A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

INVISIBLES. A distinguishing name given to the disciples of Osiander, Flacius Illyricus, Swenkfeld, &c., being so denominated because they denied the perpetual visibility of the Church. Palmer remarks, that the reformed seem generally to have taught the doctrine of the visibility of the Church, until some of them deemed it necessary, in consequence of their controversy with the Romanists, who asked them where their Church existed before Luther, to maintain that the Church might sometimes be invisible. This mistaken view appears in the Belgic Confession, and was adopted by some of the Protestants; but it arose entirely from their error in forsaking the defensive ground which their predecessors had taken at first, and placing themselves in the false position of claiming the exclusive title of the Church of Christ, according to the ordinary signification of the term. Jurieu, a minister of the French Protestants, has shown this, and has endeavoured to prove that the Church of Christ is essentially visible, and that it never remained obscured, without ministry or sacraments, even in the persecutions, or in the time of Arianism. The same truth has been acknowledged by several denominations of dissenters in Britain.

INVITATORY. Some text of Scripture, adapted and chosen for the occasion of the day, and used in ancient times before the Venite, which is also called the Invitatory Psalm.

The Invitatories, as given in the Roman Breviaries, are two verses, “Adoremus Dominum, qui fecit nos,” and “qui fecit nos:” the former sung before and after the psalm, and at the end of the 2nd, 6th, and 1Oth verses; and the latter at the end of the 4th and 8th.—Jebb.

INVOCATION. The commencing part of the Litany, containing the invocation of each Person of the Godhead, severally, and of the Blessed Trinity in Unity. This distinction is made in the margin of Nicholls’s edition of the Common Prayer.

INVOCATION OF SAINTS. The thirty-fifth canon of the Council of Laodicea runs thus: “It does not behove Christians to leave the Church of God, and go and invoke angels, and make assemblies; which things are forbidden. If, therefore, any one be detected idling in their secret idolatry, let him be accursed, because he has forsaken our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and gone to idolatry.” This plain testimony of the fathers of the primitive Church, against the invocation and worshipping of angels, which is denounced as idolatry, is not to be set aside by all the ingenuity of the Roman writers.—See their attempts, Labbe and Cossart, i. 1526. The subtle distinctions of Latria, Dulia, and the rest, had not entered the imagination of Theodoret when he cited this canon as condemning the worshipping of angels, σύνοδος ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ τῆς Φρυγίας νόμῳ κεκώλυκε τὸ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις προσεύχεσθαι (Comm. Coloss. ii. 18); nor into that of Origen, who expressly says, that men ought not to worship or adore the angels, for that all prayer and supplication, and intercession and thanksgiving, should be made to God alone, (Contra Celsum, v. § 4,) and that right reason forbids the invocation of them.—Ibid. § 5.

But in the twenty-fifth session of the Popish Council of Trent, the synod thus rules: “Of the invocation, veneration, and relics of the saints, and the sacred images, the holy synod commands the bishops and others who have the office and care of instruction, that according to the custom of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, which has been received from the first ages of the Christian religion, the consent of the holy Fathers, and the decrees of the sacred councils, they make it a chief point diligently to instruct the faithful concerning the intercession and invocation of saints, the honour of relics, and the lawful use of images, teaching them that the saints reigning together with Christ, offer to God their prayers for men; that it is good and useful to invoke them with supplication, and, on account of the benefits obtained from God through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour, to have recourse to their prayers, aid, and assistance; but that they who deny that the saints enjoying eternal happiness in heaven are to be invoked, or who assert either that they do not pray for men, or that the invoking them that they may pray for each of us, is idolatry; or that it is contrary to the word of God, and opposed to the honour of the one Mediator between God and man; or that it is folly, either by word or thought, to supplicate them who are reigning in heaven; are impious in their opinions.

“Also that the holy bodies of the holy martyrs and others living with Christ, which were living members of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Ghost, and are by him to be raised to eternal life, and glorified, ought to be venerated by the faithful; by means of which the faithful receive many benefits. So that they who declare that veneration and honour are not due to the relics of the saints, or that the honour which the faithful pay to them and other sacred monuments is useless, and that it is in vain to celebrate the memory of the saints for the sake of obtaining their assistance, are utterly to be condemned, as the Church already has condemned them, and does so at the present time.

“Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and other saints, are to be especially had and retained in the churches; and due honour and veneration to be given to them, not because it is supposed that there is any divinity or virtue in them on account of which they are to be worshipped, nor because anything is to be asked of them, nor that confidence is to be placed in images, as of old was done by the heathens, who placed their hope in idols, but because the honour which is shown to them is referred to the prototypes which they represent; so that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads and fall down, we worship Christ, and venerate the saints, whose likeness they bear. That is what has been sanctioned by the decrees of the councils against the opposers of images, especially those of the second Nicene Synod.

“But let the bishops diligently teach that by stories of the mysteries of our redemption, expressed in pictures or other representations, the people are taught and confirmed in commemorating and carefully bearing in mind the articles of faith, as also that great advantage is derived from all the sacred images, not only because the people are thereby reminded of the benefits and gifts which Christ has conferred upon them, but also because the miracles of God by the saints, and their wholesome examples, are submitted to the eyes of the faithful, that they may give thanks to God for them, and dispose their lives and manners in imitation of the saints; and may be excited to adore and love God, and to cultivate religion.

“Canon. If any shall teach or think contrary to these decrees, let him be accursed.”