HOLY THURSDAY. see Ascension Day.
HOLY WEEK. Some consider the terms Holy Week and Passion Week equally to apply to the week preceding Easter—the last week in Lent. This is Dr. Hook's opinion. Others restrict the term Holy Week to the week commencing with Palm-Sunday, and call the week preceding that Passion Week. Undoubtedly the fifth Sunday in Lent was commonly called in old times Passion Sunday, because of the anticipation of the Passion in the Epistle.
HOMILIES. The Homilies of the Church of England are two books of discourses, composed at the time of the Reformation, and appointed to be read in churches, on "any Sunday or Holy Day, when there is no sermon." Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer are thought to have composed the first volume; the second is supposed to be by Bishop Jewel, 1563.
HOODS. The ornamental fold which hangs down the back of a graduate to mark his degree. (See Degree.) The 58th Canon provides that "every minister saying the public prayers, or ministering the Sacraments, or other rites of the Church, if they are graduates, shall wear upon their surplice, at such times, such hoods as by the orders of the Universities are agreeable to their degrees." The same Canon goes on to say "It shall be lawful for such ministers as are not graduates to wear upon their surplices, instead of hoods, some decent tippet of black, so it be not silk."
HYMN, see Church Music.
IDOLATRY. The worship of any person or thing but the one true God, whether it be in the form of an image or not.
IMMERSION, see Baptism, Infant.
IMPOSITION, or LAYING ON OF HANDS, see Ordinal.
IMPROPRIATION. Ecclesiastical property, the profits of which are in the hands of a layman. Impropriations have arisen from the confiscation of monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., when, instead of restoring the tithes to Church purposes, they were given to Court favourites.
INCARNATION. The act whereby Christ, the "Word, was made flesh."
The "taking of the Manhood into God."