208 ART. IX.-1. The Scotch Liturgy. A New Edition. By GEORGE FORBES. Pitsligo Press. 2. Letters in the Guardian' Newspaper of Oct. 1, 1862, &c. from the Revs. JOHN KEBLE, PHILIP FREEMAN, J. C. CHAMBERS, GILBERT RORISON, and JOHN COMPER. 3. The Roman Liturgy contrasted with that of the Orthodox Church. By IVAN BOBROFFNITSKY. Third Edition. Kieff; at the University Press: 1857. Translated by BASIL POPOFF, Student of the Spiritual Academy. IT is a somewhat weary work to enter into a controversy of long standing. But if the Christian Remembrancer is to act up to its own professions, it has no right to ignore one of the most important, though certainly not the most notorious, of the theological questions of the day. There cannot be one reader of our pages unaware of the Eucharistic difficulty now agitating the Church of Scotland. For many years, as every one knows, her clergy have felt their exclusion from English benefices to be a hardship and a wrong; and latterly this feeling has taken the form of a definite agitation, and seems likely to win for them, sooner or later, that which they seek. We are not quite sure about the wrong; we are very sure that, whether a right or a gift, the thing, if gained by the present agitation, will be no blessing. But let that pass. Somehow or other, for no man seems to know when or how, it was offered on the one side, or demanded on the other, that in exchange for the temporal gain of possible English livings, the spiritual vantage-ground of the distinctive Scotch Liturgy should be given up. As this proposal happened to synchronize with a general revision of the canons -a revision, as we observed in last January, much neededthe result has been a perfect tempest of proposals, counterproposals, rejoinders, and replies to rejoinders. "O Navis, referent in mare te novi Fluctus. O quid agis?" We may, perhaps, for the sake of brevity and clearness, divide the controversialists into four classes. I. Those who are for the status quo: the Scotch office to remain unaltered and to be of primary authority. II. Those who are for forbidding its use entirely. IV. Those who would desire that which we have placed as our first division: but who, despairing to accomplish that, are willing to surrender the primary authority, if they may keep the office unchanged. Now, first of all, allowing, as every one who has the slightest Liturgical knowledge must allow, that the one great difference between the Eastern and Western Liturgies is this: that, in the former, the Invocation of the HOLY GHOST has its place after the words of Consecration; in the latter, if it exists at all, it is to be found before them: the first question is, whether on the one hand, the Invocation has been misplaced, or, on the other, omitted. Let us fairly consider the question as it presents itself to us. Of the five original Liturgies, we have four which place the Invocation of the HOLY GHOST after the words of Consecration; one which either inverts the order, or has no Invocation at all. The problem to be solved is, which was the original method of offering the first sacrifice? Because on this, and on this only, hangs the present difficulty about the Scotch Communion Office. One thing would appear certain, that the Apostles at Jerusalem, as by all ecclesiastical tradition they united in the formation of one creed, so they must have resolved, within more or less precise limits, on a certain fixed rule for the Christian Sacrifice. In the last number, we called attention to Mr. Freeman's most ingenious reasons for believing that one branch among the Liturgical families derived its origin from S. Paul. We are not about to unsay a syllable that we then said; but now it has become our duty to discuss a question into which we then were not called to enter. And, first of all, let us state that distinguished writer's case as clearly as we can. He believes that at some indefinite time or other (and a very indefinite time indeed),-the Invocation of the HOLY GHOST was misplaced; so that, instead of following, it thereafter preceded the words of Consecration. At least, if this is not Mr. Freeman's meaning, we fail to understand the point at which he is aiming. But now, let us consider. In the beginning of the Fourth Century, there were five different Liturgical families in use. In four of them—namely, that of S. James, that of S. Thaddeus, that of S. John, and that of S. Mark, the Invocation of the HOLY GHOST followed the words of Consecration; then followed them as it does now. The one point in dispute is; Whether in the Petrine Liturgy it existed at that time; or, if it did, by what influence it has since been omitted. In plainer words; Is it more likely that four independent Churches should have, in a most vital point, made an alteration in the service enshrined within their very heart of hearts; or that one individual Church should, under foreign influence, have accepted an innovation which the other four combined to reject? Look at the Church of Rome as it was during the first six centuries. Up to A.D. 600, she had not produced one first-rate theologian, unless-for the sake of his Epistle to S. FlavianS. Leo may be so reckoned. During the same period what had the Church of Africa brought forth? In the first place, Tertullian: let him have fallen into whatever depth of heresy you will, most undoubtedly, while he was a Catholic, he was not only one of the ablest writers, but he was also one of the most influential theologians, whose works were read in the Church of Rome. And then, exactly at the moment when Italy had no divine whatever, he arose in Africa whose mind has probably exercised greater influence over the whole human race than that of any other created being-namely, S. Augustine. One cannot wonder that his contemporaries must have regarded him as something little less than divine, when they saw him pour forth treatise after treatise, epistle after epistle, commentary after commentary-and that so far from exhausting himself, that his latest writings are his richest and deepest; richest in their marvellous typology, deepest in the boldness and yet humility with which he seeks to penetrate into those hidden things which the next world alone can reveal. S. Augustine! Why, those, who are but dwarfs by his side, were giants compared to anything that Italy could then boast. S. Älypius, for example. And what wonder if, in a Church which at first was merely (as Dean Stanley has so well shown) a Greek colony among a Latin people, and which for six hundred years never produced any self-instructed theologian, should have leant on the communion which, during the same centuries, had produced the greatest theologians which the Church had then, and with the single exception of S. Thomas, has ever since, known? This, then, is what we have always endeavoured to keep before the eyes of our readers: that the Primitive Liturgy or Liturgies of the very early Church-let them be called from whatever Apostle they might, by the name of S. James, or S. Peter, or S. John-let them have been said in whatever way they might (the wooden chalices and the golden priests are now reversed), had this as a common point between all: that the consecration of the bread and wine into our LORD'S Body and Blood, was not considered complete by the words of Institution only, but was perfected by the Invocation of the HOLY GHOST. This no learning of Roman divines can gainsay: this, inferior in worldly study, Eastern theologians have made good; that the Oriental Church has maintained to the present day the original idea of consecration, and that the Roman has substituted, not (GOD forbid we should think so for one moment) an invalid one, but one, though to a certain extent more beautiful, less Apostolic. In Professor Bobroffnitsky's treatise the case is stated, not only with great learning, but with unusual impartiality. It is there proved that Rome, as soon as persecution ceased, received from some quarter or other, a new impulse: which impulse, we think, might be shown to have arisen from the African Church. It would require far greater learning than we possess, and especially far deeper acquaintance with the writings of S. Augustine, to lead others to the conviction (which, nevertheless, we ourselves entertain), that, at the end of the Fourth Century, Carthage either had no Invocation of the HOLY GHOST, or had prefixed it to the words of Institution. From Africa the corruption-if one may use so strong a term-was introduced to Rome; the city, conquered in this world's battles, spiritually vanquished its conqueror. And Mr. Freeman might be challenged to adduce any reason why he should imagine the Invocation to have been dislocated in the Eastern Church; to tell us how, supposing from Carthage the change had crept into Alexandria, how it should thence have spread to Antioch, and Ephesus, and Cæsarea, and Jerusalem, and afterwards Constantinople; whereas, it is so easy to show, why the one Church, Rome, should have imbibed a novel practice from the then dominating communion of Africa. On this point Mr. Chambers speaks with great force : 'I am warned by Mr. P. Freeman that I must not assume, as I had been wont to do, the superior antiquity of S. James's Liturgy, upon which the Scottish prelates of the last century built up their Office of Primary Authority. He thinks he has shown" that given there was a very serious change in the order of parts," and that, too, involving the position of the Invocation, "this was less the case in the West than in the East." That is to say, we must henceforth, on Mr. P. Freeman's authority, believe that three or four great Eastern testimonies-to say nothing of the Armenian and other liturgies of a different type-have all been in this particular tampered with and corrupted, while the Petrine has alone been preserved whole and entire. Few who reflect upon the unwavering tenacity with which the Orientals cling to their traditions will be ready to admit a theory which presumes that they and not the Latins have deviated on such a point as this. For myself, I would rather rely upon the confession of Cardinal Bona. "Some have thought that the Greeks at first used that prayer (of Invocation) before the consecration, and that it was subsequently transferred to where it now stands. But the ancient MSS., wherein it is read in the very place in which it is now found, forbid this conjecture. For it is monstrous to suspect them all of having been falsified. Besides, the very same prayer is extant in the same position in the Liturgies of James, Mark, Clement, and Basil, with the addition or alteration of a few words, without, however, any change of sense." And the Cardinal goes on to add the weight of the Armenian testimony as still more conclusive. After this I have no hesitation in avowing that I shrink from adopting a theory which would make me Romanis ipsis Romaniorem: Neither is there any difficulty whatever in the elimination of this Invocation from the Roman Use, as we may learn from the history of the Mozarabic rite. As every one knows, in the latter, it occurred in the prayer called the Post Pridie, the Post Mysterium of the Gallican Church. In both these offices this prayer varied with the Sunday or festival; there may be, perhaps, two hundred existing Post Pridies. In all these, the Invocation once was; it now is to found decidedly in only about five; and in some six or seven more there are the traces of it. Now, we have no reason to believe that this prayer, supposing it to have existed in the Petrine Liturgy, was a varying form, any more than it is in the Eastern Church. If, then, out of a hundred and eighty and more Post Pridies in Spain, the Invocation has vanished, how much more easily might it do so from the one Roman Post Mysterium? We had occasion, as our readers are aware, in our last number to speak in the highest terms of Mr. Freeman's book, especially of that part of it in which his knowledge is probably unrivalled, where he connects the Jewish with the Christian Liturgy. We did not then-foreseeing that a fitter opportunity would probably arise--proceed to discuss the question why he should attribute to the Roman or Petrine office, that superiority which he claims for it above the Liturgies of S. James and of S. Mark. If it be true-and the more the question is studied, the more, we are convinced, will it become matter of certainty— that S. Paul's Epistles contain quotations from the Eastern Liturgies, the question is settled so far as this. In Apostolic times, the Invocation of the HOLY GHOST followed the words of Institution; nay, we have in a previous paper on the subject shown that there is good reason to believe that S. Paul, in 1 Cor. ii., refers to that Invocation in connexion with the place which it occupies. Granting, which, however, we do not for a moment grant, that it never existed in the Roman Liturgy; granting, which, also, we do not grant, the Petrine Liturgy to be of the same age as the two great Eastern ones, what would that prove? Simply that, in Apostolic times, far more than two-thirds of the Church placed the Invocation where it now stands in the Scotch Office. And here we must express our regret that some of the most zealous advocates of that office almost seem to think it necessary to apologise for the position of the Invocation, as if it were reiteratory of that which had taken place before, the Consecration of the Bread and Wine into our LORD'S Body and Blood. We do not at all like such observations as those of |