the same place in the Papal Church that the Bible does among Protestants. If to history it belong to illustrate Rome in her relations to the world at large, and to Trent to furnish the sum of her doctrinal teaching, to her ritual books we must go for the fullest and most authentic intelligence of her religious life. There we see her training her children to devotion. There we see what she does really concern herself about, and how she goes about it; what she terms the "counsels," and "the life of perfection," and what she would accomplish if permitted to do her best for the healing of the nations. THE BIBLE AND THE BREVIARY. CHAPTER I. THE MISSAL. The origin of the name.-The general contents.-Gradual growth of the parts.Internal evidence of their varied antiquity.—The reformation of the Missal.— Time it occupied.-Boast of Urban VIII.-Aversion of Rome to translations of it. Fate of Voisin's French version.-Additions since its reformation.Short hand devices of Rome.-Reformation of the Calendar.-Prejudices of Protestant nations.-The number of festivals.-Their use in the middle ages.Their evils in modern times.-The number of saints in the Missal.—The greater number not in the Missal.-The "Acta Sanctorum" of the Bollandists.-Saint worship illustrated from the Roman Liturgy. THE word Missal, like the word Mass, is derived from the form anciently used in the Latin churches in dismissing the congregation, when the communion was about to be celebrated. The words were, "Ite missa est;" which signified, "The congregation is dismissed." The people, hearing most audibly the word missa, fastened this name on the communion itself, and thence on the book containing the prayers and rites pertaining to it throughout the year. In the Church of Rome, masses are offered for anything and everything in which human beings are interested; for the sick, the dying and the dead, for the recovery even of sick animals whose owners are rich enough to pay for a mass in their behalf. Whatever a Bible Christian would make the subject of private, or family, or public prayer, and for many things about which a Bible Christian would not feel any warrant to pray at all, Rome offers one or more masses, varying in number according to the wealth or will of the parties. Endless are the uses to which the Church of Rome has contrived to convert that sweet and simple memorial of Christ's death, that was designed to refresh only the hearts of His disciples, and cherish their love to Him on earth, until they meet Him in heaven. On every festival of the Church, yea, on every saint's day, a mass is celebrated in cathedral and collegiated churches, where the staff of priests permits, or wherever the saint's day is observed; and as these occasions are about as numerous as the days in the year, it is no uncommon thing to find it recorded in praise of eminent saints, that they communicated not only every week, but every day in the year. This "unbloody sacrifice," as Rome calls her mass, is esteemed, of all things done on earth, the most acceptable to God, not only as a fresh act of loving commemoration of his Son's sufferings and death, but as itself the offering up anew of the very body, blood, and Divinity of that Son, and possessing thereby a mysterious and incomparable efficacy against all human evils, and for the obtaining of all good, temporal and eternal. Rome can thus plausibly assert that she associates the sufferings of Christ with everything important or interesting to man, and when accused of interposing the saints between the believer and his Saviour, replies, that Christ is only "admired in his saints," and the glorious memory of the saint engrafted on the more glorious root whence have sprung his saintly honours. Very plausible indeed, like most of the defences of her practices, did not every man's experience inform him that ceremonial services, from their very nature, lose all their power by frequency, and that the occasional, best secures the solemn and spiritual use. The most glorious spectacle of creation is the rising sun, yet, seen from infancy, and seen daily, it ceases to be seen with the interest or attention of the glowworm at our feet. Were the sun, like the sacramental commemoration of Christ's death, designed only to awaken adoration, it were more for edification were the daily converted into the occasional sight of his glory. He who knew what was in man enjoined therefore the Passover as an annual festival, and instituting the memorial of his own death, used no other words than these-" This do ye as oft as ye drink it in re The Missal is thus the book of public worship throughout the 1. A preface or address to posterity by Pope Urban VIII. 2. The authorisation of the particular edition, as of the edition we use of 1840, by the Cardinal Arrchbishop of Mechlin. 3. The enactments of the congregation of rites-a long-standing con- gregation or committee at Rome, composed of cardinals, bishops, or masters of ceremonies, and having the care of all ceremonies. 4. Account of the reformation of the calendar by Gregory XIII., one of the real reforms of Rome, together with tables of Easter, and of the moveable feasts. 5. The general rubrics-or directions about dress, gestures, positions, persons, and things, in the celebration of mass. 6. The remarkable chapter entitled "Defects that may occur in the celebration of Mass," and their effects in annulling the mass, or in- volving the priest in venial or mortal sin. 7. The preparation of the priest for celebrating mass, consisting of the prayers for his private devotions, and containing what most of our readers will regard as the most devotional part of the Missal. All the above is prefatory to the Missal proper, which con- sists- 1. Of the masses proper to each Sunday or solemn feast of the year, 2. The masses proper to the saints, in which whatever is peculiar to the 3. The common of the mass, consisting of certain forms of prayer that Such is a general view of the contents of the Roman Missal, honour amongst a long line of his supposed successors. The intelligent reader will also discover not a few internal proofs that it is the work of many ages, and of many minds. Here, he will be tempted to exclaim, is the third century; there is a growth of the fourth; and not far off he may find the superstitions of the tenth and twelfth centuries woven into the beliefs and practices of an earlier age. Thus the name secret given to certain prayers in every mass, whispers that there was a time when the church did not wrap up all her service in the secrecy of a dead language—when secrecy was the exception, not the rule. In the ordinary of the mass1 the priest is directed to turn to the people, and, in a voice slightly raised, to say to them, "Pray, brethren, that mine and your sacrifice may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty," indicating the time when divine service was equally intelligible to all. In the canon of the mass we have a prayer offered up after consecration, when the elements are supposed to have become Christ himself, beseeching Almighty God to command that the elements be carried up by the hands of angels to heaven. The idea of angels conveying Christ to heaven betraying its antiquity, at least, that it preceded the present sacramental theory of Rome, and standing in curious contradiction to the prayer in the same canon, said to have been inserted by Pope Innocent III., entreating that it may "adhere to his bowels." These, and many such internal evidences discover the successive growths of the mass from times and sentiments the most pure, to superstitions the most gross. From Bishop Ambrose have been borrowed prayers and hymns which the Church of Christ may use with edification. Then was added the Nicene Creed to declare the orthodox faith as to the person of Christ. In the sixth century Gregory the Great added the Lord's Prayer to the mass as a fixed part of it, and seems to have first conceived the idea of giving the churches a common liturgy. This he may have done to correct abuses which had crept in, as well as from a desire to extend the influence of the Roman See, whose supremacy was yet unacknowledged. To Gregory are ascribed many little versides, such as repetitions of "Lord have mercy"-" Christ have mercy" and the insertion of the Litany which the English Church has so well reformed, and which, as adopted into her 1 P. 196, Ed. in one vol. Mechlin Missal. 2 P. 238 Missal. |