1. To the people of the congregation forms of prayer are inappropriate.
There is an intimacy in all our joys, our sorrows, and our trials; an intimacy and identity which makes them peculiarly our own; so that they find not a just expression in the language of another. The language may be more select, more appropriate, in the estimation of another who knows not our hearts, but it is not our own, and but poorly expresses our emotions and desires. How variable withal, is this infinite play of the passions of the heart; and how preposterous the attempt to give utterance to them in one unvarying tone! As if the harp of David were always strung to the same key and sounded one unchanging note! First, stereotype the mind and heart of man, and then is he prepared to express his devotions in the unvarying letter of a liturgy.
Amid all the ills that man is heir to, new and unforeseen calamities are ever and anon met with, which would naturally bring men to the throne of grace with supplications and entreaties of a special character. Shall we wait now until notice is given to the diocesan in the distant metropolis, and a prayer returned at last duly prepared for the occasion? But before it comes, that occasion may have gone by, and given place to something else for which the bishop’s form is altogether inappropriate.
2. Liturgical forms become wearisome by constant repetition. [353]
The love of change is inherent in the breast of man. We must have variety. Without it, even our refined pleasures lose their charm in a dull and dead monotony. So a liturgy, however excellent in diction, or noble in sentiment, loses its interest by perpetual repetition. The continual recurrence even of the best possible form, that of the Lord’s prayer, injures its effect upon our own mind. We have heard it at the table in our daily meals; at morning and evening prayer, and in some instances it has been the only prayer offered in our hearing on such occasions; at funerals, at marriages, in baptism, in confirmation, at the sacrament of the Lord’s supper; and in every public service, not once merely, but twice or thrice, and even more than this; as if no religious act could be rightly done, without the introduction somewhere of the Lord’s prayer. Such ceaseless repetition only creates a weariness of spirit, in which one earnestly craves a freer and more informal mode of worship. Let the following testimony suffice for illustration. “How often have I been grieved to observe coldness and comparative indifference in the reading-desk, but warmth and animation in the pulpit! In how many different places have I been obliged to conclude, this man preaches in earnest, but prays with indifference! I have asked myself, I have asked others, what is the reason of such conduct.”52 The case so embarrassing our churchman is easily explained. In the reading-desk, the Episcopal preacher utters the cold dictations of another; in the pulpit he expresses the warm suggestions of his own heart. Here, accordingly, his utterance is instinct with life and spirit; there it is changed by perpetual repetition into chilling indifference.
3. The significancy of a liturgy is lost by its constant repetition.
To one who but seldom frequents an Episcopal house of worship, there may be much that is impressive in the liturgy. [354] But the impression, we apprehend, must be greatly diminished by a constant attendance. The words of the prayer-book, when grown familiar, lose in a great degree, their significancy. They fall upon the ear like the murmur of the distant waterfall, lulling the mind to repose, or leaving it to the undisturbed enjoyment of its idle musings. The listless inattention of men to the reading of the Scriptures, is a subject of public and painful notoriety; the reason assigned is, that, by long familiarity and constant repetition, the words even of the great Jehovah fall upon the ear without making any adequate impression on the mind. The same result, in a much higher degree, may be expected from the constant recital of the liturgy. It may be a form of sound words, received passively and without producing requisite impression. “This same service, now repeated for the thousandth, the ten thousandth time—which has stood printed before the eye ever since it could trace a line, which no moment of personal or public excitement ever warmed or can warm into a higher flight,—this same weary monotony for youth and age—this eternal dead letter loses much of its power by long practice, and dwells often in the memory after it has ceased to touch the heart.”
4. A liturgy is often not in harmony with the subject of discourse.
The preceding remarks relate to the disadvantages of the liturgy to the people; the present, and some that follow, have reference to the inconvenience experienced by the clergyman from the same source. Every preacher knows the importance of harmony in his services. And if permitted, in the freedom of primitive worship, to direct them accordingly, he studiously seeks to make the impression from the prayers, the psalmody, and the reading of the Scriptures, coincident with the subject of his sermon; so that all may conspire to produce a single impression upon the hearer. The final result [355] upon the audience is ascribable in a great degree to the harmony which pervades the entire service. But here the liturgy interposes its unyielding forms, to break up this harmony of service, and sadly to impair the effect of it upon its audience.
5. The liturgy is not a suitable preparation for the impression of the sermon.
Much of the practical effect of the preacher’s discourse depends upon the previous preparation of the mind for it. This preparation results, in a great degree, from a happy adaptation of the preliminary services to this end. But the preliminaries of the liturgy move on with unvarying formality, carrying the mind, it may be, directly away from the subject of the discourse that is to follow, or leaving the audience uninterested and unprepared for any quickened impression from the preacher. He rises to address them, with the disheartening conviction that they are in no state rightly to receive what he has to say, he advances in his discourse, under the consciousness that he is toiling at a task that is too heavy for him; and retires at last with the feeling that he has only labored in vain, and spent his strength for nought. So in the event, it appears; all has been done with cold and decent formality, but the profiting of the hearer is not apparent. How much of the inefficacy of the pulpit in the Episcopal church is ascribable to this cause, we leave the reader to judge.
6. A liturgy curtails unreasonably the time allotted to the sermon.
A sermon we know may be, and often is, too long; it may also be too short. Following the protracted recitals of the liturgy, it is necessarily crowded into a narrow space, at the conclusion of a service which has already unfitted the audience for a calm, sustained attention to the preacher. What he has to say, must be quickly said; he therefore hurries through a brief and superficial exposition of his subject, and dismisses [356] it with a hasty application, before it has had time to assume in the hearer’s mind that importance which belongs to its momentous truths. And the final result is that it falls powerless upon the conscience of the audience.
7. The liturgy exalts the invention of man above the truth of God.
The liturgy is ever prominently before the audience; claiming the first attention, the highest place in all the acts of worship. In some liturgies the reading of the Scriptures forms no part of the public service, and in others, the word of God is mixed up with a mass of foreign ingredients which do but neutralize its power. The tendency of the whole arrangement is to keep back the word of God, to hold in check its power, to rob religious truth of its chief glory as the means of salvation, and to substitute in its place a system of mere formalism.
In this connection, the profound remarks of Archbishop Whately, respecting undue reliance on human authority, are worthy of serious consideration. He exposes with great force the disposition of men, to “obtrude into the place of Scripture, creeds, catechisms, and liturgies, and other such compositions, set forth by any church.” This disposition he ascribes to deep seated principles of our nature. He supposes that nothing but a miraculous providence could have so directed the apostles and primitive Christians, that they left no such formulary of religious worship, or compend of the Christian faith. “Such a systematic course of instruction, carrying with it divine authority, would have superseded the framing of any others—nay, would have made even the alteration of a single word, appear an impious presumption.... So that there would have been an almost inevitable danger, that such an authoritative list of credenda would have been regarded, by a large proportion of Christians, with a blind, unthinking reverence, which would have exerted no influence on the [357] character. They would have had a form of godliness; but, denying the power thereof, the form itself would have remained with them only the corpse of departed religion.”53
Ought not then this momentous consideration to excite a wise jealousy of a tendency, which may so easily be abused? In our mind, it is an urgent reason for confining the ceremonials of religion within the strictest limits. But this continual recital of creeds and confessions, this perpetual profession of faith in the “holy catholic church,” these rites of the ritual ever recurring, and foremost in importance, to which everything else gives place in public worship,—who can doubt the practical influence of all this? It casts into shade and distance God’s own word. It brings forward the dictations of canonized tradition as the rule of faith and or worship; and spiritual truth is forgotten in this parading of the ceremonials of religion.
8. The book of Common Prayer dishonors the holy sabbath.
We have sought in vain for any clear expression of the divine authority of the Lord’s day. It is specified in the church calendar among many other holy days of the church, some of which seem to be regarded with equal reverence. The specifications respecting it, all serve to direct the mind to it as merely an ordinance of the church. They bring it down from its lofty place as a divine institution, and blend it unworthily with a multitude of saints’ days, which a blind superstition first established and still venerates. When the true doctrine of the sacred sabbath was first promulgated, it encountered for half a century the furious opposition of the established church on this very principle, that it was derogatory to the authority of the church, and to the reverence due to its festivals and fasts. The advocates of this doctrine were suspended from their ministerial duties, deposed and imprisoned for daring to assert, that this holy sabbath depended on higher [358] authority than the usage and decrees of the church. Whatever may be the sentiments of Episcopalians at the present respecting this day, we cannot resist the conviction, that it has in the prayer-book no higher place than the other holy days of the church.
9. We object to the popish origin and tendencies of the English liturgy.
It is a translation and compend of the popish ritual, and still savors too strongly of its origin. We hear, indeed, so much of this “excellent,” “this noble and pathetic liturgy,” that it seems almost like sacrilege to touch that holy thing with other sentiments than those of profound veneration. But we dislike its origin, and the character which it inherits. Must we, in this nineteenth century, go back to the dark ages of popery, and learn from her traditions, her superstitions, how we may best worship God in spirit and in truth? But this “pathetic litany,” “this noble liturgy,” it is said,—“is it not admirable?” To which we must still reply,
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.54
Let us examine a little. What change has the liturgy undergone, in passing over from the Romish to the English church, and what is the difference between the religion of the two churches. The chief points of distinction, according to Hallam, are the following:
1. The liturgy was translated into the vernacular language of the people. Formerly, it had been in an unknown tongue.
2. Its acts of idolatrous worship of saints and images were expunged.
3. Auricular confession was done away; or rather it was left to every man’s discretion, and went into neglect.
4. “The doctrine of transubstantiation, or the change, at the moment of consecration, of the substances of bread and wine into those of Christ’s body and blood,” was discarded.
5. The celibacy of the clergy was abolished.55
With these modifications the religion of Rome became that of the church of England. And to this day, her ritual, crudely formed in the infancy of protestantism, which Milton denominates “an extract of the mass translated,” continues with little variation to be the liturgy of the whole Episcopal church in England and America. Like the ancient liturgies, it was prepared for a priesthood who were too ignorant to conduct religious worship with decency without it. Even the book of homilies was drawn up at the same time, “to supply the defect of preaching, which few of the clergy at that time were capable of performing.”56
Multitudes in the kingdom were strongly attached still to the Roman Catholic religion. It was a politic measure to conciliate these as far as possible. For various reasons, the Reformers sought to make a gradual, rather than an abrupt departure from popery. The liturgy accordingly had then, and still retains many popish affinities. These are seen in the canonizing of saints, and celebration of saints’ days; in the absolution by the priests, modified so as to unite the Protestant idea of forgiveness of sin by God alone, with the popish absolution by the priest; in the endless reiterations of the Lord’s prayer; in the inordinate prominence that is given to liturgical forms; in the qualified and cautious phraseology of the communion service, in the special care that all the consecrated bread and wine shall be eaten and drunk, so that none of it shall be carried out of the church,—a point upon which the papists are ridiculously superstitious.57 These [360] popish tenets are seen particularly in the baptismal regeneration of the liturgy, by which the child becomes “regenerate, and grafted into the body of Christ’s church.... We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption.” The order of confirmation is so conducted as to confirm one in the delusion, that he has become “regenerate by water, and the Holy Ghost,” through the instrumentality of this rite, rather than by that grace which is the gift of God. The burial service, also, is exceedingly objectionable. “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy, to take unto himself the soul of our deceased brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is said of every one alike, however profligate his life, however hopeless his death. In the American service, instead of this, at the grave is said or sung, “I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, ‘Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.’” Rev. 14:13. The practical influence of this service is apparent from the following remark of Archbishop Whately. “I have known a person, in speaking of a deceased neighbor, whose character had been irreligious and profligate, remark, how great a comfort it was to hear the words of the funeral service read over her, ‘because, poor woman, she had been such a bad liver.’”58
Without controversy, a temporizing policy guided the early Reformers in the preparation of the English prayer-book. However many of the Episcopal church may repudiate the semi-popish delusion of Puseyism, which has come up over the length and breadth of our land, it is indirectly [361] supported, if not plainly taught, in her ritual. The English reformers attempted a sinful compromise with the corruptions of the church of Rome. In the language of Macaulay, “The scheme was merely to rob the Babylonian enchantress of her ornaments; to transfer the full cup of her sorceries to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the way. The Catholic doctrines and rites were to be retained in the church of England.”59
The great effort of a large party in this church at present is to reinstate these popish doctrines and rites—an effort which Roman Catholics regard with the deepest interest. The celebrated Dr. Wiseman expresses, in the liveliest terms, his gratification at “the movement” of the Oxford Tractarians “toward Catholic ideas and Catholic feelings.” He has “watched its progress with growing interest,” because he “saw in it the surest guarantee and principle of success. The course which we (papists) ought to pursue seems simple and clear,—to admire and bless, and, at the same time, to second and favor, as far as human means can, the course which God’s providence has opened, and is pursuing; but to be careful how we thwart it. It seems to me impossible to read the works of the Oxford divines, and especially to follow them chronologically without discovering a daily approach towards our holy church, both in doctrine and affectionate feeling. Our saints, our popes, our rites and ceremonies, offices, nay our very rubrics are precious in their eyes, far alas beyond what many of us consider them.”60 [362]
52 Churchman, in Christian Observer, 1804, p. 271.
53 Errors of Romanism, pp. 49-61.
54 I dred the Greeks; yea, when they offer gyftes.—Howard’s Trans.
55 Constitutional History, Vol. 1. pp. 116-126.
56 Neal’s History of Puritans, 1. p. 90. Hetherington’s History of Westminster Divines, p. 21.
57 In the amendment of the liturgy, under Elizabeth, “the words used in distributing the elements, were so contrived as neither to offend the Popish, or Lutheran, or Zuinglian communicant.”—Hallam’s Const. Hist. Vol. 1. p. 150 note. Very catholic and accommodating, surely!
59 Review of Hallam’s Constitutional History. See in the Appendix a further illustration of this.