Dissertation on the Decasional Offices. 1. HAVE avoided as much as possible the addition of notes to the text of the Offices which form the greater part of this volume: being desirous that the reader should be furnished with an accurate edition and arrangement of those offices, illustrated only by some important variations between them and the Uses of the other Churches of York, or Hereford, or Bangor; and by an explanation of some parts of them, which seem to be involved in any difficulty or obscurity. Hence I have not noticed the almost numberless variations, many of them of the highest importance, which exist between the old ritual and pontifical of the church of England, and the modern ones which correspond to them of the church of Rome. These latter books are to be procured any where, and every reader who may wish to pursue the subject, can easily make the comparison for himself. My object has been to illustrate our present Book of Common Prayer, and to furnish some information respecting the observances and faith and practice of the English Church, from her own authentic documents, during the middle ages. But I think that some observations may not unfitly be thrown together, by way of preface, or preliminary dissertation, consisting chiefly of extracts and collections from canons and orders of the Church of England, which regard the due celebration of these holy offices. Three of the offices which I have edited, viz. of Confirmation, Marriage, and Extreme Unction, were considered, by the church of England for some centuries before the reformation, to be sacraments in the same sense in which those of Baptism and the Eucharist were held to be. The rite of extreme unction is now no longer practised or allowed in the church of England: but confirmation and marriage she teaches us are sacraments, although not such as two only are, "generally necessary to salvation." It was in this sense that the framers of Queen Elizabeth's Act for Uniformity spoke, when they enacted that "all and singular ministers shall, from and after the feast of the Nativitie - be bounden to saie and use the Matins, Euensong, celebracion of the Lordes supper, and administracion of eche of the Sacramentes,in such order and forme, etc." But the reader will remember that, certainly in the later canons before 1530, which may be cited, the term sacramentum is to be understood, not only with S. Augustine, as the "invisibilis gratiæ visibilis forma,' but, as the "invisibilis gratiæ visibile signum ad nostram justificationem institutum." Or to take the number and necessity of the sacraments from a provincial statute of Archbishop Peckham, in the year 1281: Septem ecclesiæ sunt sacramenta, quorum dispensatores sunt prælati ecclesiæ; quorum quinque ab omnibus debent recipi Christianis; utpote baptismus, confirmatio, pœnitentia, eucharistia, extrema unctio; -sunt et alia duo sacramenta, scil. ordo et matrimonium, quorum primum perfectis convenit, secundum vero novi testamenti tempore solum convenit imperfectis."1 II. Although the church of England has at various times limited the meaning, or extended it, of the term Sacrament, herein following the custom of the fathers of the Catholic Church who employed it in even a wider sense than writers of later ages; and although she has removed, as I have said, one Office altogether from her ritual; yet whether they be few or many, whether more than two, or two only be generally necessary to salvation, she has always held that "it is not lawful for any man to take upon himself the office of ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same," by the laying on of the hands of a Bishop. The statute above quoted says, sacramenta, quorum dispensatores sunt prælati ecclesiæ:" upon which Lyndwood's gloss is: "Hic vocantur prælati nedam superiores, ut Episcopi: sed etiam inferiores, ut archidiaconi, presbyteri plebani, et rectores ecclesiarum. Unde quoad hanc dispensationem quilibet, qui præest curæ animarum, dicitur esse prælatus, dummodo habeat potestatem sacramenta dispensandi." That is, as he proceeds to explain, of course in their degree, confirmation and orders being committed only to the Bishops. When therefore they have been so ordained, the church of England has ever insisted upon all her 1 Wilkins. Concilia. Tom. 2. p. 56. Compare also, Concilium Dunelm. "De numero Sacramentorum." Tom.1.p.574. “Imperfectis. sc. Laicis, qui respectu Clericorum dicuntur imperfecti." Lyndwood. Lib. 1. Tit. 7. Ignorantia. verb. Imperfectis. 2 Lib. 1. Tit. vij. Ignorantia. verb. Prælati. priests being prepared, if called upon, to perform the duties of their sacred ministry: and indeed not only parish-priests, but every priest to whom power and authority have been given, when it may be necessary, and without intrusion upon another's charge. And to this carefulness, in a great degree, and not to any general laxity of living and manners among the English clergy in the middle ages, are we to attribute those frequent provincial and diocesan statutes, that they should live piously, orderly, and in the severe practice of all religious duties. III. But it will be not useless to quote some orders, to the effect that the sacraments were to be administered to the people, freely and without charge. It would have been idle to have insisted upon the necessity that all men should receive some of them, and nevertheless, by tacitly permitting money to be paid and demanded for the administration, put the reception of them out of the reach of the poor. First then in the year 1126, the second canon of the council of London. "Interdicimus, ut pro chrismate, pro oleo, pro baptismate, pro pœnitentia, pro visitatione infirmorum, seu unctione, pro communione Corporis Christi, pro sepultura nullum omnino pretium exigatur." Another, to the same effect, was enacted at the synod of Westminster, A. D. 1138, adding the "desponsatio mulierum" and the sentence, "quod qui præsumpserit, excommunicationi subjaceat." Again: in other words by the council of London in the next 993 century, A. D. 1200. "Canon viij. Nihil exigendum pro sacramentis administrandis.” "inhibemus: ne 3 Wilkins. Concilia. Tom. 1. ♦ Ibid. p. 415. p. 408. |