Innovations

HOLY CROSS TRACTS

August 1917

"Why should we have so many new ways of teaching and of conducting the Church's services, seeing we got along so well without them for nearly four hundred years? Why all these innovations?"

Well, my friend, your question suggests two other questions that might be asked in reply: First, Did we get along so well without them? I may take this question up in one of our Tracts some day, and in the meantime I will now refer you to any good historian, such, for example, as Wakeman, who tells us that while the Church was getting along without these things, "lethargy, like a malarious fog, crept up the body of the Church and laid its cold hand upon her heart." (History of the Church of England, Chapter "The Ascendancy of Latitudinarianism.")

The second question that is suggested is, Are these things innovations? Let us consider some of them, Prayers for the Dead, for instance. Are they something new in our Church?


Let us appeal to a book called a Manual of Christian Antiquities, written by the Rev. J. E. Riddle, a distinguished and learned clergyman, who has been described as "a very extreme Protestant." He will be a fair witness to summon. He says: "It is certain, however, that during the third and fourth centuries prayers were offered for the dead, with a belief that they might contribute to their benefit in various ways; that many Fathers of that date concur in speaking highly of the advantage of such prayers; and that this mistaken and mischievous practice, which, in some form or other, had crept into the Church, at a very early period, was conducted with the consent of those Christian teachers." Mr. Riddle, as you see, objects seriously to prayers for the dead, but acknowledges that this "innovation" has been a custom of the Christian Church for at least seventeen hun­dred years, and how much longer he confesses he does not know.

Suppose we take the Sign of the Cross next. Again I will take Mr. Riddle into court as my witness, just because he is such an unwilling one. "In this treatise," he says (speaking of a book by Tertullian, who died some seven­teen hundred years ago), "We find the author appealing to oral tradition as a guide or rule in matters of form or cere­mony. Mention is made of the Sign of the Cross as usual amongst Christians without any trace of superstition or abuse." Again, "The practice of marking the body with the Sign of the Cross at the Celebration of the Lord's Sup­per is unquestionably one of most remote antiquity in the Christian Church. It has generally been supposed to be of Apostolic origin." So then we go back nearly nineteen hun­dred years for that practice. It then is no "innovation."

Let us next take the Daily Celebration of Holy Com­munion. Is that an innovation? It looks very like it, when we think in how many places three or four times a year used to be thought enough. Once more I call Mr. Riddle into court. "Ecclesiastical history," says he, "exhibits evi­dent traces of the observance of the Lord's Day very early in the second century, and of the celebration of the Lord's Supper regularly on that day. . . . But we must not sup­pose that the celebration of this Sacrament was absolutely restricted to the Lord's Day in the ancient Church. On the contrary, a daily celebration seems to have been recom­mended, and to a certain extent practiced. It is probably to this that allusion is made in Acts ii. 42, 46."

Next let us take the Elevation of the Host. Here is what Mr. Riddle says: "No high antiquity can be claimed for the elevation or adoration of the consecrated elements." Just what we say, you exclaim. Wait a little; listen to his very next sentence: "A practice of this kind seems to have existed in the Eastern Churches as early (perhaps) as the fourth century, originating probably in the system of secret discipline, and in the irregularities of the Markosites or other erroneous sects." I have not the least idea what Mr. Riddle means by this last clause, and I believe myself that Doctor Littledale has proved that the Elevation of the Host is Apostolic, and the antitype of the Jewish heave-offering. But I will not press that now. I will merely remark that on an opponent's showing, this "innovation" is fifteen hun­dred years old.

Incense is said by Mr. Riddle, and in Dean Hook's Church Dictionary, to have been introduced by Pope Gregory the Great, the same to whom the conversion of our English forefathers to Christianity is due. He died A. D. 604; so, if we take that view, incense has been in use amongst Christians for more than thirteen hundred years. As a fact, it is mentioned by St. Hippolytus, who died in A. D. 230; by St. Ephrem Syrus, who died in 374; by Basil the Great, who died in 379; and by St. Ambrose, who died in 397, as in use during and before their time. That sends us back, at any rate, nearly four hundred years earlier, and thus incense is near seventeen hundred years old as a Christian usage.

Vestments for the Priest at Holy Communion are not of such clear and positive antiquity as some other things I have named, but they are very far from being innovations. I call up my Protestant witness again, and I beg you to remember that he is a very strong Protestant, indeed. "We do not, indeed, find any allusion to such vestments in the New Testament, but it is remarkable that there are some records of some very early traditions respecting certain ornaments and vestments supposed to have belonged to some of the Apostles, and to have been worn by them in the celebration of divine offices. It can hardly be supposed that ministers of the different degrees or orders in the hierarchy which existed in the second and third centuries were not distinguished by different vestments in the discharge of their offices in the congregation. Ecclesiastical laws of the fourth century are extant which relate to the appropriation of vestments to the different orders." So far Mr. Riddle; and I may add that the authorities he quotes as to the early traditions about the Apostles are Eusebius and Epiphanius, both writers of the fourth century. Suppose them to have been wrong in their belief; at any rate they were com­petent witnesses to the use of the century just preceding, and thus the Eucharistic vestments have at least seventeen hundred years' prescription.

I might easily have made this list longer, but these examples are as good for my purpose as fifty; and I have shown you that the newest of these "innovations" is, at any rate, more than twelve centuries old, and the oldest more than eighteen hundred years of age. You might not like them, my friend, but do not again make the mistake of call­ing them "innovations." The real innovators were those so-called Reformers who denied these ancient doctrines and practices of Christ's Church.