laws, however, in the present age, are not enforced; and by the statute of 53 George III. ch. 160, the words in italics were omitted, the legislature thinking, perhaps, that spiritual offences should be left to be punished by the Deity, and not by human statutes. Campbell's Prel. Diss., vol. i. p. 395; Robinson's Script. Plea, p. 58.

AGAINST

BLASPHEMY THE HOLY GHOST. See UNPARDONABLE SIN.

BLOOD, EATING OF, is differently viewed among Christians; some maintaining that its prohibition, in the Scriptures, is to be regarded as merely ceremonial and temporary; while others contend that it is unlawful, under any circumstances, and that Christians are as much bound to abstain from it now, as were the Jews under the Mosaic economy. This they found on the facts,-that when animal food was originally granted to man, there was an express reservation in the article of the blood; that this grant was made to the new parents of the whole human family after the flood, consequently the tenure by which any of mankind are permitted to eat animals is in every case accompanied with this restriction; that there never was any reversal of the prohibition; that most express injunctions were given on the point in the Jewish code; and that in the New Testament, instead of there being the least hint intimating that we are freed from the obligation, it is deserving of particular notice, that at the very time when the Holy Spirit declares, by the Apostles, (Acts xv.) that the Gentiles are free from the yoke of circumcision, abstinence from blood is explicitly enjoined, and the action thus prohibited is classed with idolatry and fornication. It was one of the grounds alleged by the early apologists against the calumnies of the enemies of Christianity, that so far were they from drinking human blood, it was unlawful for them to drink the blood even of irrational animals. Numerous testimonies to the same effect are found in after ages. See under FOOD. BOARDS, SACRED. Small pieces of board struck together, for the purpose of assembling the people to worship, before the invention of bells. To the present day the Catholics use such boards in Passion-week and Lent, because the noise of bells they consider to be unsuitable to the solemnity of the season. On the first day of Easter the bells

ring again, to excite to cheerfulness and joy.

BODY OF DIVINITY. See THEO

LOGY.

BOGOMILI, OR BOGARMITÆ, a sect of heretics which arose about the year 1179. They held that the use of churches, of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and all prayers except the Lord's Prayer, ought to be abolished; that the baptism of Catholics is imperfect; that the persons of the Trinity are unequal, and that they often made themselves visible to those of their sect.

BOHEMIAN BRETHREN. The name of a Christian sect, which arose in Bohemia, about the middle of the fifteenth century, from the remains of the Hussites. Dissatisfied with the advances made towards popery, by which the Calixtines had made themselves the ruling party in Bohemia, they refused to receive the compacts or articles of agreement between that party and the Council of Basle (November 30, 1433); and began about 1457, under the direction of a clergyman of the name of Michael Bradatz, to form themselves into separate parishes, to hold meetings of their own, and to distinguish themselves from the rest of the Hussites by the name of Brothers, or Brothers' Union; but they were often confounded by their opponents with the Waldenses and Picards, and, on account of their seclusion, were called Cavern-hunters. Amidst the hardships and sufferings which they suffered from the Calixtines and the Catholics, without offering any resistance, their numbers increased so much, through their constancy in belief, and the purity of their morals, that in the year 1500, their parishes amounted to two hundred, most of which had chapels belonging to them. The peculiarities of their religious belief are exhibited in their confessions of faith, especially their opinions in regard to the Lord's Supper. They rejected the idea of transubstantiation, and admitted only a mystical spiritual presence of Christ in the eucharist. On all points they professed to take the Scriptures as the ground of their doctrines, and for this, but more especially for the constitution and discipline of their churches, they received the approbation of the Reformers of the 16th century. This constitution they endeavoured to model according to the accounts which they could collect respecting the primitive churches. They aimed at the re

storation of the primitive purity of Christianity, by the exclusion of the vicious from their communion; by the careful separation of the sexes; and by the distribution of their members into three classes: the beginners, the proficients, and the perfect. Their strict system of superintendence, extending even to the minute details of domestic life, contributed much towards promoting this object. To carry on their system they had a multitude of officers, of different degrees, as bishops, seniors and conseniors, presbyters or preachers, deacons, ædiles, and acolytes, among whom the management of the ecclesiastical, moral, and civil affairs of the community was judiciously distributed. Their first bishop received his ordination from a Waldensian bishop, though their churches held no communion with the Waldenses in Bohemia. They were destined, however, to experience a like fate with that oppressed sect. When, in conformity to their principle not to perform military service, they refused to take up arms in the Smalcaldic war against the Protestants, Ferdinand took their churches from them; and, in 1548, one thousand of their society retired into Poland and Prussia, where they at first settled at Marienwerder. The agreement which they entered into at Sentomir, April 14th, 1570, with the Polish Lutherans and Calvinistic churches, and, still more, the Dissenters' Peace Act of the Polish Convention, 1572, obtained toleration for them in Poland, where they united more closely with the Calvinists under the persecutions of the Swedish Sigismund, and have continued in this connexion to the present day. Their brethren who remained in Moravia and Bohemia, recovered a certain degree of liberty under Maximilian II., and had their chief residence at Fulneck, in Moravia, and hence have been called Moravian Brethren. The issue of the Thirty Years' War, which terminated so unfortunately for the Protestants, occasioned the entire destruction of their churches, and their last bishop, Comenius, who had rendered important services in the education of youth, was obliged to flee. From this time they made frequent emigrations, the most important of which took place in 1712, and occasioned the establishment of the New Brethren's Church by Count Zinzendorf.

Though the Old Bohemian Brethren must be regarded as now extinct, this

society deserves ever to be had in remembrance, as one of the principal guardians of Christian truth and piety, in times just emerging from the barbarism of the dark ages; as a promoter of a purity of discipline and morals, which the Reformers of the sixteenth century failed to establish in their churches; and as the parent of the widely-extended association of the United Brethren, whose constitution has been modelled after theirs.

BOLLANISTS, a society of Jesuits in Antwerp, which published, under the title of Acta Sanctorum, the traditions and legends of the Saints. They received this name from John Bolland, who first undertook to digest the materials already accumulated by Heribert Roswey.

BONZES, priests of the religion of Fo, in Eastern Asia, particularly in China, Birmah, Tonkin, Cochin-China, and Japan. Living together in monasteries, unmarried, they greatly resemble the monks of corrupt Christian churches; the system of their hierarchy also agrees, in many respects, with that of the Catholics. They do penance, and pray for the sins of the laity, who secure them from want by endowments and alms. The female bonzes may be compared to the Christian nuns, as the religion of Fo admits of no priestesses, but allows of the social union of pious virgins and widows, under monastic vows, for the performance of religious exercises. The bonzes are commonly acquainted only with the external forms of worship, and the idols, without understanding the meaning of their religious symbols.

BOOK OF SPORTS. See SPORTS.

BORRELLISTS, a Christian sect in Holland, so named from their founder Borrel, a man of great learning in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. They reject the use of the sacraments, public prayer, and all other external acts of worship. They assert that all the Christian churches of the world have degenerated from the pure apostolic doctrines, because they have suffered the word of God, which is infallible, to be expounded, or rather corrupted, by doctors who are fallible. They lead a very austere life, and employ a great part of their goods in alms.

BOUNTY, QUEEN ANNE'S, the profits of the first-fruits and tenths, which were anciently given to the Pope, transferred in the reign of Henry VIII. to the

king, and restored to the church by Queen Anne, who caused a perpetual fund to be established from the revenue thus raised, which was vested in trustees for the augmentation of poor livings under 50l. a year. This has been further regulated by subsequent statutes; but as the number of livings under 507. was at the commencement of it 5597, averaged at 231. per annum, its operation is very slow.

BOURIGNONISTS, the followers of Antoinette Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle, in 1616. At her birth she was so deformed, that it was debated some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of which are entitled, "The Light of the World," and "The Testimony of Truth." In her confession of faith, she professes her belief in the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ. She believed also that man is perfectly free to resist or receive divine grace; that there is no such thing as foreknowledge or election; that God is ever unchangeable love towards all his creatures, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishment; but that the evils they suffer are the natural consequence of sin; that religion consists not in outward forms of worship nor systems of faith, but in an entire resignation to the will of God, and those inward feelings which arise from immediate communion with God. She held many extravagant notions, among which, it is said, she asserted that Adam, before the fall, possessed the principles of both sexes; that in an ecstasy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state; as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that everything was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory; that Christ has a twofold manhood; one formed of Adam before the creation of Eve, and another taken from the Virgin Mary; that his human nature was corrupted with a principle of rebellion against God's will: with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like a hermit, and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland. She died at Franeker, in the

province of Frise, October 30, 1680. Her principal patrons were Christian Bartholomew, a Jansenist priest at Mechlin, and Peter Poinet, who employed a surprising genius and no uncommon sagacity to dress out the reveries of fanaticism. In his "Divine Economy," he reduced the substance of Bourignon's fancies to a regular form. Dr. Garden of Aberdeen attempted to introduce them into Scotland, and wrote an apology in their favour, or at least laboured to spread it. He was condemned and deposed by the General Assembly, in 1701. If we may believe Dr. Kippis, she had more disciples in Scotland than in any other country perhaps in the world.

BOY BISHOP, THE. Anciently, on the 6th of December, it being St. Nicholas's Day, the choir boys in cathedral churches chose one of their number to maintain the state and authority of a bishop, for which purpose the boy was habited in rich episcopal robes, wore a mitre on his head, and bore a crosier in his hand; and his fellows, for the time being, assumed the character and dress of priests, yielded him canonical obedience, took possession of the church, and, except mass, performed all the ecclesiastical ceremonies and offices. Though the boy bishop's election was on the 6th of December, yet his office and authority lasted till the 28th, being Innocents' Day. It appears from a printed church book, containing the service of the boy bishop set to music, that at Sarum, on the eve of Innocents' Day, the boy bishop and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing versicles as they walked into the choir by the west door, in such order, that the dean and canons went foremost, the chaplains next, and the boy bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves on each side of the choir upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bore the incense and the book, and the petitcanons the tapers, according to the Romish rubric. Afterwards the boy bishop proceeded to the altar of the Holy Trinity, and All Saints, which he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, while his priests were singing. Then they all chanted a service, with prayers and responses, and the boy bishop taking his seat, repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles, and in conclusion gave his be

nediction to the people, the chorus answering, Deo Gratias. Having received his crosier from the cross-bearer, other ceremonies were performed; he chanted the compline; turning towards the choir, delivered an exhortation; and last of all said, "Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus." By the statutes of the church of Sarum, for the regulation of this extraordinary scene, no one was to interrupt or press upon the boy bishop and the other children during their procession or service in the cathedral, upon pain of anathema. It further appears that at this cathedral the boy bishop held a kind of visitation, and maintained a corresponding state and prerogative; and he is supposed to have had power to dispose of prebends that fell vacant during his episcopacy. If he died within the month, he was buried like other bishops in his episcopal ornaments, his obsequies were solemnized with great pomp, and a monument was erected to his memory, with his episcopal effigy. About one hundred and fifty years ago, a stone monument to one of these boy bishops was discovered in Salisbury cathedral, under the seats near the pulpit, from whence it was removed to the north part of the nave between the pillars, and covered over with a box of wood, to the great admiration of those who, unacquainted with the anomalous character it designed to commemorate, thought it" almost impossible that a bishop should be so small in person, or a child so great in clothes." Mr. Gregorie found the processional of the boy bishop. He notices the same custom at York; and cites Molanus as saying, "that this bishop in some places did reditat census, et cassones anno accipere,―receive rents, cassons, &c. during his year." He relates that a boy bishop in the church of Cambray disposed of a prebend, which fell void during his episcopal assumption, to his master; and he refers to the denunciation of the boy bishop by the council of Basil, which, at the time of the holding of that council, was a well-known custom. Mr. Gregorie, who was a prebendary of Salisbury, describes the finding of the boy bishop's monument at that place, and inserts a representation of it in his treatise. The ceremony of the boy bishop is supposed to have existed not only in collegiate churches, but in almost every parish in England. He and his companions walked the streets in public procession. A statute of the col

legiate church of St. Mary Overy, in 1337, restrained one of them to the limits of his own parish. On December 7, 1229, the day after St. Nicholas's Day, a boy bishop in the chapel at Heton, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, said vespers before Edward I. on his way to Scotland, who made a considerable present to him and the other boys who sang with him. In the reign of King Edward III. a boy bishop received a present of nineteen shillings and sixpence for singing before the king in his private chamber on Innocents Day. Dean Colet, in the statutes of St. Paul's school, which he founded in 1512, expressly ordains that his scholars should, every Childermas (Innocents') Day, come to Paulis churche and hear the chylde bishop's sermon: and after be at the hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the chylde bishop; and with them the maisters and surveyors of the scole." By a proclamation of Henry VIII. dated July 22nd, 1542, the show of the boy bishop was abrogated; but in the reign of Mary it was revived, with other Romish ceremonials. A flattering song was sung before that queen by a boy bishop, and printed. It was a panegyric on her devotion, and compared her to Judith, Esther, the queen of Sheba, and the Virgin Mary. The accounts of St. Mary at Hill, London, in the 10th Henry VI., and for 1549, and 1550, contain charges for the boy bishops of those years. At that period his estimation in the church seems to have been undiminished; for on November 13, 1554, the bishop of London issued an order to all the clergy of his diocese to have boy bishops and their processions; and, in the same year, these young sons of the old church paraded St. Andrew's, Holborn, and St. Nicholas of Olaves, in Bread-street, and other parishes. In 1556, Strype says, that the boy bishops again went abroad singing in the old fashion, and were received by many ignorant but well-disposed persons into their houses, and had much good cheer.

BOYLE'S LECTURES, a course of eight sermons, preached annually; set on foot by the Honourable R. Boyle, by a codicil annexed to his will, in 1691, whose design, as expressed by the institutor, is to prove the truth of the Christian religion against infidels, without descending to any controversies among Christians, and to answer new difficulties, scruples, &c. For the support of this lecture he

assigned the rent of his house in Crooked Lane, to some learned divine within the bills of mortality, to be elected for a term not exceeding three years. But, the fund proving precarious, the salary was ill paid; to remedy which inconvenience, Archbishop Tennison procured a yearly stipend of 501. for ever, to be paid quarterly, charged on a farm in the parish of Brill, in the county of Bucks. To this appointment we are indebted for many excellent defences of natural and revealed religion.

BRANDENBURG, CONFESSION OF. A formulary or confession of faith, drawn up in the city of Brandenburg by order of the elector, with a view to reconcile the tenets of Luther with those of Calvin, and to put an end to the disputes occasioned by the Confession of Augsburg. See AUGSBURG CONFESSION. BRETHREN, THE TWELVE. See MARROWMEN.

BRETHREN AND SISTERS OF THE FREE SPIRIT, an appellation assumed by a sect which sprung up towards the close of the thirteenth century, and gained many adherents in Italy, France, and Germany. They took their denomination from the words of St. Paul, Rom. viii. 2, 14, and maintained that the true children of God were invested with perfect freedom from the jurisdiction of the law. They held that all things flowed by emanation from God; that rational souls were portions of the Deity; that the universe was God; and that by the power of contemplation they were united to the Deity, and acquired hereby a glorious and sublime liberty, both from the sinful lusts and the common instincts of nature, with a variety of other enthusiastic notions. Many edicts were published against them; but they continued till about the middle of the fifteenth century.

BRETHREN AND CLERKS OF THE COMMON LIFE, a denomination assumed by a religious fraternity towards the end of the fifteenth century. They lived under the rule of St. Augustin, and were said to be eminently useful in promoting the cause of religion and learning. BRETHREN, WHITE, were the followers of a priest from the Alps, about the beginning of the fifteenth century. They and their leader were arrayed in white garments. Their leader carried about a cross like a standard. His apparent sanctity and devotion drew together a number of followers. This de

luded enthusiast practised many acts of mortification and penance, and endeavoured to persuade the Europeans to renew the holy war. Boniface IX. ordered him to be apprehended, and committed to the flames; upon which his followers dispersed.

BRETHREN, UNITED. See MoRAVIANS.

BREVIARY, daily office, or book of divine service, in the Romish church. It is composed of matins, lauds; first, third, sixth, and ninth vespers; and the Compline or Post-communio: i. e. of seven different hours, on account of that saying of David: "Seven times a day will I praise thee;" whence some authors call the breviary by the name of Hora Canonica-Canonical Hours.

The breviary of Rome is general, and may be used in all places: but on the model of this have been built various others, appropriated to each diocese, and each order of religious; the most eminent of which are those of the Benedictins, Bernardins, Carthusians, Carmelites, Dominicans, and Jesuits; that of Cluni, of the church of Lyons, of the church of Milan, and the Mozarabic breviary used in Spain.

The breviary of the Greeks, which they call by the name of 'gwλóyiv (horologium) Dial, is the same in almost all the churches and monasteries that follow the Greek rites. The Greeks divide the Psalter into twenty parts, called Kabioμara (Sedilia) Seats, because they are a kind of pauses or rests. In general, the Greek breviary consists of two parts; the one containing the office for the evening, called MovÚTIO; the other that of the morning, divided into matins, lauds ; first, third, sixth, and ninth vespers, and the compline.

The institution of the breviary not being very ancient, there have been inserted in it the Lives of the Saints, full of ridiculous and ill-attested stories, which gave occasion to several reformations of it by several councils, particularly those of Trent and Cologne; by several popes, particularly Pius V., Clement VIII., and Urban VIII.; as also by several cardinals and bishops; each lopping off some extravagances, and bringing it nearer to the simplicity of the primitive offices.

Originally every person was obliged to recite the breviary every day; but by degrees the obligation was reduced to the clergy only, who are enjoined, under