The Church Handy Dictionary Part 19

SUPER-ALTAR, or RE-TABLE. A shelf or step behind the altar, on which the vases, candlesticks, and cross are placed. Properly the _Super-Altar_ is a small portable slab of stone which is placed on wooden altars.

SUPEREROGATION. The 14th Article gives the teaching of the Church of England. Romanists teach that there are certain good deeds which have been performed by saints over and above those necessary for their own salvation. From this fund of good works, technically known as the _Treasury of Merits_, the Pope claims to have the power to draw and apply the good deeds of others to the benefit of those who are deficient in them themselves.

SUPREMACY. The Church of England regards the Sovereign as being over all persons, and all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, supreme in this realm. (See Article x.x.xvii.) This does not teach in any way that the Clergy derive their authority and mission from the State, as some misunderstand. (See _Apostolical Succession_.)

SURPLICE, _see_ Vestments.

SURROGATE. One appointed in place of another. Thus to avoid the necessity of journeying to the Bishop, he grants to other clergymen living in the princ.i.p.al towns, the power of giving licenses for marriage instead of publis.h.i.+ng banns, of granting probates of wills, &c. These clergymen acting in place of the Bishop are called _Surrogates_.

SWEDENBORGIANS. The followers of Emanuel, Baron Swedenborg, who was born in Stockholm in 1688, and died in London, 1772. He believed himself to be the subject of inspiration, and taught that the Scriptures have two senses, natural and spiritual. The natural sense is that held by the Christian Church, but the spiritual is that which is concealed within the natural sense of the same words. He taught that the second advent had been realized in the establishment of his New Church, the "New Jerusalem" of the Apocalypse.

They do not receive the usual doctrine of the Trinity, and reject the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They administer the Sacraments. They still profess to believe themselves visited by super-natural beings, by the Apostles and other saints. It is not generally known that the heaven of the Swedenborgian bears a close resemblance to the Mahometan's idea of heaven,--a place of sensual delights; and one of their books which is as hard to obtain as the others are easy, named "Conjugal Love," is not particularly moral in its teaching!

The _Swedenborgians_ number 64 Societies, with 4,987 registered members.

SYNOD. A meeting duly summoned and const.i.tuted of ecclesiastical persons for the discussion of religious matters. Synods are of less authority than general or OEc.u.menical Councils.

TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. A canticle of Morning Prayer, which has been sung for 1,500 years throughout the Western Church. Its origin is not known. The tradition which ascribes it to St. Ambrose, or to St.

Ambrose and St. Augustine, conjointly, rests on very slight foundation. An able article in the _Church Quarterly Review_ (April, 1884), comes to the conclusion that the Te Deum very probably originated from the monastery of St. Honoratus, at Lerins, about the middle of the 5th century. It is the great triumphant hymn of praise of the Western Church as the Gloria in Excelsis is of the Eastern. Verses 1 to 13, are _praise_; vv. 14-19 are a _Creed_ in our Lord Jesus Christ; vv. 20-29 are _prayer_ to our Lord broken by another burst of praise. There is a musical setting of the _Te Deum_, called the Ambrosian, dating from the 5th century.

TESTAMENT, OLD AND NEW, _see_ Bible.

TESTIMONIAL LETTERS, _see_ Orders, Qualifications for,

THANKSGIVING, THE GENERAL. Composed by Bishop Reynolds, and inserted in 1662. The custom obtaining in some churches of the congregation repeating this Thanksgiving after the minister, was certainly not originally intended, and perhaps has been based on a mistaken idea of the meaning of the word "general," as applied to this Thanksgiving: we understand it to mean that the _terms_ and _subjects_ of the prayer are _general_.

THEISM. The recognition of a principle apart from nature, independent of nature, yet moulding, regulating, and sustaining nature. The idea of _Personality_ is essential to Theism.

_A-theism_, literally, is the denial of _Theism_.

THEOLOGY. The science which treats of the Deity. It is too often forgotten that theology is a science as much as medicine or mathematics, or we should not find the laity so confident of their knowledge, and so ready to give the law on questions of systematic Divinity.

THEOLOGICAL COLLEGES. Colleges specially established for the training of candidates for Holy Orders, in theology. They seem to answer to the a.s.semblies of "sons of the prophets," spoken of in 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 7, &c. These colleges have not the power of conferring degrees.

THOMAS'S (St.) DAY. Dec. 21st. The name Thomas (Hebrew), and Didymus (Greek), means a "twin brother." Some think St. Matthew to have been his brother. The only incidents of his life with which we are acquainted, are told us by St. John, (xi. 16; xiv. 5; xx. 28.) Tradition says that he laboured in Persia, and finally suffered martyrdom in India.

THRONE. The Bishop's seat in his Cathedral. Anciently it stood behind the altar in churches which terminated in an apse.

TIPPET, _see_ Hood.

t.i.tHES. A certain portion, or allotment, for the maintenance of the priesthood, being the tenth part of the produce of land, cattle, or other branches of wealth. It is an income, or revenue, common both to the Jewish and Christian priesthood. (Gen. xiv. 20; Lev.

xxvii. 30-33; &c.) The origin of _t.i.thes_, in the Christian Church, was something of this kind: When a benefactor was not able or not willing to part with an estate out and out, he settled on the Church which he was endowing a certain portion of the income arising out of the estate. The ratio which this portion bore to the whole amount varied enormously, and so one man gave a t.i.the of corn only, another a t.i.the of wood, another a t.i.the of meadow land, another a t.i.the of stock, another t.i.thes of all these together. There is a very common mistake made that t.i.thes are a kind of tax, levied on the whole country by Act of Parliament. They are nothing of the kind, being simply a certain portion of the income arising out of lands settled by the former owners of those lands for the maintenance of the parson of the parish. They date back to the 4th century.

Although the Church is disestablished in Ireland, t.i.thes are still paid, not to the clergy, but to the Government. Disestablishment, therefore, is small gain to the farmer.

_t.i.the Redemption Trust_. In the year 1846 a very excellent Society was formed, called "The t.i.the Redemption Trust," the object of which is the very opposite of that at which the Liberation Society aims. It has been quietly at work for some years, endeavouring, with some success, to get back, either by redemption or by voluntary donation, the t.i.thes which have been alienated by appropriation or impropriation. What portion of Church property has been long enjoyed by private families, or by Corporations, has, of course, become inalienable; but it would be a reasonable and a righteous thing (and all the more blessed for being voluntary) that every person who receives t.i.thes, or possesses glebe land in a parish, for which no spiritual service is rendered, should give in some way or other to the Church a very liberal percentage of what was never meant to be raised for the purpose of private emolument, but for the fitting discharge of ecclesiastical duties. (Webb's "England's Inheritance in her Church.")

t.i.tLE, _see_ Orders, Qualifications for.

TRACTARIANISM. The Anglican movement which began with the publication of the celebrated "_Tracts for the Times_" in 1833. The princ.i.p.al results of this movement are (1) the complete reintegration of the original theory of the Church of England; of that "ancient religion which, in 1830, had well-nigh faded out of the land;" (2) the improvement which has taken place in the lives of the clergy, in the performance of the Services, and in the condition of our churches; and the marked revival in the Corporate life of the Church herself.

The great names of this movement are Pusey, Newman, Marriott, Oakley, Manning, Robert Wilberforce, Keble, and Palmer. For some few the movement led to disastrous issues; and they fell at last into Roman errors, and joined that erring Church.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION. The name given to the philosophical theory whereby the Church of Rome has endeavoured to explain and define the doctrine of the Real Presence. In it they allege that the bread and wine in the Eucharist is miraculously converted or changed into the very body and blood of our Lord, by the consecration of the priest. This false doctrine is condemned in Article xxviii.

TRENT, COUNCIL OF. An important Council of the Roman Church which met in 1545, and was dissolved in 1563. The city of Trent is in the Tyrol. It was at this Council that the Creed of the Roman Church was last defined, and all who differed from it were anathematised. Neither the Greek Church nor the English Church was represented there, so it has no claim to the t.i.tle of oec.u.menical, or general, as a.s.serted by Romanists.

TRINITY, THE HOLY. The Athanasian Creed and Article i. give the teaching of our Church on the Holy Trinity. There we learn that in the unity of the G.o.dhead there be three Persons; that is, though there be but one living and true G.o.d, yet there be three Persons, who are that one living and true G.o.d. Though the true G.o.d be but one in substance, yet He is three in subsistence, so as still to be but one substance. And these three Persons, every one of which is G.o.d, and yet all three but one G.o.d, are really related to one another; as they are termed in Scripture, one is the Father, the other the Son, the other the Holy Ghost.

The Father is the first Person in the Deity; not begotten, nor proceeding, but begetting; the Son, the second, not begetting nor proceeding, but begotten; the Holy Ghost, the third, not begotten, nor begetting, but proceeding. The first is called the Father, because He begot the second; the second is called the Son, because He is begotten of the Father; the third is called the Holy Ghost, because breathed both from the Father and the Son.

This is a great mystery to us, which, however, we are not called upon to _understand_, but only to _believe_ on the plain statement of Scripture.

The Father is G.o.d, John vi, 27; Gal. i. 1; 1 Thess. i. 1, &c.

The Son is G.o.d, John i. 1; xx. 28; Rom. ix. 5, &c.

The Holy Ghost is G.o.d. This, however, has to be proved by implication and a.n.a.logy, as with Luke i. 35 compare Matt. i. 18; Acts v. 3, 4, with John iii. 6 compare 1 John v. 4; with 1 Cor.

iii. 16 compare vi. 19, &c.

The unity of the G.o.dhead is declared in many such pa.s.sages as Deut. vi. 4; Gal. iii. 20; John x. 30, &c.

The Son of G.o.d, our Lord Jesus Christ, "took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance; so that the two whole and perfect natures, that is to say the G.o.dhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ very G.o.d and very Man." (Art. ii. and Luke i.)

TRINITY SUNDAY. This is a festival of Western origin, and of comparatively recent date; the earliest formal notice of the festival is in England, under Becket, in 1162; though the collect dates from the 5th century.

TRIUMPHANT, The CHURCH. Those who have departed this life in G.o.d's faith and fear; the Church in Heaven. The Church on earth is called the Church Militant.

TUNICLE, _see_ Vestments.

TYPE. An impression, image, or representation of some model which is termed the _anti-type_; thus the brazen serpent and the paschal lamb were types, of which our Lord was the _anti-type_.

UNITARIANS. Heretics who deny the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the separate personality of the Holy Ghost. The name includes all Deists, whether the Arians of old, or the Socinians (which see) of later years.

The Arians were heretics named after Arius, whose doctrine was condemned at the Council of Nice, A.D. 325. He taught that there was a time when the Son of G.o.d was not, and that He was created by the Father. He called Him by the name of G.o.d, but denied that He was _h.o.m.oousios_, "_of one Substance_" with the Father. The Arians seem to have held that the Holy Ghost also was a created Being. The Athanasian Creed, vv. 4-19 opposes the Arian heresy.

The Unitarians have in England 325 ministers, 355 chapels, and about 13 mission stations.

UNIVERSITY. (Lat., _universitas_, corporation.) A corporation of teachers and students inst.i.tuted for the promotion of the higher education, and empowered to grant degrees in the various faculties of Divinity, Arts, Law. Medicine, &c.

England has five Universities, two ancient--Oxford and Cambridge; and three modern, viz., Durham, London, and the Victoria University, Manchester.

USE, _see_ Sarum, Use of.

UTILITARIANISM. The name of the peculiar theory of Ethics, or of the ground of moral obligation, that adopts, as the criterion of right, the happiness of mankind; or, as Jeremy Bentham defined it, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." It is opposed to the view that founds moral distinctions on the mere arbitrary will of G.o.d. The most eminent modern advocates of Utilitarianism are Hume, Bentham, Paley, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Sir James Mackintosh, John Austin, Samuel Bailey, Herbert Spencer, and Bain.

VENIAL SIN, _see_ Sin.

VENI CREATOR. An old Latin hymn ascribed by common tradition to St.