SECTION VIII. OBLATIONS OF THE PEOPLE, AND OFFERTORY. There can be no doubt that it has been the universal custom of Christians since the apostolic age to offer alms and oblations to the glory of God. In the writings of the primitive fathers, and the acts of synods, we find this practice recognised throughout the whole world. We learn its prevalence in Africa from the writings of Optatus, Cyprian, Tertullian, and the decrees of the councils of Carthage b. In the patriarchate of Antioch its existence is testified by Chrysostom, the Apostolical Constitutions, and Justin. Ambrose is a witness for Italy d; Gregory Nazianzen for Cæsarea and Pontus; the council of Eliberis for Spain f; Irenæus, Cæsarius of Arles, and the council of Matiscon, for Gauls; Augustine for b Locuples et dives es, et Dominicum celebrare te credis, quæ corbonam omnino non respicis; quæ in Dominicum sine sacrificio venis; quæ partem de sacrificio, quod pauper obtulit, sumis?" Cyprian. de Oper. et Eleemosynis, p. 203. ed. Fell. 66 Modicam unusquisque stipem menstrua die, vel cum velit, et si modo velit, et si modo possit, apponit. Nam nemo compellitur, sed sponte confert, &c." Tertull. Apolog. c. 39. Optatus Milev. lib. vi. de Schism. Donatist. p. 93. ed. Albaspin. Paris. 1631. Concil. Carthag. 4. can. 93, 94. c Chrysost. Hom. 50. in Matt. p. 518. tom. vii. ed. Benedict. Χρὴ δὲ τὸν ἐπίσκοπον εἰ δέναι τίνων ὀφείλει δέχεσθαι καρποφορίας, καὶ τίνων οὐκ ὀφείλει. φυλακταῖοι γὰρ αὐτῷ πρὸς δόσιν κάπηλοι φευκταῖοι δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ πόρνοι κ. τ. λ. Apost. Const. lib. iv. c. 6. οἱ εὐποροῦντες δὲ καὶ βουλόμενοι, κατὰ προαίρεσιν ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ὁ βούλεται δίδωσι, καὶ τὸ συλλεγόμενον παρὰ τῷ πρωεστῶτι ἀποτίθεται, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπικουρεῖ ὀρφανοῖς τε καὶ χήραις, καὶ τοῖς διὰ νόσον ἢ δι ̓ ἄλλην αἰτίαν λειπομένοις, καὶ τοῖς ἐν δεσμοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τοῖς παρεπιδήμοις οὖσι ξένοις, καὶ ἁπλῶς πᾶσι τοῖς ἐν χρείᾳ οὖσι κηδεμὼν γίνεται. Justin Martyr, Apolg. i. p. 98. ed. Thirlby. d Ambros. Epist. 17. ad Valent. p. 827. tom. ii. ed. Benedict. e Gregor. Nazianz. Orat. 20. P. 351. tom. i. f Concil. Eliberitan. can. 28, 29. g Irenæus, lib. iv. c. 18. See England; and Patrick for Ireland. The custom of offering voluntary oblations was therefore universal in the primitive church. These oblations were of various sorts. Some offered money, vestments, and other precious gifts, and all, it appears, offered bread and wine, from which the elements of the sacrament were taken. But though all the churches of the east and west agreed in this respect, they differed in appointing the time and place at which the oblations of the people were received. In the west, the people offered bread and wine in the public assembly, immediately after the catechumens were dismissed, and before the solemn prayers began. We have no authentic record of the prevalence of any such custom in the east. It appears that the oblations of the people were made in the eastern churches before the liturgy began, or at least not during the public assembly. No trace of the western oblation of the people and offertory is found in the ancient liturgies of Antioch, Cæsarea, Constantinople, and Alexandria. It is not alluded to by the Apostolical Constitutions, nor by the Fathers of the eastern churches. From whence it may be concluded, either that the oblations of the people were not made during the liturgy of the eastern churches; or else, that the custom has been very long discontinued. In the churches of Gaul, Spain, Rome, Milan, and England, the people long continued to offer during the liturgy, and memorials of the custom remain to this day in most parts of the west. In the councils and the writings of the Fathers of those churches, we find many allusions to it, many injunctions regulating it. In time, when the clergy received donations of a more permanent nature, the oblations of the people fell off. In many places they became extinct, and in the rest there remained little more than the shadows and memorials of the primitive customs. Oblations are now in general never made by the laity in the Roman liturgy; yet in some remote parts the country people, according to Bona, still continue the practice3. In the church of Milan, which has retained its peculiar rites for a long series of ages, and which did not receive the alterations made in the Roman liturgy by Gregory the Great, A. D. 590, the custom of offering bread and wine is still in some degree preserved. At the proper time the officiating priest, accompanied by his assistants, and preceded by two attendants with silver vessels to receive the oblations, descends from the altar to the entrance of the presbytery, where two old men of the school of St. Ambrose, attended by all their brethren, offer three cakes of bread, and a silver vessel full of wine. The priest and his attendants then descend to the entrance of the choir, where they receive the same sort of oblations from the women k. j Bona, Rer. Lit. lib. ii. cap. 8. §.8. k Bona, Rer. Lit. lib. i. cap. 10. §. 3. In England the people have been accustomed to offer oblations since the time of Augustine, who wrote in A. D. 601 to Gregory, patriarch of Rome, to consult him how the oblations of the people should be divided; but we can have no doubt that in the British church the same practice had prevailed long before, since no western church can be named in which the people had not made oblations from the most primitive ages. A synod also, held in Ireland in the time of Patrick, first archbishop of the Irish, in the fifth century, forbids the oblations of sinning brethren to be received m. This shews that the practice of lay oblation prevailed then in Ireland. In England the oblations of the people gradually became less as the church was endowed with lands, and different rules as to the payment of offerings were adopted in different places. In 1287, the synod of Exeter, cap. 9, required all priests celebrating the communion in chapels annexed to churches, to restore fairly whatever oblations they received to the rector of the church ". Henry Woodloke, bishop of Winchester, in his Constitutions of A. D. 1308, enjoined every person above eighteen years of age, who had sufficient means, to offer due and customary oblations on four great feast days in the year. In 1367, Simon a singulis parochianis, annum octavum decimum excedentibus, dum tamen bona habeant mobilia, aut extra domos paternas pro certis stipendiis commorentur, in quatuor festivitatibus, nativitatis, scilicet, paschæ, festivitate sancti loci, et dedicationis ecclesiæ, oblationes debitæ et consuetæ persolvantur." Wilkins, Concilia Langham, archbishop of Canterbury, took measures to try a dispute between the clergy of London and the citizens, who were unwilling to pay the oblations which the clergy alleged to be due from every house in proportion to its value P. We also find the subject alluded to in other canons of the English and Scottish churches. Thus the custom of lay oblation was continually kept up in some degree in England, till the time when the reformation at last began, and then we find the church continuing and reinforcing it. The English liturgy, in the year 1549, contained this rubric: "In the mean time, while the clerks do sing the offertory, so many as are disposed, shall offer to the poor man's box, every one according to his ability and charitable mind; and at the offering days appointed, every man and woman shall pay to the curate, the due and accustomed offerings." Afterwards the rubric was amended to its present form, in which the deacons or the officers of the church are required to collect the alms and devotions of the people and the custom of oblation is to this day preserved in the church of England, having never been intermitted from the most primitive ages. I have already observed, that when the people offered bread and wine, the elements for the sacrament were taken from their oblations. It was for this reason, partly, that we find the liturgies speaking in the plural number when the verbal oblation of the gifts was made, as if the bishop or priest re tom. ii. p. 298. The same rule, nearly, occurs in the 54th chapter of the synod of Exeter, anno 1287. p. 160. Wilkins. P Wilkins, tom. iii. p. 67. |