History of the ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church , with a commentary on its offices

Front matter

History of the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church

Witty a Commentary on 9Jtjs SDfficeg

By R. J. COOKE, M. A., D. D.

Preface

It is with no slight degree of hesitancy that this present work is offered to the Church. The subject itself is of such interest, and in its true relation is of such practical importance, that even after prolonged investigation and patient study of the many difficult questions involved, Historical and Theological, one might well hesitate to put in permanent form the results of his labors. It requires no surplus of genius to make a mistake. The teachings of a Church are embodied in its Ritual, and nowhere else are they so clearly seen or more readily apprehended. So intimate, therefore, is the relation between Doctrine and Form, that a misinterpretation of one is a misrepresentation of the other, and the book which was solely designed for the encouragement of intelligent devotion and Churchly Order becomes the unconscious cause of confusion and debate.

But the possibility of wrong interpretation, or of erroneous judgment in the balancing

8 Preface

of historical probabilities, should not forever prevent the attempt to pioneer the way to better things. The need of a work giving the genesis, tracing the growth, and interpreting the Sacred Offices of the Church must be supplied some time. From his Chair of Theological Instruction there was not a book covering the ground of this Volume in the whole range of Methodist Literature, English Or American, to which the author could refer his students; and it certainly seemed strange that while our ministers were required to be proficient in general Church history, and especially in the History of Methodism, no provision should have been made for their knowledge of that Book which, with the Holy Scriptures, they must constantly use from the beginning to the end of their ministerial career.

The purpose, then, of this work is to present in briefest form the History of the Ritual, from the early days of the English Reformation to the times of John Wesley, with such explanations of its several Offices as may be helpful to our younger ministry and membership, in order that throughout the whole Church there may be preserved among us the loyalty of intelligence to the legacy of our

Preface 9

Fathers, and a deep and abiding veneration for the Sacred Rites of the Church of God. To archaeological or dry antiquarian notes on liturgical niceties no space has been given ; nor, since the ripest product of critical scholarship can be so easily obtained, have I deemed it at all necessary to comment on the selections from Holy Scripture. In the interest of brevity also, no notes are written on the Forms for the Laying of a Corner-stone or for the Dedication of a Church, nor have I elaborated many interesting historical allusions and references found all along in my study of the Ritual. Indeed, of the mass of literature through which I have been compelled to wade in search for facts at first hand very little appears in these pages, for few, it may be assumed, would be interested in reading the titles of books seldom seen, rarely read. The critical student, however, will note my indebtedness to original documents found in Burnet's and Sparrow's Collections and in Cardwell's History of Conferences, and also to the works of Neale, Strype, Lathbury, Maskell, and Palmer. The only bias an historian should have is a prejudice for the truth, and in the Historical Division of this work I have endeavored to write History, and not Fiction.

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Preface

If, therefore, I have failed to portray men and events in their true color and perspective, as a Puritan, a Churchman, or a Romanist here and there may think I have, the supposed failure may probably be found not in my conscious prejudice or misunderstanding of the situation, but in the partisan view of my critic. And, now, there remains to me only the pleasant task of expressing my gratitude to the kind friends who have encouraged me in this undertaking, especially that eminent layman, Robert T. Miller, Esq., of Covington, Ky., who to business sagacity of a high order has united in leisure hours the ever-deepening love of scholarly pursuits valuable to Methodism. Would that of many other able laymen, numerous in the Church, it might also be said, "Saul also is among the prophets!"

R. J. C.

HISTORY

Chapter I

BEGINNINGS Henry VIII, A. D. 1509— Edward VI, A. D. 1547

Anno Domini 1784 is a memorable date in the ecclesiastical history of the United States. In a critical survey of the religious development of the Nation few dates are of greater interest, and fewer still of greater importance. The close of that year marked the beginning of one of the prime factors, one of the mightiest forces in the annals of American Christianity — the Methodist Episcopal Church — the first Protestant Episcopal Church organized in the United States. It was in this year also in which Episcopal Methodism began, that Wesley prepared and sent over from England by the hands of the Rev. Bishop Thomas Coke, Doctor of Civil Law of the University of Oxford, a Revision of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. The title of this Revision was, "The Sunday Service for the Use of the_Methodists in North America," and it contained, in addition to the Litany and the Daily Prayers, the English Ordinal for the consecration of ministers and Forms for the administration of the sacraments.

The history of this Ritual, the causes which led to its original compilation, its gradual growth, and the several changes through which it passed till it was adopted by the Methodist Church, are among the most interesting narratives of the English-speaking peoples. Being identical with the English Liturgy, its history is, to a large extent, the story of those religious struggles which, beginning in the early days of the Reformation, involved in ceaseless agitation the Church, the Throne, and the People of England for nearly two hundred years. Few, perhaps, worshiping at our altars, or ministering in the sacred offices of the Church, sufficiently appreciate the struggles of that mighty past through which this Book of Ritual has come down to us. But every prayer and collect and response in it has its history. Its rubrics, or directions for ordinations or for administering the sacraments, have been the subjects of debate in the Councils of Kings and Reformers ; and for its doctrines men have laid down their lives. Listening to its vigorous English, or noting its devotional tone or expressions of doctrine, we are carried back to the stirring, tumultuous days of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The struggles of the Reformation are again before us ; the stake, the block, and the gray walls of the Tower bf London again glide into view; martyrs and confessors pass to their reward; bishops and mitered abbots, kings and queens, statesmen, lowly peasants, and noble champions of freedom, are all related to it, opposing it, changing it, defending it, or dying for it. , In it are the religious yearnings of the age in which it was compiled, the efforts to preserve for a Scriptural Christianity the best that the Church had preserved through the ages in the service of her Lord, the attempts to compromise between the Puritan doubtful of all ceremony, and the Churchman seeking a middle ground between the severities of Geneva and the superstitions of Rome.

The task, then, before us is to trace this Ritual from its origin through successive periods to its adoption by the bishops and presbyters of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784. But before we take up the history of this book, it will be necessary to survey its antecedents, to study the conditions, the soil, out of which it sprung, and by thus noting the situation, political and ecclesiastical, as a background to the picture of the times in which it had its origin, be the better prepared to understand the nature of those controversies which waged arownd it for nearly two centuries.

At the University of Oxford, where Methodism began, the Reformation in England had its beginning. It was here that John Wiclif in 1355 opened the eyes of England to the aggressions of the Roman hierarchy, the vices of the monks, and the religious corruptions of the age. Here he preached those sermons which brought down upon him the anathemas of the ecclesiastics in power, and it was here that, realizing the fundamental need of his time, he translated the Scriptures into homely English. From Oxford enthusiastic students, like Jerome, of Prague, carried the writings and teachings of Wiclif to Bohemia and other parts of Europe, where they were eagerly studied, and afterward bore fruit in the moral uprising of the northern nations. Wiclif asserted the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures to direct the Church without the aid of a pope, and attacked the doctrines of transubstantiation, indulgences, masses for the dead, and auricular confession. His influence was felt far and near, twelve years after his death the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining that his heresies had infected the whole university.1 John Huss adopted his views, and preached them in the language of the people, and for his boldness in their defense was condemned by the Council of Constance. This Council also condemned Wiclif as a heretic, and, though he was long since dead, ordered his body to be exhumed and cast out.

Nearly two centuries after the death of Wiclif the New Learning, as it was called, came to Oxford from Florence. The fall of Constantinople, which was regarded as a portentous calamity, but which was one of those dispensations of Providence understood better by posterity than by those experiencing them, had scattered Greek literature and classical scholars over Italy, and the universities of Europe in this manner became acquainted with the language of the New Testament. The writings also of the Fathers in their own tongue, Clement, Origen, Lactantius, Eusebius, all of the Ante-Nicene Greek writers, and of the historians, Sozomen and Theodoret,

'Lewis's "Life of Wiclif," p. 113, collection 28. Canon Trevor, " Rome from the Fall of the Western Empire," p. 285.

were thus opened up to the scholars of Europe, and by the invention of printing, made at this time, became accessible in translations more or less accurate to all who were unable to study the originals. In spite of the opposition of the friars, Oxford welcomed the New Learning. Cornelius Vitellius was the, first to teach Greek there, having for a pupil the afterward famous Grocyne. There Linacre came on his return from Italy, full of the new ideas then springing into life ; and there also the celebrated Erasmus came in 1497, and being taught Greek by Grocyne and Linacre laid the foundation for those critical studies which resulted in the publication for the first time of the entire New Testament in its original tongue.

This Greek edition of the New Testament, which was printed at Basle in 15 16, furnished Luther in Germany and Tyndale in England the text for their vernacular versions, the two most potent agencies in the promotion of the Reformation. Here also, and chief among these Oxford reformers, was Colet, who, like Linacre, had traveled extensively in Italy, and had caught the inspiration of a new era from the apostles of Humanism, which the Medici, powerful in politics and liberal patrons of art and classical learning, had gathered about them in Florence; and here also Thomas More, afterward Chancellor of England, shed the light of his genius, unmindful of the fate that awaited him.

These were all Reformers in a large sense before the teachings of Luther or of Zwingli were known in England. By their lectures and writings they expelled the Scholastic philosophy from Oxford, as Melanchthon afterward did from Wittenberg, and substituted therefor the study of the Gospels and Epistles, as being more serviceable to sound learning and a correct understanding of the Christian faith. The moral state of Christendom, especially the religious condition of England, was not beyond the scope of their teachings. They fearlessly attacked the ignorance and vices of the monastic orders, which had become a scandal; they challenged the doctrines and arguments which sustained and defended the mass of superstitious beliefs and practices obscuring the truth, and by their arraignment of the luxury and pride of ecclesiastics in high places prepared the way for the moral revolution which had been breeding for centuries throughout all Europe, and which was now made inevitable by the invention of printing, the revival of learning, and the study of the Scriptures.

But the Reformation in England was of slow growth. Subjected at the beginning to the passionate impulses of a king, an absolutist in his theory of government, and whose antipathy to the ancient Church, having no religious grounds, exhausted itself in antipapal legislation mainly in his own interest or to the profit of his courtiers, it was not possible for religious reform in England to gain at a bound that freedom from the past which the movement had reached ,on the Continent. In Germany and Switzerland reformation in doctrine logically led to separation from the Roman Church. But in England it was separation from Rome that first produced reformation in doctrine. Henry had no desire to purify Christian truth. He was more Catholic, it was said, than the pope himself. He had won the applause of Roman cardinals, and had obtained the title of "Defender of the Faith" by his polemic against Luther on the sacraments, and throughout his reign he showed little mercy to any of his subjects who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. Henry VIII never dreamed of rejecting the teachings of the Church, but only of drawing a distinction as wide as his kingdom between the political and spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiff. For this reason the spread of evangelical truth in England was as the coming of the morning in a troubled sky. Faint streaks of light now and then shot through the mists, and gave promise of the golden day, but only to be again quickly blurred by thickening clouds. Light and darkness struggled for the mastery. In many a reactionary crisis brought about by the play of politics, the conservatism of its friends, and the aggressive designs of its enemies, the Reformation in England was saved from extinction only by the direct interference of a watchful Providence.

The double dealings of the papacy furnished the occasion for the rupture. In his youth Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon, his deceased brother's wife. Such a marriage was forbidden by the Levitical law; but the exigencies of State affairs between England and Spain seemed to demand it, and a dispensation of the Law was obtained from Pope Julius II.1 When Henry came of age he made a written protest against the mar-

^ee the Bull for the King's Marriage in Burnet, Records Book II, Pt. I. Also the King's Protest, ibid.

riage but such was the state of the kingdom on the death of his father, Henry VII, that, yielding to the arguments of his advisers, he publicly married her again June 3d, and together they were crowned on June 24, 1509. The children of this marriage all died after a brief life of a few months, only one, the Lady Mary, living to full age, and it soon became a conviction in the mind of the king that he was being punished for his violation of the law of God. Catherine had in person become disagreeable to him, and the sad reflection that he would die without a son to succeed him on the throne hastened his resolve to appeal to Rome for a divorce. Cardinal Wolsey in person waited on the pope, Clement VII, whom he found a prisoner at Orvieto in the hands of the Emperor Charles V, and from him he obtained assurance that a bull annulling the marriage would be issued if he, the imprisoned pope, were at liberty.1 But nothing came of the negotiations, either then or after. Clement was in mortal dread of the emperor, the nephew of Catherine, who would not submit to this humiliation of his kinswoman, nor thus deprive her daughter, the Lady Mary, of her

'See Ungard, " History of England," Vol. VI, pp. 172-3, chap, iii, London, 1823.

right to the succession. Between the king and the emperor the pope temporized and maneuvered until a seeming accident took it out of his hands.

In September, 1529, Dr. Thomas Cranmer, a tutor at Cambridge University, accepted the invitation of some friends to stop at their home in Waltham. The king was in the neighborhood, or was on his way, and his secretary and almoner, Bishop Gardiner and Edward Fox, were directed to take up their quarters at this same house in Waltham. At table the conversation turned on the divorce, then a general topic, and Cranmer was pressed, because of his learning, for an opinion. He finally told them that if the marriage was unlawful in itself because of a commandment of God, then it was not possible for the pope by dispensation to make that lawful which God had made unlawful. Therefore, in his opinion, there was no need for protracted negotiations with Rome, but it were better to obtain the judgments of the learned men and of the universities of Christendom. When the king heard of this he was delighted, declaring that Cranmer "had the sow by the right ear," and sending for him to appear at court, he was immediately employed by the king in the all-engrossing subject of the divorce. In pursuit of this business he visited Rome, and after a while failing to obtain a decision from the pope, he traveled into Germany and came in close touch with the leaders of Reform.

In the meantime there was progress in England. In order to hasten matters, and also to serve as a warning to Clement, Henry issued in 1530 a proclamation forbidding the introduction of bulls from Rome. Recourse to Rome in matters ecclesiastical was also forbidden, and restraint was put on the payment of a tax known as annates, or first-fruits. Various other acts were passed relating to ecclesiastical administration, plural livings, residences of the clergy, which last put an end to the holding of wealthy livings in England by foreign, chiefly Italian, bishops. In 153 1 Parliament enacted that the king _was supreme head of the Church in England. The entire clergy of the kingdom acknowledged the title, with the saving clause added, quantum per legem Christi licet — so far as the law of Christ allows. This clause, however, was not acceptable to the king, for under it the clergy might hold in reservation the supremacy of the pope in spiritual affairs, and being now convinced that the procrastinations and wily policies of Clement indicated that he had no intention of granting the divorce, Henry was determined that the jurisdiction of the pope should be utterly abolished in England. In 1532, therefore, further advance was made by the enactments of laws limiting the jurisdiction of Church Courts. Prior to this, ecclesiastics were not amenable to civil tribunals, and thus a wide difference existed in this respect between the Church and the State. But the status of the Church as an independent power within the State, and as possessing authority which the State must support, was by this and subsequent Acts materially changed. The effect of all this legislation was that, in the eyes of observent men, England was rapidly drifting into separation from Rome. In February, 1531, Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, wrote to the Emperor Charles V:

"And now the Act has been passed against the pope, which I wrote in my last. By this His

Holiness will perceive the truth of what I have always told the nuncio, and written to him, that his timidity and dissimulation would not only prejudice the queen's interest, but his own authority. The nuncio has been with the king to-day. The nuncio then entered upon the subject of this new papacy here, to which the king replied that it was nothing, and was not intended to infringe the authority of the pope, provided his Holiness would pay due regard to him, otherwise he knew not what to do." »

This was in 1531, and only one year later we find the kingdom almost wholly cut off from the authority of the Papal See. By Act of Parliament it was declared that English courts were possessed of plenary power to give justice in all cases relating to affairs, whether temporal or spiritual, within the kingdom, and that henceforth all appeals to Rome should cease. This was followed by a law in 1533, which granted to a Commission appointed by the king the full power, with royal assent, to abrogate or confirm canons. This was a remarkable Act. It will be observed that such a law, so radical in its influence upon the power of the Church, lodged the highest prerogatives of ecclesiastical authority in the hands of the king. It was also enacted that the bishops were no longer to be presented to the Roman See for election, but to the Archbishop of Canterbury or of York. No longer the pope, but the king alone, should exercise the authority to nominate to a va-

1 Dispatches in Childs' "Church and State under the Tudors, Appendix II.

cancy, or to issue a commission for consecration. Before consecration the bishop-elect must swear fealty to the king, after which he must pay homage to the crown and receive by royal permission his spiritualities and temporalities.

But greater changes were yet to be made; for no event of historical importance, or indeed of any importance, ends with itself. Yesterday predestinates to-morrow, and one act determines the character of another. Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died about this time, and although as the head of the Upper House of Convocation he had taken part in and had guided the deliberations of the clergy in the numerous reforms actually and tentatively made, on his deathbed he entered a solemn protest against the legislation of the previous two years annulling papal authority. This disavowal of Warham, however, had no influence on the events transpiring; but his death afforded Henry an opportunity to proceed more vigorously with the work of reform. Thomas Cranmer, who had been a sagacious adviser and agent of the king in the matter of the divorce, was promoted to the vacant Archiepiscopal See. The final breach was not yet made with Rome, and Henry having suspended the law concerning bulls from Rome, the pope, still wishing to show some friendship, signed the bull for the consecration of Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, February 21, 1533. The document was sent on the 2d of March, and on the 30th of that month Cranmer was consecrated by the Bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, and St. Asaph.1 Cranmer was an ardent Reformer. His opposition to Roman teaching was pronounced, especially respecting the supremacy of the pope over the English Church, so that when he took the oath of fidelity to the pope, on the condition of taking which the pope had issued the mandate for his consecration, he publicly affirmed in the Church of St. Stephen, Westminster, that he did not admit the pope's authority any further "than it agreed with the express Word of God, and that it might be lawful for him at all times to speak against him, and to impugn his errors when there should be occasion." Respecting the character of this prelate who had so much to do with the compilation of the Ritual and with the progress of the Reformation in this reign and in the one succeeding, nothing scarcely can be said, even to this day, by one

'Strype's "Mem. of Cranmer," B. I, c. iv, p. 28.

party that will not be vehemently denied by another. He has been extolled by his friends and execrated by his enenres. By the former, his memory is revered as thai of a saint caught in the meshes of intriguing courtiers and designing ecclesiastics. By the latter, he is depicted as the servile tool, the pliant ally, of a lustful despot, and is even denounced by the defenders of Puritanism as a Protestant by choice and a martyr by compulsion.1 Bossuet, Hallam, and Macaulay have each drawn his portrait in Rembrandtesque style ; but notwithstanding Bossuet's invective, Macaulay's merciless flaying, and Hallam's calm censure, the truth still remains that Cranmer, in spite of his weaknesses and the stains on his memory, all of which might have been virtues had he been on the other side, was a lover of truth, a foe to ecclesiastical tyranny, learned and modest, and he will hold his place in history as the most progressive leader of the Reformed Church of England in its formative period. He was not a hero. He was not a Luther, and it is useless to excuse him for the sins of his age, for the part he took in the burning of heretics, as it is impossible to exonerate Calvin for causing the death of Serve-

1 English Puritanism, Documents, London, 1862.

tus. Toleration was unknown to that age, for men had not yet grown away from the doctrine that for the peace and stability of the State the civil magistrate should enforce uniformity in religion; and history that is not fiction can no more shield the names of illustrious Reformers from the stigma now attached to their misdeeds, than it can cover the atrocities of Bloody Mary, of Torquemada, or of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, with the mantle of charity.

As Primate of the Church in England, Cranmer gave impetus to the spirit of reform already rising among the people. He was the leader. Around him as the pillar of their hopes gathered other prelates of the Church : Goodrich, Bishop of Ely ; Shaxton, Bishop of Sarum; Latimer, Bishop of Worcester; Fox, Bishop of Hereford ; Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester; and Barlow, Bishop of St. David's. Like himself, all these were in favor of a return to the purer practice and doctrine of primitive times. Although Eee was the Archbishop of York, and had precedence, yet the Roman party in opposition rallied under the leadership of the stern, astute, and aggressive Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester ; Stokesly, Bishop of London; Tonstal, Bishop of Durham;

Longland, Bishop of Lincoln; Sherburn, Bishop of Chichester; and Kite, Bishop of Carlisle. Under these parties was the Church of England divided, the Reform and the Roman, each party struggling- for the supremacy; the former seeking to clean the Ark of God of the accretions that had accumulated about her in her voyage through the centuries ; the latter viewing every such attempt as a sacrilegious innovation instigated by the powers of darkness, and having for its ulterior purpose the destruction of the Church and the faith of the ages. Between the two Henry mediated as umpire ; but behind them all were the people, strong in their sympathies with the king, inclined to Reform, but conservative in action, and depending less on themselves than on the initiative from those in authority. A strong current, however, was setting in from the Continent, where the Reformation had made great progress ; books on every subject, nearly, of theology were being brought over, and all parties felt themselves carried forward by the spirit of the time.

The year 1534 was a momentous one. The law relating to the jurisdiction of the pope, which Convocation had agreed to, but which was enforced or ignored at the pleasure of the king, became a fact, and the papal supremacy in England was completely abolished. By Statute 26, Henry VIII, the king was declared the supreme head of the Church in England, without any qualifying clause, with full power for the reformation and correction of all heresies and abuses which could be amended by any spiritual authority whatsoever.1 An Act relating to Annates, which was more thorough than a similar Act of two years previous, forbade payments to Rome for any purpose, thus cutting off all revenue from England to the pope. An Act of Submission, based on a previous submission of the clergy when the whole body by recognizing the legative powers of Wolsey had incurred, by the arbitrary will of the king, the penalties of the statute of prcemunire, was also passed. In this Act the clergy, acknowledging that all Convocations ought to be convened by the king's writ, give promise in verbo sacerdotii not to promulgate any new Canons, Constitutions, or Ordinances, provincial or synodial, without royal authority. The Archbishop of Canterbury ordered that in all formal documents the word "MetropoliiCollier, " Eccl. Hist.," Vol. IV, p. 248. Carwithen's " Hist, of the Church of England," Vol. I, p. 112.

tanus" should be used instead of the ancient title, "Apostolicce sedis legatus," for he was no longer legate of the pope. Various other Acts were passed readjusting the Church in her new relation to the State, and Cranmer, as Primate of the Church, was not slow, though greatly opposed by the Roman party, to seize the opportunity to advance the interests of the Reform cause, which the aggressive policy of Parliament afforded. Therefore, under the inspiration of the Archbishop, Convocation petitioned that "His Majesty would vouchsafe to decree that the Scriptures should be translated into the vulgar tongue by some honest and learned men, to be nominated by the king, and to be delivered unto the people according to their learning." *

As was doubtless expected by the friends of Reform, this petition excited the apprehensions of the Romanists, and led to a lengthy debate. Gladly would the misguided bishops of the Roman party have consigned all the Bibles that were in the hands of reformers in Germany and Switzerland to the flames, in order to prevent them coming into England, for the more Bibles there were among the people the less grew the authority of the