by such resignation the king is deprived of the presentation.—Stephens on the Laws relating to the Clergy, p. 91.

AZYMITES. A name given to the Latins, by those of the Greek Church, because they consecrate the holy eucharist in unleavened bread (έν άζυμοις). The more ancient custom was to consecrate a portion of the oblations of the faithful, and therefore of course in leavened bread. The wafer, or unleavened bread, is still retained in the Church of Rome, although the catechism of the Council of Trent admits that the eucharist may also be consecrated in common bread. In the Church of England unleavened bread was prescribed by Queen Elizabeth’s injunctions, and was generally used throughout her reign. At Westminster, it was retained until 1642, nor has it since been forbidden; but the use of leavened bread is now universal, as in the primitive Church.

BACHELOR. In the universities of the Church, bachelors are persons who have attained to the baccalaureate, or taken the first degree in arts, divinity, law, or physic. This degree in some universities has no existence, in some the Candidatus answers to it. It was first introduced in the thirteenth century, by Pope Gregory IX., though it is still unknown in Italy. Bachelors of Arts are not admitted to that degree at Oxford and Dublin till after having studied four years at those universities. At Cambridge, the regular period of matriculation is in the October term; and an undergraduate who proceeds regularly will be admitted to his B. A. in three years from the following January. Bachelors of Divinity, before they can acquire that degree either at Oxford or Cambridge, must be of fourteen years’ standing in the university. Bachelors of Laws, to acquire the degree in Oxford or Cambridge, must have previously studied the law six years. Bachelors of Canon Law are admitted after two years’ study, and sustaining an act according to the forms. Bachelors of Medicine must have studied two years in medicine, after having been four years M. A. in the university, and must have passed an examination; after which they are invested with the fur in order to be licensed. Bachelors of Music in the English and Irish universities must have studied music for a certain number of years, and are admitted to the degree after the composition and performance of a musical exercise. Anciently the grade of Bachelor, at least in arts, was hardly considered as a degree, but merely a step towards the Doctorate or Mastership. In fact, Bachelors in any faculty, as such, have no voice in the university convocations or senates. Bachelors 77in Divinity have, because they must necessarily have been Masters of Art previously. But Bachelors of Law and Medicine have no votes, unless they happen to be Masters of Arts also. In the French, as in the Scotch universities, the degree of Bachelor of Arts was taken while the student was still in statu pupillari, and in fact corresponded very much to the Sophisters in our universities, the A. M. in these places practically correspond to our degree of A. B.

BAMPTON LECTURES. A course of eight sermons preached annually at the university of Oxford, set on foot by the Reverend John Bampton, canon of Salisbury. According to the directions in his will, they are to be preached upon any of the following subjects:—To confirm and establish the Christian faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics; upon the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures; upon the authority of the writings of the primitive fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church; upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost; upon the articles of the Christian faith, as comprehended in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. For the support of this lecture he bequeathed his lands and estates to the chancellor, masters, and scholars of the university of Oxford for ever, upon trust that the vice-chancellor, for the time being, take and receive all the rents and profits thereof; and, after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made, to pay all the remainder to the endowment of these divinity lecture sermons. He also directs in his will, that no person shall be qualified to preach these lectures, unless he have taken the degree of Master of Arts, at least, in one of the two universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and that the same person shall never preach the same sermon twice. A number of excellent sermons preached at this lecture are now before the public.

BAND. This part of the clerical dress, which is too well known to need description, is the only remaining relic of the ancient amice. (See Amice.) When the beard was worn, and when ruffs came in, this ancient part of clerical dress fell into disuse, but it was generally resumed after the Restoration. The band is not, however, an exclusively clerical vestment, being part of the full dress of the bar and of the universities, and of other bodies in which a more ancient habit is retained, as in some schools of old foundation. Formerly it was worn by graduates, and even under-graduates, at the universities; nor was the custom altogether extinct within memory. It is still worn by the scholars at Winchester, &c., and was anciently worn with the surplice by lay vicars, singing men, and sometimes by parish clerks.

BANGORIAN CONTROVERSY. This was a celebrated controversy within the Church of England in the reign of George I., and received its name from Hoadly, who, although bishop of Bangor, was little else than a Socinian heretic. Hoadly published “A Preservative against the Principles and Practice of the Nonjurors,” and soon after, a sermon, which the king had ordered to be printed, entitled, “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ.” This discourse is a very confused production; nor, except in the bitterness of its spirit, is it easy, amidst the author’s “periods of a mile,” to discover his precise aim. To the perplexed arguments of Bishop Hoadly, Dr. Snape and Dr. Sherlock wrote replies; and a committee of convocation passed a censure upon the discourse. An order from government arrested the proceedings of the convocation. Snape and Sherlock were removed from their office of chaplains to the king; and the convocation has never yet been again permitted to assemble for the transaction of business. But the exertion of power on the part of the government was unable to silence those who were determined, at any sacrifice, to maintain God’s truth. This controversy continued to employ the press for many years, until those who held Low Church views were entirely silenced by the force of argument. Of the works produced by the Bangorian Controversy, perhaps the most important is Law’s Letters to Hoadly, which were reprinted in “The Scholar Armed,” and have since been republished. Law’s Letters have never been answered, and may indeed be regarded as unanswerable.