to praise the Lord not in three tongues only [sc. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin] but in all: for Holy Scripture directs' Praise the Lord, all ye nations; praise Him, all ye people;' and S. Paul strikes the same note, 'Let every tongue confess to God1.?" The forced uniformity of an unknown tongue is fictitious and valueless: the real unity of the Church consists in the union of all "peoples and tongues" in one act of worship (Rev. vii. 9, 10). (2) It is said to be essential to the preservation of the right Faith that the formularies of the Church should be embalmed in a dead language, which is beyond the reach of change. An argument perfectly sound when urged in support of Latin Creeds and Articles of Religion; but inapplicable to Common Prayer. The object of Symbols is to preserve the faith of Offices, to propagate it. The former require the protection of a dead language: the latter, the life and elasticity of a living tongue. (3) The practical difficulty is urged of continually adapting Church Services to the fluctuations of the vernacular. But the English Prayer-book supplies a sufficient answer. During more than 300 years it has undergone scarcely any verbal alterations, and needed none. Notwithstanding the occurrence of a few archaic forms, there is scarcely a book in the English language which is so intelligible to the unlettered classes. Even should revision become necessary, the inconvenience of such an occasional change would count as nothing in comparison with the manifold blessings which the possession of a sound manual of devotion has bestowed upon the people of England. (4) It is pleaded that by means of translations and expositions, for which the Tridentine decree expressly provides, the faithful are

1 Labbe, Concil. Vol. 1x. Ep. Joann. P. ccxlviii.

enabled mentally to follow the prayers of the Priest. To which we can only answer, that we trust in God it may be so; yet such a machinery must in its very nature be at once cumbrous and incomplete; the congregational responses of the Early Church1, perpetuated in all well-conducted Anglican Services, are impossible in the churches of the modern Latin communion.

To conclude in the eloquent language of Bishop Jeremy Taylor" If the words of the Apostle and the practice of the primitive Church, the sayings of the Fathers, and the confessions of wise men amongst themselves;...if the needs of the ignorant, and the very inseparable conditions of holy prayers; if the laws of princes and the laws of the Church which do require all our prayers to be said by them that understand what they say; if all these cannot prevail with the Church of Rome to do so much good to the people's souls as to consent they should understand what in particular they are to ask of God, certainly there is a great pertinacity of opinion, and but a little charity to those precious souls for whom Christ died and for whom they must give account."

1 The congregational character of public worship has so long been lost in the Roman Church as to be now not even desired. Cf. the following extract from a popular R. C. treatise (Protestant Principles examined by the written word, p. 153): "Private prayer is the people's prayer for themselves: public prayer is the priest's prayer for the people...It is not the people's office but the Priest's for the people." Strange words these would have seemed to S. Chrysostomstranger still to S. Paul!

2 Dissuasive, pt. 1. § 8.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE NUMBER OF THE SACRAMENTS.

I. Points of Dispute. These are evidently two. (1) There are five out of the seven Tridentine Sacraments which the Church of England refuses to place in the same category with Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. (2) Two out of the five, Penance and Extreme Unction, she rejects altogether, at least in their Roman form. The present chapter will be occupied with the consideration of the first point: for (2) see chh. x. and xii.

2. Definition of the term "Sacrament." Are the Churches agreed as to the nature of a Sacrament? The question is important; for if not, the difference may be merely verbal.

The Latin Sacramentum signifies properly "anything sacred;" hence an oath, and especially the military oath of obedience and allegiance. In this latter sense it passed into the use of the Christian Church. Tertullian adopts it to express the Baptismal promise of allegiance to Christ1. By an easy transition the word was applied to the ceremony of Baptism, and then (not without a glance perhaps at its primary signification) to any sacred rite. Lastly it came to be used as the counterpart of the Greek μvoτýpιov, and to denote any mystery of the Faith-whether ceremony or type or doctrine. Thus S. Cyprian speaks of the many Sacraments (i. e. doctrines) of the Lord's prayer. S. Augustine (or an early preacher under his name) says that the Creed is "of few words, but great in Sacraments," i. e. mysterious facts; among which he presently enumerates "the Sacrament of our Lord's taking human nature and the mystery of His death and resurrection." Again the manna and the Red Sea

1 Bp. Kaye's Tertullian, p. 352.
2 Serm. CCXLII. Vol. V. 2975.

were in patristic language Sacraments, i. e. typical events. The component parts of one and the same ceremony were sometimes separately called "Sacraments:" thus Pope Innocent I. mentions the “Sacraments of Christ's Body and Blood1."

The term then is evidently ambiguous. It is not of Scriptural origin 2; and the Early Church, from which it has descended to us, employed it with much latitude of meaning. Hence if the Church of Rome had chosen to call every sacred rite a Sacrament, no objection could have been reasonably taken to such a course. Our own Homilies do not scruple to speak of the "Sacrament of Matrimony3." "In a general acceptation (they freely admit*) the name of Sacrament may be attributed to anything whereby an holy thing is signified." But the Council of Trent has been careful to renounce this laxer meaning. Each of its seven Sacraments is truly and properly a Sacrament3, i. e., such in the same sense as Baptism and the Eucharist; not merely a sacred rite, or even a significant rite, but a rite "instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord," "necessary to salvation," and "containing the grace which it signifies." In this stricter sense the English

1 Ep. ad Decent. c. 5.

2 In Eph. v. 32, the Vulg. gives "sacramentum hoc magnum est" for τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστί, where sacramentum like μvorýρlov stands for "a doctrine of revelation. The passage has, of course, been turned to account by unlearned Romanists, but its true meaning is acknowledged by their greatest divines, e.g. Cajetan, Estius. (Cf. Alford in loc.)

3 Serm. on Swearing, pt. I.

4 Homily of Common Prayer and Sacraments.

5 The Tridentine Catechism allows that the Sacraments differ in degrees of dignity and necessity though not in kind. Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist are the most necessary: the Eucharist is the most excellent.