A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The more usual name in the Latin Church was collectæ, collects, because the prayers of the bishop, which in any part of the service followed the joint prayers of the deacon and congregation, were both a recollection and recommendation of the prayers of the people. In this sense Cassian takes the phrase, colligere orationem, when speaking of the service in the Egyptian monasteries and Eastern churches, he says, “after the psalms they had private prayers, which they said partly standing and partly kneeling; which being ended, he that collected the prayer rose up, and then they all rose up together with him, none presuming to continue longer upon the ground, lest he should seem rather to pursue his own prayers than go along with him who collected the prayers, or closed up all with his concluding collect.” Where we may observe, that a collect is taken for the chief minister’s prayer at the close of some part of Divine service, collecting and concluding the people’s preceding devotions. Uranius, speaking of one John, bishop of Naples, who died in the celebration of Divine service, says, “he gave the signal to the people to pray, and then, having summed up their prayers in a collect, he yielded up the ghost.”—Bingham.

Walapidus Strabo, as quoted by Wheatly, says that they are so called because the priest collects the petitions of all in a compendious brevity. To which Dr. Bisse assents, and considers the word to mean the collecting into one prayer the petitions which were anciently divided between him and the people by versicles and responses. They are in fact used in contradistinction to the alternate versicles, and the larger and less compendious prayers.

Morinus, in his notes on Greek Ordination, remarks on the resemblance between the Greek word συναπτὴ, and the Latin collecta: but shows that the συναπτὴ, though meaning a connected prayer, has a very different use. The συναπτὴ was sometimes a sort of litany, sometimes a set of versicles resembling the “preces” of the Roman Church, or our versicles and responses after the Creed. The συναπτὴ μέγαλη, again, is like our Prayer for the Church Militant. The Greek εὐχὴ, said after the συναπτὴ, is more like our collect: but there is nothing exactly resembling it in the Greek formularies. Their prayers are generally much longer.

The collects are (for the most part) constructed upon one uniform rule, consisting of three parts. (1.) The commemoration of some special attribute of God. (2.) A prayer for the exercise of that attribute in some special blessing. (3.) A prayer for the beneficial and permanent consequences of that blessing. The punctuation of the Prayer Book most accurately brings out the meaning of the collects. The apodosis of the sentence is (for the most part) begun by a capital letter.

In many of the collects, God is desired to hear the petitions of the people, those that the people had then made before the collect. These come in at the end of other devotions, and were by some of old called missæ, that is to say, dismissions, the people being dismissed upon the pronouncing of them and the blessing; the collects themselves being by some of the ancients called blessings, and also sacramenta, either for that their chief use was at the communion, or because they were uttered per sacerdotum, by one consecrated to holy offices.—Sparrow.

Our Reformers observed, first, that some of those collects were corrupted by superstitious alterations and additions, made by some later hand. Secondly, that the modern Roman missals had left some of the primitive collects quite out, and put in their stead collects containing some of their false opinions, or relating to their innovations in practice. Where the mass had struck out an old, and put in a new, collect, agreeable to their new and false doctrines or practices, there the Reformers restored the old collect, being pure and orthodox. At the restoration of King Charles II., even those collects made or allowed at the Reformation were strictly reviewed, and what was deficient was supplied, and all that was but incongruously expressed was rectified; so that now they are complete and unexceptionable, and may be ranked into three several classes. First, the ancient primitive collects, containing nothing but true doctrine, void of all modern corruptions, and having a strain of the primitive devotion, being short, but regular, and very expressive; so that it is not possible to touch more sense in so few words: and these are those taken out of Pope Gregory’s Sacramentary, or out of those additions made to it by the abbot Grimoaldus. Many of these were retained in their native purity in the missals of York and Salisbury, and the breviaries; but were no more depreciated by standing there than a jewel by lying on a dunghill. The second order of collects are also ancient as to the main; but where there were any passages that had been corrupted, they were struck out, and the old form restored, or that passage rectified; and where there was any defect it was supplied. The third order are such as had been corrupted in the Roman missals and breviaries, and contained something of false doctrine, or at least of superstition, in them; and new collects were made, instead of these, at the Reformation, under King Edward VI.; and some few which were wanting were added, anno 1662.—Comber.

The objection, that our service is taken from the Popish, affects chiefly the collects. But those of ours which are the same with theirs, are mostly derived from prayer books brought over in the days of that pope by whose means our Saxon ancestors were converted to Christianity, above 1100 [now 1200] years ago; and they were old ones then, much older than the main errors of Popery.—Secker.

It appears that the service of the Church is far more ancient than the Roman missal, properly speaking. And whoever has attended to the superlative simplicity, fervour, and energy of the prayers, will have no hesitation in concluding, that they must, the collects particularly, have been composed in a time of true evangelical light and godliness.—Milner’s Church Hist.

It is the boast of the Church of England, and her praise, that her Common Prayer corresponds with the best and most ancient liturgies which were used in the Church in the most primitive and purest times.—Directions to Commissioners in 1661.

Here I entreat the people to remember that these collects, and the following prayers, are to be vocally pronounced by the minister only, though the people are obliged to join mentally therein. Wherefore let none of the congregation disturb the rest, especially those that are near them, by muttering over their prayers in an audible manner, contrary to the design and rule of the Church, which always tells the people when their voices are allowed to be heard, and consequently commands them at all other times to be silent, and to speak to God in a mental manner only.—Bennett.