bury shall rise again to joy and felicity, or profess this 'sure and certain hope' of the person that is now interred. It is not his resurrection, but the resurrection that is here expressed; nor do we go on to mention the change of his body, in the singular manner, but of our vile body, which comprehends the bodies of Christians in general.' That this is the sense and meaning of the words, may be shown from the other parallel form which the Church has appointed to be used at the burial of the dead at sea: 'We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead), and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body,' &c. 'I heard a voice,' &c. Rev. xiv. 13. 'Almighty God, with whom,' &c. The commencement of this prayer is from the Sarum Manual: Deus apud quem spiritus mortuorum vivunt, et in quo electorum animæ, deposito carnis onere, plena felicitate lætantur, &c. 'O merciful God,' &c. This in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. was the Collect in the Communion-service, appointed to be used at the burial of the dead; and is therefore still entitled 'the Collect.' The forty-second psalm, 'Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,' &c., was the Introit: the Epistle 1 Thess. iv. 13 to the end: the Gospel John vi. 37–48. "Who is the resurrection and the life.' John xi. 25. 'Who also hath taught us by his holy Apostle St Paul.' 1 Thess. iv. 13. The following is from Dean Comber: "The Apostle, as St Augustine notes, says not, be not sorry at all, but, be not sorry as infidels without Joh. xi. 35. hope. Jesus himself wept at Lazarus' grave; and Acts viii. 2. the primitive saints made great lamentation at St Stephen's burial. Christianity will allow us to express our love to our departed friends, so it be within the bounds of moderation, and provided it make us not forget those divine comforts wherewith religion refreshes us again.' Come, ye blessed,' &c. Matt. xxv. 34. SECTION VI. THE CHURCHING OF WOMEN. Lev. xii. THIS Office is probably derived from the Jewish rite of purification enjoined by Moses, and complied with by the Blessed Virgin, as we read in Luke ii. It is however regarded by our Church not as the means of removing a ceremonial defilement (for which purpose it was instituted by Moses), but simply as an act of thanksgiving to God for deliverance from a great pain and peril. And therefore the title of purification, which was prefixed to the Office in the unreformed Servicebook, and in the Prayer Book of 1549, has very properly given place, since 1552, to that of 'Thanksgiving.' The Office is of great antiquity in the Church, being found in all the Western rituals, and in that of the patriarchate of Constantinople. Our present form is taken with little variation from the Manual of Sarum, according to which the rite was to be performed at the door of the church, before the woman entered it. Rubric at the commencement, 'at the usual time.' In the Greek Church the fortieth day is appointed as the time for performing this office. In the West the time has never been strictly determined, and with us it is left to custom. 'Decently apparelled.' These words were inserted at the last review. It was formerly the custom for the woman on this occasion to wear a white covering, or veil; and in the reign of James I. a woman was excommunicated for refusing to comply with it'. The addition made to the rubric in 1662 would seem to imply that the white veil was then becoming obsolete. The 'In some convenient place,' i. e. near the Communion-table, according to Bishop Gibson. Bishops also at the Savoy Conference said in their answer to the exceptions of the ministers, 'It is fit that the woman performing especial service of thanksgiving should have a special place for it, where she may be perspicuous to the whole congregation, and near the holy table, in regard to the offering she is there to make. They need not fear Popery in this, since in the Church of Rome she is to kneel at the church door"." The rubric at the end directs that the woman 'must offer accustomed offerings.' By the Prayer Book of 1549 the woman was required to offer 'her chrisome.' (See Office of Baptism, supra, p. 233.) The alteration was made in 1552. 1 Gibson's Codex, tit. 18, cap. 12, p. 451. Penance. The mode of inflicting it. Ant. XVIII. SECTION VII. THE COMMINATION SERVICE. THE word penance, used in the preface to this Office, is another form of the word penitence, or repentance, and sometimes is taken in the same sense; as in the exhortation which follows, bring forth worthy fruits of penance,' and in Wyclif's Bible: sometimes it denotes the humiliation or punishment which was undergone by persons professing penitence, as a token of their sincerity, and a means of their reconciliation and re-admission to the ordinances of the Church. In this latter sense it occurs here in the preface, 'were put to open penance.' The nature of the public discipline inflicted on great and notorious sinners in the third century may be gathered from Tertullian's treatise de Pœnitentia; in the ninth chapter of which it is mentioned under the name of exomologesis (confession), as a discipline requiring the penitent to sit in sackcloth and ashes (sacco et cineri incubare,') to defile his body, and to afflict his soul. The sackcloth and ashes were probably derived from the Jewish custom of mourning so frequently referred to in the Old Testament. The mode of inflicting penance in the twelfth century is recorded in the following passage of Bingham, Gratian, a monkish writer of that age: 'On Ash 2.2. Wednesday, or the first day of Lent, (In capite Quadragesima) all penitents, who either then were admitted to penance, or had been admitted before, were presented to the bishop before the doors of the church, clothed in sackcloth, barefooted, with countenances dejected to the earth, confessing themselves guilty both by their habit and their looks. They were to be attended by the deans or archpresbyters of the parishes, and the penitential presbyters, whose office was to inspect their conversation, and to enjoin them penance according to the measure of their faults by the degrees of penance that were appointed. After this they bring them into the church: and then the bishop with all the clergy, falling prostrate on the ground, sing the seven penitential psalms with tears for their absolution. After this the bishop, rising from prayer, gives them imposition of hands; sprinkles them with holy water; puts ashes upon their heads; and then covers their heads with sackcloth; declaring with sighs and groans, that as Adam was cast out of Paradise, so they for their sins are cast out of the Church; then he commands the inferior ministers to expel them out of the doors of the church and the clergy follow them, using this responsory, 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' In the end of Lent, on the Thursday before Easter, called 'Coena Domini,' the deans and presbyters are to present them before the gates of the church again. In after times this discipline of penitents became extinct, both in the Eastern and Western Churches: and the office was applied indiscriminately to all the people, who received ashes, as a token of humiliation, and were prayed for by the bishop or presbyter. The English Churches have long used the Office nearly as we do at present1. The prayer, O Lord, we beseech thee,' &c., is from the Sacramentary of Gelasius: 1 Palmer, Eng. Rit. II. 240.. |