A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

fig. 11.

fig. 12.

We have at present described only the component figures of tracery. The character of windows is further altered by several other means common to all the styles, consistent with every form here described. Thus, for instance, tracery is grouped in these three ways: a large and prominent centre-piece is carried by two independent arches (fig. 2.); or it is divided into two windows, as it were, by two main arches, of the same curvature with the window arch (figs. 3. and 11.); or it fills the whole window head with no such equal division of its parts[^[19]] (figs. 5., 8., 9.); or, again, it is divided into foil and foiled tracery, the latter being the ordinary form, the first that of tracery, which itself, in its principal bars, follows the direction of foils, without a circumscribing arch (fig. 12.); or, again, according as the surface of the tracery bar which traces the pattern is a fillet, an edge, or a roll, it is fillet, edge, or roll tracery; or, again, if it is only a plate of stone, pierced, without being moulded, it is plate tracery. Flowing tracery is convergent, or divergent, or reticulated. But the greatest source of beauty next to cusping is the due subordination of mouldings, which is itself sufficient to remedy the apparent sameness of pattern in the concentric Geometrical, and which adds infinite grace to the flowing tracery, in which, however, it is too seldom found. The student of ecclesiastical architecture will do well to pursue the subject of this article in Sharpe’s “Decorated Windows,” and in Freeman’s “Essay on the Origin and Development of Window Tracery.”

TRACT, in the Roman Missal, is an anthem, generally taken from the Psalms, following, and sometimes substituted for, the Gradual, (i.e. the anthem after the Epistle,) during penitential seasons, as the third Sunday in Advent, the three Sundays before Lent, Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Lent, Easter Saturdays, and Easter Even, and certain holidays. Cardinal Bona says it is so called, “a trahendo: quia tractim et graviter, et prolixo descensu cantatur,” because it is sung in a protracted or slow manner.—Jebb.

TRADITION. (See Fathers.) The doctrine which has been delivered or handed down from one age to another. The great deference paid by the Church of England as a branch of the Catholic Church to tradition, is so misrepresented by the wicked, and so misunderstood by the weak, that we quote the following passage from Palmer’s “Treatise on the Church.” Speaking of those who calumniate us for our use of this doctrine, he says: “The various methods which these men employ in endeavouring to prevent any appeal to the tradition of the Church, may be classed under the following heads:

“1. Systematic misrepresentation. We do not appeal, in proof of Christian doctrine, to the ancient Christian writers as in any way infallible. Our sentiments on this head are well known; they have been repeatedly explained. We hold that the doctrine of any Father, however great and learned he may have been, e. g. that of Augustine, Athanasius, Ambrose, or Basil, is to be rejected in any point where it contradicts Scripture. We consider all these writers as uninspired men, and therefore liable to mistakes and errors like other theologians. Therefore it involves a studied misrepresentation of our meaning and principle, when we are met by assertions or proofs that particular Fathers have taught errors in faith or morality—that they were credulous—that their writings are in some points obscure—that their criticisms or interpretations of Scripture are sometimes mistaken—that they invented scholastic doctrines and were tinged with false philosophy—that the later Fathers were better theologians than the earlier—that there are Fathers against Fathers, and councils against councils, on some points. This is all calculated merely to excite prejudice against an appeal to the doctrine of the Church, by misrepresenting our design and principle in making it. Our answer to all these arguments is, that we do not appeal to the Fathers as inspired and authoritative writers, but as competent witnesses of the faith held by Christians in their days. If they are not to be trusted in this, they are not to be trusted in their testimony to the facts of Christianity, and the external evidence of revelation is subverted.

“2. Pretended respect for religion. Under this head may be classed that mode of argument which rejects any appeal to the doctrine of the Christian Church, under pretence that the Word of God alone ought to be the rule of our faith, in opposition to all the doctrines of man; that the Scripture constitutes a perfect rule of faith, needing nothing else; that it must necessarily be plain in all essential points, and that it is its own interpreter. The end of all this pretended reverence for Scripture is, to obtain an unlimited liberty of interpreting it according to our own reason and judgment, even in opposition to the belief of all Christians from the beginning. But in asserting this liberty to all men, it follows inevitably that no particular interpretation of Scripture is necessary to salvation; that Scripture has no Divine meaning; that it is not a revelation. In short, tradition is thrown aside, under pretence of veneration for the Scripture, in order that men may be enabled to distort, or misinterpret, and to destroy that very Scripture.

“The same may be observed of that pretended zeal for the defence of the Reformation, which infidels, Unitarians, and other enemies of the doctrine and discipline of the Church allege as a plea for rejecting all appeal to the doctrines of the universal Church. ‘The doctrines of the Reformation,’ they say, ‘cannot be defended if this appeal is allowed; Popery must triumph.’ Excellent men! They will maintain the Reformation at all hazards; all evidence shall be pronounced worthless if it be opposed to the interests of that sacred cause! But what is the end sought by all this pretended devotion? It is, that every man may be permitted, without any check, to interpret Scripture in such a manner as to subvert all the doctrines of the Reformation, whether positive or negative, to prove the Reformation itself needless, erroneous, bigoted, equally absurd as the system to which it was opposed, and more inconsistent. I charge these men with the grossest hypocrisy. Never was there a more daring attempt to palm an imposture on the credulous and unthinking, than this effort of deists and heretics to set aside tradition under pretence of zeal for the Reformation. They are the opponents of the Reformation. They are the representatives of those whom the Reformation condemned. They reject its doctrines, they charge it with ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, errors as gross as those of Popery. They have separated from its reformed institutions, as anti-Christians, and only exist by a perpetual attack upon them. The Reformation has no connexion with these men: its defence belongs exclusively to those who maintain its doctrines and adhere to its institutions, and they alone are proper judges of the mode of argument suited to its interests.