Project Canterbury
Alcuin Club Collections
XVII
Traditional Ceremonial and Customs
connected with the Scottish Liturgy.
by
F. C. Eeles, F.R.Hist.S, F.S.A. Scot.
Diocesan Librarian of Aberdeen
[pp 1-13]
transcribed by Dr Robert G Stephenson
AD 2000
Chapter I.
INTRODUCTORY.
NOTHING
is more common at the present day than to be told that the interest in the
details of liturgical practice consequent on the Oxford Movement has been
without precedent in the churches of the Anglican Communion since the
Reformation. Certain
controversialists are never tired of insisting that any sort of regard for the
externals of worship—let alone the use of what is commonly called
ceremonial—is an innovation upon the post-reformation usage of the Church.
They interpret the Prayer Book in the light of the slovenly neglect prevalent
in England in the early part of the nineteenth century.
Plausible though this theory may seem at first sight, it turns out to
be untenable when the light of history is thrown upon it.
The slovenliness of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
was itself of the nature of an innovation; it was not merely contrary to the
letter and spirit of the Prayer Book, but it was in marked contrast to the
practice of the better appointed churches in
the seventeenth century and in the earlier part of the eighteenth.
It is true that those churches were in the minority, but there were
many more than is commonly supposed, and it may well be claimed that their
practice represented the ideal of the Church more closely than did that of the
puritanical clergy, against whom episcopal Visitation Articles were
continually being directed. It
was in these churches forming the minority, that Prayer Book, Canons, and Visitation Articles were obeyed, and
it is to them we must look if we would know how those formularies were
interpreted by the more loyal men of that time.
It
is unnecessary to enter into detail here, as Hierurgia Anglicana [1] contains the bulk of the available evidence.
Enough to say that conservative churches retained a not inconsiderable
part of the mediaeval ceremonial, and that under the Caroline divines a great
deal more was revived. Not until
well on into the eighteenth century did the English Church become almost
overspread with the state of desolation remembered by our fathers and
grandfathers. Puritanism was
rampant in the seventeenth century, and the puritan faction made no secret of
their opposition to the Prayer Book and Canons, but indifference and neglect
were a product of a later age. In
spite of all, many old usages lived on till within living memory, only to be
removed through want of knowledge at the beginning of the ceremonial revival
which accompanied the later phases of the Oxford Movement.
But
it is not only the puritan controversialist who ignores the true history of
ceremonial since the Reformation. Unfortunately, it must be admitted that much
the same misrepresentation has been
used as a reason for bringing in
foreign ceremonial by some who claim to belong to what is called the Catholic
party. It has been said that the
old ceremonial of our dioceses is dead and gone; that all continuity is lost ;
and that a fresh start must be made on “modern Western” lines.
Rome, and very modern Rome, is made by these men the test by which all
old survivals are tried, and by which nearly all are condemned.
The neglect of, and the disobedience to, plain rules which prevailed in
England before the Oxford Movement, was indeed widespread and was bad enough,
but it seems to have been represented as worse than it really was, with a view
to avoiding the fact that in recent times we have used certain parts of the
older ceremonial, which form no part of the normal Roman use, although still
followed in many districts of the Continent.
Post
Reformation ceremonial in England has been dealt with in the book already
referred to, and in Dr. Wickham Legg’s learned paper on Ancient Liturgical Customs now fallen, into disuse.
[2]
The design of the present publication is to preserve some account of
post-reformation liturgical usages in Scotland.
Scottish post-reformation ceremonial is not so much the continuance of
mediaeval usage, as the offspring of the revival of primitive doctrine and
practice by the nonjurors in the eighteenth century; although there is reason
to think that one or two of the traditional usages may perhaps be survivals
from the middle ages.
The
Scottish Liturgy has been deservedly called the finest in the English
language. Built up from materials
gathered from East and West, some of the highest antiquity, others but a few
hundred years old, it is primitive in structure, Catholic in arrangement, yet
modern in its comprehensive brevity. It
has lived through two bitter series of attacks, both of which owed their
origin to the southern part of the kingdom.
The first was from the standpoint of an extreme Protestantism which
looked upon the English liturgy as the model of perfection, but knew little
and cared less about the faith and practice of the majority of Christians from
the beginning. The second was
from the standpoint of an almost equally narrow Latinising theology, which did
perhaps know one other liturgy—the post-tridentine Roman—but was the more
harmful, became the more insidious, and based upon that little knowledge which
is proverbially dangerous. Attacked by these two opposing schools of thought,
the Scottish Liturgy has lived to see both of them decay, and their place
taken in the minds of thoughtful men by a more liberal theology with a wider
outlook, which knows the teaching of the East as well as of the West, of
antiquity as well as of the present day, and has been accompanied by a school
of scientific liturgical research of something like European fame. The result has been that the Scottish Liturgy is now valued
far more highly than ever it was before.
Those
few comparatively obscure eighteenth century ecclesiastics who built up the
Scottish rite, hampered as they were by extreme poverty and political
persecution, must have been men of deep learning, and remarkable genius, or
they could never have done such a magnificent piece of work.
It would have been very strange if they had left no tradition at all
how their handiwork was to be carried out.
And yet no one hitherto seems to have thought it worth while to
investigate the matter, or to ascertain whether the strong conservatism of the
older congregations retained any tradition how the liturgy should be rendered.
Perhaps the obvious impossibility of any ceremonial in the popular
sense of the word may have deterred men from such an enquiry.
But it is more
likely that the unfortunate liturgical ideas which began to prevail after the
middle of the nineteenth century
had something to answer for in the matter.
Those who can realize the poverty-stricken state of the Scottish
churches early in the nineteenth century cannot wonder that all eyes were
turned to the ecclesiological revival in England as the one great source of
light. With English gothic
architecture other English church customs began to come in.
At first these were of a most desirable kind, and led to the erection
of church-like churches, the abolition of such things as “pumphal seats”
and the revival of those accessories of divine worship which Christians have
more generally used. But a
Romanising movement in ceremonial followed upon the ecclesiological revival.
Men in England acted too hastily, and liturgical zeal outran liturgical
knowledge. Modern continental
customs, often of a kind by no means desirable, came into use, often because
people thought they were old English, but sometimes because Romanising
ceremonialists cleverly introduced them under the specious though misleading
name of “Western use.” Thus
in England certain things came to be looked upon as “correct” and
everything else as “incorrect.” And
this notion was imported into Scotland, and led to the abolition of several
old liturgical customs which were much better than those which took their
places. This was often done in the most perfect innocence, by loyal upholders
of the Scottish Liturgy, but it appears to have been otherwise in the case of
men who were infected with the puritanical or the Romanising dislike of the
national rite.
These
traditional Scottish usages and customs have lasted to our own day.
They still exist in sonic places, chiefly in the diocese of Aberdeen,
and are being restored in others. When we take into consideration the
small number of the old non-juring congregations and the destructive
causes just enumerated, it is wonderful that any traces of them can be found. It is easy to see how difficult has been the work of
collecting them, and yet this work has been amply repaid by the result, for it
has shown that side by side with the text of the Scottish liturgy there grew
up a certain amount of ceremonial tradition regarding such practices as the
circumstances of the Church allowed to be carried out.
This tradition must once have been much more clearly defined than it is
now, and one of the first things a reader will notice in the following pages
is the great diversity which exists at present.
In one church, for example, a particular custom obtains and in the next
it does not. But this diversity
seems to be in great measure a thing of recent growth, and is largely to be
accounted for by the disuse in some places of usages which have lived on in
others. It is probable indeed
that most of the customs mentioned were at one time in use in almost all the
older congregations. At the same
time variations certainly existed to some extent; for example, in the time at
which the chalice was mixed, some performing this ceremony before the service,
others at the offertory. Yet on
the whole, considering the circumstances, the uniformity of practice was much
greater than one would have expected.
Most
of the customs with which we have to deal are connected with the Scottish
Communion Service, the best liturgy in the English language, and the product
of the time when Scottish episcopalians were groaning under the severity of
the penal laws. [3]
It
will be advisable to say a few words to explain the position of those who
gradually brought the Scottish liturgy into its present form, and whose clear
and consistent appeal to antiquity gave us many of the traditional customs.
A
great part of the Scottish Church was strongly Jacobite at the time of the
Revolution in 1688-90, [4] the bishops and many of the clergy refusing to take
the oath of allegiance to William and Mary.
While the English non-jurors were a small minority which became still
smaller after secession from the Church, the Scottish non-jurors formed the
majority of the faithful remnant of the National Church which was true to the
principle of Episcopacy. [5]
Throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century the same form of
religion which was established south of the border was penalised on the
northern side, and its northern representatives were in communion with a body
that was schismatic in the southern part of the country.
Although the surroundings of the Church’s worship in those days were
mean and poor to a decree, and ceremonial in the sense in which the word is
now commonly understood was out of the question, by the middle of the
eighteenth century the services were generally conducted with great care, and
with attention to such ceremonial details as circumstances allowed.
True, the ancient Church had become “a shadow of a shade,” but that
small remnant was refined and purified by the fire of persecution, and the
irreverent carelessness which afterwards became common in eighteenth century
England was all but unknown. The
reasons for this are not far to seek, and to find them we must first of all
turn to the English non-jurors, who were freed from the overwhelming burden of
puritan latitudinarianism which weighed so heavily upon the Church of England
at the time, and had ample leisure to devote themselves to historical research
and theological reading. This they turned to good advantage. Unrestricted by
connexion with the State, or by the prejudices of those who were dissenters in
everything but name, they at once endeavoured to bring their liturgical
practice into closer conformity with that of the primitive Church.
A communion service for their own use was printed in 1718, [6] and in
1734 Thomas Deacon, an English nonjuring bishop, issued what was for all
intents and purposes a complete prayer book. [7] In 1748 was published a
reprint from The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, of a liturgy and
other services which had been drawn up by Thomas Rattray, Bishop of Dunkeld.
[8] These books contained provision for the practices which were known as the Usages,
that is to say, certain liturgical customs which their advocates held to
be catholic in the true sense of the word, and consequently of binding
obligation. These “Usages” were:—
(i)
Explicit invocation of the Holy Ghost in consecrating the Eucharist. (ii) The
Prayer of Oblation at the consecration of the Eucharist.
(iii) Remembrance in prayer of the faithful dead. (iv) The mixed
chalice. The foregoing were sometimes called the “greater usages” to
distinguish them from certain other usages, which were looked upon as being of
less importance, [9] namely:—(i) Baptism by immersion; (ii) Chrism at
confirmation; (iii) Anointing of the sick; (iv) Reservation for the sick.
Not all the
non-jurors were in favour of the Usages.
There were many who could not conscientiously take the oaths under
William and Mary, but who were content with the English Prayer Book as it
stood, and who violently opposed the “Usagers.” The “Usage Controversy” was long and acrimonious, and did
much to weaken the non-juring cause. [10]
But among both usagers and non-usagers its
natural result was a keen interest in liturgy, coupled with scrupulous
attention to practical details. This
liturgical revival began, as we have seen, among the English non-jurors, but
it quickly found its way into Scotland, whither the usage controversy
soon followed it. The Scottish
non-jurors seem never to have formally adopted, though no doubt they were much
influenced by, the service books printed by their brethren in England; indeed
it is doubtful if the 1718 book and Deacon’s were ever more than occasionally
used in Scotland. A larger body
than the English non-jurors, and less uniformly well instructed, the Scottish
clergy made no attempt at first to print a service book of their own, but
began by using the English Prayer Book. Later
on the Scottish liturgy of 1637 [11] was brought into use in
places, and gradually superseded the English rite as far as the Communion
Service was concerned. By slow
degrees the present Scottish liturgy was developed through arranging the 1637 service in such a way as to bring it more closely into agreement
with primitive models, and what is generally looked upon as the received text
was first printed in 1764. [12] The various steps
in the process were recorded by the late Bishop of Edinburgh in the book
referred to in the preface. At
the same time numerous liturgical customs came into use.
Some of these seem to have been suggested by the English non-jurors’
books, but others were of native growth.
While many of
the old customs are due to the revival of the liturgical spirit among the
non-jurors, a persistent tradition ascribes others to a date long anterior to
the eighteenth century. In many
places where Episcopacy held out during the days of persecution,
Presbyterianism had never really obtained a footing.
Some of the very out-of-the-way districts can have been little affected
by the rapid changes which convulsed the more populous centres, and it is
scarcely to be wondered at if a few of the old customs never died out.
In 1792,
when the Penal
Laws were repealed, [13] the ancient Church consisted of a handful
of congregations, served by only 39 clergy, mostly in the north-east of
Scotland. It is this mere handful
of churches which preserved the Scottish rite. [14] Now at that time there
were a number of Anglican churches in Scotland in a schismatical position.
They formed no part of the national episcopal Church ; the Hanoverian
occupants of the throne of England were prayed for by name in them, and they
were consequently known as “Qualified” congregations, to distinguish them
from the congregations of the Scottish Church, which were non-juring, and
therefore disqualified for civil toleration.
After the repeal of the Penal Laws, these schismatical congregations
gradually submitted to the jurisdiction of the Scottish bishops, and they
brought into the Scottish Church some of the worst traditions of the English
and Irish Low Church party. This
explains the numerous cases of irreverent and careless services which were to
be found in Scotland at the beginning of the Oxford Movement.
Such things formed no part of the tradition of the genuine Scottish
episcopacy.
NOTES
1.
2nd. ed- 3 vols. London, De la More Press.
2.
Transactions of St.
Paul's Ecclesiological Society, vol. ii. p. 113; reprinted in Essays
on Ceremonial,
London, De la More Press, 1904,
p. 39.
3.
It must not be thought that all the usages described in the following
pages are necessarily good and worthy to be restored.
Many of them might certainly be revived, and their disuse in some
places is a matter for regret ; but there are others which were adopted by
reason of the circumstances of the Church in non-juring days, or were founded
upon mistakes, or arose from the idiosyncrasies of particular priests, and
some of these are by no means matter for imitation.
4.
The state of the Church of Scotland before the Revolution was very
different from that of the Church of England. The services were almost indistinguishable from those of the
Presbyterians, at any rate in the generality of churches.
It would take too long to explain why this was the case, as it would
involve an outline of the religious history of Scotland since the Reformation
in 1560. The reader will find a
short account of it in Dr. Dowden’s Annotated
Scottish Communion Office, to which also reference must be made for a
description of the services as they were at the time of the Revolution.
5.
“In Aberdeen and the northern dioceses many of the clergy would have
accepted William and Mary. In the
Presbytery of Alford twelve out of sixteen would have done so.
In 1697 the ‘regular’ clergy of Aberdeen and the north sent two
representatives to the General Assembly to give in their adhesion under King
William’s letter and form of 1691. But
the deputation as well as the larger movement of southern clergy represented
by Dr. Canaries was not admitted. Proof
of this will be found in pamphlets connected with the movement for Toleration
in 1703, and in most accounts of the General Assembly of 1692, which was
abruptly dissolved.” G.S.
6.
A Communion Office, taken Partly from Primitive Liturgies, and partly
from the first English Reformed Common Prayer
Book: together with Offices for Confirmation and the Visitation of the Sick. London
: Printed for James Bettenham, at the Crown in Paternoster Row 1718. The late
Bishop of Edinburgh has reprinted the Communion Office in his Annotated
Scottish Communion Office, pp. 293 et
seq.
7.
A Compleat Collection of
Devotions both Publick and Private : Taken front the Apostolic Constitutions,
the Ancient Liturgies and the
Common Prayer Book of the Church of England. London : Printed for the Author and sold by the Booksellers of London
and Westminster, 1734.
8.
A form of Morning and Evening
Prayer, Daily throughout the Year. Together
with an Office for celebrating
the Christian Sacrifice. London. Printed in the Year MDCCXLVIII.
9.
“Support of the distinction between major and minor usages will be
found in the Scottish Episcopal Review, vol.
ii. (1821) ; in the Historical Outline
of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, p. 205, and on the general question
pp. 187-196. The article is understood to be by Dr. Gleig. See also the
language of Bishop Gadderar’s personal agreement with the College of
Bishops, 1724 (Skinner’s Ecclesiastical
History of Scotland 1788, vol. ii., p. 633), and an original letter from
Gadderar to Bishop Rose, 1719, in the Episcopal Chest at Edinburgh (A. No.
31). Bishop Rattray in a letter to the College Bishops says that the
difficulty of introducing the Liturgy was greater than the difficulty of
introducing the Usages (Thos. Stephen’s History
of the Church of Scotland, 1843, vol. iv.
p. 189).” G.S.
10.
On the non-jurors and their controversies, see A
History of the Non jurors : their controversies and writings; with remarks on
some of the rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer. By Thomas Lathbury, M.A.
London, William Pickering, 1846, and also The
Non-jurors, their lives principles and writings. By the Rev. J. H Overton,
D.D. London, 1902.
11.
In 1712 the Earl of Winton reprinted in a smaller form the Book of
Common Prayer which had been prepared for Scotland in 1637. This book seems to
have been actually used in places in the 18th century and it exercised a wide
influence.
12.
The earlier editions of the Scottish Liturgy had the parts of the
Prayer of Consecration in the same order as the 1637 book, which in this
respect copied the English Prayer Book of 1549 in which the Invocation of the
Holy Ghost preceded the recital of
the narrative of the Institution and the Oblation. The researches of the
non-jurors in liturgiology had shown them that the primitive and all but
universal order of parts in the Consecration placed the Invocation last, and
so we find it in the book of 1718, in Deacon’s Liturgy of 1734 and
Rattray’s Liturgy Of 1744 and 1748. The
Scottish Liturgy was at length revised so as to bring it “to as exact a
conformity with the ancient standards of Eucharistic service as it would
bear” the Invocation being placed after
the words of Institution and Oblation. This was in 1764, and this form of
the service superseded all others and has since become generally recognised as
the textus receptus of it, although
at present there is no text of standard authority as regards minutiae, like the English Book Annexed or the American Standard.
13.
It was not until 1863 that the last disabilities affecting Scottish
episcopalians were removed.
14.
“There were I think many more meeting places, served in rotation. I
know of a case in the beginning of the Nineteenth century, where one man
served three congregations of which two still exist.
I believe the Rev. Paul MacColl of Appin had more.”
G. S.
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