Boultbee on Article XXIV: Of speaking in the Congregation in such a tongue as the people understandeth

No special comment is needed on either the Latin or English text of the Article. The twenty-fifth Article of 1552 was to the same effect, but less strongly worded. * It is most seemly, and most agreeable to the word of God, that in the congregation nothing be openly read or spoken in a tongue imknown to the people, the which thing St. Paul did forbid, except some were present that should declare the same.’

Observations on Article XXIV.

The strangely irrational and unscriptural custom against which this Article protests belongs not only to the Eoman Church. Several sections of the Christian Church persist in the use of service-books, or of translations of the Scriptures, in dialects long obsolete. But the use of Latin in the services of the Roman Church was the occasion of this Article. Little more can be needed than to show how this usage arose.

When the Western Roman Empire was broken up, Latin had superseded the native dialects throughout ItaJy, Gaul,

Spain, and probably Britain, excepting in tbe more remote and mountainous or less civilized provinces. The Church, therefore, through these regions was a Latin Church. In Italy, Gaul, and Spain the invading barbarians either pro- fessed or adopted Christianity, and merged their own lan- guage in the provincial Latin. Thus, throughout those countries, the Church as well as the people continued to use Latin. It is not necessary to go into the question how far the provincial Latin was already a corrupt patois. Hallam ^ shows that Latin was still spoken in France in the sixth and seventh centuries ; faulty in point of granmiar, but still Latin, and intelligible to the people. In the eighth and ninth centuries we read of the * rustic Roman,’ and find that vidgar patois of broken Latin prevailed, out of which, in course of time, modem French arose. In Italy and Spain similar changes and developments of dialects were proceeding. But Hallam says that he does not find any express evidence of a vulgar Italian dialect different firom the Latin earlier than the close of the tenth century.

From this sketch it will be manifest that the change of lan- guage was so very gradual that it was only by little and little that the Church services became unintelligible to the people. By the time that the new dialects had assumed a definite type, and had received some little literary culture, there was not sufficient enlightenment in the people to make them desire vernacular services.

This explanation will not apply to Germany, nor to England after the Saxon conquest. In both these countries Teutonic dialects prevailed. But they received Christianity so late, and chiefly through Latin sources, that the Latin service-books were everywhere introduced. The priesthood cherished Latin as the language of books, and of such learning and divinity as they possessed. It was also the instrument of intercourse with Rome and their foreign brethren. It was, therefore, prized as at once a pledge and means of learning, and a matter of ecclesiastical convenience. Subsequently it was found to be too valuable an instrument of ecclesiastical

• • History of Middle Ages,’ chap. ix. Ft. I.

iomination to be abandoned by the Church of Rome, even in the face of the fourteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Accordingly the Council of Trent * decreed that it was * not expedient that the mass should be everywhere celebrated in the vernacular tongue.’ The mode of defending this practice usually employed by Romanist writers appears to be of the following nature : 1. Thi canon of the mass is peculiarly sacred and perfect, and translations would naturally vary, and risk imperfections which might vitiate the whole. 2. Priests could only officiate in their own country if accustomed to the vernacular only. 3. The mass is a sacri- 15 ce, a thing done, which the worshipper is to contemplate 21 nd adore with all the powers of his heart. The words used do not, therefore, concern him. 4. In fact, the priest utters the canon of the mass in a low voice to God, and not to the people. Hence the language used is, to them, a matter of no consequence. It is, however, customary now in England, and probably in other countries of similar enlightenment, to place ill the hands of the people vernacular books of devotion, explaining the nature of the services, and containing tr^sla- tions of some portions of them, and meditations and prayers in harmony with other parts.

It will be scarcely needful to point out that the Scriptural mode of dealing with the subject of this Article may be thus classified : —

I. Direct Scripture examples. II. The nature of prayer, and its true requisites.

Ill Direct Scripture precepts.

I Sakhioii XXII. chap. vilL