A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

VIA MEDIA. The position occupied in the Christian world by the Anglican Church. There are three parties at present dividing the kingdom—the Church, the Romanist, the ultra-Protestant; of these the Church occupies the middle, Romanism and ultra-Protestantism the extreme positions. Were the Church withdrawn or forced from this central position, the two extremes would soon collide in civil and religious contention and rancour. The Church is the peace-preserving power in the home empire; her advantages and resources in this respect are singularly her own. As far as the Roman is a Church, she agrees with Rome: educated Romanists, however much they regret the disunion of the sees of Rome and Canterbury, respect her ecclesiastical and apostolic character. As far as the renunciation of errors dangerous to salvation constitutes Protestantism, she is thoroughly Protestant; learned and sober Nonconformists, therefore, have always considered her as the bulwark of the reformed religion. She possesses what Rome does not, to conciliate the Nonconformist; she possesses what ultra-Protestantism does not, to attract the esteem of the Roman Catholic. She has wherewith to conciliate to herself these two extremes, totally irreconcileable with each other. Were all religious parties in the realm to meet at this moment to draw up a national form of Christianity consistent with both Scripture and Catholic antiquity, the vast majority, we doubt not, would conscientiously prefer the liturgy and articles of the Church to any form or articles propounded by any one sect out of the Church. Without the Church, again, ultra-Protestantism would prove but a rope of sand to oppose the subtle machinations and united movement of the papal hierarchy. With her, at peace with both, though not in communion with either, these hostile schemes have as yet been prevented from committing the nation to the horrors of intestine commotion. The statesman who would undermine or debilitate this passive supremacy—for to all aggressive or domineering purposes it is entirely passive—on the chance that conflicting sects would extend to each other the mild toleration which now under the Church all impartially enjoy, must have studied religious passions and religious history to little profit.

The great mass of Protestant communities sends each individual to the Bible alone; thence to collect, as it may happen, truth or falsehood, by his own interpretation, or misinterpretation, and thence to measure the most weighty and mysterious truths by the least peculiar and appropriate passages of sacred Scripture. The Church of Rome sends her children neither to the Bible alone, nor to tradition alone; nor yet to the Bible and tradition conjointly, but to an infallible living expositor: which expositor sometimes limits, and sometimes extends, and sometimes contradicts, both the written word and the language of Christian antiquity. The Church of England steers a middle course. She reveres the Scripture: she respects tradition. She encourages investigation: but she checks presumption. She bows to the authority of ages: but she owns no living master upon earth. She rejects alike the wild extravagance of unauthorized opinion, and the tame subjection of compulsory belief. Where the Scripture clearly and freely speaks, she receives the dictates as the voice of God. When Scripture is neither clear nor explicit, or when it may demand expansion and illustration, she refers her sons to an authoritative standard of interpretation, but a standard which it is their privilege to apply for themselves. And when Scripture is altogether silent, she provides a supplementary guidance: but a guidance neither fluctuating nor arbitrary; the same in all times, and under all circumstances; which no private interest can warp, and no temporary prejudice can lead astray. Thus, her appeal is made to past ages, against every possible error of the present. Thus, though the great mass of Christendom, and even though the vast majority of our own national Church, were to depart from the purity of Christian faith and practice, yet no well-taught member of that Church needs hesitate or tremble. His path is plain. It is not merely his own judgment, it is not by any means the dictatorial mandate of an ecclesiastical director, which is to silence his scruples, and dissolve his doubts. His resort is, that concurrent, universal, and undeviating sense of pious antiquity, which he has been instructed, and should be encouraged, to embrace, to follow, and to revere.—Bishop Jebb.

VIATICUM. The provision made for a journey. Hence, in the ancient Church, both baptism and the eucharist were called Viatica, because they were equally esteemed men’s necessary provision and proper armour, both to sustain and conduct them safe on their way in their passage through this world to eternal life. The administration of baptism is thus spoken of by St. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, as the giving to men their viaticum or provision for their journey to another world; and under this impression it was frequently delayed till the hour of death, being esteemed as a final security and safeguard to future happiness. More strictly, however, the term viaticum denoted the eucharist given to persons in immediate danger of death, and in this sense it is still occasionally used. The 13th Canon of the Nicene Council ordains that none “be deprived of his perfect and most necessary viaticum, when he departs out of this life.” Several other canons of various councils are to the same effect, providing also for the giving of the viaticum under peculiar circumstances, as to persons in extreme weakness, delirium, or subject to canonical discipline.

VICAR. In order to the due understanding of this office, as distinguished from those of rector and perpetual curate, it will be necessary to describe in this article the three several offices in their order.

The appellation of rector is synonymous with that of parson, which latter term, although frequently used indiscriminately, as applicable also to vicars and even curates, is, according to Blackstone, the most legal, beneficial, and honourable title that a parish priest can enjoy. Parson, in the legal signification, is taken for the rector of a church parochial: he is said to be seised in jure ecclesiæ. Such an one, and he only, is said vicem seu personam ecclesiæ gerere. He is called parson (persona) because by his person the Church, which is an invisible body, is represented; and he is in himself a body corporate, in order to protect and defend the rights of the Church (which he personates) by a perpetual succession. And, as Lord Coke says, the law had an excellent end therein, viz. that in his person the Church might sue for and defend her right. A parson, therefore, is a corporation sole, and has during his life the freehold in himself of the parsonage house, the glebe, the tithe, and other dues.

But these are sometimes appropriated; that is to say, the benefice is perpetually annexed to some spiritual corporation, either sole or aggregate, being the patron of the living, which the law esteems equally capable of providing for the service of the Church as any single private clergyman. This contrivance seems to have sprung from the policy of the monastic orders. At the first establishment of parochial clergy, the tithes of the parish were distributed in a fourfold division: one for the use of the bishop, another for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and the fourth to provide for the incumbent. When the sees of the bishops became otherwise amply endowed, they were prohibited from demanding their usual share of these tithes, and the division was into three parts only; and hence it was inferred by the monasteries, that a small part was sufficient for the officiating priest, and that the remainder might well be applied to the use of their own fraternities, (the endowment of which was construed to be a work of the most exalted piety,) subject to the burden of repairing the church, and providing for its constant supply. And therefore they begged and bought for masses and obits, and sometimes even for money, all the advowsons within their reach, and then appropriated the benefices to the use of their own corporation. But in order to complete such appropriation effectually, the king’s licence and consent of the bishop must first have been obtained; because both the king and the bishop may, some time or other, have an interest, by lapse, in the presentation to the benefice, which can never happen if it be appropriated to the use of a corporation which never dies, and also because the law reposes a confidence in them that they will not consent to anything that shall be to the prejudice of the Church. The consent of the patron also is necessarily implied, because (as was before observed) the appropriation can be originally made to none but to such spiritual corporation as is also the patron of the Church; the whole being, indeed, nothing else but an allowance for the patrons to retain the tithes and glebe in their own hands, without presenting any clerk, they themselves undertaking to provide for the service of the church.

The terms appropriation and impropriation are now so commonly used indiscriminately, that it has become almost unnecessary to mention the distinction between them; but appropriation, in contradistinction to impropriation, means the annexing a benefice to the proper and perpetual use of some spiritual corporation either sole or aggregate, being the patron of a living, which is bound to provide for the service of the church, and thereby becomes perpetual incumbent, the whole appropriation being only an allowance for the spiritual patrons to retain the tithes and glebe in their own hands, without presenting any clerk, they themselves undertaking to provide for the service of the church; while impropriation is supposed to be properly used when the profits of the benefice are held in lay hands, as being improperly so. But, in truth, the correctness of the distinction, even originally, seems doubtful: they are used as synonymous in statutes in the times of Elizabeth, of Mary, and of Charles II.; and even prior to the Reformation, in a petition to parliament in the time of Henry VIII., the term used is “impropried.” Both terms were borrowed from the form of the grant, “in proprios usus,” and they are peculiar or principally confined to this country. Blackstone says, that appropriations can be made to this day; upon which Mr. Christian observes, “It cannot be supposed that at this day the inhabitants of a parish, who had been accustomed to pay their tithes to their officiating minister, could be compelled to transfer them to an ecclesiastical corporation, to which they might be perfect strangers,” and that “there probably have been no new appropriations since the dissolution of monasteries.” Upon this same proposition, Mr. Justice Coleridge observes, alluding to the opinion of Mr. Christian, “The truth of this position has been questioned, and the doubt is not likely to be solved by any judicial decision. But I am not aware of any principle which should prevent an impropriation from being now legally made, supposing the spiritual corporation already seised of the advowson of the church, or enabled to take it by grant. The power of the king and the bishop remain undiminished.”

This appropriation may be severed, and the church become disappropriate, in two ways; as, first, if the patron or appropriator presents a clerk, who is instituted and inducted to the parsonage; for the incumbent so instituted and inducted is, to all intents and purposes, completed parson: and the appropriation, being once severed, can never be re-united again, unless by a repetition of the same solemnities. And when the clerk so presented is distinct from the vicar, the rectory thus vested in him becomes what is called a sinecure, because he had no cure of souls, having a vicar under him, to whom that cure is committed. Also, if the corporation which has the appropriation is dissolved, the parsonage becomes disappropriate at common law; because the perpetuity of person is gone, which is necessary to support the appropriation.

These sinecure rectories here spoken of had their origin in the following manner: The rector, with proper consent, had a power to entitle a vicar in his church to officiate under him, and this was often done; and by this means two persons were instituted to the same church, and both to the cure of souls, and both did actually officiate. So that however the rectors of sinecures, by having been long excused from residence, are in common opinion discharged from the cure of souls, (which is the reason of the name,) and however the cure is said in the law books to be in them habitualiter only, yet, in strictness, and with regard to their original institution, the cure is in them actualiter, as much as it is in the vicar, that is to say, where they come in by institution; but if the rectory is a donative, the case is otherwise; for coming in by donation, they have not the cure of souls committed to them. And these are most properly sinecures, according to the genuine signification of the word.

But no church, where there is but one incumbent, is properly a sinecure. If indeed the church be down, or the parish become destitute of parishioners, without which Divine offices cannot be performed, the incumbent is of necessity acquitted from all public duty; but still he is under an obligation of doing this duty whenever there shall be a competent number of inhabitants, and the church shall be rebuilt. And these benefices are more properly depopulations than sinecures.