testimony from such an opponent is an absolute denial of the calumny of Pope Cornelius that Novatian fell away in time of persecution.

By the martyrdom of Fabian (250), the Roman see became vacant. At this period, the subject of dealing with the lapsed during the still existing Decian persecution occupied the chief place in the deliberations of the clergy. Departing sadly from her ancient fidelity under persecution, the Church of Christ no longer remained, as a whole, loyal to her Lord. The Imperial Edict being chiefly directed against the clergy, so many of these either recanted or fled, that there did not remain a sufficient number to carry on the ordinary services and pastoral duties. The magnitude of this apostasy filled the hearts of those who remained faithful with sorrow and righteous anger, and foremost among these latter was Novatian, whose convictions regarding the subject were accentuated by the natural moroseness of his nature. There was, it appears, a special class of the lapsed-the "Libellatici" -which called for his sternest displeasure. It is interesting, but equally painful, to trace in the circumstances of these special seceders from the faith the first conception of purchasing by money a freedom from moral obligations, which resulted in the indulgences of the Middle Ages. "Libelli" were governmental documents given to those who subscribed to the civil ritual of offering incense and sacrifice to the gods, and denied having attended, or having any intention of attending, the Christian gatherings for worship. To all those thus subscribing the Libelli were given, as an imperial guarantee of exemption from penalty or punishment on account of their faith. Those who received the Libelli were called "Libellatici." The wealthier citizens, however, had the option of purchasing these Libelli from the civil officers, instead of subscribing to the conditions; and we read that thousands were base enough to avail themselves of this alternative. It was especially against these Libellatici that Novatian wrote to various bishops during the interim in the Roman See. According to some writers of the present day, Novatian commenced his attack upon the lapsed with a degree of moderation, but no doubt impelled forward by the extreme laxity of some of the highest leaders of the Church upon this question, his opinions gradually became crystallised into a rigid sternness which culminated in his rigorous sentence that those who had denied the faith, although still united to the salvation of God, ought never again to be re-admitted into the ranks of the visible Church. This inexorable judgment, contrasted with the extreme laxity, not to say indifference, of many

of the clergy,' drew numerous sympathisers to the support of Novatian, and when, opportunity being taken of the absence of the persecuting Decius in Thrace (where he had gone to oppose the Goths, and from which expedition he never returned), Cornelius, leader of the party of laxity, was consecrated Bishop of Rome, the friends of Novatian, inspired by the Carthaginian presbyter Novatus, at once secured his election in opposition to the appointment of Cornelius, who is suspected of having been himself a "libellaticus."

Novatian (who in spite of the insinuations of Cornelius that he had secretly longed after the position, had in reality been greatly averse to it), according to the customary usage, wrote to the chief bishops to apprise them of his election. The beautiful answer of Dionysius of Alexandria still exists, in which he urges Novation to give up life itself rather than produce schism in the Church. Fabius of Antioch received his missive so favourably that he is supposed to have been on the point of yielding. Cyprian of Carthage indignantly repudiated his communication, and became from that moment one of his most zealous opponents. His cause also lost favour from the augmentation of its adherents by the arrival of the infamous Novatus. The wellknown violence of character, united to loose

ness

of morals, of this furious agitator, alienated many of the more thoughtful followers of Novatian from their allegiance to their leader; and before many months had passed away, at the close of A.D. 250, he was solemnly excommunicated by a synod of sixty bishops.

From this time Novatian threw all his zeal into forming a fresh sect. He ordained bishops, and sent his emissaries to the farthest confines of the Roman world. All we know of his further career is that it closed in martyrdom (according to Socrates) under the Emperor Valerian. He appears to have been a voluminous writer. Of his works, however, only two have been preserved, De Cibis Judaicis and De Trinitate, the former of these, on Jewish meats, was written to refute the Judaising contention which raged in his day, and was evidently penned in some retreat from persecution. His work, De Trinitate, was inferior in literary merit to the two great kindred works of the succeeding centuries. But not even the towering genius of Augustine, or the persuasive eloquence of Hilary, enshrined purer doctrine or showed more accurate fidelity to scriptural truth. Some writers, indeed,

1 A document of this period is still extant, containing an absolution of "all the lapsed by all the confessors."

have accredited Novatian with the authorship of the Refutation of all Heresies.

The founder of the Cathari schism, with all his mistakes, stands out as perhaps the only orthodox teacher of his century who saw salvation outside the pale of the ecclesia. Neander points out very clearly that the great error of his teaching lay in confounding the visible Church with the invisible. In his intense zeal to conform the former to the glowing description of the latter, as given by the inspired apostle, he ruthlessly cast out all that might contaminate her purity; while on the other hand, he urged upon the lapsed, even on the Sacrificiti, repentance, in order to receive the eternal salvation of God. Surely the fact that a man of such high moral character and universally acknowledged orthodoxy of creed separated himself from the body of his fellow-believers on the question of discipline only, speaks with no uncertain sound of the corruption which had begun to leaven the Church even in the third century of her existence.

Novatianists (called also Cathari, pure; hence, Puritan). Although Novatian gave his name to this sect, yet their chief doctrine (i.e. regarding the condition of the lapsed) was as ancient as the orthodox Hermas early in the second century, and of the unorthodox Montanists somewhat later. Novatianism differentiated, however, from all the sects which had previously disturbed the Church, in the one respect that all others had separated voluntarily or had been expelled, on the ground of unsound views respecting the nature of the blessed Trinity, while the cause of Novatianist severance was that of discipline only. The nature and more important particulars of that separation the reader will find amply discussed above. See NOVATIAN. When a member of the Novatian (or, of the Cathari, as they preferred to call themselves) schism desired to return to the body Catholic, he was received merely by the imposition of hands, whereas even a Montanist could only be received back into the visible Church by re-baptism. This fact furnishes a strong attestation to the universally acknowledged orthodoxy of the Cathari creed. Indeed, on the occasion of their spirited defence at Mantinum against the soldiers of their common foe, Constantius, the Catholics were so filled with admiration at their heroism, that had the Novatianists themselves been willing to unite, it is strongly conjectured that they would have received them again into communion. As it was, so closely were the two parties drawn together by the Arian persecutions, that the Catholics worshipped in Novatian churches, and at the Synod of 383, the orthodox Patriarch Nectarius and the

Novatian Patriarch Agelius defended the Homoousian doctrine side by side. The influence the Cathari exerted in the East over public thought is evidenced by the following fact given by Socrates, who was himself supposed to have been a follower of Novatian, and which throws a strong side-light upon the history of auricular confession. In order to prevent Puritan scrutiny, a presbyter was set apart by the bishop to hear privately the confessions of those among the lapsed who were desirous of partaking of Holy Communion, in order that he might, as seemed advisable to him, allow or forbid their doing so; but in the time of Nectarius (390), so grave a scandal arose from this custom, that it was entirely put a stop to, and the inquirers were left to follow their own judgment in the matter—a wise conclusion, which it is to be regretted all our Churches to-day do not imitate.

During the following century the Novatianists continued to flourish. Bishop succeeded bishop at Constantinople of their following. The whole Christian community of Thyatira at one period were said to be wholly Puritan ; but as the position of the Church of Christ gradually changed in consequence of the cessation of imperial persecution, and discipline concerning the lapsed therefore became an obsolete question, other sins, in the place of apostasy, began to be regarded as an insuperable bar to communion. This, it may be imagined, gave rise to numerous differences in the Puritan ranks, with the inevitable consequence that many fresh sects sprang into existence, each united to the parent stem of Novatianism; but although some of these became unsound and erratic in doctrine and practice, yet a small and insignificant stream of Christianity, wholly separate from the main body of the visible Church, permeated the centuries, not entirely undeserving the ancient name still retained; and there are those among the most thoughtful and esteemed theologians of our day who behold in the persecuted sects of the Middle Ages, especially in those of the Waldenses and Albigenses, the spiritual descendants of the Cathari of the third century. Nay, further, standing beside the quiet resting-place of a Richard Baxter, or in the sacred precincts of the Bedford jail, they trace backward through buried ages the line of a spiritual ancestry of martyrs which links the Puritan of to-day to a genealogy as remote as it is honourable. [M. A.] NOVICE. A probationer in a religious community. See MONASTERIES and NUNNERIES. NUNCIO (Latin, nuntius, a messenger).—The nuntius apostolicus, or nuncio, is a permanent diplomatic agent representing the Pope of Rome politically at the Court or seat of govern

ment of any state willing to receive him. He differs from a legate, whose mission is temporary only, and whose powers are greater.

In England regular diplomatic relations with the Pope were broken off at the Reformation, and have never been resumed. Indeed, from the Reformation up to 1848, it seems to have been considered illegal for the Sovereign to hold friendly relations with the Pope in any capacity. By the Bill of Rights (1689) it was enacted "that all and every person or persons that is, are, or shall be reconciled to, or shall hold communion with the See or Church of Rome" should be excluded from the throne. In 1848, however, it having been doubted whether our Sovereign could not treat with the Pope as a temporal prince, an Act was passed (11 & 12 Vict. c. 108) enabling Queen Victoria to establish and maintain (under certain conditions) diplomatic relations with the Sovereign of the Roman States. Under this Act, no diplomatic agent from Rome could be received at the Court of London who was in Holy Orders of the Church of Rome, or a Jesuit, or a member of any Order of the Church of Rome bound by monastic or religious vows. Since 1870, when the Pope's temporal power was taken away, there has been no 66 'Sovereign of the Roman States" other than the King of Italy; so the Act of 1848 having become obsolete, it was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act, 1875. The law on the subject of reconciliation with the Pope therefore seems to stand in the same position as prior to 1848 (Whitehead on Roman Catholic Disabilities). [B. W.] NUNS and NUNNERIES.-A nunnery (Fr. nonnerie) is a house in which nuns reside. A nun (Gr. vovvos, a monk; vovva, a nun; from Coptic or Egyptian nane, nanu, good, beautiful) is "a woman devoted to a religious life who lives in a cloister or nunnery, secluded from the world, under a vow of perpetual chastity" (Webster).

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Long before the monastic life was known in the Christian Church, it had its ascetics, female as well as male, the female known as virgines Deo sacrata ("virgins dedicated to God"), or 'ecclesiastical virgins," regularly enrolled as such, self-devoted to the life of holy charity among the poor and sick; consecrated to their office by the bishop before whom they made their vows, receiving at his hands the habit of their Order-the veil (sacrum velamen), the sombre-coloured mantle, and a kind of coronet, gold-embroidered. But, unlike the later monastic virgins, they lived with their families, though in retirement, and for a long time their vows were not so strict as to make marriage afterwards a cause of reproach against those who had taken such VOWS.

The tonsure of virgins was not permitted in the Church for centuries. These and other differences prove that Christian monasticism is not in its origin and development Christian at all, but heathen, almost certainly Egyptian; having more in common with the communities who lived entirely secluded from the world in the Serapis temples of Egypt than with ascetics, male and female, of the Church's first centuries. The Romish nun does not find her pattern or model among the holy women who ministered to our Blessed Lord, or His apostles, co-workers and helpers, or Dorcas and her companions, or "the widows" in 1. Tim, v. 1-12; whilst Tertullian (A.D. 160-240) tells us of Christians in his time: 'We are not Indian Brahmins or Gymnosophists, dwellers in woods, or exiles from life; . . . we sojourn with you in the world" (Apol., xlii.). The De Singularitate Clericorum, ascribed to Cyprian, illustrates the general dissatisfaction occasioned by the proposal for monastic insulation when first made towards the close of the third century.

As the change from asceticism to monasticism took place concurrently, and in much the same mode among the female ascetics as among the male, so the corruptions, attempted abortive reformations, and dissolutions of monasteries and nunneries all through the centuries run in parallel lines. The indictment of history, loud and persistent, against the whole conventual system, mainly consists of two counts-immorality and cruelty. In our day and country it is mainly on the latter point that the demand for State inspection of nunneries is based.

The cruelties of the conventual system are not merely contingent or dependent on the caprices and tempers of superiors within doors and windows closed against the light of public opinion. Cruelty, as Englishmen understand the word, is of the very law of the system. Liguori tells us, p. 26, Spouse of Christ: "I have been accustomed to say that a religious in her convent enjoys a foretaste of Paradise, or suffers an anticipation of hell." For the discontented nun "in a word, it is to be in continual torture without a moment's peace." But is there no "cruelty" for the "contented" nun? In page 186 we read: "Disciplines or flagellations are a species of mortification . . . universally adopted in religious communities of both sexes. . . . Surely it would not be too much for you to take the discipline (scourging) once in the day, or at least three or four times a week. However, the practice of this penance should be regulated by the confessor." From this it is plain that instruments of torture are in use ("regulated by the confessor ") in every convent in the United Kingdom. The Syllabus of Pius IX., no less

than the Tridentine Fathers, declares absolute seclusion without the leave of the bishop an essential law: those who try to escape and fail are to be punished as apostates, while even the Civil Government is forbidden under any circumstances to aid such.

Three great litterateurs, so far apart as De Foe, Walter Scott, and Rider Haggard, have recorded their conviction that inmates of nunneries are subjected from time to time to the same atrocious penalty (immurement) as the Roman Vestals who broke their vows. See Scott's own note to the lines in Marmion:

And now that blind old Abbot rose,

To speak the Chapter's doom,
On those the wall was to enclose,
Alive, within the tomb."

De Foe, in his Memoirs of an English Officer, by Captain George Carleton, tells of two nuns who had been regrettably persuaded by two English officers to quit their vows, but the two nuns were taken, "and, as in like offences, condemned directly to the punishment of immuring." But "the Earl of Peterborough, though highly exasperated with his officers. after a great deal of labour, first got the penalty suspended, and, at last, though with great reluctance, got them received again into the nunnery." In a note to Montezuma's Daughter, first and second edition, Mr. Haggard, speaking in his own person, wrote: "Lest such cruelty should seem impossible and unprecedented, the writer may mention that in the Museum of the city of Mexico he has seen the dessicated body of a young woman in the walls of a religious building. With it is the body of an infant. . . . There can be no doubt as to the manner of her death. . . . Such, in those days, were the mercies of religion." In the Pall Mall Gazette, 1894, a lengthy correspondence was raised by a Jesuit Father who protested against this footnote. In the result Mr. Haggard, whilst acknowledging he has found "no proof that so barbarous a punishment was ever enforced at any rate in this country," insists that "The immurement in Montezuma's Daughter is supposed to have occurred in Spain, where, as I presume, the most ardent defenders of the Inquisition will admit, cruelties as great, or greater, were in those days commonly practised in the name of religion." For a summary of this correspondence, with testimonies of eye-witnesses, see W. L. Holland's Walled-up Nuns, chaps. iii.-vi.

...

Even here in the United Kingdom, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, facts and records have leaped to light proving that the system, left to itself, is irreclaimable, and illustrating the imperative necessity that exists that nunneries, as all other institutions in the

land, should be under inspection by the State. It is the leading journal (again we quote no Protestant partisan) that wrote, discussing one of these cases: "It is only now and again we get a glimpse at the interior of one of these ecclesiastical shambles. A gust of wind raises for a moment the edge of the pall, and we see the festering rottenness hidden beneath its dark folds. . . . The novelist, or the poet, cannot outdo reality, when he endeavours to depict the terrors under which the tenants of these dismal abodes of superstition are bent to the will of their spiritual superiors" (The Times, July 27, 1848). Again, respecting Saurin v. Starr case, 1868: "Feminine ingenuity seemed almost to exhaust itself in devices for doing that which a Nero or a Tiberius would not have done more terribly, but yet in one day."

We are not unmindful of the good that can be set to the account of workers belonging to this system, but we insist that such good is in spite of the system, and has been always in proportion to the measure in which the light of public, especially Protestant, opinion was brought to bear upon its working. And when we are assured that the monastic life as organised by the Church of Rome is cultivated in abodes that are simply homes of happiness and holiness, among many others we venture to quote two witnesses so widely apart as the late Rev. Hobart Seymour, and the late Pope Pius IX.

"If nuns were indeed so happy, there was no necessity for such lofty walls to keep them there. . . . If all was a type of heaven, it seems strange to have such bars of iron and such gratings of iron to compel these spirits of holiness to remain in the enjoyment of it. . . . It is nothing else than rank hypocrisy to say that these lofty walls and iron bars are designed for any other purpose than the enforced constraint and imprisonment of the inmates” (Pilgrimage to Rome, p. 179).

The late Pope, discussing with an English Roman Catholic bishop the dissolution of monasteries, convents, &c., in Italy, said: "It was the devil's work; but the good God will turn it into a blessing, since their destruction was the only reform possible to them" (Rev. R. R. Suffield in Modern Review, vol. ii. p. 359, April 1881). See ASCETICISM, MONASTICISM, MONK. [T. C. O'C.]

0

OATH.—An appeal to God in testimony of the truth of any statement. In consequence of the prohibitions against swearing in Matt. v. 34, and James v. 12, some Christian sects (e.g. the Quakers and Moravians) decline to take

any oath, even in a Court of justice. The Church of England, according to her XXXIX. Articles, considers that the prohibition relates only to "vain and rash swearing," and holds that "a man may swear when the magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the prophet's teaching, in justice, judgment, and truth" (see Jer. iv. 2; Matt. xxvi. 63, 64; Rom. i. 9; 2 Cor. i. 23; Gal. i. 20; Rev. x. 5, 6). By the Oaths Act, 1888, a solemn affirmation is permitted, instead of an oath, to any person stating that taking an oath is contrary to his religious belief, or that he has no religious belief. OBLATES.-Properly offered, applied to children dedicated to the monastic life and trained up in monasteries-then to persons, laymen, or in later times secular priests, dedicated to some special work or service. A number of such congregations of priests pledged to perform various works exist under different titles in the Church of Rome, such as the oblates of the B.V. and St. Ambrose, Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

OBLATIONS. Oblations are the offerings

of bread and wine, or fruits, brought every Sunday by the first Christians to their minister for the social meal called Agape, out of which bread and wine sufficient for the administration of the Holy Communion were selected, the remainder being eaten at the meal.

Down at least to the commencement of the Middle Ages (the ninth century) all the faithful were bound to bring their offerings. If they did not, they were reproved, as guilty of meanness (Cyprian, De Op. et Eleemos.; Regino, De Discipl. Eccles.).

The officer, whether deacon, priest, or bishop, separated from the rest the bread and wine required for the sacramental use, and placed them on the Lord's Table without any form of oblation (until after the twelfth century), while a short anthem, called "Offertorium" was sung. If by mistake too much of the bread and wine thus offered was consecrated, the surplus was eaten and drunk by the boys of the church school at Constantinople, or at Jerusalem was cast into the fire and burnt. The remainder of the oblations, which had not been consecrated, went to make the midday or evening meal of Agape, or if there were no Agape, they were divided in stated proportions among the bishops, presbyters, deacons, and minor clerics. Hence, it is interesting to remark, our rubric that "if any of the bread and wine remain unconsecrated, the curate shall have it to his own use ;" and hence, too, the practice (though its pedigree is more difficult to trace) of giving blessed bread to non-communicants after a

Mass, still witnessed in Continental Cathedrals.

Besides being types and symbols of the body and blood of Christ, the bread and wine were, in the estimation of the whole Church down to the middle of the third century, a gift of homage to God for His goodness in supplying to us the necessaries of life. Justin Martyr represents the bread and wine as offered "in memorial of our food, both dry and liquid," and "that we may thank God for having created the world with all the things therein for the sake of man," as well as in memorial of the Passion (Dial. cum Tryph.) Irenæus' teaching is that as we show honour and affection to a king (according to Eastern customs) by making him a gift of homage, so we make oblations to God of the fruits of the earth in token of our gratitude to Him for supplying us with necessary sustenance. And this is the new oblation of the new covenant (in contrast to the oblations under the old covenant); when this oblation in gratitude for temporal mercies has been completed, we proceed to participate in the bread and wine as emblems of the body and blood of Christ (Haer., iv. 17; see also Fragm. Secund.). In like manner the " Teaching of the Apostles," earlier than Justin and Irenæus, regards the Eucharist as an offering of thanksgiving made in joyous acknowledgment of God's goodness and power in giving food to support man's life, and in supplying spiritual sustenance to Christians (ch. x.). It was not till the time of Cyprian (A.D. 250), that the idea of the oblation of bread and wine being a gift of homage to the Creator for supplying us with food and drink, was divorced from the Eucharist.

Oblations were at first made chiefly in kind, but afterwards were changed into money contributions. The alms for the poor, collected at the administration of the Holy Communion, represent those oblations that were in excess of what was wanted for sacramental use, and the bread and wine used for consecration is now the only relic of the old oblations in kind. The rubric orders that they shall be provided at the cost of the parish, just as the original oblations were brought by every well-to-do member of the congregation, which, owing to changes that have occurred, is no longer possible.

After consecration there is no oblation. After the idea became prevalent that Christ Himself was being offered to His Father by the priest, it became necessary to introduce one. Accordingly, in the Roman Mass, there are two oblations, termed popularly the Lesser Oblation (the memorial offering before consecration), and the Greater Oblation (the supposed offering of Christ Himself after the consecra