A CHURCH DICTIONARY. ABBA. ABBA. A Syriac word signifying Father, and expressive of attachment and confidence. St. Paul says, Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father. (Rom. viii. 15.) ABBE. The designation assumed in France, before the Revolution, by certain persons, who ostensibly devoted them selves to theological studies, in the hope that the king would confer upon them a real abbey, i. e. a certain portion of the revenues of a real abbey. Hence it became the common title of unemployed secular priests. ABBEY. (See Abbot, Monastery, Monk.) The habitation of a society devoted to religion. The name Abbey is derived from Abbas, which occurs in the lower Latin, which is derived from the Hebrew, and signifies Father. The heads of abbeys were patres monasterii, or, if females, matres monasterii, and their houses were denominated abbeys. An abbey was a monastery, whether of men or women, distinguished from other religious houses in the middle ages, and in the existing Romish Church, by larger privileges. The abbeys in England were exempted from all jurisdiction, civil and spiritual, and from all impositions, and having generally the privilege of sanctuary, for all who fled to them were beyond the reach of the law. They became enormously rich through an appeal on the part of the monks to the superstitious feelings of the age. The doctrine of purgatory being insisted upon, they persuaded the people that by making endowments for the saying of masses for ABBEY. their souls, they would both mitigate their torments while they lasted, and deliver themselves from them entirely, after the lapse of a certain time. The worship of saints, of images, and of relics, having been encouraged, the ignorant were urged to make large donations to certain shrines, concerning miracles wrought at which, the most monstrous falsehoods were related. The merit of good works, and their power to justify sinners being admitted, the monks easily persuaded awakened profligates on their deathbeds to leave large legacies to their respective abbeys. The abuse became at last a public nuisance. As the abbeys increased in wealth, the state became poor; for the lands which these regulars (see Regulars) possessed were in mortua manu (see Mortmain), and could not be brought into the market. This inconvenience gave rise to the statutes against gifts in mortmain. The abbeys were totally abolished in England in the time of Henry VIII., who, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign, appointed visiters to inspect them. The abuses discovered were so many and so disgraceful, that many of the abbeys were voluntarily surrendered to the king; by which means the abbey lands became invested in the crown, and were afterwards granted to the nobility; under which grants they are held to the present day. One hundred and ninety such abbeys were dissolved. Cranmer begged earnestly of Henry VIII., that he would save some of the abbeys to be reformed and applied to holy and religious uses, but in vain. For the arrangement of the several buildings of an abbey, see Cathedral and Monastery. ABBOT. The Father or Superior of an abbey of monks, or male persons, living under peculiar religious vows. Abbot is a word of oriental extraction, from the Syriac, Abba, father; as that, from the Hebrew Ab, of the same signification: and, if we may ascend still higher, that word itself (as many others which occur in that language) proceeds from the voice of nature; being one of the most obvious sounds, to express one of the first and most obvious ideas. ABSOLUTION. ABSOLUTION. (See Confession, Pe nance.) The authority and power of conferring absolution on penitents, wherewith our gracious SAVIOUR hath so clearly vested his ministerial successors, "whosoever sins ye remit," &c. having been abused by the Church of Rome in a lucrative market of pardons and indulgences, it is no wonder that Luther, and all our first reformers, should have taken infinite offence at a practice so flagitious, and so directly contrary to the command of CHRIST, "freely ye have received; freely give." This, however, should not have been a Among the abbeys in England before the reason, as it was with too many, for redissolution, were some which gave the title jecting all absolutions. The true doctrine of Mitred Abbot to their superiors These is, and must be this-for the consolation mitred abbots sat and voted in the house of his church, and particularly of such as of lords. They held of the king in capite class with the penitent publican in the per baroniam, their endowments being at gospel, CHRIST hath left with his bishops least an entire barony, which consisted of and presbyters a power to pronounce abthirteen knights' fees. The following are solution. This absolution is on condition the abbeys which conferred this distinction of faith and repentance in the person or on their abbots: St. Alban's, St. Peter's, persons receiving it. On sufficient apWestminster; St. Edmondsbury, St. Ben-pearance of these, and confession made net's of Holm, Berdsey, Shrewsbury, Crowland, Abingdon, Evesham, Gloucester, Ramsey, St. Mary's, York; Tewkesbury, Reading, Bath, Winchcomb, Hide by Winchester, Cirencester, Waltham, Malmesbury, Thorney, St. Augustine's, Canterbury; Selby, Peterborough, St. John's, Colchester; Coventry, Tavistock, St. John's of Jerusalem, and Glastonbury. (See Monks.) ABBESS The Mother or Superior of an abbey of nuns, or female persons, living under peculiar religious vows. ABECEDARIAN HYMNS. Hymns composed in imitation of the acrostic poetry of the Hebrews, in which each verse, or each part, commenced with the first and succeeding letters in the alphabet, in their order. This arrangement was intended as a help to the memory. St. Augustine composed a hymn in this manner. for the common people to learn, against the error of the Donatists. (See Acrostics.) ABJURATION. A solemn renunciation in public, or before a proper officer, of some doctrinal error. A formal abjuration is often considered necessary by the Church, when any person seeks to be received into her communion from heresy or schism. A form for admitting Romish recusants into the Church of England was drawn up by the convocation of 1714, but did not receive the royal sanction. with these appearances in particular per- Sacerdotal absolution does not necessarily require any particular or auricular confession of private sins; forasmuch as that the grand absolution of baptism was commonly given without any particular confession. And therefore the Romanists vainly found the necessity of auricular confession upon those words of our SAVIOUR, Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted ABSOLUTION. unto them as if there could be no absolu- | tion without particular confession; when it is so plain, that the great absolution of baptism (the power of which is founded by the ancients upon this very place) required no such particular confession. We may hence infer, that the power of any sacerdotal absolution is only ministerial; because the administration of baptism (which is the most universal absolution), so far as man is concerned in it, is no more than ministerial. All the office and power of man in it is only to minister the external form, but the internal power and grace of remission of sins is properly GoD's; and so it is in all other sorts of absolution. Bingham. The bishops and priests of the whole Christian Church have ever used to absolve all that truly repented, and at this day it is retained in our Church as a part of the daily office; which being so useful, so necessary, and founded on Holy Scrip. ture, needs not any arguments to defend it, but that the ignorance and prejudice of some makes them take offence at it, and principally because it hath been so much abused by the Papal Church. We may declare our abhorrency of these evil uses of absolution; though in that sober, moderate, and useful manner we do perform it, we do not vary from the prime intention of CHRIST'S Commission, and the practice of antiquity: absolution was instituted by JESUS, and if it have been corrupted by men, we will cast away the corruptions, not the ordinance itself.-Comber. Calvin's liturgy has no such form in it: but he himself says that it was an omission in him at first, and a defect in his liturgy; which he afterwards would have rectified and amended, but could not. He makes this ingenious confession in one of his epistles: "There is none of us," says he, "but must acknowledge it to be very useful, that, after the general confession, some remarkable promise of Scripture should follow, whereby sinners might be raised to the hopes of pardon and reconciliation. And I would have introduced this custom from the beginning, but some fearing that the novelty of it would give offence, I was over easy in yielding to them; so the thing was omitted." I must do that justice to Calvin here, by the way, to say, that he was no enemy to private absolution neither, as used in the Church of England. For in one of his answers to Westphalus he thus expresses his mind about it: "I have no intent to deny the usefulness of private absolution; but as I commend it in several places of my writings, provided the use be left to men's liberty, and free from superstition, so to blind men's consciences by a law to it, is neither lawful nor expedient." Here we have Calvin's judgment, fully and entirely, for the usefulness both of public and private absolution. He owns it to be a defect in his liturgy, that it wants a public absolution.-Bingham. Our Church has not appointed the indicative form of absolution to be used in all these senses, but only once in the office of the sick, and that may reasonably be interpreted (according to the account given out of St. Jerome), a declaration of the sinner's pardon, upon the apparent evidences of a sincere repentance, and the best judgment the minister can make of his condition; beyond which none can go, but the searcher of hearts, to whom alone belongs the infallible and irreversible sentence of absolution. The indicative form, "I absolve thee," may be interpreted to mean no more than a declaration of God's will to a penitent sinner, that, upon the best judgment the priest can make of his repentance, he esteems him absolved before God, and accordingly pronounces and declares him absolved. As St. Jerome observes, the priests under the old law were said to cleanse a leper, or pollute him; not that they were the authors of his pollution, but that they declared him to be polluted, who before seemed to many to have been clean. As, therefore, the priest makes the leper clean or unclean, so the bishop or presbyter here binds or looses, not properly making the guilty or the guiltless; but according to the tenor of his office, when he hears the distinction of sins, he knows who is to be bound, and who is to be loosed. Upon this also, the master of the sentences (following St. Jerome) observes, that the priests of the gospel have that right and office, which the legal priests had of old under the law in curing the lepers. These, therefore, forgive sins, or retain them, whilst they show and declare, that they are forgiven or retained by GOD. For the priests "put the name of the LORD" upon the children of Israel, but it was he himself that blessed them, as it is read in Num. vi. 27.—Bingham. The following remarks on our forms of absolution occur in "Palmer's Origines Liturgica." An absolution followed the confession formerly in the offices of the English holy and religious uses, but in vain. For the arrangement of the several buildings of an abbey, see Cathedral and Monastery. ABBOT. The Father or Superior of an abbey of monks, or male persons, living under peculiar religious vows. Abbot is a word of oriental extraction, from the Syriac, Abba, father; as that, from the Hebrew Ab, of the same signification: and, if we may ascend still higher, that word itself (as many others which occur in that language) proceeds from the voice of nature; being one of the most obvious sounds, to express one of the first and most obvious ideas. The authority and power of conferring absolution on penitents, wherewith our gracious SAVIOUR hath so clearly vested his ministerial successors, "whosoever sins ye remit," &c. having been abused by the Church of Rome in a lucrative market of pardons and indulgences, it is no wonder that Luther, and all our first reformers, should have taken infinite offence at a practice so flagitious, and so directly contrary to the command of CHRIST, "freely ye have received; freely give." This, however, should not have been a Among the abbeys in England before the reason, as it was with too many, for redissolution, were some which gave the title jecting all absolutions. The true doctrine of Mitred Abbot to their superiors These is, and must be this-for the consolation mitred abbots sat and voted in the house of his church, and particularly of such as of lords. They held of the king in capite class with the penitent publican in the per baroniam, their endowments being at gospel, CHRIST hath left with his bishops least an entire barony, which consisted of and presbyters a power to pronounce abthirteen knights' fees. The following are solution. This absolution is on condition the abbeys which conferred this distinction of faith and repentance in the person or on their abbots: St. Alban's, St. Peter's, persons receiving it. On sufficient apWestminster; St. Edmondsbury, St. Ben-pearance of these, and confession made net's of Holm, Berdsey, Shrewsbury, Crowland, Abingdon, Evesham, Gloucester, Ramsey, St. Mary's, York; Tewkesbury, Reading, Bath, Winchcomb, Hide by Winchester, Cirencester, Waltham, Malmesbury, Thorney, St. Augustine's, Canterbury; Selby, Peterborough, St. John's, Colchester; Coventry, Tavistock, St. John's of Jerusalem, and Glastonbury. (See Monks.) ABBESS The Mother or Superior of an abbey of nuns, or female persons, living under peculiar religious vows. ABECEDARIAN HYMNS. Hymns composed in imitation of the acrostic poetry of the Hebrews, in which each verse, or each part, commenced with the first and succeeding letters in the alphabet, in their order. This arrangement was intended as a help to the memory. St. Augustine composed a hymn in this manner, for the common people to learn, against the error of the Donatists. (See Acrostics.) ABJURATION. A solemn renunciation in public, or before a proper officer, of some doctrinal error. A formal abjuration is often considered necessary by the Church, when any person seeks to be received into her communion from heresy or schism. A form for admitting Romish recusants into the Church of England was drawn up by the convocation of 1714, but did not receive the royal sanction. with these appearances in particular per- Sacerdotal absolution does not necessarily require any particular or auricular confession of private sins; forasmuch as that the grand absolution of baptism was commonly given without any particular confession. And therefore the Romanists vainly found the necessity of auricular confession upon those words of our SAVIOUR, Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted ABSOLUTION. unto them: as if there could be no absolu- | The bishops and priests of the whole Christian Church have ever used to absolve all that truly repented, and at this day it is retained in our Church as a part of the daily office; which being so useful, so necessary, and founded on Holy Scrip. ture, needs not any arguments to defend it, but that the ignorance and prejudice of some makes them take offence at it, and principally because it hath been so much abused by the Papal Church. We may declare our abhorrency of these evil uses of absolution; though in that sober, moderate, and useful manner we do perform it, we do not vary from the prime intention of CHRIST'S Commission, and the practice of antiquity: absolution was instituted by JESUS, and if it have been corrupted by men, we will cast away the corruptions, not the ordinance itself.-Comber. Calvin's liturgy has no such form in it: but he himself says that it was an omission in him at first, and a defect in his liturgy; which he afterwards would have rectified and amended, but could not. He makes this ingenious confession in one of his epistles: "There is none of us," says he, "but must acknowledge it to be very useful, that, after the general confession, some remarkable promise of Scripture should follow, whereby sinners might be raised to the hopes of pardon and reconciliation. And I would have introduced this custom from the beginning, but some fearing that the novelty of it would give offence, I was over easy in yielding to them; so the thing was omitted." I must do that justice to Calvin here, by the way, to say, that he was no enemy to private absolution neither, as used in the Church of England. For in one of his answers to Westphalus he thus expresses his mind about it: "I have no intent to deny the usefulness of private absolution; but as I commend it in several places of my writings, provided the use be left to men's liberty, and free from superstition, so to blind men's consciences by a law to it, is neither lawful nor expedient." Here we have Calvin's judgment, fully and entirely, for the usefulness both of public and pri vate absolution. He owns it to be a defect in his liturgy, that it wants a public absolution.-Bingham. Our Church has not appointed the indicative form of absolution to be used in all these senses, but only once in the office of the sick, and that may reasonably be interpreted (according to the account given out of St. Jerome), a declaration of the sinner's pardon, upon the apparent evidences of a sincere repentance, and the best judgment the minister can make of his condition; beyond which none can go, but the searcher of hearts, to whom alone belongs the infallible and irreversible sentence of absolution. The indicative form, "I absolve thee," may be interpreted to mean no more than a declaration of God's will to a penitent sinner, that, upon the best judgment the priest can make of his repentance, he esteems him absolved before GoD, and accordingly pronounces and declares him absolved. As St. Jerome observes, the priests under the old law were said to cleanse a leper, or pollute him; not that they were the authors of his pollution, but that they declared him to be polluted, who before seemed to many to have been clean. As, therefore, the priest makes the leper clean or unclean, so the bishop or presbyter here binds or looses, not properly making the guilty or the guiltless; but according to the tenor of his office, when he hears the distinction of sins, he knows who is to be bound, and who is to be loosed. Upon this also, the master of the sentences (following St. Jerome) observes, that the priests of the gospel have that right and office, which the legal priests had of old under the law in curing the lepers. These, therefore, forgive sins, or retain them, whilst they show and declare, that they are forgiven or retained by GoD. For the priests "put the name of the LORD" upon the children of Israel, but it was he himself that blessed them, as it is read in Num. vi. 27.—Bingham. The following remarks on our forms of absolution occur in "Palmer's Origines Liturgica." An absolution followed the confession formerly in the offices of the English |