VI. ORIGIN AND DEFECTS OF THE CHURCH LITURGY. New religions are seldom genuine. Like new constitutions of government, they are mostly established by being incorporated with preexisting opinions and institutions. This observation will appear evident from an advertance to the origin and history of the Church Liturgy, by which will be seen the successive gradations of Paganism, Popery, and Protestantism, through which it has emerged and been transmuted. Dr. MIDDLETON, an eloquent and learned divine of the Church of England, was the first to lead the way in this inquiry. In his celebrated letter from Rome, he exhibits, in a very perspicuous manner, the great conformity between Paganism and Popery, and proves that the religion of the present Romans is entirely derived from that of their heathen ancestors in the use of incense, holy water, tapers and lamps, in their worship; in the practice of pomps and processions, penance, pretended miracles, and pious frauds; in the making of votive gifts and offerings, and erecting rural shrines; in the orders of their priesthood, nuns, monks, and begging friars, and in the use of boys clothed in sacred habits, to attend the officiating priest: all of which he has shown to have been practised by the Pagans, and by the Papists, in imitation of them. But here Dr. Middleton stopped in his comparison, unaware, apparently, that in his zeal to depreciate a rival church, he had furnished weapons of no ordinary temper, with which that to which he belonged might be assailed. This task has been executed in the well-known work of DE LAUNE, in his Plea for the Nonconformists, where he has exhibited learning and ability not inferior to Dr. Middleton. He shows that in the several particulars of kneeling at the Sacrament, the use of the surplice, the sign of the cross, the rite of confirmation, the use of sponsors in the baptism of infants, of a liturgy or form of prayer, and of altars, the observance of fasts and festivals, the ceremony of marriage, bowing at the name of Jesus, and towards the east, the authority of episcopacy, and the dedication of churches to saints; the church of England symbolizes not with primitive Christianity, but with the idolatrous forms of Popery. Such resemblance ceases to be matter of surprise, when it is known, on the authority of Calderwood, that the English service was put together out of three Romish channels: viz. 1. The breviary, out of which the common prayers are taken; 2. The ritual, or book of rites, out of which the administration of the sacraments, burial, matrimony, and the visitation of the sick, are taken; and, 3. The mass-book, out of which the consecration of the Lord's supper, collects, epistles, and gospels are taken. The Rubric, or Service-book of Henry VIII.'s time, was no other than the Romish liturgy, partly translated into English. In the reign of Edward VI. the whole was rendered into the vernacular tongue, but otherwise was little altered. This fact was distinctly avowed by the proclamation of the king and council made at the rebellion of some en thusiasts in the West of England, who had been excited thereto by the priests; it is thus : "As for the service in the English tongue, it perchance seems to you a new service, and, yet, indeed, it is no other but the old, the self-same words in English; for nothing is altered but to speak with knowledge that which was spoken with ignorance, only a few things taken out, so fond, that it had been a shame to have heard them in English."* Between that period and the reign of James I. it is true that some alterations were effected, but notwithstanding we find that monarch thus speaking of the same service. "As for our neighbour Kirk of England, their service is an evil said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass, but the liftings." It is allowed, that after this period there were some other alterations made in the service, but we find that Charles II. in his preface to the Common Prayer, annexed to the Act of Uniformity, thus expresses his opinion: "the main body and essentials of it (as well in the chiefest materials as in the frame and order thereof) have still continued the same unto this day, notwithstanding all vain attempts and impetuous assaults made against it." Now the obvious inference from these testimonies is, that the service of the Church of England, with little alteration, is the same as that of the Church of Rome. But, to show more satisfactorily the resemblance between the two churches, we shall insert the following comparison from an ingenious and elaborate publication, entitled "The Church Establishment founded in Error:"‡ "The breviary and calendar of the Church of Rome divides the year into fasts, vigils, feasts, and working days. The same division is adopted by the Church of England, with this exception, that there are less of the former; but of those that are observed they stand in the same order, and are evidently borrowed from the calendar of the Roman Church. Their feasts are divided into moveable and fixed; so are ours; and of thirty-six of them the observance is the same in both churches. The fast-days of both are alike. In the Church of Rome the service itself is divided into matins and even songs; so is ours; theirs is appropriated to the particular feasts, fasts, vigils, &c.; so is ours; the substance of their service consists in collects, confessions, absolutions, psalms, epistles, gospels, prophets, apocrypha, litanies, anthems, &c. so does ours. In the Church of Rome, the people kneel at confession or absolution, repeat after the priest the pater-noster, stand at gloria patri, stand up and repeat the apostle's creed, kneel and repeat after the minister, Lord, have mercy upon us; Christ have mercy upon us; make responses at the saying of the litany, kneel at the altar when they partake of the eucharist, or Lord's supper, kneel and ask mercy and grace after the rehearsal of the decalogue; read the psalms alternately with the priest, verse by verse; sit at reading the lessons, say the psalms to the accompaniment of music, bow to the * Acts and Mon. vol. ii. p. 1189; quoted by De Laune. east and at the name of Jesus. All this is done in the Church of Rome, and so is it performed in the Church of England. The places of worship which the Church of England at present occupies, and the endowments it possesses, were built, consecrated, and bestowed by the Papists, and as they were dedicated by them to various saints, so they continue dedicated by the Church of England. The Church of Rome has its archbishops, bishops, deans and chapters, prebends, archdeacons, and other graduated dignities; so has the Church of England, which retains also distinguishing habits for each, as formerly practised by the Roman Church. And the ordination services in both churches so closely resemble each other, that, with a few unimportant alterations, they are verbatim the same. A parallel so singular and striking cannot fail to convince every unprejudiced mind, that one system has given rise to the other."-pp. 44-5. Having gone through the historical part of our inquiry, we shall next come to a notice of the church service as now administered. Apart from the temporalities of the Church, we do not think there is much to give offence in the established worship, notwithstanding its impure and idolatrous origin. Man is said naturally to be prone to religion, and were he deprived of his present idols, it is not improbable he might create others with more onerous pretensions. Those, however, most attached to the national establishment, cannot deny there are defects in its ritual, which, if they could be quietly abscinded, would a great improvement. The church has partaken, in some degree, of the improvements of the age. It has been argued out of intolerance towards every Christian sect. Some doctrines still retained, as part of the Athanasian creed and Thirty-nine Articles, are viewed, we apprehend, in the same light as special pleading and other legal fictions, rather as curious relics of a past age than as dogmas of practical use and belief. In its rites and ceremonial, the services it exacts are of easy performance to every class. The enforcement of the sabbath is an unmixed good to the industrious orders, while the hebdomadal inculcation of a future state of reward and punishment supports with hope or restrains with fear those who cannot appreciate the claims of a more enlightened morality. Philosophers can hardly begrudge the devotion of one morning out of seven to a parish church; if their feelings are not interested in the iterations of the Liturgy, their souls may be soothed by music and psalmody, and thus be enabled to range, with less disturbance, through the regions of science. Mere politicians, who usually look on the sanctions of religion as more useful than credible, are little under its influence. The Tories were formerly a godly race of men,-they had religion at the heart, but with the Whigs it never went beyond the lips. Speaking of these once notable factions, the late Mr. Fox observes, "While the Whigs considered all religion with a view to politics, the Tories, on the other hand, referred all politics to religion. Thus the former, in their hatred to Popery, did not so much regard the superstition or even idolatry of that unpopular sect, as its tendency to establish arbitrary power in the state; while the latter revered arbitrary monarchy as a divine institution, and cherished passive obedience and non-resistance as articles of religious faith." With few exceptions, both parties are now agreed in treating religion as an engine or ally of the state,-a branch of the police, or civil power, very useful for repressing disorders, or assisting that famous tax machine, a mock representation, in extracting money out of the pockets of the people. The Church appears inclined to cultivate a spirit of indifference and quietism, the most favourable course it could take for a lengthened duration. It prosecutes no doctrine, controls, with a gentle hand, the passions of the multitude, gives full scope to the pleasures of the great, and is mostly prompt to throw the weight of its influence into the scale of government. So far is well and judicious. But there are some parts of the Liturgy so staringly preposterous, and so inconsistent with genuine Protestantism, that we think, if they are not shortly got rid of, they must, ere long, attract a dangerous share of popular attention. The reformation of Henry VIII. from the first needed reforming, and, after an elapse of more than two centuries, the task cannot surely be deemed premature. The portion of the book of Common Prayer, to which we shall first call attention, is the Church Catechism. This includes the elements of Church of Englandism, and is of the utmost importance from being first impressed on the minds of the rising generation. To the bad grammar and logic of this manual we do not attach much importance, though, entering as it does into early instruction, it ought to be unobjectionable on these points. But what is more serious, is the impracticable, superfluous and unintelligible matter it contains. For example:-in the baptismal service, the godfather and godmother renounce, in the name and behoof of the child," the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh;" and this engagement the child solemnly promises to fulfil. But the utter impossibility of performance reduces the whole to an unmeaning ceremony: sponsors offer up their pledges without consideration, and christenings next to marriages are scenes of the greatest levity and indecorum. That part where the child engages to make "no graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth," is superfluous, inapplicable, and liable to be misunderstood. Though the golden calf was never more worshipped than at present, it is the most romote possible from a religious worship. The injunction was delivered to the Jews when they were surrounded by nations of idolators; but the nearest idolatry is distant from England at least a thousand leagues, and children can find no type of it in this country, except in the productions of the artist, to which they may mistakenly think it applies. In another place occurs the phrase "all the elect people of God," which savours strongly of that Calvinism against which Lord Chatham directed History of James II. his anathema, and which we verily believe, next to the anarchical principles of the French revolutionists, is the most anti-social doctrine ever propagated. Unless religion aids the cause of virtue, it is, comparatively, valueless; but the doctrine of election divests the Christian faith of every moral obligation. Of what importance can an individual's conduct be, if his salvation depends solely on the fiat of a foregone conclusion. In the words of JOHN WESLEY, who has stated the case with equal force and truth, the sum of all is this: "one in twenty (suppose) of mankind are elected; nineteen in twenty are reprobated! The elect shall be saved, do what they will: the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can.' Affirm till doomsday that there can be no election without faith, and no faith without works, this is the essence of Calvinism; for which, diabolism would be a better name; and in the worst and bloodiest idolatry that ever defiled the earth, there is nothing so horrid, so monstrous, so impious. Transubstantiation, or the real presence, was the great test of popery at the time of the Reformation. If a man, like Mr. O'Connell, for example, were to affirm his belief that the body and blood of Christ are actually taken and swallowed, at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he was hurried off to the stake, without pity or remorse. Yet, for the life of us, we cannot attach any other than a real and corporeal interpretation to the following interrogatories in the Catechism : Question. What is the inward part or thing signified? Answer. The body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper. Question. What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby? Answer. The strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine. If this is not transubstantiation we do not know how it can be otherwise expressed. But it may be urged, that our apprehensions are wholly groundless, and no harm is done: that the catechism is intended only for the instruction of children; that it is mere words learnt by rote, like the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments, at an age when the understanding is so little unfolded that no ideas are attached to them. Granted: but if the formula is to be so construed, we think it had better be consigned to the exclusive use of the dame shools, and the public saved the expense of maintaining so many well-fed clergymen, chiefly employed in impressing and confirming it on the minds of our juvenile population. Another morceau from the mass-book is retained in the Visitation of the Sick; in which the Protestant priest actually grants absolution of sin with as much sang froid and authority as Leo. X. The sick person is directed to make a confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled in any weighty matter; the priest then tenders a carte blanche in manner and form following: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his church to absolve all sin Dr. Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. i. p. 371. |