RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Liturgies
Meanwhile, both in England and on the Continent the conditions of ecclesiastical strife were inducing among many a liturgical reaction. The Lutheran Church, indeed, held to many of the traditions of devotion, but the Calvinistic churches of Switzerland and France, and the Puritan churches of England and Scotland, abandoned the old forms and adopted for the most part an extemporaneous worship. This was an incident in a bitter contention, and proceeded not so much from a dislike of the ancient prayers as from a dislike of the people who insisted on them. This dislike the course of time has mitigated, and at present there is a general return in most of the Protestant churches to the liturgical treasures which the fathers left behind. George Hodges.
III. Liturgical Formulas: Under this head it is convenient to group together several traditional phrases frequently used in divine worship, and appearing again and again in the most various liturgies.
The Hebrew amen, when used adverbially in the Scriptures (e.g., Num. v. 22; Deut. xxvii. 15; Ps. xli. 13), has the force of strong affirmation or assent, usually to the words spoken by another, although it may also be used as a pre-
i. Amen, liminary affirmation of the speaker's own, occurring frequently in this sense in the words of Jesus. Its liturgical use is the former. It is thus found in the Jewish rites, as an assent by the congregation to the content of a prayer. The Christian Church borrowed this usage, keeping the Hebrew form, the meaning of which was always familiar to theologians, though perhaps not always to the people at large, for whom a translation was sometimes appended, as in the Coptic liturgies. Its primitive use as conveying the assent of the whole congregation to the prayer of any member (cf. I Cor. xiv. 16) remained when the utterance of the prayer became the office of a distinct clerical class, as is shown by nearly all the Eastern liturgies. An exceptional case is the liturgy contained in the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, where the " Amen " is assigned to the congregation after three prayers only — the Trisagion (q. v.), the prayer of intercession, and the formula of administration. In the modern Greek Church, the " Amen " is taken from the congregation and given to the choir — and then in comparatively few places. In some Eastern baptismal rites, as still among the Nestorians, it seems to have been customary for the congregation to say Amen after each part of the baptismal formula; in the present Eastern Church it is thus pronounced by the priest, having lost its original meaning and become a mere concluding word. The most obvious retention of the old usage in the West occurs in the Mozarabic Liturgy (q.v.), where some of the responses are indeed assigned to the choir, but the congregation is bidden to answer in other cases, especially with " Amen." In the present Roman rite, the " Amen " belongs either to the assistants or to the choir, or is pronounced by the priest himself, as in the formula of administration at communion and at the end of the Lord's Prayer in the mass. Luther interpreted the " Amen " in the
sense of his own doctrine of faith, as "an expression of firm and hearty belief," and the Reformation restored the use of it in a number of cases, though not in all, to the congregation. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer it occurs at the end of every prayer as the response of the people, except after the first Lord's Prayer in the Communion Office.
In continuation of the old synagogal custom, the primitive Christians closed every important liturgical prayer with a doxology, and the custom was extended to sermons also. The simplest form was " to thee (or " to whom") be glory throughout all ages " (cf. Rom. xi. 36; Phil. iv. 20; Didache ix. 2, 3; Apostolic Constitutions II., 2. The xxii. 11). A number of formulas grew Doxologies. up in the course of time, differing according to the influence of the dogma of the Trinity. While from the second to the beginning of the fourth century the form " to thee be glory in the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ " was usual, when it became possible to suspect Arianism in such a phrase, it was changed to one which completely coordinated the three Persons, " Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." The Gloria Patri, known as the lesser doxology to distinguish it from the Gloria in excelsis, was slow to find its way into all the Eastern liturgies. Thus it is not found in the Clementine liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions or in that of St. James, and even the ninthcentury liturgies of St. Chrysostom and St. Basil do not contain it. It is of frequent occurrence, on the other hand, in the Nestorian and Armenian liturgies and in the present liturgy of St. Chrysostom, as well as less often in the various Jacobite rites. The second half, " As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen," does not occur in the East, and is probably of Roman origin. The Synod of Vaison (529) asserts that its use was universal in Italy and Africa, and directs its introduction into Gaul. It is not in the Mozarabic liturgy, where the formula runs " Glory and honor to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost throughout all ages." In the Eastern rites the doxology was used in many different places. The Roman liturgy, on the other hand, lays down fixed rules for its use. It occurs regularly at the end of each psalm, and the first half of it in the responsories of the day and night hours; in the .Mass it occurs in the preparation, after the Introit or anthem sung at the beginning of the communion service in tli3 Roman Catholic Church, and after the Lavabo psalm. The custom of using it thus at ths end of psalms or parts of psalms is first attested by John Cassian (before 426), and next by Pope Vigilius (d. 555). The assertion of medieval liturgiologists that the practise was introduced by Pope Damasus is possibly true. As the Gloria Patri has a more or less festival or triumphant character, it is wholly or partly omitted on occasions of mourning, as in Holy Week and in services for the dead; in the latter case the Greeks still use it. Luther seems to have ignored the Gloria Patri, although modern Lutheran liturgies put it after the introit. The Gloria in ex-
Liturgies