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Updated: May 3, 2025
In the Church of England I could have been easy as far as the communion formulary was concerned; but to the entire system I had contracted an incurable repugnance, as worldly, hypocritical, and an evil counterfeit. I desired, therefore, to creep into some obscure congregation, and there wait till my mind had ripened as to the right path in circumstances so perplexing.
With little hope of advantage, I yet felt it a duty to consult many of the Evangelical clergymen whom I knew, and to ask how they reconciled the Baptismal Service to their consciences. Not one of these good people seemed to have the most remote idea that it was their duty to investigate the meaning of the formulary with the same unbiassed simplicity as if it belonged to the Gallican Church.
By my side, on this parchment, lies the formulary of questions to be addressed by Reburrus, when the curtain is withdrawn, to the Oracle of the Mysteries of other Spheres. 'Before you, behold in those vases all that remains of my once well-stocked cellars, and all that is provided for the palates of my guests!
But if the Holy Ghost, through the assembled clergy, were to dictate an iron formulary to which all must conform, to make laws for church government which every citizen must obey, and to appoint preachers and school-masters from whom alone old and young could receive illumination and instruction religious or lay, a theocracy would be established which no enlightened statesman could tolerate.
Bertie amused himself. He might be within a day of his ruin, but that was no reason why he should not sip his iced sherbet and laugh with a pretty French actress to-night. His epicurean formulary was the same as old Herrick's, and he would have paraphrased this poet's famous quatrain into
How could the general government prescribe an especial formulary for the Reformed Church, and declare opposition to its decrees treasonable, when it did not prohibit, but absolutely admitted and invited, provinces and cities exclusively Catholic to enter the Union, guaranteeing to them entire liberty of religion?
It would add to the merit of the formulary, especially when used as a separate office, were it to be prefaced by the versicle and response, similarly employed in the Hereford Breviary: V. Let us confess unto the Lord, for he is gracious. R. And his mercy endureth forever.
But as a formulary, how full and comprehensive is that of the Church of England! and how well adapted to express the feelings of the mind, humbled, and penitentially exercised, yet exalted in hope at the throne of a covenant God in Christ Jesus.
In point of fact, however, no Protestant Church is without her formulary, or abstains from enforcing it by temporal provisions and spiritual censures. To enforce their formularies by civil penalties, is inconsistent with the principles, of every christian church. All churches howsoever have so enforced, and have blamed the others, for so enforcing them.
Max Müller regarded the Tattva-samâsa, a short tract consisting chiefly of an enumeration of topics, as the most ancient Sâṅkhya formulary, but the opinion of scholars as to its age is not unanimous. The name Sâṅkhya is best interpreted as signifying enumeration in allusion to the predilection of the school for numbered lists, a predilection equally noticeable in early Buddhism.
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