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

IT seems strange that, considering what divine ser vice is, it should have been necessary to ordain that it should be in the language of the worshipper. Bearing in mind that one great part of oral prayer is the ele vation of the soul to God, one would hardly imagine that the greater part of the Christian Church should deem it right to offer it in a tongue not understanded of the people. There must be some reason for what is rightly declared in the Article to be ” plainly repug nant to the Word of God, and the custom of the primi tive Church.”

And that this custom is thus repugnant, is manifest from the text of St. Paul, ” Yet in the church I had rather speak five words to the edifying of the hearers, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue a.” So also, ” Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at the giving of thanks, seeing he under- standeth not what thou sayest b ?” Again, positively, we are told, ” I will pray with my spirit, and I will pray with my understanding also.” God’s service is a reasonable service, Xoyi/crjv \arpeiav vpwv, a service in which the \6yos is concerned.

Though we have no trace of it remaining, except the * Kyrie Eleison’ before the Lord’s Prayer, and the 1 Agios o Theos’ in the office for Good Friday, there can be no doubt that in the earliest ages the Liturgy of the Greek -speaking Roman Church was Greek, and continued such till the transference of the Empire to Byzantium. It is probable that the Latin Liturgy of St. Peter existed also from the very earliest times, if not in Rome, at least in Africa. The Eastern Church, of course, employed the Greek language, which also served for Palestine, where, in consequence of more than two centuries of Hellenism, it was so uni versally employed, that many scholars believe that it was the very language of our Lord and His Apostles. We have no knowledge of the offices which were used by the Apostles who carried the Gospel into India, Parthia, and other regions, but there is no reason for • 1 Cor. xiv. 19. b Ibid., 16.

OF SPEAKING IN THE CONGREGATION, &C. 433

supposing that the services were in any other language than the vernacular of each region.

Martene says c, ” Although the modern use of the Church is that the mass shall only be celebrated in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and the reasons for pro scribing the mother tongue are sufficient, yet it was not so in the beginning.” In support of this he quotes the story of St. Anthony the Abbot, told by St. Athanasius, who, knowing nothing but the Egyptian idiom, entered the church, and hearing the Gospel read in which it is enjoined to sell all, straightway went and did so. Still more to the purpose is the history of the life of St. Theodosius the Archimandrite, who built in his monastery four churches, one for the Greeks, one for the Bessi, a third for the Armenians, and a fourth for those beset with evil spirits ; so that it happened that they all (except the beset) carried on the services in their own tongues, so far as the Gospel, and then joined together in the great Greek Church, and here upon were made partakers of the Divine mysteries.

A similar fact is narrated by Cyrillus Scythopoli- tanus, in his life of St. Saba.

In the ninth century, when the Slaves were con verted to Christianity by St. Methodius, John VIII. highly praised their performing the service in the Slavonic tongue d. He, however, adds, that for the ho nour of Divine worship, the Gospel is to be read first in Latin and then translated, and if the Count and his

c De Antiq. Eccl. Nat., lib. i. cap. iii. art. ii. torn. i. p. 101. d Ep. 247. to Sfentopulcher, Count of Moravia.

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judges like to hear it read in Latin they may do so. Before this, Methodius had introduced the vernacular among the Pannonians, with the consent of Pope John ; but Gregory YII. forbad it when writing to Vratisloff, Duke of Bohemia. All the Slaves still use the Slavonic, and not only the schismatical communities in the Easte, but those in communion with the Latins, as the Ma- ronites, who use Arabic or Chaldaic, worship in their own language.

It is unnecessary to allude to those mixed rites, where Latin was used in the East, and Greek in the West, sometimes to typify intercommunion, sometimes to meet the case of alien populations, as was specially common in Magna Grsecia. A still more interesting question suggests itself, whether in the West the use of the ver nacular ever obtained to any great extent. Martene mentions that in the Church of Soissons (Suessonensis), on the feast of St. Stephen, the Epistle was sung in Latin and in French, as also at St. Gatien’s, at Tours, and he gives the beginning of it. It is a specimen of what are termed ” farsuras,” and in a philological point of view is eminently curious. He mentions that in some parishes in the diocese of Bheims they sang, in his own time, a piece in French, describing the life of St. Stephen, which was forbidden by the existing arch bishop.

Theodoret makes mention of the translation of the Bible into many tongues f ; and the version of Ulphilas into Maesogothic, A.D. 360, is the first that prevailed in

e Vide Bona Eer. Lit., lib. i. c. 9. n. 4. f Grate. Affect., 1. 5.

the West. But we know nothing of a Gothic Liturgy. It is true the Church, hymns, e. g. the Te Deum, were rendered into German, as well as the Epistles and Gos pels, in the ninth century ; and by the Council of Lep- tines, A.D. 743, certain parts of the Baptismal Service were appointed to be in the German language s. Still there was always a tendency to enforce the Latin lan guage in the West. As the fresh tribes from the north were evangelized by the Roman clergy, it was natural that the Roman clergy should employ and recommend the rites to which they had been accustomed. It be came the measure of the solidity of the conversion that the Latin tongue was accepted. It was also a great means for the consolidation of the Church’s power. Even in the Celtic tribes of Ireland and Scotland the mass, though not the rubrics and hymns, was always in Latin ; and whatever may have been the polity and nationality of the race who first raised to heaven the prayers of the Mozarabic Rite, that glorious formulaiy speaks to God in the language of the Romans.

The Eastern Church did not take this exclusive line. Wedded as that Church has ever been to tradition, it freely allowed of the translation of the Euchologia and Liturgies. The great Slave races, who received their knowledge of Christ from the East, as we have seen, were freely allowed their Slavonic services. The Arme mans and Georgians, Cophts and Syrians, were all allowed to worship God in a tongue which they un derstood. Time, of course, has told on this arrange-

% Labbe and Cossart, Cone., torn. viii. p. 278.

ment. The language of daily use has altered, while the Church language has remained as it was, so that now over the greater part of the Christian world the ignorant among the worshippers imperfectly under stand what is said in church.

In extenuation of this state of things, it is urged 1. that it would be impossible to be eternally altering the service to suit the alterations of the language of common life ; 2. that more is gained by the reverence which an ancient form inspires than is lost by a par tial ignorance of it ; 3. that in fact, by means of trans lation and explanation, the great mass of the faithful do adhibit a rational attention to the sense of that in which they are occupied ; and 4. that it is most impor tant to embalm the expression of doctrine in a lan guage, which, by being dead, has got a definite mean ing sealed to each word.

To sum up, it is desirable that, due precaution being taken for the conservation of the true doctrine by cer tain unalterable formulae, the language of prayer and praise should be that which every ordinarily educated person of average intelligence should be able to follow with perfect facility ; and that in the mutation of lan guage, the service-books should from time to time be corrected, but only when the amount of discrepancy between the archaic and ordinary tongues has become so great, that an intelligent rational worship is ren dered difficult or impossible.