holy and religious uses, but in vain. For the arrangement of the several buildings of an abbey, see Cathedral and Monastery. ABBOT. The Father or Superior of an abbey of monks, or male persons, living under peculiar religious vows. Abbot is a word of oriental extraction, from the Syriac, Abba, father; as that, from the Hebrew Ab, of the same signification: and, if we may ascend still higher, that word itself (as many others which occur in that language) proceeds from the voice of nature; being one of the most obvious sounds, to express one of the first and most obvious ideas.

Among the abbeys in England before the dissolution, were some which gave the title of Mitred Abbot to their superiors These mitred abbots sat and voted in the house of lords. They held of the king in capite per baroniam, their endowments being at least an entire barony, which consisted of thirteen knights' fees. The following are the abbeys which conferred this distinction on their abbots: St. Alban's, St. Peter's, Westminster; St. Edmondsbury, St. Bennet's of Holm, Berdsey, Shrewsbury, Crowland, Abingdon, Evesham, Gloucester, Ramsey, St. Mary's, York; Tewkesbury, Reading, Bath, Winchcomb, Hide by Winchester, Cirencester, Waltham, Malmesbury, Thorney, St. Augustine's, Canterbury; Selby, Peterborough, St. John's, Colchester; Coventry, Tavistock, St. John's of Jerusalem, and Glastonbury. (See Monks.)

ABBESS The Mother or Superior of an abbey of nuns, or female persons, living under peculiar religious vows.

ABECEDARIAN HYMNS. Hymns composed in imitation of the acrostic poetry of the Hebrews, in which each verse, or each part, commenced with the first and succeeding letters in the alphabet, in their order. This arrangement was intended as a help to the memory. St. Augustine composed a hymn in this manner. for the common people to learn, against the error of the Donatists. (See Acrostics.)

ABJURATION. A solemn renunciation in public, or before a proper officer, of some doctrinal error. A formal abjuration is often considered necessary by the Church, when any person seeks to be received into her communion from heresy or schism. A form for admitting Romish recusants into the Church of England was drawn up by the convocation of 1714, but did not receive the royal sanction.

The authority and power of conferring absolution on penitents, wherewith our gracious SAVIOUR hath so clearly vested his ministerial successors, "whosoever sins ye remit," &c. having been abused by the Church of Rome in a lucrative market of pardons and indulgences, it is no wonder that Luther, and all our first reformers, should have taken infinite offence at a practice so flagitious, and so directly contrary to the command of CHRIST, "freely ye have received; freely give." This, however, should not have been a reason, as it was with too many, for rejecting all absolutions. The true doctrine is, and must be this-for the consolation of his church, and particularly of such as class with the penitent publican in the gospel, CHRIST hath left with his bishops and presbyters a power to pronounce absolution. This absolution is on condition of faith and repentance in the person or persons receiving it. On sufficient appearance of these, and confession made with these appearances in particular persons, the bishop or presbyter, as the messenger of CHRIST, is to pronounce it. But he cannot search the heart; God only, who can, confirms it. The power of absolution is remarkably exercised by St. Paul, though absent, and depending on both report, and the information of the HOLY SPIRIT, in regard to the Corinthian excommunicated for incest. The apostle, speaking in the character of one to whom the authority of the church of Corinth, "to whom ye forabsolution had been committed, saith to gave anything, I forgive also." (2 Cor. ii. 10.) Thus the penitent was pardoned, and restored to communion by delegated authority, in the person of CHRIST, lest such an one should be swallowed up with over much sorrow, and lest Satan should get an advantage over us. As these reasons for compassion still remain, it seems evident that the Church should still retain the same power of showing that compassion, as far as human understanding may direct its application.-Skelton.

Sacerdotal absolution does not necessarily require any particular or auricular confession of private sins; forasmuch as that the grand absolution of baptism was commonly given without any particular confession. And therefore the Romanists vainly found the necessity of auricular confession upon those words of our SAVIOUR, Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted

ABSOLUTION.

unto them: as if there could be no absolu- | tion without particular confession; when it is so plain, that the great absolution of baptism (the power of which is founded by the ancients upon this very place) required no such particular confession. We may hence infer, that the power of any sacerdotal absolution is only ministerial; because the administration of baptism (which is the most universal absolution), so far as man is concerned in it, is no more than ministerial. All the office and power of man in it is only to minister the external form, but the internal power and grace of remission of sins is properly GoD's; and so it is in all other sorts of absolution. Bingham.

The bishops and priests of the whole Christian Church have ever used to absolve all that truly repented, and at this day it is retained in our Church as a part of the daily office; which being so useful, so necessary, and founded on Holy Scripture, needs not any arguments to defend it, but that the ignorance and prejudice of some makes them take offence at it, and principally because it hath been so much abused by the Papal Church. We may declare our abhorrency of these evil uses of absolution; though in that sober, moderate, and useful manner we do perform it, we do not vary from the prime intention of CHRIST'S Commission, and the practice of antiquity: absolution was instituted by JESUS, and if it have been corrupted by men, we will cast away the corruptions, not the ordinance itself.-Comber.

Calvin's liturgy has no such form in it: but he himself says that it was an omission in him at first, and a defect in his liturgy; which he afterwards would have rectified and amended, but could not. He makes this ingenious confession in one of his epistles: "There is none of us," says he, "but must acknowledge it to be very useful, that, after the general confession, some remarkable promise of Scripture should follow, whereby sinners might be raised to the hopes of pardon and reconciliation. And I would have introduced this custom from the beginning, but some fearing that the novelty of it would give offence, I was over easy in yielding to them; so the thing was omitted." I must do that justice to Calvin here, by the way, to say, that he was no enemy to private absolution neither, as used in the Church of England. For in one of his answers to Westphalus he thus expresses his mind about it: "I have no intent to deny the

usefulness of private absolution; but as I commend it in several places of my writings, provided the use be left to men's liberty, and free from superstition, so to blind men's consciences by a law to it, is neither lawful nor expedient." Here we have Calvin's judgment, fully and entirely, for the usefulness both of public and pri vate absolution. He owns it to be a defect in his liturgy, that it wants a public absolution.-Bingham.

Our Church has not appointed the indicative form of absolution to be used in all these senses, but only once in the office of the sick, and that may reasonably be interpreted (according to the account given out of St. Jerome), a declaration of the sinner's pardon, upon the apparent evidences of a sincere repentance, and the best judgment the minister can make of his condition; beyond which none can go, but the searcher of hearts, to whom alone belongs the infallible and irreversible sentence of absolution. The indicative form, "I absolve thee," may be interpreted to mean no more than a declaration of God's will to a penitent sinner, that, upon the best judgment the priest can make of his repentance, he esteems him absolved before Gon, and accordingly pronounces and declares him absolved. As St. Jerome observes, the priests under the old law were said to cleanse a leper, or pollute him; not that they were the authors of his pollution, but that they declared him to be polluted, who before seemed to many to have been clean. As, therefore, the priest makes the leper clean or unclean, so the bishop or presbyter here binds or looses, not properly making the guilty or the guiltless; but according to the tenor of his office, when he hears the distinction of sins, he knows who is to be bound, and who is to be loosed. Upon this also, the master of the sentences (following St. Jerome) observes, that the priests of the gospel have that right and office, which the legal priests had of old under the law in curing the lepers. These, therefore, forgive sins, or retain them, whilst they show and declare, that they are forgiven or retained by GoD. For the priests "put the name of the LORD" upon the children of Israel, but it was he himself that blessed them, as it is read in Num. vi. 27.—Bingham.

The following remarks on our forms of absolution occur in "Palmer's Origines Liturgica."

An absolution followed the confession formerly in the offices of the English

churches, for prime, or the first hour of the day. We may, perhaps, assign to the absolution thus placed an antiquity equal to that of the confession, though Gemma Anima and Durandus do not appear expressly to mention it. The sacerdotal benediction of penitents was in the earliest times conveyed in the form of a prayer to GOD for their absolution; but, in after ages, different forms of benediction were used, both in the East and West. With regard to these varieties of form, it does not appear that they were formerly considered of any importance. A benediction seems to have been regarded as equally valid, whether it was conveyed in the form of a petition or a declaration, whether in the operative or in the indicative mood, whether in the active or the passive voice, whether in the first, second, or third person. It is true that a direct prayer to GoD is a most ancient form of blessing; but the use of a precatory, or an optative form, by no means warrants the inference, that the person who uses it is devoid of any divinely instituted authority to bless and absolve in the congregation of GoD. Neither does the use of a direct indicative form of blessing or absolution imply anything but the exercise of an authority which God has given, to such an extent, and under such limitations, as divine revelation has declared.

In the primitive Church absolution was regarded to consist of five kinds: sacramental, by baptism and the eucharist; declaratory, by word of mouth and doctrine; deprecatory, by imposition of hands and prayer; judicial, by relaxation of Church censures.

ABSTINENCE. (See Fasting.) In the Romish Church, fasting and abstinence admit of a distinction, and different days are appointed for each of them. On their days of fasting, they are allowed but one meal in four-and-twenty hours; but, on days of abstinence, provided they abstain from flesh, and make but a moderate meal, they are indulged in a collation at night. The times by them set apart for the first are, all Lent, except Sundays, the Ember days, the vigils of the more solemn feasts, and all Fridays except those that fall within the twelve days of Christmas, and between Easter and the Ascension. Their days of abstinence are all the Sundays in Lent, St. Mark's Day, if it does not fall in Easter weeks, the three Rogation days, all Saturdays throughout the year, with the Fridays before excepted, unless either

ABYSSINIA.

happen to be Christmas Day. The reason why observe St. Mark as a day of abstinence is, as we learn from their own books, in imitation of St. Mark's disciples, the first Christians of Alexandria, who, under this saint's conduct, were eminent for their great prayer, abstinence. and sobriety. They further tell us, that St. Gregory the Great, the apostle of England, first set apart this day for abstinence and public prayer, as an acknowledgment of the divine mercy, in putting a stop to a mortality in his time at Rome.

We do not find that the Church of England makes any difference between days of fasting and days of abstinence. It is true, in the title of the table of vigils, &c. [This table is omitted in the American Prayer Book], she mentions fasts and days of abstinence separately; but when she comes to enumerate the particulars, she calls them all days of fasting or abstinence, without distinguishing between the one and the other. Nor does she anywhere point out to us what food is proper for such times or seasons, or seem to place any part of religion in abstaining from any particular kinds of meat. It is true, by a statute (5 Eliz. 5), none were allowed to eat flesh on fish-days (which are there declared to be all Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays in the year), without a license first obtained, for which they are to pay a yearly fine (except such as are sick, who may be licensed either by the bishop or minister), under penalty of three pounds forfeiture, or three mouths imprisonment without bail, and of forty shillings forfeiture for any master of a family that suffers or conceals it. But then this is declared to be a mere political law, for the increase of fishermen and mariners, and repairing of port towns and navigation, and not for any superstition to be maintained in the choice of meats. For, by the same act, whosoever, by preaching, teaching, writing, &c., affirms it to be necessary to abstain from flesh for the saving of the soul of man, or for the service of God, otherwise than other politic laws are or be, is to be punished as a spreader of false news. That is, he must suffer imprisonment till he produce the author; and, if he cannot produce him, must be punished at the discretion of the king's council. The sections of this act which relate to eating fish on Wednesdays, were repealed by 27 Eliz. c. 11.-Wheatly.

ABYSSINIA. There was certainly an orthodox Christian Church in Abyssinia,