APPENDIX A CHANCELS

'The temple of old was divided into two parts by a veil hung in the middle thereof. The first part was called the Holy Place, but the inner part the Holy of Holies. Whatever part then of the office of the Mass cometh before the secret [Footnote 602] is performed as it were in the outer place: but the secret itself within the Holy of Holies. There were in the Holy of Holies the altar of incense, the ark of the testimony, the mercy-seat above the ark, and over this two cherubims of glory with their faces looking towards each other. Herein the high priest entered alone once in the year, having the names of the patriarchs written upon the breastplate of judgment and the shoulderplates, and bearing a censer of burning coals and blood, and incense, which with prayer he placed in the thurible until the cloud of incense covered him. [Footnote 603]

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Afterwards he sprinkled the mercy-seat and the altar with blood, and then he went out to the people, and washed his vestments in the evening. These were types of old, but they have ceased since the things signified thereby have come. But thus the former temple doth denote the present church; the Holy of Holies, heaven; the high priest, Christ; the blood, His Passion; the coals, His love; the thurible. His flesh; the burning incense, prayers of sweet savour; the altar, the hosts of heaven; the ark, Christ in His humanity; the mercy-seat, God the Father; the two cherubims, the twain Testaments, the which do look towards each other because the two do agree; the vestments which be washed, mankind. Wherefore consider what things were done of old, and what things Christ hath done, and then see how the minister of the Church doth represent the same in the office of the Mass. By the ark also is signified the humility of Christ, from which through his mercy all good hath come unto us' (Durandus, Book IV, Preface 13, 14).

In the next section the same subject is further illustrated, though without reference to the immediate subject of this appendix, the necessity of the division of every church into a chancel and nave.

The reader may consult a most interesting series of chapters in Hugo de Sancto Victore (Tituli ii-viii, Ex. Misc. II, Lib. IV) upon this subject: the passages are far too long for insertion here.

The absolute necessity of this twofold division is a point which it is more than painful at this time to have to prove. It is only within the last two centuries that our own or any branch of the Church Catholic has dared to depart from an usage which, if any, has universality, antiquity, and consent on its side, and of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. {177} For some of the arguments which have been adduced in the present controversy we must refer to the publications of the Cambridge Camden Society, and particularly the Ecclesiologist. There is nothing more wanted than a careful treatise on the subject which shall in a compendious form put this and several points depending upon it, such as orientation itself, and praying towards the east, in a clear light.