Anonymous

“ EXCOMMUNICATION. An ecclesiastical censure, whereby the person against whom it is pronounced is for the time cast out of the communion of the church. The first rubric in the Office for the Burial of the Dead prohibits the use of the Service for any that die excommunicate.
EXHORTATION. The name given to the various addresses in the Liturgy.
They are nearly all the production of the Reformers. The Burial
Office is the only Service of the Prayer Book which has not one or
more of these exhortations. ”

“ The Church of England is the only religious body in England which may not have a distinct burial ground for her dead!
CHURCHING OF WOMEN. From the earliest times it has been usual for a woman after child-birth to come to God's house to offer thanks. It was so among the Jews, although with them the idea of purification is involved as well as of thanksgiving, as it is in the Eastern Church at the present day. In some country places there is an idea that a woman can be "Churched" at home, which is a contradiction in terms. ”

“ The only two things necessary for the validity of Holy Baptism are (1) that it should be administered in water, (2) in the name of the Holy Trinity, as is shown by the questions in that part of the Office for Private Baptism which treats of receiving a child publicly into the Church. It is to be noticed that the rule of our Church is that the child should be immersed in the water (see the Rubric before the form of words which accompany the act of Baptism) . Thus the rite of immersion can be claimed by any Church people. ”

“ To the heathen, and infidel, conversion—a change of heart and life—is absolutely and always necessary to salvation; but the baptized Christian may, by God's grace, so continue in that state of salvation (see Church Catechism) in which he was placed in baptism, that conversion, in the above sense, is not necessary to him; but inasmuch as all fall into sin day by day, he will need renewal, or renovation—the quiet and continuous work of the Holy Spirit upon his heart. There is not a single reference to sudden conversion in any of the formularies of the Church of England. ”

“ The High Church party has deepened the sense of the Church's corporate life and work, and added to the reverence, the order, the beauty of holy worship. The Low Church party has done much to awaken a spirit of vital personal religion. The Broad Church party has done much to co-ordinate the truths of religion with the certain results of science. ”

“ This may be all true, and yet Genesis need not be false. Genesis begins with man as man, and not with man as a Monera—supposing he ever was such. But when scientists speak of the principle of life as being the outcome of an act of spontaneous generation without any external creative power, then we must disagree with them. The principle of life is hidden with God alone, and must come from God. ”

“ In the Christian Church a presbyter or elder is one who is ordained to a certain office, and authorized by his quality, not his age, to discharge the several duties of that office and station in which he is placed. In this large and extended sense, Bishops were sometimes called presbyters in the New Testament, for the apostles themselves did not refuse the title. Priests are in an ordinary sense the presbyters of the Church, and in the Scotch Liturgy, compiled in the reign of Charles I, the word presbyter is substituted for that of priest. ”

“ Holy Scripture is not responsible for the phrase, "suspension of the laws of nature." Theologians do not dogmatise about the nature of miracles, and it would be well if science were less zealous for the inviolability of laws, the outside limits of which she cannot now ascertain. Miracles are but a part of the Gospel, and we judge them by the setting in which they are placed. ”

“ SARUM, THE USE OF. In the early Church in England every Bishop was allowed to ordain rites and ceremonies, and prayers for use in his own diocese. The exercise of this power, in process of time, caused a considerable variety in the manner of performing Divine Service; and the custom of a diocese in its ceremonial, mode of chanting, &c., became a distinct Use, and was known by the name of that diocese. ”

“ FAITH. Man is justified by God in respect of, and by means of, Faith in Christ. It is not the principal cause for our Justification, that being God's mercy; it is not the meritorious cause of our Justification, for that is Christ's death; audit is not the efficient cause of our Justification, for that is the operation of the Holy Spirit ”

“ Bishop Harold Browne says, "The school-authors thought that some degree of goodness was attributable to unassisted efforts on the part of man towards the attainment of holiness: and, though they did not hold, that such efforts did, of their own merit, deserve grace, yet they taught that in some degree they were such as to call down the grace of God upon them, it being not indeed obligatory on the justice of God to reward such efforts by giving His grace, but it being agreeable to His nature and goodness to bestow grace on those who make such efforts." ”

“ MILLENNIUM. Latin, a thousand years. Certain people look for a return of Christ to the earth before the end of the world, and hold that there will be a first or particular resurrection limited to the good, and a reign of Christ with all the saints upon the earth for a thousand years, or millennium. This doctrine is chiefly based upon a most literal interpretation of part of the book of Revelation (chap, xx.) , which is confessedly the most figurative and mystical book in the Bible. ”

“ SCARF or STOLE, see Vestments.
SCEPTICS. From a Greek word meaning to look about, to deliberate. Anciently the term was applied to a sect of philosophers founded by Pyrrho. In modern times the word has been applied to Deists, or those who doubt of the truth and authenticity of the sacred Scriptures.
SCHISM. Greek, a fissure, or rent. In an ecclesiastical sense it means a breaking off from communion with the Church, on account of some disagreement in matters of faith or discipline. Those who do so are called Schismatics. To separate wilfully from the Church of God is a sin ”

“ What portion of Church property has been long enjoyed by private families, or by Corporations, has, of course, become inalienable; but it would be a reasonable and a righteous thing (and all the more blessed for being voluntary) that every person who receives tithes, or possesses glebe land in a parish, for which no spiritual service is rendered, should give in some way or other to the Church a very liberal percentage of what was never meant to be raised for the purpose of private emolument, but for the fitting discharge of ecclesiastical duties. (Webb's "England's Inheritance in her Church.") ”

“ They themselves claim to have sprung from the Greek Church in the ninth century. Hook says, "It is sometimes supposed that because the Moravians have Bishops they are less to be blamed than other dissenting sects. But, to say nothing of the doubt that exists with respect to the validity of their orders, an Episcopal Church may be, as the English Moravians and Romanists in this country are, in a state of schism. And the very fact that the difference between them and the Church is not great, if this be so, makes the sin of their schism, in not conforming, yet greater." ”

“ The song of Zacharias has always been a hymn of the Church.
BENEFICE or LIVING. A church endowed with a revenue for the performance of Divine Service; the holder of which is called a Rector, or Vicar, or Incumbent, or Perpetual Curate (see under each head) . Heresy, Simony, and other grave offences, disqualify a man from holding a benefice.
A clergyman can only be deprived of his benefice for want of capacity, Heresy, Contempt of Court, or crime.
BIBLE, THE HOLY. So called from a Greek word, meaning "the books," just as the word Scriptures means "the writings." ”

“ The present Church of England is the old Catholic Church of England, reformed in the 16th century of certain superstitious errors, but still the same Church which came down from our British and Saxon ancestors, and as such it possesses its original endowments, which were never, as some suppose, taken from one Church and given to another. And thus, when Roman Catholics speak of our grand old Cathedrals and Parish Churches as being once theirs, they assert what is not historically true. ”

“ The Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, "took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance; so that the 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." ”

“ The Society is still flourishing, and has a power which is probably as little imagined as it is unknown to all but themselves.
JESUS, see Trinity, The Holy.
JOHN (St.) BAPTIST'S DAY. June 24th. This feast commemorates, not the martyrdom, but the miraculous birth of St. John Baptist. It is the only nativity, besides that of our Lord, that is kept by the Church; although September 8th is marked in our Calendar for the commemoration of the nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The festival has been observed since the 4th or 5th century. ”

“ There is a very common mistake made that tithes are a kind of tax, levied on the whole country by Act of Parliament. They are nothing of the kind, being simply a certain portion of the income arising out of lands settled by the former owners of those lands for the maintenance of the parson of the parish. They date back to the 4th century.
Although the Church is disestablished in Ireland, tithes are still paid, not to the clergy, but to the Government. Disestablishment, therefore, is small gain to the farmer. ”

“ It will be noticed that the Services recognise distinctly what may be called God's part and man's part in the communion of worship. They open by the message of God to His people, calling for penitence and promising forgiveness, which is met by the response of the Confession. Next pardon is pronounced in God's Name, which naturally awakens in the pardoned soul the outburst of Praise and Thanksgiving in the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms and the Canticles. Then the voice of God is again heard in the Lessons, and His revelation is accepted by the response of faith in the Creed. ”

“ ABSOLUTION. In the Anglican Church the authoritative declaration, by a Bishop or Priest, of God's pardon to the truly penitent. "All the office and power of man in it is only to minister the external form, but the internal power and grace of remission of sins is properly God's." (Bingham.)
There are three forms of absolution in our Prayer Book, viz., in the Order for Morning and Evening Prayer; in the Communion Service, and in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. It is to be noticed in each case that Confession precedes Absolution. ”

“ It is too often forgotten that theology is a science as much as medicine or mathematics, or we should not find the laity so confident of their knowledge, and so ready to give the law on questions of systematic Divinity. ”

“ COMMITTAL PRAYER. That prayer in the Burial Service in which the minister commits the body to the ground, "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." (See Burial Service.)
COMMON PRAYER, see Liturgy.
COMMUNION, THE HOLY. Variously called the Lord's Supper and the Eucharist. This Service, formerly exclusively called the Liturgy is the highest act of Christian worship. We will consider it under four heads,— (1) History; (2) Rubrics; (3) Service; (4) Views. ”

“ The Arminian view is that God, knowing what the life of every man born into the world shall be, and foreseeing that some "will refuse the evil and choose the good," hath elected them to eternal life. (See Arminianism.)
The Catholic view is that God of his mercy elects certain of His creatures for a place in the visible Church, and thus causes them to be placed in "a state of salvation," of which, however, they may fall short by their own perverseness. ”

“ Thus, at the present day, a great number of our nobility and landed gentry are drawing large incomes from land, which is, in all right, the property of the Church, while the clergy who do the work of the Church receive a miserable pittance out of what was once their own. Laymen drawing these incomes, "great-tithes," as they are called, are named Lay-Rectors. A benefice in the hands of a layman is termed, not an Appropriation, but an Impropriation. ”

“ SERMONS. Orations or discourses, delivered by the clergy of the Christian Church in their religious assemblies. In the ancient Church it was one of the chief offices of a Bishop to preach, and it was only in the lesser churches of the city and country that the office of preaching devolved upon presbyters. Deacons were never allowed to preach, and they are only permitted to do so now by special licence of the Bishop (see Ordination Service.) St. Augustine has laid down excellent rules for the practice of Christian eloquence. The subject is to be weighty, the style answering to the subject. ”