Maclear and Williams on Article XXIV: Of speaking in the Congregation in such a tongue as the people understandeth

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i. Connection. This Article naturally succeeds the preceding, for if the Ministers of the Church must be duly authorized and called, the next natural enquiry is, In what language ought they to officiate ?

ii. Object of the Article. To this question the Mediaevalists replied, that the Latin tongue is the proper vehicle for public worship. It is this position which it is the object of the Article to controvert, and it affirms that the language used in the performance of divine worship should always be intelligible to the people1.

iii. The Wording of the Article has undergone con- siderable modification since the issue of the first draft in 1553. It then began, ” It is most seemly, and most agree- able to the word of God, that in the congregation nothing be openly read, or spoken in a tongue unknown to the

people1.” In 1563 this clause was made much stronger, and in place of the words, ” It is most seemly,” we have substituted, “It is a thing playnely repugnaunt to the worde of God, and the custome of the primitiue Churche, to haue publique prayer in the Churche, or to minister the Sacra- mentes in a tongue not vnderstanded of the people.” The alteration may have been due to a knowledge of what was going on in the Council of Trent, which maintained the Latin language as the ordinary vehicle of worship, and affirmed that ” it had not seemed expedient to the Fathers that the Mass should be everywhere celebrated in the vulgar tongue2.”

iv. Analysis. The Article affirms that such a mode of conducting public worship is repugnant

(a) to the Word of God,

and the custom of the Primitive Church.

v. Holy Scripture. The idea of approaching God in worship in a tongue unknown to the worshippers is quite foreign to the entire tenor of the Old Testament, while in the New Testament we have four points clearly brought out : —

(1) We have no trace of any custom on the part of our Lord of praying Himself or of teaching His Apostles to pray, or of speaking to those of His generation, in an unknown language ;

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2 Twenty-Second Session of the Council, Sep. 17, 1562. Chapter viii. ” Ktsi missa niagnam contineat populi

M.

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(2) At least one object of the miracle of the Day of Pentecost1 was to enable the Apostles gifted with divers languages to preach the Gospel to all nations (Acts ii. 4) ;

(3) S. Paul, when he speaks of the exercise of the gift of tongues by the Corinthian Christians, thanks God that he speaks with tongues more than all of them. Howbeit- in Church, he declares, he would rather speak five words with his understanding, that he might instruct3 others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue ( 1 Cor. xiv. 18, 19) ;

(4) Moreover in the same chapter he says, If thou bless with the spirit, how shall lie that filleth the place of the unlearned* say the Amen at thy giving of thanks5, seeing he knoweth not what thou sayest? For thou givest thanks well, but the other6 is not edified (1 Cor. xiv. 16, 17).

1 See the Proper Preface in the Communion Office for Whit-Sunday.

2 ‘AW e’e eRic\r)crtq.. ‘AWa here has its full adversative force and specifies what, in spite of the statement in the foregoing verse, was the real feeling of the Apostle on the subject. ‘En eKK\r)ol<f, without the article, ” may be understood as implying what our more familiar ’ in church ’ would con- vey to a modern reader.” Bp Ellicott on 1 Cor. xiv. 18.

3 “\va Kai dXXous KaTrixqcu. The verb from the nature of the context retains here some tinge of its more restricted meaning ” voce instituo,” Beza.

4 ToC ISo!)tov, 1 Cor. xiv. 16. ‘ISiuttjs and its use are copiously illus- trated by Wetstein. The word de- notes (1) a private person as opposed

to one in office, or in a profession, a layman, as in Acts iv. 13, ayodp.fw.rol ei<ri Kal IdiOrai, or (2) an unlearned and ignorant person.

5 The reference here to e£xa- piaria, ” the giving of thanks,” and to the ” Amen,” tends to show that the Apostle, as Bp Wordsworth says, is speaking here of the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist. He points to the necessity of its being celebrated in the vulgar tongue, that the people may know when and how to make the proper responses. See the admission of Cardinal Bona, Rer. Liturg. 1. v. 4.

vi. The Custom of the Primitive Church. As

regards primitive usage it is to be borne in mind that

(a) It had nowhere been laid down before the Advent of our Lord that Hebrew was too sacred a language for translation into the vernacular tongue ; (jQ) The Old Testament Scriptures had already been translated into Chaldee for the Palestinian Jews, and into Greek for those of Alexandria and of the Roman world generally ;

(7) And as it was with the Old, so it was with the New Testament. In very early times portions of the New Testament appeared in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Gothic and other lan- guages1;

(8) What was true with respect to the Scriptures was true also of the primitive Liturgies. The custom was that the whole congregation should join in the responses and in the singing of the Psalms and Hymns, which would have been impossible, had not the Psalms and Hymns been sung in intelligible dialects capable of being understood by the people2.

vii. Testimony of the Fathers. When we turn to the statements of the early Fathers, we find : —

(a) S. Cyril3 writing thus, ” When the Priest says, Lift up your hearts, the people answer, We lift

1 See Article Versions in Smith, Dictionary of the Bible ; Westcott’s Bible in the Church, and Canon of the New Testament.

2 Martene admits that the proscrip- tion of the vernacular in the Mass was not the custom in the beginning. He quotes in confirmation the “story, told

by S. Athanasius, of S. Anthony, the Abbot, who, knowing nothing but the Egyptian language, entered a Church, and hearing the Gospel read, in which it is enjoined to sell all, straightway went and did so.” Bp Korbes, Articles, P- 433-

3 S. Cyril, Catech. Mystagog. v.

t/iem up unto t/ie Lord ; when the Priest says, Let us give thanks unto the Lord, the people respond, It is meet and right so to do ;

(b) Origen writes, ” The Greeks use Greek in their prayers, the Romans Latin, and so every one in his own language prays to God, and gives thanks as he is able. And He that is Lord of every tongue hears that which is asked in every tongue1;”

(c) S. Jerome tells us that at the funeral of Paula, a lady of high rank, ” the Psalms were sung in Greek, Latin, and Syriac, because people speak- ing each of these languages were present2;”

(d) S. Hilary speaks of people standing without the Church, and yet ” able to hear the voice of the people praying within ; to discern the clear sound of the hymns ; and, amidst the celebration of the divine Sacraments, to distinguish the response of devout confession3.”

Now all this would have been impossible, if the language used had not been intelligible to the people, and had it not been desired that the mass of the faithful should be able to attend to, and understand, the service at which they were present.

viii. The use of the Latin tongue in the services of the Western Church was not due to the fact that Latin was the original language of the Roman Church, for that Church in the earliest times used the Greek language, and not only S. Paul’s Epistles to and from Rome were written

1 Origen, coilr. Celsum, viii. 37.

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in Greek, but all the extant Christian writings of the first three centuries, which appeared in Rome and in the West, were Greek or originally Greek1. Moreover in the Roman Mass itself there are still preserved indications of its Greek original. The words Kyrie Eleison are Greek, not Latin, and their occurrence in the Mass shows that it was once said in Greek. In process of time, however, Greek began to fall into disuse, and the translation of the divine offices into Latin was made for the very purpose of their being understood by the worshippers, and with the intention of obeying S. Paul’s precept. Thus Latin became in its turn the language of Liturgical worship as Greek had been before, and while out of the ancient Latin grew the French, the Italian, the Spanish and other dialects, the Latin Liturgies were retained2, and gradually acquired, or were supposed to acquire, a special sanctity, and it was deemed profanation to celebrate the Mass in any other language than that of the capital of Christendom. The Eastern Church, on the other hand, did not take this exclusive line. It freely allowed the translation of the Liturgies and other Service Books, for the use of the Slavonic races3, whom it

2 ” 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 accus- tomed. It became the measure of the solidity of the conversion that the Latin tongue was accepted. It was also a great means for the consolida- tion of the Church’s power. Even in the Celtic tribes of Ireland and Scot- land 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 formu- lary speaks to God in the language of the Romans.” See Bp Forbes, p. 43S-

3 The great Slav races, who re- ceived their knowledge of Christ from the East, were freely allowed their

won over to the faith1. Hence we can understand why, when the Council of Trent took the course it did2, the language of the present Article was made stronger and more definite, for the craving in the sixteenth century to possess a vernacular Liturgy was only a craving for what had been sanctioned in the earliest and purest ages of the Church, and in the Greek Church from the first moment of its existence.

Slavonic services. The Armenians and Georgians, Copts and Syrians, were all allowed to worship God in a tongue which they understood.

1 When in the ninth century the Slavs were converted to the Christian faith by Methodius, Pope John VIII. highly praised their performing the service in the Slavonic tongue. He, however, added that, for the honour of divine worship, the Gospel is to be read first in Latin and then translated into the vernacular. The scruples of this Pontitf are said to have been re- moved by his remembering the verse in the Psalms, Praise the Lord all ye nations. This verse appeared to him decisive. It could hardly mean that the Creator’s praise was to be restricted to three languages, Hebrew, Greek,

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• Comp. p. 289, «. It is clearly desirable that, ” due precaution being taken for the conservation of the true doctrine by certain unalterable for- mulae, 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 language, 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 rendered difficult or im- possible.” Bp Forbes on the Articles, p. 436.

Notes

• See Hardwick, Articles, pp. 104, 130. Ed. 1859.
• 2i> p.h> yap ko\us evxapicrreis. The emphasis rests on the prominently placed pronoun. ” Thou givest thanks well ; he, however, who fills the place of the unlearned is in no degree the better for it.”
• ” For some considerable part of the first three centuries the Church of Rome, and most, if not all the Churches of the West, were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colo- nies. Their language was Greek ; their Scriptures Greek ; and many vestiges and traditions show that their ritual and their Liturgy was Greek.” Milman’s Latin Christianity, i. p. 32. “The Epistles of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, the works of Justin Martyr, down to Caius and Hippolytus, the author of the Refuta- tion of all Heresies — all were Greek.” Ibid. p. 33.