A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The foregoing passage furnishes us with a description of Christians, of baptized persons; and consequently to Christians we are to refer those other passages which relate to God’s predestination: them God hath predestinated to glory. And as such, as God’s elect people, predestinated not merely to means of grace, for this were clearly inadequate, but to glory in the kingdom of glory, the inspired writers were wont to address the multitude of the baptized. Thus the apostle addresses the Church of the Thessalonians, good and bad commingled, as “knowing” their “election of God.” (1 Thess. i. 4.) Thus St. Peter speaks of “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” as “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Pet. i. 2); and he speaks of them afterwards as “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people;” and St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, addresses the Hebrews, meaning those who had made profession of the Christian faith, as “holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling.” Such, then, is our blessing, our privilege, our high hope as Christians. In the temple of the first Jerusalem there was a variety of chambers or mansions, employed for different purposes, though all relating directly or indirectly to the services of the sanctuary. In the new Jerusalem, which will itself be the temple of the universe, there will in like manner be “many mansions” or chambers: but if so, those mansions or chambers in the earthly Jerusalem having been intended for a variety of different offices, we may conclude that offices of different characters will exist in the new Jerusalem. It is very possible that we are not only each of us predestined to heaven, but predestined also each to our own particular place in heaven, that our very mansion is fixed. We know that God has predestinated particular persons to particular offices here on earth, long before their birth: as, for example, in the case of Jeremiah, God saith, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth of the womb, I sanctified thee, and ordained thee a prophet unto the nation.” And so with respect also to St. Paul, we are told that it “pleased God to separate him from his mother’s womb, that he might preach Christ among the heathen.” (Gal. i. 15, 16.) Nay, we find that this is really to be the case with respect to the next world, in some cases at least; for example, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, the apostles shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28): a particular office is allotted to them; to a particular office they are predestinated. When the mother of Zebedee’s children prayed that her children might sit, the one on the right hand, and the other on the left, in our Lord’s kingdom of glory, our Lord said, “to sit on my right hand and on my left, is not mine to give.” (Matt. xx. 23.) No. These places are designed for certain persons who are preparing, or shall be prepared, to fill the same. This is already fixed in the counsels of God. These places, therefore, are not mine to give. They are already given. Your place is also designated: prepare for it by doing your duty. We know that some of the saints are predestinated to a mysterious office, the nature of which we cannot understand, but they will judge angels. (1 Cor. vi. 2, 3.) And at the last day shall the King say unto them that are on his right hand, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matt. xxv. 34.)

But this predestination to glory is, like our election, conditional. We shall not only be saved, but we shall occupy a predestined post of glory, if we escape condemnation at the day of judgment; not otherwise. The omission of all reference to the day of judgment is the vice of the Calvinistic system. The man, condemned at the day of judgment, will find an addition to his pangs, by knowing the glory to which he had been predestined, had he not perverted his ways. But if our sins are then found blotted out by the blood of the Lamb, we know that a certain place in heaven is designed for us, for which we are shaped and prepared by the circumstances under which we are placed while on earth. (See Bishop Pearson’s 23 and 24 Lectiones “de Prædestinatione” in Archdeacon Churton’s edition of his minor Works.)

PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST, OUR LORD. (See Generation.) His existence before he was born of the Virgin Mary, and even before the creation of the world by him. The fact is stated thus by Bishop Bull in his “Defence of the Nicene Creed:”—All the catholic doctors of the first three centuries taught, that Jesus Christ, he who was afterwards so called, existed before he became man, or before he was born, according to the flesh, of the Blessed Virgin, in another nature, far more excellent than the human nature; that he appeared to holy men, giving them an earnest, as it were, of his incarnation; that he always presided over, and provided for, the Church, which in time to come he would redeem with his own blood; and of consequence that, from the beginning, the whole order or thread of the Divine dispensation, as Tertullian speaks, ran through him: further yet, that he was with the Father before the foundations of the world, and that by him all things were made.

PREFACES. Certain short occasional forms in the Communion Service, which are introduced by the priest, on particular festivals, immediately before the anthem, beginning, “Therefore with angels and archangels,” &c. This anthem is a song of praise, or an act of profound adoration, equally proper at all times; but the Church calls upon us more especially to use it on her chief festivals, in remembrance of those events which are then celebrated. Thus, on Christmas Day, the priest having said—“It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, everlasting God,”—adds the proper preface which assigns the reason for peculiar thankfulness on that particular day, viz. “Because thou didst give Jesus Christ, thine only Son, to be born as at this time for us; who, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, was made very man, of the Virgin Mary his mother, and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin: therefore, with angels, &c.” The days for which these prefaces are provided are, Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and seven days after each of these festivals; also Whitsunday, and six days after; together with Trinity Sunday. The antiquity of such prefaces may be estimated from the fact that they are mentioned and enjoined by the 103rd canon of the African code, which code was formed of the decisions of many councils prior to the date of 418.

The decay of devotion let fall the apostolical and primitive use of daily and weekly communions, and the people in the later ages did not receive but at the greater festivals: upon which custom there were added to the general preface mentioned, before some special prefaces relating to the peculiar mercy of that feast on which they did communicate, the Church thinking it fit, that, since every festival was instituted to remember some great mercy, therefore they who received on such a day, besides the general praises offered for all God’s mercies, should at the Lord’s table make a special memorial of the mercy proper to that festival; and this seemed so rational to our reformers, that they have retained those proper prefaces which relate to Christmas, Easter, Ascension Day, Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday, so as to praise God for the mercies of Christ’s birth, resurrection, and ascension, for the sending the Holy Ghost, and for the true faith of the holy Trinity.—Dean Comber.

Our Lord himself, before he brake the bread and distributed it, gave thanks; and the Church has thought fit to do the same thing. But, because our Lord has not prescribed any set form for this, but used one agreeable to the thing and the time, the Church therefore, as matters and occasion required, has accordingly adapted peculiar forms of prayer and thanksgiving, suited, as St. Augustine says, to the diversity of festival days, in which different benefits are commemorated.—Bp. Cosin.

On the greater festivals there are proper prefaces appointed, which are also to be repeated, in case there be a communion, for seven days after the festivals themselves (excepting that of Whitsunday, which is to be repeated only six days after, because Trinity Sunday, which is the seventh, hath a preface peculiar to itself); to the end that the mercies may be the better remembered by often repetition, and also that all the people (who in most places cannot communicate all in one day) may have other opportunities, within those eight days, to join in praising God for such great blessings.

2. The reason of the Church’s lengthening out these high feasts for several days is plain: the subject-matter of them is of so high a nature, and so nearly concerns our salvation, that one day would be too little to meditate upon them, and praise God for them as we ought. A bodily deliverance may justly require one day of thanksgiving and joy; but the deliverance of the soul by the blessings commemorated on these times, deserves a much longer time of praise and acknowledgment. Since, therefore, it would be injurious to Christians to have their joy and thankfulness for such mercies confined to one day, the Church, upon the times when these unspeakable blessings were wrought for us, invites us, by her most seasonable commands and counsels, to fill our hearts with joy and thankfulness, and let them overflow eight days together.

3. The reason of their being fixed to eight days is taken from the practice of the Jews, who by God’s appointment observed their greater festivals, some of them for seven, and one, namely, the feast of Tabernacles, for eight days. And therefore the primitive Church, thinking that the observation of Christian festivals (of which the Jewish feasts are only types and shadows) ought not to come short of them, lengthened out their higher feasts to eight days.—Bp. Sparrow. Wheatly.

These prefaces are very ancient, though there were some of them, as they stood in the Latin service, of later date. For as there are ten in that service, whereof the last, concerning the Virgin Mary, was added by Pope Urban, 1095, so it follows that the rest must be of a more considerable antiquity. Our Church has only retained five, and those upon the principal festivals of the year, which relate only to the persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, and not to any saint.—Dr. Nicholls.