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PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

THE numerous and extensive editions of Buck's Theological Dictionary published both in England and in this country since its first appearance, together with the continued and increasing demand, sufficiently attest the estimate in which the work is held by the Christian public. The judgment, industry, candour, and impartiality evinced by the Author in the selection and compilation of the articles, embracing, as they do, the wide field of Theology, didactic and polemic, Ecclesiastical Polity, Church History, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, and Biblical Literature, together with a copious list of references to the most valuable authorities in each department, are universally acknowledged. So far as the merit of sterling utility can entitle any book to favourable acceptance, the Dictionary of Mr. Buck presents claims which will not be contested. As a theological and ecclesiastical manual, embodying a vast amount of useful information in a moderate compass, and clearly and judiciously arranged, it would not be easy to designate its superior.

Yet while this tribute of deserved commendation is readily bestowed, it must still be admitted, that the work hitherto has not been altogether adapted to the circumstances of our own country, or the wants of the present day. Considered in this view the Theological Dictionary labours under manifold defects, which it would be as easy to specify as it is obvious to perceive. As might have been expected, its local bearings and allusions are to the state of things in England, and not in this country. But a work of this nature is needed, which shall be suited to the state of religious opinion in the Christian community of the United States. Moreover, since the first publication of Mr. Buck's work, great changes have occurred in the religious world; great advances have been made in theological as well as in natural science; a fresh impulse has been given to the investigation of revealed truth; new sects, especially in our own country, have risen up, and with them new controversies, or new forms of old ones; the ever varying field of religious discussion, while it has been contracted in some of its limits, has been widened in others; besides which, nearly every department treated in the Theological Dictionary has been enriched with new treasures from the writings of modern divines, to which the reader will look in vain for any references in the previous editions. While therefore the active spirit of progress and improvement is urging its way in the province of Theological inquiry as well as every other, while modern researches are shedding light upon numberless points of Christian and Jewish antiquities, upon Ecclesiastical institutions, and Biblical criticism, it is doubtless desirable that a Theological Dictionary should be prepared, fitted to meet, in some good degree, the exigences of the present period.

With this view the present edition of Buck has been undertaken. In the prosecution of the plan, the steady aim has been to increase the amount of new and valuable matter, at the same time that the accession should not swell the size, nor enhance the price of the volume. The whole work therefore has undergone a careful revisionSome few articles of trivial moment have been expunged to make way for others of more consequence-Several have been abridged-Several in whole or in part re-written: But the principal feature of the present edition is the addition of a large mass of new matter under the following heads: ABYSS, ACCOMMODATION OF SCRIPTURE, ANNIHILATION, ANTICHRIST, ANTICHRISTIANISM, ATONEMENT, CHURCH, COMMENTARY, CONGREGATIONALISTS, EPISCOPALIAN, GLASSITES, NEw Independents, NEOLOGY, PRESBYTERIANS, UNITARIANS, besides many others, which will be pointed out to the reader, wherever they occur, by the letter B. being annexed to them. Notices of all or nearly all the existing religious denominations in the United States are given, accompanied with historical sketches and ecclesiastical statistics. In this department of the work the Editor acknowledges his obligations to the very valuable Quarterly Register and Journal of the American Education Society, for February, by means of which, and from other sources, he has been enabled to bring down the records of the various denominations to a very late period.

In the earnest hope that the attempted improvements of the present edition may be found to be a benefit, and not a bar, to its general reception, it is submitted to the candour of the public.

A

THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY.

ABBEY

A.

ABBOT

gulars possessed could never revert to the lords who gave them. These places were wholly abolished by Henry VIII. He first appointed visitors to inspect into the lives of the monks and nuns, which were found in some places very disorderly; upon which the abbots, perceiving their dissolution unavoidable, were induced to resign their houses to the king, who by that means became invested with the abbey lands: these were afterwards granted to different persons, whose descendants enjoy them at this day: they were then valued at 2,853,000l. per annum; an inmense sum in those days. Though the suppression of these houses, considered in a religious and political light, was a great benefit to the nation, yet it must be owned, that at the time they flou rished, they were not entirely useless. Abbeys were then the repositories as well as the semina

ABBA, a Syriac word of Hebrew origin, sig-state became poor, for the lands which these renifying Father. It is more particularly used in the Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic churches, as a title given to the bishops. The bishops themselves bestowed the title Abba more eminently on the bishop of Alexandria, which occasioned the people to give him the title of Baba, or Papa; that is, Grandfather: a title which he bore before the bishop of Rome. It is a Jewish title of honour given to certain Rabbins called Tanaites: it is also used by some writers of the middle age for the superior of a monastery. Saint Mark and Saint Paul use this word in their Greek, Mark xiv. 36. Rom. viii. 15. Gal. vi. 6. because it was then ommonly known in the synagogues and the primitive assemblies of the Christians. It is thought by Selden, Witsius, Doddridge, and others, that Saint Paul alluded to a law among the Jews which forbade servants or slaves to call their master Abba, or Father; and that theries of learning: many valuable books and naapostle meant to convey the idea that those who believed in Christ were no longer slaves to sin; but, being brought into a state of holy freedom, might consequently address God as their Father. ABBE, the same with A580т, which see. Also the name of curious popular characters in France; who are persons who have not yet obtained any precise or fixed settlement in church or state, but most heartily wish for and would accept of either, just as it may happen. In the meanwhile their privileges are many. In college, they are the instructors of youth, and in private famihes the tutors of young gentlenen.

tional records have been preserved in their librarics; the only places wherein they could have been safely lodged in those turbulent times. Indeed the historians of this country are chiefly beholden to the monks for the knowledge they have of former national events. Thus a kind Providence overruled even the institutions of su perstition for good. See MONASTERY.

ABBOT, the chief ruler of a monastery or abbey. At first they were laymen, and subject to the bishop and ordinary pastors. Their monas teries being remote from cities, and built in the farthest solitudes, they had no share in ecclesias tical affairs; but, there being among them several persons of learning, they were called out of their deserts by the bishops, and fixed in the suburbs of the cities; and at length in the cities themselves. From that time they degenerated, and, learning to be ambitious, aspired to be independ ent of the bishops, which occasioned some severe laws to be made against them. At length, however, the abbots carried their point, and obtained the title of lord, with other badges of the episco

ABBESS, the superior of an abbey or convent of nuns. The abbess has the same rights and authority over her nuns that the abbots regular have over their monks. The sex, indeed, does not allow her to perform the spiritual functions annexed to the priesthood, wherewith the abbot is usually invested; but there are instances of some abbesses who have a right, or rather a privilege, to commission a priest to act for them. They have even a kind of episcopal jurisdiction, as well as some abbots who are exempted from the visi-pate, particularly the mitre. Hence arose new tation of their diocesan.

ABBEY, a monastery, governed by a superior ander the title of Abbot or Abbess. Monasteries were at first nothing more than religious houses, whither persons retired from the bustle of the world to spend their time in solitude and devotion; but they soon degenerated from their original institution, and procured large privileges, exemptions, and riches. They prevailed greatly in Britain before the Reformation, particularly in England: and as they increased in riches, so the

distinctions among them. Those were termed mitred abbots who were privileged to wear the mitre, and exercise episcopal authority within their respective precincts, being exempted from the jurisdiction of the bishop. Others were called crosiered abbots, from their bearing the erosier, or pastoral staff. Others were styled œcumenical or universal abbots, in imitation of the patriarch of Constantinople; while others were termed cardinal abbots from their superiority over all other abbots. At present, in the Roman Catho

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ACOLYTHI

words St. Paul afterwards accommodates to the Jews of his time. Isa. xxix. 14. Matt. xv. 8. Acts xiii. 41. Great care, however, should be taken by preachers who are fond of accommodating texts, that they first clearly state the literal sense of the passage.

ACCOMMODATION SYSTEM, a name given to a peculiar mode of scriptural interpretation, adopted during the last century by Semler and other German divines, which teaches, that many things, uttered by our Saviour and his Apostles, in the course of their instructions, are not to be understood as expressing the actual reality and verity of things, or conveying true doctrines, but as merely adopted in accommodation to the popular belief, and the deep-rooted prejudice of the Jews. For instance, when our Saviour speaks of persons being possessed with evil spirits, we are not according to this theory, to imagine there was really any such things as demoniacal possession, or that Christ intended to teach that doctrine; but as the notion had been long prevalent among the Jews that men under the influence of certain bodily diseases were possessed by the devil, he accommodated himself in his language to their weakness and simplicity, "that he might win the more." And so the Apostles. See this dangerous doctrine ably canvassed and refuted in Storr's Essay on the Historical Sense, translated by Gibbs, or the original treatise in his Opuscula.-B.

ACT OF FAITH ance; but their functions were different from those of their first institution. Their business was to light the tapers, carry the candlesticks and the incense pot, and prepare the wine and water. At Rome there were three kinds: 1. those who churches; 3. and others, who together with the waited on the pope. 2. those who served in the deacons, officiated in other parts of the city.

mish church, is a solemn day held by the InquisiACT OF FAITH (Auto da Fé,) in the Rotion for the punishment of heretics, and the absolution of the innocent accused. They usually contrive the Auto to fall on some great festival, that the execution may pass with the more awe; and it is always on a Sunday. The Auto da Fe may be called the last act of the inquisitorial tragedy: it is a kind of gaol delivery, appointed as often as a competent number of prisoners in the Inquisition are convicted of heresy, either by their own voluntary or extorted confession, or on the evidence of certain witnesses. The process is this:-In the morning they are brought into a great hall, where they have certain habits put on, which they are to wear in the procession, and by which they know their doom. The procession is led up by Dominican friars, after which come the penitents, being all in black coats without sleeves, and barefooted, with a wax candle in their hands. These are followed by the penitents who have narrowly escaped being burnt, who over their ACCURSED, something that lies under a turned downwards. Next come the negative and black coats have flames painted, with their points curse or sentence of excommunication. In the relapsed, who are to be burnt, having flames on Jewish idiom, accursed and crucified were their habits pointing upwards. After these come synonymous: among them, every one was ac- such as profess doctrines contrary to the faith of counted accursed who died on a tree. This Rome, who besides flames pointing upwards, serves perhaps to explain the difficult passage in have their picture painted on their breasts, with Rom. ix. 2, where the apostle wishes himself ac-dogs, serpents, and devils, all open-mouthed, cursed after the manner of Christ; i. e. crucified, if happily he might by such a death save his countrymen. The preposition here made of is used in the same sense, 2 Tim. i. 3, when it obviously signifies after the manner of. ACEPHALÍ, i. e. headless; from the privative and κεφαλη head; such bishops were exempt from the discipline and jurisdiction of their ordinary bishop or patriarch. It was also the denomination of certain sects; 1. of those who, in the affair of the council of Ephesus, refused to follow either St. Cyril or John of Antioch; 2. of certain heretics in the fifth century, who, at first, followed Peter Mongus, but afterwards abandoned him upon his subscribing to the council of Chalcedon, they themselves adhering to the Eutychian heresy: and, 3. of the followers of Severus of Antioch, and of all, in general, who held out against the council of Chalcedon.

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ACOEMÉTÆ, or ACOEMETI, an order of monks at Constantinople in the fifth century, whom the writers of that and the following ages called Ax, that is, Watchers, because they performed divine service day and night without intermission. They divided themselves into three classes, who alternately succeeded one another, so that they kept up a perpetual course of worship. This practice they founded upon that passage "Pray without ceasing," 1 Thess. v. 17. ACOLYTHI, or ACOLUTHI, from xoxcubos, a follower, young people who, in the primitive times, aspired to the ministry, and for that purpose continually attended the bishop. In the Romish church, Acolythi were of longer continu

about it. Each prisoner is attended by a fami liar of the Inquisition; and those to be burnt have also a Jesuit on each hand, who are continually preaching to them to abjure. After the and after them the Inquisitors, and other officers prisoners, comes a troop of familiars on horseback; of the court, on mules: last of all the inquisitorgeneral on a white horse, led by two men with black hats and green hatbands. A scaffold is erected big enough for two or three thousand people; at one end of which are the prisoners, at the other the Inquisitors. After a sermon made up of encomiums on the Inquisition, and invectives against heretics, a priest ascends a desk near the scaffold, and having taken the abjuration of the penitents, recites the final sentence of those who are to be put to death, and delivers them to the secular arm, carnestly beseeching at the blood, or put their lives in danger!!! The same time the secular power not to touch their prisoners, being thus in the hands of the civil magistrate, are presently loaded with chains, and carried first to the secular gaol, and from thence, in an hour or two, brought before the civil judge; who, after asking in what religion they intend to die, pronounces sentence, on such as declare they die in the communion of the church of Rome, that they shall be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes: or such as die in any other faith, that they be burnt alive. Both are immediately carried to the Ribera, the place of execution, where there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed, that is

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