Church records

“ Having his name duly inscribed upon the records of some church gives a man confidence with which to face death, and the coming judgment, not realizing that the Church Record will perish in the flames of the last day; and that men are judged by comparing the records which God has kept with the record that each man writes upon the pages of his own body, mind, and soul. ”

“ It is the office of Christian pastors to study the sacred records with all diligence, striving to ascertain by the help of learning and philosophy, and every other help, what the true faith is, and how other minds may be best disposed for its apprehension; to place before those minds whatever may best tend to enlighten, convince, and establish them; to excite them to activity and stimulate them to further action when aroused. But further than this they must not go. The mind must work out the results for itself ”

“ I. The “Sacred and Canonical Books,” i.e. the definitive collection of the authentic documents of Revelation preserved and promulgated by the Church, have been considered in recent times by writers tinged with rationalistic Protestantism, as being documents of Revelation merely because the Church has acknowledged them to be historically trustworthy records of revealed truth. This, however, is by no means the Catholic doctrine. ”

“ Scholars have devoted to our records the patient investigation of years; the general history of the church has been summarized for popular reading in most of the principal modern languages; and for the use of theologians and students there are elaborate and costly collections. Individual biographies of saints and preachers innumerable have been written for the edification of the devout. Sketches of local church history, more or less complete, have occasionally appeared—sketches, for instance, like The Catholic Church in the United States, by De Courcy and Shea ”

“ It thus becomes impossible for any one to make out a title to the ministry by tracing his ecclesiastical descent; for no contemporary records enable us to prove a connexion between the inspired founders of our religion, and those who were subsequently entrusted with the government of the Church. At the critical point where, had it been deemed necessary, we might have had the light of inspiration, we are left to wander in total darkness. ”

“ In the primitive Christian Church, regulated by elders chosen from the people, and in no way distinguished from them in rank or learning, and served by deacons, whose office was to distribute the funds held by all in common, we can scarcely recognize the original of the pompous establishments in which religion is now believed to be preserved in its purity, till, on examining the history, we trace the degrees by which spiritual domination was secured. ”

“ Now, if a man had gone with this Bible in his hands throughout Christendom at the time the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, and inquired of the various churches respecting their organization and the gifts and blessings that Paul has described in the chapter I have read as necessary to the Church of Christ, he would have found no church corresponding to his description. He compares it to a man's body. ”

“ The sacred records teach, with equal clearness, their own plenary inspiration. Each writer has his peculiarities of style, and yet each uses language which the Holy Spirit dictates. In the New Testament a single word is more than once made the basis of an argument ”

“ The present authority for the provision in every English church of a proper repository for its records is the seventieth canon, the latter part of which runs in the following words, from which it will be seen that some of its details have been suffered to become obsolete: “For the safe keeping of the said book (the register of baptisms, weddings, and burials) , the churchwardens, at the charge of the parish, shall [p 162] provide one sure coffer, and three locks and keys; whereof one to remain with the minister, and the other two with the churchwardens severally ”

“ How the early priests came into possession of these secrets does not appear, and if there were ever any records of this kind the Church would hardly allow them to become public. ”

“ The Christian Church has not been left without its records; its history is as well marked on the pages of history as that of any other kingdom or organization. (See EPISCOPACY; EPISCOPATE; BISHOP, also MINISTRY) ,
Apse.—An architectural term descriptive of the semicircular or polygonal shape in which the Chancel is frequently built. From a Greek word meaning a joining ”

“ It is suitable, therefore, that the record of the facts should hold the first place. The apostolic epistles, which unfold the doctrines and duties involved in the gospel, and make a practical application of them to all the manifold relations of life, naturally follow the historic record. The mighty system of prophecies contained in the book of Revelation, which stretches over the whole future history of the church to the end of time, forms an appropriate close to the entire collection of writings. ”

“ We keep a record, if you must know not only individually some of us, but as a Church, as a body, or community. We have revelation penned, revelations and visions penned, we have revelation and prophecy penned, we have knowledge penned, we have knowledge and principle penned, we have principle and history penned; the history comprising but a small portion, such as can be written, revealed to us Latter-day Saints, and practised upon; so that our modern books are like the ancient books—a mixture of revelation, prophecy, history, and doctrine. ”

“ What surrender is there of one's reason, judgment, free-will, manhood, in believing the testimony of a competent and credible witness?
In point of fact, the case is even stronger than we put it. The church is the body of Christ, and in her dwelleth the Holy Ghost. She is human in her members, no doubt; but she is divine as well as human in her head. ”

“ You have heard, Latter-day Saints, for years and years, that God has given keys, by which the living in this Church might do, not only the works necessary for their own salvation, but also certain works necessary to the salvation of their ancestors as far back as they could obtain their genealogies. ”

“ The art of printing has supplied us with facilities for the study of the Scriptures which were denied to the fathers of the second century; and the ecclesiastical documents, relative to that age, which have been transmitted to us from antiquity, contain, perhaps, the greater part of even the traditionary information which was preserved in the Church. If we are only "taught of God," we are in as good a position for acquiring a correct acquaintance with the way of salvation as was Polycarp or Justin Martyr. ”

“ Everywhere we shall find the wellsprings and the streams of the Christian history of England running beneath our feet; everywhere something to keep alive in our recollections the growth and spread of the Christianity of this great country. Almost every church and churchyard has its own antiquities. Almost every parish and every sect has its own strange spiritual experiences, past or present. In almost every county and province we may study those august trophies of Ecclesiastical History—instructive beyond those of almost any other country—our cathedrals. ”

“ Fairs, too, were held, sometimes in the very cathedral precincts, and mystery and miracle plays also combined to increase the funds required for a grand fabric, or village church. A leading feature in the archivist’s work were the bishop’s registers, to be found in every diocese, and varying greatly in their interest and contents. Those of Canterbury and York form a unique collection of church history, while others are models of exactness or statesmanlike precision. ”

“ But since it would be very long in such a volume as this to count up the successions [i.e., series of bishops] in all the churches, we confound all those who in any way, whether through self-pleasing or vainglory, or through blindness and evil opinion, gather together otherwise than they ought, by pointing out the tradition derived from the Apostles of the greatest, most ancient, and universally known Church, founded and established by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, and also the faith declared to [pg 113] men which through the succession of bishops comes down to our times. ”

“ The basis on which God has willed that His revelation should rest in the world is the testimony of the Catholic Church, which, if considered only as a human and historical witness, affords the highest and most certain evidence for the fact and the contents of the Christian religion. ”

“ The history of the Church, whether as a whole or in England, is one of much complication and difficulty, and is rendered all the more so by the fact that most of those who have written it, have written party pamphlets in the guise of history. ”

“ Ecclesiastical historians are ingenious and unscrupulous; but it is impossible even for them to exhibit Church history as the record of a continuous intervention of the Spirit of Christ in human affairs. If any Spirit has presided over the councils of popes, cardinals, and inquisitors it is not that of the Founder of Christianity. ”

“ The application of this test shows that Catholic Christianity, which alone can claim unbroken, unaltered historical continuity and universality from the apostolic age, is the genuine and absolute religion of Christ. Any other species is unknown to history as an historical religion. The Catholic faith, worship, and discipline manifest themselves in the church of apostolic succession at the earliest period in which this church is clearly and distinctly visible through the medium of historical testimony. ”

“ They declare that it is their business to interpret the old and to bring forth what the ancient fathers have said, and the church must be guided by these interpretations, and by the decrees of its uninspired authorities. ”

“ During the Prayer of Consecration the Bishop is to lay hands upon the head of each ordinand, and say over each one “Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to N.; fill him with grace and power, and make him a deacon in your Church.” After laying hands upon all the ordinands, the bishop continues “Make them, O Lord, modest and humble. . .”
A Bible is to be given to each new deacon, and the words “Receive this Bible. . .” are also to be said to each one.
After participating in the Peace, the deacons go to the Altar for the Offertory. ”

“ The objects are to collect and preserve such materials, as may serve to illustrate the history of the Episcopal church, and the collection and preservation of all memorials, printed, manuscript, or traditional, which throw light on the progress of the American branch of that church, in any period, and of all materials relating to the social and religious history of the times during which that church has existed. ”

“ In cases of doubt, recollect that the Apostles, the most popular Saints in the Christian world, and in that particular country or neighbourhood, the patron Saint of the Church itself, or those whose reliques are known to have been deposited there in ancient times, are more likely to have been depicted than others. ”

“ Not only those authors of ecclesiastical history have been procured, that treat of the state of religion in general, or deliver accounts of sects or nations, but those, likewise, who have confined themselves to particular orders of men in every church; who have related the original, and the rules of every society, or recounted the lives of its founder and its members; those who have deduced in every country the succession of bishops, and those who have employed their abilities in celebrating the piety of particular saints, or martyrs, or monks, or nuns. ”

“ What is the origin of, and the authority for our present use of texts of Holy Scripture before sermons? In the Roman Catholic church the custom, I believe, is not the same. The homilies used in the Church of England have no texts. In the ancient Postils, was the gospel for the day again read from the pulpit, or were the hearers supposed to carry it in their minds? It is quite clear that texts are now in most cases merely the pegs whereon the sermon is hung, so to speak, and are not read as passages of Holy Scripture to be expounded to an audience ignorant of the meaning of the sacred volume. ”

“ With the divines who had specially valued the Prayer Book, and taught in its spirit, Bishop Wilson, William Law, Hammond, Ken, Laud, Andrewes, he went back to the times and the sources from which the Prayer Book came to us, the early Church, the reforming Church for such with all its faults it was—of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, before the hopelessly corrupt and fatal times of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which led to the break-up of the sixteenth. ”

“ The church as a corporation, without any appeal to her mystic character, has not been subject to any succession of time, has known no lapse of years, and is as present today to the events of the apostolic times as she was when those events occurred. She is at any moment we choose their contemporary, and, as a contemporary witness to extraordinary facts, her testimony is as good for us as was that of the apostles themselves to their personal contemporaries. ”

“ They state what is, not invent what is to be. Now, history or written tradition, as contradistinguished from Scripture, testifies to every simple tenet of the Catholic Church—her creeds, liturgy, sacraments, jurisdiction. It testifies unerringly, too, even from the objections of heretics, to the fact that this church has been always believed divine in her origin, divine in her teaching, infallible and unerring in her solemn pronouncements. ”