A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The peculiar excellencies of our Church of England service are to be traced to a variety of causes. One prominent cause is obvious and important; namely, that our reformers most closely adhered to the model of primitive devotion.... To approach, as near as possible, to the Church of the apostles, and to that of the old Catholic bishops and fathers, so long as they deemed it pure and unadulterated, was the paramount direction of their tastes, their judgments, and their hearts.... In the formation of our liturgy, it has been happily, and doubtless providentially, guarded alike from excess and deficiency. It possesses a peculiar temperament, equally remote from all extremes, and harmoniously blending all excellencies: it is not superstitious, it is not fanatical, it is not cold and formal, it is not rapturous and violent; but it unites, perhaps beyond any other human composition, sublime truth and pure spirit; the calmest wisdom and the most energetic devotion. Under various trying circumstances it has been so signally and repeatedly preserved, that we cannot doubt it is continued to us for some greater purpose than it has hitherto effected. While the very memory of many contending parties, that threatened its destruction, has nearly passed away, it remains uninjured and unaltered; giving us to conjecture, that it is reserved for still nobler, more extended, and more enduring triumphs.—Bishop Jebb.

As for the English liturgy’s symbolizing with the Popish Missal, as some have odiously and falsely calumniated, it doth no more than our communion, or Lord’s supper celebrated in England, doth with the mass at Rome; or our doctrine about the eucharist doth with theirs about transubstantiation; or our humble veneration of our God and Saviour in that mystery doth with their strange gesticulations and superstitions. In all which particulars, how much the Church of England differed both in doctrine and devotion from that of Rome, no man that is intelligent and honest can either deny or dissemble.—Gauden’s Tears of the Church of England.

The Nonconformists say, the liturgy is in great part picked and culled out of the mass-book; but it followeth not thence, that either it is, or was esteemed by them, a devised or false worship; for many things contained in the mass-book itself are good and holy. A pearl may be found upon a dunghill. We cannot more credit the man of sin than to say, that everything in the mass-book is devilish and antichristian, for then it would be antichristian to pray unto God in the mediation of Jesus Christ—to read the Scriptures—to profess many fundamental truths necessary to salvation. Our service might be picked and culled out of the mass-book, and yet be free from all fault and tincture, from all show and appearance of evil; though the mass-book itself was fraught with all manner of abominations. It is more proper to say the mass was added to our Common Prayer, than that our Common Prayer was taken out of the mass-book; for most things in our Common Prayer were to be found in the liturgies of the Church long before the mass was heard of in the world.”—Stillingfleet on Separation.

A man would wonder how it is possible for those, who understand wherein the iniquity of Popery consists, to make this objection against the Book of Common Prayer.

The Papists have corrupted Christianity by adding many unwarrantable particulars; whereas the Protestants have rejected those unwarrantable particulars, and retained pure Christianity. Wherefore, as the Protestant religion is very good, although it is in some sense the same with that of the Papists; so also may an English reformed Prayer Book be very good, although it be in some sense the same with the Popish liturgies. Upon supposition that the matter of fact were never so certainly true, and that the Book of Common Prayer were taken word for word out of the Popish liturgies, yet this is no just objection against it. For as the Popish religion is a mixture of things good and bad; so their liturgies are of the same kind. They contain many excellent prayers addressed to the true and only God; which every good Christian cannot but heartily approve of; though at the same time there are other prayers addressed to angels and saints, and containing unsound matter. So that it is possible for us to make a choice of admirable devotions out of the Popish liturgies, if we take care to separate the good from the bad; if we reject their superstitions, and retain what is truly Christian.—Bennet’s Paraph. Com. Prayer, Appendix I.

If it may be concluded that our liturgy is not good because it is comprehended in the mass-book, or in the breviary, we must, by the same reason, infer, that our doctrine is unsound, because it is all to be found in the councils, and in the writings of the doctors of the Romish Church. But so the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and many sentences of Scripture which are used in that missal, or in that breviary, as also the doctrine of the Trinity, of the incarnation, passion, &c., which are comprehended in the councils, would all of them be but superstitions and heresies. Again, to say that our liturgy is naught, because it hath been extracted out of the mass-book or breviary, if that were true, yet it is just such an argument, as if men had hit Luther and Calvin in the teeth with this, that they were superstitious, Popish heretics, because they came the one out of a convent from among friars, and the other out of a cathedral from the midst of prebendaries, who were all infected with Popish heresies and superstitions. And would they not have had great cause to complain, if upon this pretence they had been always suspected, rejected, or condemned? Therefore, as they were reputed sound and orthodox in that respect, after their doctrine had been examined, and nothing was found therein of the leaven of Rome, although they came out of her communion, let our liturgy have but the same right done unto it; let it be examined, and that, if they please, with exactness and the greatest rigour; but in consequence let it be also declared innocent, if no harm be found therein, though that should prove true, that it had been wholly taken out of the mass-book, or breviary, which will never be found to be so. For I dare say that among one hundred of them who so confidently affirm it, there is not one that ever saw the missal or the breviary, or but knows so much as what the books are. And if we should put those books into their hands, that they might produce some proofs of this rash affirmation, which is so frequent in their mouths, they would be infinitely puzzled. They would not find, either in the missal, or in the breviary, that wise economy which our liturgy useth in the reading of the Holy Scriptures, nor those excellent passages which set before our eyes the greatness of our guilt towards God, and of his mercy in pardoning the same unto us; which passages are placed in the very beginning of it. They would not find there that godly exhortation to repentance, and to the confession of our sins in the presence of God, which followeth immediately the reading of those passages. Nor yet the confession of sins, nor the absolution which followeth the same, for there is not one line of all this in the mass-book. The ten commandments are not to be found there, nor that prayer which is made at the end of every commandment which the minister hath pronounced; nor the Commination, nor several prayers of the Litany, or of the other forms. But in it they will meet with the Lord’s Prayer, the Creeds, the songs of Zachary, Simeon, of the Blessed Virgin, and of some others, which are word for word in the Scripture, or are extracted out of it, and are grounded upon the same, and were in use in the primitive Christian Church before ever the mass was hatched. Therefore it is manifest that to say that our liturgy is either the mass, or taken out of it, is a mere slander, proceeding from malice, or ignorance, or both.—Durel’s Government of the Reformed Churches—Sermon on the English Liturgy.

LOGOS. The Word; from the Greek ὁ Λόγος. A title given to our blessed Lord and Saviour; so designated not only because the Father first created and still governs all things by him, but because, as men discover their sentiments and designs to one another, by the intervention of words, speech, or discourse, so God by his Son discovers his gracious designs to men. All the various manifestations of himself, whether in the works of creation, providence, or redemption, all the revelations he has been pleased to give of his will, are conveyed to us through him; and therefore he is, by way of eminence, called the Word of God.—Tomline.

The word appears to be used as an abstract for the concrete, as St. John employs Light for enlightener, Life for giver of life; so that the expression means speaker, or interpreter. So, (John i. 18,) “No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” In the first verse he is described as the Word which “was with God in the beginning, and was God.” (See Jesus and Lord.)

As to the reason of this name or title of the Word, given by the evangelist to our blessed Saviour; he seems to have done it in compliance with the common way of speaking among the Jews, who frequently call the Messias by the name of the Word of the Lord; of which I might give many instances; but there is one very remarkable, in the Targum of Jonathan, which renders the words of the psalmist, which the Jews acknowledged to be spoken of the Messias, viz. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, &c., thus, “The Lord said unto his Word,” &c. And so likewise Philo the Jew calls him “by whom God made the world, the Word of God, and the Son of God:” and Plato probably had the same notion from the Jews, which made Amelius, the Platonist, when he read the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, to say, “This barbarian agrees with Plato, ranking the Word in the order of principles;” meaning, that he made the Word the principle or efficient cause of the world, as Plato also hath done. And this title of the Word was so famously known to be given to the Messias, that even the enemies of Christianity took notice of it. Julian the apostate calls Christ by this name: and Mahomet in his Alcoran gives this name to Jesus the Son of Mary. But St. John had probably no reference to Plato, any otherwise than as the Gnostics, against whom he wrote, made use of several of Philo’s words and notions. So that in all probability St. John gives our blessed Saviour this title with regard to the Jews more especially, who anciently called Messias by this name.—Archbishop Tillotson.

See the very learned article on the word Λόγος (under its 16th head) in Rose’s edition of Parkhurst’s Greek Lexicon.