A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

St. Bartholomew.

St. Matthew.

St. Simon and St. Jude.

St. Thomas.

St. Andrew.

All Saints.

It has been given as a reason why the other holy-days have no vigils before them, that they generally happened between Christmas and the Purification, or between Easter and Whitsuntide, seasons of joy which the Church did not think fit to break into by fasting and humiliation.—See fully on this subject, Wheatly on the Common Prayer.

VIRGIN MARY. (See Mariolatry and Mother of God.) The mother of our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. What follows is from the celebrated Bishop Bull. “She was of all the women, of all the virgins in Israel, elected and chosen by God to be the instrument of bringing into the world the long-desired Messias. All the virtuous daughters of Jacob, a good while before the revelation of our Saviour, but especially in the age when he appeared, (the time wherein they saw the more punctual and remarkable prophecies concerning the coming of the Messias fulfilled,) desired, and were not without hopes, each of them, that they might have had this honour done unto them. But it was granted to none of all these holy women and virgins, but to the Virgin Mary. And therefore ‘all generations shall call her blessed.’

“The Blessed Virgin Mary was the only woman that took off the stain and dishonour of her sex, by being the instrument of bringing that into the world, which should repair and make amends for the loss and damage brought to mankind by the transgression of the first woman, Eve. By a woman, as the principal cause, we were first undone; and by a woman, as an instrument under God, a Saviour and a Redeemer is born to us. And the Blessed Virgin Mary is that woman. Hence Irenæus, in his fifth book, makes a comparison between the virgin Eve, (for such the ancients believed her to be till after her transgression,) and the Virgin Mary. ‘Seductionem illam solutam,’ &c., i. e. ‘That seduction being dissolved, whereby the virgin Eve designed for man was unhappily seduced; the Virgin Mary, espoused to man, by the truth, happily received the glad tidings from an angel. For as the former was seduced by the speech of an angel to flee from God, having transgressed his commandments: so the latter, by the word also of an angel, received the good news, ut portaret Deum, that she should bear God within her, being obedient to his word. And as the former was seduced to flee from God, so the latter was persuaded to obey God. So that the Virgin Mary became the comforter of the virgin Eve.’ Where the last words of the holy martyr are grossly misinterpreted by the Latin translator, and have given to the Papists to conclude from them, that Eve was saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary. A most absurd conceit, unworthy of the learned and holy Father, or indeed of any man else of common sense; for who knows not that Eve was past all need of intercession, before ever the Blessed Mary could be capable of making intercession for her? Doubtless the Greek word used by Irenæus here was παράκλητος, which, as it signifies ‘an advocate,’ so it also as frequently signifies ‘a comforter,’ and so ought to have been rendered here. But, you will say, how did Eve receive comfort from the Blessed Virgin Mary? I answer, in that gracious promise delivered by God himself in the sentence passed on the serpent, after Eve’s seduction by him, where it is said, ‘that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.’ Every man now knows that the seed there spoken of is Christ; and, consequently, that the individual woman, whose immediate seed he was to be, is the Blessed Virgin Mary. The holy Virgin was the happy instrument of the saving incarnation of the Son of God, who hath effectually crushed the old serpent, the devil, and destroyed his power over all those that believe on himself, and thereby she became the instrument of comfort to Eve and all other sinners. This is certainly all the good Father intended by that expression.

“The Blessed Virgin was consecrated to be a temple of the Divinity in a singular manner. For the eternal Son of God, by an ineffable conjunction, united himself to that human nature, which was miraculously conceived and formed in her, even whilst it was within her; and so he that was born of her, at the very time that he was born of her, was Θεανθρωπος, God and Man. O astonishing condescension of the Son of God! O wonderful advancement of the Blessed Virgin! and therefore we daily sing in our Te Deum, ‘Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ; Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.’ Upon which account, the fathers of the third General Council at Ephesus, convened against Nestorius, approved the title of Θιοτοκος, ‘the Mother of God,’ given to the Blessed Virgin.”