DIRECTORY

A kind of regulation for the performance of religious worship, drawn up by the A embly of Divines in England, at the instance of the parliament, in the year 1644. It was designed to supply the place of the Liturgy, or Book of Common Prayer , the use of which the parliament had abolished. It consisted only of some general heads, which were to be managed and filled up at discretion; for it prescribed no form of prayer or circumstances of external worship, nor obliged the people to any responses, excepting Amen . The use of the Directory was enforced by an ordinance of the Lords and Commons at Westminster, which was repeated August 3rd, 1645. By this injunction, the Directory was ordered to be dispersed and published in all parishes, chapelries, donatives, . In opposition to this injunction, King Charles i ued a proclamation at Oxford, November 13th, 1645, enjoining the use of the Common Prayer according to law, notwithstanding the pretended ordinances for the new Directory. To give a short abstract of the Directory: It forbids all salutations and civil ceremony in the churches. The reading the Scripture in the congregation is declared to be part of the pastoral office. All the canonical books of the Old and New Testament (but none of the Apocrypha ) are to be publicly read in the vulgar tongue. How large a portion is to be read at once is left to the minister, who has likewise the liberty of expounding , when he judges it nece ary. It prescribes heads for the prayer before sermon; among which part of the prayer for the king is, to save him from evil counsel . It delivers rules for managing the sermon ; the introduction to the text must be short and clear, drawn from the words or context, or some parallel place of Scripture; in dividing the text, the minister is to regard the order of the matter more than that of the words; he is not to burden the memory of his audience with too many divisions, nor perplex their understandings with logical phrases and terms of art; he is not to start unnece ary objections; and he is to be very sparing in citations from ecclesiastical, or other human writers, ancient or modern. The Directory recommends the use of the Lord’s Prayer, as the most perfect model of devotion. It forbids private or lay persons to administer baptism, and enjoins it to be performed in the face of the congregation. It orders the communion table at the Lord’s supper to be so placed that the communicants may sit about it. The dead, according to the rules of the Directory, are to be buried without any prayers or religious ceremony. The Roman Catholics publish an annual Directory for their laity, which serves the purpose of a book of reference in matters of ceremonial as settled by their communion.— Brought on.