altar at which St. Peter fulfilled-if he ever did fulfil-the same functions. It is not a stone or marble monument, but a rough wooden table, such as would have been used at any common meal. And the churches in which, we do not say St. Peter, for there were no churches in his time, but in which the Bishops of the third and fourth centuries officiated, are not copies of Jewish or Pagan temples, but of town-halls and courts of justice. And the posture in which they officiated was not that of the modern Roman priest, with his back to the people, but that of the ancient Roman prætor,* facing the people for whose sake he was there. And the Latin language, now regarded as consecrated to religious purposes, was but the vulgar dialect of the Italian peasants. And the Eucharist itself was the daily social meal, in which the only sacrifice offered was the natural thanksgiving, offered not by the presiding minister, but by all those who brought their contributions from the kindly fruits of the earth. We do not deny that in those early ages there were many magical and mystical notions afloat. In a society where the whole atmosphere was still redolent of strange rites, of Pagan witchcraft and demonology, there is quite enough to make us rejoice that even the medieval Church had, in some respects, made a great advance on the Church of the first ages. What we maintain is, that in the matter of vestments, as in many other respects, the primitive Church was not infected by these superstitions, and is a witness against them. They are incontrovertible proofs that there was a large mass of sentiment and of usage, which was not only not mediæval, not hierarchical, but the very reverse; a mine of Protestantism—of Quakerism if we will-which remained there to explode, when the time came, into the European Reformation. They coincide with. the fact which Bishop Lightfoot has proved in his unanswerable Essay, that the idea of a separate clerical priesthood was unknown to the early Church. They remain in the ancient Roman ritual, with other well-known discordant elements, a living protest against the modern theories which have been engrafted upon it. *See the chapters on the Basilica and on the Pope. + Bishop Lightfoot's Commentary on the Philippians, pp. 247-66. Secondly, there is the interest of following out the transformation of these names and garments. How early the transition from secular to sacred use took place, it Their transis difficult to determine; but it was gradually, and formation. by unequal steps. It is said that even to the ninth century there were Eastern clergy who celebrated the Eucharist in their common costume. In the original Benedictine rule the conventual dress was so well understood to be merely the ordinary dress of the neighboring peasants, that in the sketches of early monastic life at Monte Casino the monks are represented in blue, green, or black, with absolute indifference. But now the distinction between the lay and clerical dress, which once existed nowhere, has become universal. It is not confined to ancient or to Episcopal Churches. It is found in the Churches of Presbyterians and Nonconformists. The extreme simplicity of the utmost "dissidence of Dissent" has, in this respect, departed further from primitive practice than it has from any Pontifical or ritual splendor. A distinguished Baptist minister, one of the most popular preachers, and one of the most powerful ecclesiastics in London, was shocked to find that he could not preach in Calvin's church at Geneva without adopting the gown, and naturally refused to wear it except under protest. But even he, in his London Tabernacle, had already fallen away from the primitive simplicity which acknowledged no difference of dress between the clergy and the laity,-for he as well as all other ministers (it is believed) has adopted the black dress which no layman would think of using except as an evening costume. The clergy of the Church of England have either adopted the white surplice, once the common frock, drawn, as it has been seen, over the fur of our skin-clad ancestors, or else have, in a few instances, retained or restored the shreds and patches of the clothes worn by Roman nobles and laborers. The Roman clergy have done the same, but in a more elabo rate form. In all, the process has been alike. First the early Christians, not the clergy only but the laity as well, when they came to their public assemblies, wore indeed their ordinary clothes, but *Marriott, p. lvii. took care that they should be clean. The Pelagians,* and the more ascetic clergy, insisted on coming in rags, but this was contrary to the more moderate and more general sentiment. Next, it was natural that the colors and forms chosen for their Sunday clothes should be of a more grave and sober tint, as that of the Quakers in Charles the Second's time. "As there is a garb proper for soldiers, sailors, and magistrates,† so," says Clement of Alexandria, "there is a garb befitting the sobriety of Christians." Then came the process which belongs to all society in every age and which we see actually going on before our eyesnamely, that what in ordinary life is liable to the rapid transitions of fashion, in certain classes becomes fixed at a particular moment; and then-though again in its turn undergoing new changes of fashion, yet retains something of its old form or name; and finally engenders in fanciful minds fanciful reflections as far as possible removed from the original meaning of these garments. Take for example the wigs of Bishops. First, there was the long flowing hair of the Cavaliers. Then when this was cut short came the long flowing wigs in their places. Then these were dropped except by the learned professions. Then they were dropped by the lawyers except in court. Then the clergy laid them aside, with the exception of the bishops. Then the bishops laid them aside with the exception of the archbishops. Then the last archbishop laid his wig aside except on official occasions. And now even the archbishop has dropped it. But it is easy to see that, had it been retained, it might have passed like the pall into the mystic symbol of the archiepiscopate, patriarchate, or we know not what. Bands again sprang from the broad ‡ white collars, which fell over the shoulders of the higher and middle classes-whether Cavalier or Puritan-Cromwell and Bunyan, no less than Clarendon and Hammond. Then these were confined to the clergy; then reduced to a single white plait; then divided into two parts; then symbolized to mean the two tables of the law, the two sacraments, or the cloven tongues; then, from a supposed con *Thomassin, i. 2, 43. + Marriott, p. xxv. nection with Puritanism, or from a sense of inconvenience, ceased to be worn, or worn only by the more old-fashioned of the clergy; so as to be regarded by the younger generation as a symbol of Puritan custom or doctrine. Just so, and with as much reason, did the surplice in the Middle Ages, from its position as a frock or pinafore over the fur coat, come to be regarded as an emblem of imputed righteousness over the skins in which were clothed our first parents; just so did the turban or mitra when divided by its crease come to be regarded as the cloven tongue; just so did the handkerchief with which the Roman gentry wiped their faces come to be regarded in the fifth century as wings of angels, and in the seventh as the yoke of Christian life. Just so have the ponchos and waterproofs of the Roman peasants and laborers come in the nineteenth century to be regarded as emblems of Sacrifice, Priesthood, Real Presence, communion with the universal Church, Christian or ecclesiastical virtues. It is hardly necessary to answer detailed objections to a statement of which the general truth is acknowledged by all the chief authorities on the subject, as well as confirmed by the general analogy of the origin of the Christian usages. In fact, the Roman Church has at times even gloried in the secular origin of its sacred vestments, and based their adoption on the grant by Constantine (in his forged donation) of his own imperial garments to the Pope, and has then added that they were occasionally transferred back to the secular princes, as when Alexander II. granted to the Duke of Bohemia the use of the mitre, and Alexander III. to the Doge of Venice the use of an umbrella like his own,—and that the Emperor wore the same pall or mantle that was used by Popes in the most sacred offices.* The only indications adduced to the contrary are: 1. The golden plate said to have been worn by St. John and St. James. But even if Bishop Lightfoot had not amply † proved that this is a mere metaphor, it would not avail, for a golden plate has never been adopted as part of the ecclesiastical ornaments. *Thomassin, i. 2, c. 45, s. 52. + Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, p. 252. 2. The mention in the Clementine Liturgy that the bishop at a certain moment of the service puts on a white* garment. But this is an exception which proves the rule. Of all the liturgies, this is the only one which has any indication of dress -and the Clementine Liturgy is so saturated with interpolations of all kinds, some even heretical, that its text cannot be seriously used as an authentic witness. 3. Jerome, in his Commentary on Ezekiel (c. 44), says that "Divine religion has one habit in service, another in use in common life." But he is speaking here of the trousers of the Jewish priests; and in all the allegorical interpretations he gives here, or in his letter to Fabiola, of the garments of the Jewish priesthood, there is not one which points to the sacerdotal character of the Christian ministry; and in this very passage, shortly before, he says, "Thus we learn that we ought not to enter the Holy of Holies with any sort of every-day clothing soiled from the use of life, but handle the Lord's sacraments with a clean conscience and clean clothes." It is evident that, so far as this is not metaphorical, it means only that (according to the description of the first stage of the process of adaptation given above) the clothes of Christians in public worship should not be dirty, but clean. There may possibly be other apparent exceptions, as, no doubt, in later Roman writers there are contradictory statements. But the general current of practice and opinion during the early ages is that which is well summed up by the Jesuit Sirmondus,t as by our own Bingham: "The color and form of dress was in the beginning the same for ecclesiastics and laymen." Should there be any counter-statements or counter-facts scattered here and there through the ancient customs or literature of the Latin Church, it is no more than is to be expected from the heterogeneous forms which any large historical system embraces within itself. IV. We now proceed to the practical remarks which this part suggests. 1. First, it is not useless to show that the significance of *Ааμπрàν èσlĥra, as in the next quotation from Jerome, probably means 66 clean, white gown." + See Marriott, p. 43; Thomassin, 1. 2, 43. |