RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Grafton Gratian
copal ministry in the Virginia Conference in 1848. He was assigned to the Eastville Circuit, Va. (1848- 1849), Farmville, Va. (1849-50), Lynchburg, Va. (1850-51), Loudoun Circuit, Va. (1853), Randolph, Macon College, Va. (1854-55), Charlottesville, Va. (1856), Washington (1857-58), University of Virginia (1859-60), Market Street, Petersburg, Va. (1865-68), Centenary Church, Richmond, Va. (1868- 1872), and Broad Street Church, Richmond, Va. (1872-75), interrupted only by illness in 1852 and by his duties as chaplain in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia from 1861 to the close of the Civil War. In 1875 he was appointed professor of moral philosophy in Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., and held this position until 1882, when he was elected bishop. He was retired from active service in 1902. In theology he is an orthodox member of his denomination and is an Evangelical Arminian. He has written A Bible Dictionary for Sunday Schools and Families (Nashville, Tenn., 1885); Twelve Sermons (1896); and Experience the Crowning Evidence of Christianity (1900).
GRANT, ABRAHAM: African Methodist Episcopal bishop; b. at Lake City, Fla., Aug. 25, 1848. He was born a slave, and after the close of the Civil War acquired an education in missionary and nightschools. He joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1868 and for five years was a class leader and steward. He was licensed to preach in 1873 and became an elder three years later, and in 1888 he was elected bishop.
GRANT, ASAHEL: American physician and missionary; b. at Marshall, Allegany County, N. Y., Aug. 17, 1807; d. at Mosul, Asiatic Turkey, Apr. 24, 1844. He studied medicine at Pittsfield, Mass., and was practising his profession at Utica, N. Y., when, in 1834, he first became interested in missions. In 1835 he went to Urumiah as a missionary of the American Board. He gained the confidence of the Persian officials, and of the Nestorian priests and bishops, founded schools and did much to alleviate the sufferings of the Nestorians in the war with the Kurds. After the massacres of 1843 he settled at Mosul. He published The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes (London and Boston, 1841).
Bibliography: A. C. Lathrop, Memoir of Asahel Grant, New York, 1844; T. Lawrie, Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians, Boston, 1856.
GRANT, SIR ROBERT: Governor of Bengal, India; b. in Bengal in 1779; d. at Dalpoorie, Western India, July 9, 1838. He was educated at Magdalen College, Cambridge (B.A., 1801; M.A., 1804), and was admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1807. Prior to his appointment to the governorship of Bengal in 1834 he was a member of the House of Commons for fifteen years, in which body he championed the movement for repealing the civil disabilities of the Jews. He published three works dealing with Indian affairs and a number of hymns. Twelve of these, most of which were originally contributed to the Christian Observer, were collected by his brother Charles, Lord Glenelg, under the title Sacred Poems (London, 1839). Two of them, "When gathering clouds around I
view," and "Savior, when in dust to thee," rank
with the best of modern hymns.
Bibliography: DNB, xxii. 402; S. W. Duffield, English
Hymns, p. 27 et passim, New York, 1886; Julian, Hym-
nology, pp. 449-450.
GRAPHEUS (De Schryver, Scribonius), COR- NELIUS: Humanist; b. at Aalst (Alost, 15 m. w.n.w. of Brussels), in Flanders, 1482; d. at Antwerp, Dec. 19, 1558. While town clerk of Antwerp, he published the two works of Johann von Goch, Epistula apologetica contra Dominicanum quendam and De libertate Christiana, accompanying them with caustic prefaces dated respectively Aug. 23, 1520, and Mar. 29, 1521. In both prefaces he complains of the clergy's forgetfulness of duty, and of the suppression of the truth of the Gospel. He was soon arrested by the Inquisition, and early in Feb., 1522, he was taken to Brussels, being obliged to make a formal recantation both there and at Antwerp. He was not reinstated in office, however, until 1540.
Otto Clemen.
Bibliography: A. J. van der Aa, Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden, Haarlem, 1852 sqq.; C. Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, i. 18, 136-142, 397, 402- 416, Edinburgh, 1877; O. Clemen, Johann Pupper von Goch, Leipsic, 1896; P. Kalkoff, Die Anfange der Gegenreformation in den Niederlanden, i. 57; ii. 70-71, Halle, 1903; sources may be found in P. Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis hmreticm pravitatis N eederlandicce, iii., nos. 50, 64, 74, 77, 83, 85, 90, 107, 108, 129, The Hague, 1889 sqq.
GRATIS, GRATIOSA RESCRIPTA: Technical terms applied in the Roman Catholic Church to rescripts by which the pope, as a grace or favor, generally in response to a request, confers a dispensation, an indulgence, a privilege, an exemption, a benefice, or an expectancy. The usual formula "Fiat ut petitur" or "Concessum," involves the tacit condition that the grounds adduced in the request are truthfully stated. If the grace is given in the form " Placet motu proprio," it is independent of the grounds stated and operative even if they should prove invalid. (P. HiNSCHiusf.)
GRATIAN, gre'shi-an: 1. Roman emperor, 375- 383; b. at Sirmium, 359; killed at Lyons Aug 25, 383. He followed his father, Valentinian I., on the throne of the West in 375, while his uncle, Valens (q.v.), governed the East until his death in 378, when Theodosius succeeded him. In 383 Gratian was murdered in Gaul by his general Maximus, who had assumed the title of emperor and made war upon him.
The policy which Gratian pursued with respect to the Church, and which was carried still farther by Theodosius (q.v.), was of decisive consequences. Religious liberty had reigned, at least nominally, since the Edict of Milan (313; see Constantine the Great and his Sons, I. , §4), but none of the powerful ecclesiastical parties in the empire was satisfied with it, while an equal tolerance of all parties would have entailed unceasing religious wars and threatened the existence of the empire. On the other hand, paganism had already received such a blow by the most far-reaching laws that a serious and lasting resistance was not expected from it. Thus the time had come in which the rulers of the State, by elevating the confession of one of the ecclesiastical parties to the
Gratian Graul