1 in Baptism and Confirmation to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And if the larger part of the day of most of us must necessarily be occupied with the “vocation,” time must be secured for the "ministry" of prayer, and praise, and reading, if the vocation is to have God's blessing upon it." Truly and godly serve thee." The first word, doubtless intended to apply chiefly to the vocation, and the latter to the ministry. The service done in "the vocation" must be "true;"—in the original the word is "faithful." "True,"not hollow and hypocritical, as is the case where we seek in our daily work only the praise of men; nor mercenary, as where a man endeavours to serve only his own worldly ends in his work. And "faithful," that is, conscientious, and punctually executed. And the service done in the "ministry" must be "godly"; we must set the living God before us in our prayers and praises, regard the minutes spent in devotion as real interviews with Him, and speak to Him earnestly in them, and then with all docility listen for His voice in the reading of His word. No "ministry," which we do not make an honest effort to rescue from formality, can be "godly." 1 See 1 Pet. ii. 5. CHAPTER XXIX. GOOD FRIDAY III. (1) O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live; Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen, 1 [A.D. 1549.] IT It may have often happened to us to see a wall running on an ancient foundation, the materials of which are mostly recent, but many old fragments-here the volute of a capital, here a piece of fluted shaft, there a block of stone 1 The three Collects, of which this may be said to be a compilation, stand thus in the Missal of Sarum : Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui salvas omnes homines et neminem vis perire; respice ad animas diabolica fraude deceptas: ut omni hæretica pravitate deposita, errantium corda resipiscant, et ad veritatis tuæ redeant unitatem. Dominum. Per Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui etiam Judaicam perfidiam a tua misericordia non repellis; exaudi Almighty and everlasting God, who art the Saviour of all men, and wouldest not that any should perish; Look mercifully upon souls deceived by the craft of the devil, that, all heretical perverseness being laid aside, they whose hearts have gone astray may remember themselves, and return to the unity of thy truth. Through the Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, who dost not shut out from thy mercy even the infidelity of the with a rude inscription-have been built up into the masonry. The Collect before us resembles such a wall. Two or three of its expressions are evidently borrowed from those ancient sources, of which we have had occasion to say so much, the Sacramentaries of Gelasius and Gregory; but the greater part of it is the manufacture of Cranmer and his colleagues. But though there is much that is new in the phraseology, yet the line of thought is entirely ancient. In the Sacramentary of Gelasius (the date of which is the end of the fifth century), after the reading on Good Friday of the Passion of our Lord, as related in the 18th and 19th Chapters of St. John's Gospel, eighteen solemn prayers were directed to be said. -two for the Universal Church; one for the Pope and the Bishop of the diocese; one for Bishops in general; one for Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and for the Clergy in minor orders; one for all estates of men (corresponding to our second Collect); one for the Emperor or King; one for the empire or kingdom; two for the Catechumens ; preces nostras, quas pro illius populi obcæcatione deferimus; ut agnita veritatis tuæ luce, quæ Christus est, a suis tenebris eruatur. Per eundem. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui non vis mortem peccatorum, sed vitam semper inquiris; suscipe propitius orationem nostram : et libera eos ab idolorum cultura; et aggrega Ecclesiæ tuæ sanctæ ad laudem et gloriam nominis tui. Per Dominum. Jews; Hear our prayers which we offer before thee on behalf of the blindness of that people, that, acknowledging the light of thy truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same. Almighty and everlasting God, who wouldest not the death of sinners, but ever seekest their life; Mercifully receive our prayers, and set them free from the worship of idols, and bring them into the fold of thy Church, to the praise and glory of thy Name. Through the Lord. These Collects are all found in the Sacramentary of Gelasius [Mur., Tom. I. Col. 362]. one for the sick, for prisoners, travellers, and sailors; one for the afflicted and distressed; two for heretics and schismatics; two for the Jews; and two for the heathen. I need scarcely say that the Turks do not appear in this catalogue of persons interceded for by the Church, for the very simple reason that the Ottoman empire was not founded till the very close of the thirteenth century,nay, that the Ottoman religion did not come into existence till more than a century after the Gelasian Sacramentary; for Gelasius died in 496, and Mohammed did not announce himself as a prophet till 611. Obvious as this is, it is well to call attention to it, because the doing so leads us to observe the venerable antiquity of the sources whence most of our Church prayers are derived. The religion of the false prophet traces back to a sufficiently remote antiquity; but when it was yet in the womb of the distant future, when no eye but God's could discern it, and no tongue but that of prophecy predict it, the Christian Church was holding councils, and framing definitions of faith, and judging heresies, and offering fervent prayers, as Good Friday came round, for Jews, infidels, and heretics, little thinking of the frightful form of errorism to which time should give birth, or of the scourge which God was preparing for her own superstitions and idolatries. Before we run through this prayer clause by clause, let us endeavour to see the appropriateness to Good Friday of prayers for all conditions of men, not only within the Church, but also outside her pale. The key to this appropriateness must be sought in that passage of St. John's Epistle; "He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."1 11 John ii. 2. On Good Friday the great propitiation was made for sins. The Son of God then suffered in that human nature, which He condescended to assume. But although He assumed human nature, yet He did not assume, as Nestorius erroneously supposed, a human person;-what there was in Him of personality was all divine. Hence He is not more allied to one human person than to another, but equally to all. And hence, when He died in His human nature (for, of course, His Godhead could not suffer death), it was as if the whole of humanity had expired, and met fully God's penalty against sin.1 And therefore the death of Christ is just as wide in its scope and intention as the race of man; it embraces the heathen who is ignorant of the truth, the heretic who depraves it, and the avowed unbeliever who rejects and opposes it, as much as the faithful who believe the Gospel and walk in the light of it. And therefore we pray for all, on the great propitiationday, that the knowledge of the propitiation may reach all, and convert all, and fetch them home into the true fold. And this St. Paul teaches us very emphatically to do, in the directions which he gives for public worship; "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority" (but the kings of those days were not heathens only, but persecutors and blasphemers; Nero and Domitian were the types of them), "that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty "2 (if we read only thus far, it might seem as if the Church only prayed for these, 66 1 And therefore it is said in 2 Cor. v. 14; Ei eis vπèρ πávтwv åπéÐαvev, ἄρα οἱ πάντες ἀπέθανον ; "If one died on behalf of all, then" (not, were all dead," as in our Version,- -a very serious error,-but) "all died,"-died in Him, when He died. 2 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. |