A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

DEPOSITION. (See Degradation.)

DEPRECATIONS. (See Litany.)

DEPRIVATION is an ecclesiastical sentence, whereby a clergyman is deprived of his parsonage, vicarage, or other spiritual promotion or dignity.

By Canon 122. Sentence against a minister, of deprivation from his living, “shall be pronounced by the bishop only with the assistance of his chancellor and the dean, (if they may conveniently be had,) and some of the prebendaries, if the court be kept near the cathedral church; or of the archdeacon, if he may be had conveniently, and two other at the least grave ministers and preachers to be called by the bishop, when the court is kept in other places.”

The causes of deprivation may be reduced to three heads, viz. to want of capacity, contempt, and crimes. Nonconformity is thus specially punished by 1 Eliz. c. 2, 13 Eliz. c. 12, 14 Car. II. c. 4. Dilapidation used to be held a good cause of deprivation, yet that it has ever been inflicted as a punishment of dilapidation does not appear, either by the books of common or canon law. In all causes of deprivation, where a person is in actual possession of an ecclesiastical benefice, these things must concur: 1st, A monition or citation of the party to appear: 2nd, A charge given against him by way of libel or articles, to which he is to give an answer: 3rd, A competent time must be assigned, for proofs and interrogatories: 4th, The person accused shall have the liberty of counsel to defend his cause, to except against witnesses, and to bring legal proofs against them: and 5th, There must be a solemn sentence, read by the bishop, after hearing the merits of the cause, or pleadings on both sides. These are the fundamentals of all judicial proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts, in order to a deprivation. And if these things be not observed, the party has a just cause of appeal, and may have a remedy in a superior court.

By 1 & 2 Vict. c. 106, s. 31, spiritual persons trading contrary to the provisions of that act, may be, for the third offence, deprived.

DESK. This is the name usually given to the pulpit or pew in which morning and evening prayers are sung or said in the English churches. The using of this pulpit for prayer is peculiar to the English Church, and has a very unpleasant effect. The First Prayer Book of Edward VI. ordered “the priest, being in the choir, to begin the Lord’s Prayer, called Pater Noster, (with which the morning and evening services then began,) with a loud voice:” so that it was at that time the custom for the minister to sing or say the morning and evening prayer, not in a desk or pulpit, but at the upper end of the choir or chancel, near the altar, towards which, whether standing or kneeling, he always turned his face in the prayers. This gave great offence, however, though it had been the custom of the Church of England for many hundred years, to some superstitious weaker brethren, who so far forgot their charity as to call it anti-Christian. The outcry, however frivolous and vexatious, prevailed so far, that when, in the fifth year of King Edward, the Prayer Book was altered, the following rubric appeared instead of the old one, viz. “The morning and evening prayers shall be used in such places of the church, chapel, or chancel, and the minister shall so turn him, as the people best may hear. And if there be any controversy therein, the matter shall be referred to the ordinary, and he or his deputy shall appoint the place.” This caused great contentions—the more orthodox kneeling in the old way, and singing or saying the prayers in the chancel, and the innovators, or ultra-Protestants, adopting new forms, and performing all the services in the body of the church. In the reign of Elizabeth, the rubric was brought to its present form: “that the morning and evening prayers shall be used in the accustomed place in the church, chapel, or chancel,” by which was clearly meant the choir or chancel, which had been for centuries the accustomed place; and it cannot be supposed that the Second Book of Edward, which lasted only one year and a half, could establish a custom. A dispensing power, however, was left with the ordinary, who might determine it otherwise, if he saw just cause. Pursuant to this rubric, the morning and evening services were again, as formerly, sung or said in the chancel or choir. But in some churches, owing to the too great distance of the chancel from the body of the church, in others owing to the ultra-Protestant superstition of the parishioners, the ordinaries permitted the clergy to leave the chancel, and read prayers from a pew in the body of the church. This innovation and novelty, begun first by some few ordinaries, and recommended by them to others, grew by degrees to be more general, till at last it came to be the universal practice; insomuch that the convocation, in the beginning of King James the First’s reign, ordered that in every church there should be a convenient seat made for the minister to read service in. In new churches, where there can be no complaint of the size of the chancels, there seems to be no reason why the ordinaries should not now remove the desk, and send the clergy back to their proper place, to sing or say the prayers in the chancel. At all events, they might get rid of that unsightly nuisance, a second pulpit instead of a reading pew. If the prayers are to be preached to the people, as well as the sermon, one pulpit might suffice. It is gratifying to know, that since the article was written in the first edition of this work, this disfigurement of our churches has been very generally removed. It is to be observed, that the word does not once occur in the Prayer Book.

DEUS MISEREATUR. The Latin name for Psalm lxvii., which may be used after the second lesson at evening prayers, instead of the Nunc Dimittis, except on the twelfth day of the month, when it occurs among the psalms of the day. It was first inserted in our service in the Second Book of King Edward VI.

DEUTERONOMY. A canonical book of the Old Testament. The word implies a second law, the principal design of it being, a repetition of the laws already delivered; which was a necessary thing, inasmuch as the Israelites, who had heard it before, were dead in the wilderness, and there was sprung up another generation of men, who had not heard the Decalogue, or any other of the laws openly proclaimed. It contains likewise some new laws; such as the taking down malefactors from the tree in the evening; the making of battlements on the roofs of houses; the expiation of an unknown murder; the punishment to be inflicted upon a rebellious son; the distinction of the sexes by apparel; the marrying a brother’s wife after his decease: as also, orders and injunctions concerning divorce; laws concerning men-stealers; concerning unjust weights and measures; concerning the marrying of a captive woman; concerning servants that desert their master’s service; and several other laws, not only ecclesiastical and civil, but also military. There are inserted likewise some transactions, which happened in the last year of the travels of the Israelites through the wilderness.

Deuteronomy is the last book of the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses; though some have questioned whether it was written by that legislator, because, in the last chapter, mention is made of his death and burial, and of the succession of Joshua after him. But this only proves that the last chapter was not written by Moses, but added by some other person; most probably by Ezra, when he published an edition of the Holy Scriptures. (See Pentateuch.)