A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

ADOPTIANS. Heretics in several parts of Spain, who held that our Saviour was God only by adoption. Their notions were condemned at Frankfort in the year 794.

ADOPTION. To adopt is to make him a son who was not so by birth. The Catechism teaches us that it is in holy baptism that “we are made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.” God sent forth his Son to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. (Gal. iv. 4, 5.)

ADORATION. This word signifies a particular sort of worship, which the Pagans gave to their deities: but, amongst Christians, it is used for the general respect and worship paid to God. The heathens paid their regard to their gods, by putting their hands to their mouths, and kissing them. This was done in some places standing, and sometimes kneeling; their faces were usually covered in their worship, and sometimes they threw themselves prostrate on the ground. The first Christians in their public prayers were wont to stand; and this they did always on Sundays, and on the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost, in memory of our Lord’s resurrection, as is still common in the Eastern Churches. They were wont to turn their faces towards the east, either because the East is a title given to Christ in the Old Testament, (as by Zachariah, vi. 12, according to the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate,) or else to show that they expected the coming of Christ at the last day from the east.

ADULT BAPTISM. (See Baptism.)

ADVENT. For the greater solemnity of the three principal holidays, Christmas day, Easter day, and Whit-Sunday, the Church hath appointed certain days to attend them: some to go before, and others to come after them. Before Christmas are appointed four “Advent Sundays,” so called because the design of them is to prepare us for a religious commemoration of the advent or coming of Christ in the flesh. The Roman ritualists would have the celebration of this holy season to be apostolical, and that it was instituted by St. Peter. But the precise time of its institution is not so easily to be determined; though it certainly had its beginning before the year 450, because Maximus Taurinensis, who lived about that time, writ a homily upon it. And it is to be observed, that, for the more strict and religious observation of this season, courses of sermons were formerly preached in several cathedrals on Wednesdays and Fridays, as is now the usual practice in Lent. And we find by the Salisbury Missal, that, before the Reformation, there was a special Epistle and Gospel relating to Christ’s advent, appointed for those days during all that time.—Wheatly.

It should be observed here, that it is the peculiar computation of the Church, to begin her year, and to renew the annual course of her service, at this time of Advent, therein differing from all other accounts of time whatsoever. The reason of which is, because she does not number her days, or measure her seasons, so much by the motion of the sun, as by the course of our Saviour; beginning and counting on her year with him, who, being the true “Sun of righteousness,” began now to rise upon the world, and, as “the Day-star on high,” to enlighten them that sat in spiritual darkness.—Bp. Cosin, Wheatly.

The lessons and services, therefore, for the four first Sundays in her liturgical year, propose to our meditations the two-fold advent of our Lord Jesus Christ; teaching us that it is he who was to come, and did come, to redeem the world; and that it is he also who shall come again, to be our judge. The end proposed by the Church in setting these two appearances of Christ together before us, at this time, is to beget in our minds proper dispositions to celebrate the one and expect the other; that so with joy and thankfulness we may now “go to Bethlehem, and see this great thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to us,” even the Son of God come to visit us in great humility; and thence, with faith unfeigned and hope immoveable, ascend in heart and mind to meet the same Son of God in the air, coming in glorious majesty to judge the quick and dead.—Bp. Horne.

ADVOCATE, the word used in our Bibles as a translation of the Greek παράκλητος, (see Paraclete,) which signifies one who exhorts, defends, comforts; also one who prays or intercedes for another. It is an appellation given to the Holy Spirit by our Saviour. (John xiv. 16; xv. 26.)

ADVOCATES are mentioned in the 96th, 131st, and 133rd English Canons, as regular members of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The pleaders, or superior practitioners, in all the English and Irish Church Courts are so called. In London they form a corporation, or college, called Doctors’ Commons; because all Advocates must be Doctors of Law, and they formerly lived together in a collegiate manner, with a common table, &c. The candidate Advocates obtain a fiat from the archbishop of Canterbury, and are admitted by the judge to practise. In Ireland they do not form a college: they must be Doctors of Law, but generally practise in the common law or equity courts, besides. They are admitted to practise by the judge of the Prerogative Court. The pleaders in the supreme courts in Scotland, and generally throughout Europe, are called Advocates. The institution of the order is very ancient. About the time of the emperor Alexander Severus (see Butler’s Life of L’Hopital) three ranks of legal practitioners were established: the orators, who were the pleaders; the advocates, who instructed the orators in points of law; and the cognitores, or procuratores, who discharged much the same office as proctors or attorneys now. The first order gradually merged into the second.—Jebb.

ADVOWSON, is the right of patronage to a church, or an ecclesiastical benefice; and he who has the right of advowson is called the patron of the church, from his obligation to defend the rights of the church from oppression and violence. For when lords of manors first built churches upon their own demesnes, and appointed the tithes of those manors to be paid to the officiating ministers, which before were given to the clergy in common, the lord, who thus built a church and endowed it with glebe or land, had of common right a power annexed of nominating such minister as he pleased (provided he were canonically qualified) to officiate in that church, of which he was the founder, endower, maintainer, or, in one word, the patron.