CATECHISM A form of instruction by means of questions and answers. There have been various catechisms published by different authors, but many of them have been but ill suited to convey instruction to juvenile minds. Catechisms for children should be so framed as not to puzzle and confound, but to let the beams of divine light into their minds by degrees. They should be accommodated as far as possible to the weakness of their understandings; for mere learning sentences by rote, without comprehending the meaning, will be but of little use. In this way they will know nothing but words: it will prove a laborious task, and not a pleasure; confirm them in a bad habit of dealing in sounds instead of ideas; and after…

DIRECTORY A kind of regulation for the performance of religious worship, drawn up by the assembly of divines in England, at the instance of the parliament, in 1644. It was designed to supply the place of the Liturgy, or Book of Common Prayer, the use of which they had abolished. It consisted 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 substance of it is as follows:--It forbids all salutations and civil ceremony in the churches;--the reading the scriptures in the congregation is declared to be part of the pastoral office;--all the canonical books of the old and…

CREED A form of words in which the articles of faith are comprehended. The most ancient form of creeds is that which goes under the name of the Apostles' Creed (see below;) besides this, there are several other ancient forms and scattered remains of creeds to be met with in the primitive records of the church; as, 1. The form of apostolical doctrine collected by Origen.--2. A fragment of a creed preserved by Tertullian.--3. A remnant of a creed in the works of Cyprian.--4. A creed composed by Gregory Thaumaturgus for the use of his own church.--5. The creed of Lucian, the martyr.--6. The creed of the apostolical constitutions. Besides these scattered remains of the ancient creeds, there are extant some perfect forms, as those…

CONFESSION OF FAITH A list of the several articles of the belief of any church. There is some difference between creeds and confessions. Creeds in their commencement were simply expressions of faith in a few of the leading and undisputed doctrines of the Gospel. Confessions were on the contrary the result of many an hazardous and laborious effort, at the dawn of reviving literature to recover these doctrines, and to separate them from the enormous mass of erroneous and corrupted tenets, which the negligence or ignorance of some, and the artifices of avarice and ambition in others, had conduced to accumulate for a space of 1000 years, under an implicit obedience to the arrogant pretensions of an absolute and infallible authority in the church of…

ANALOGY OF FAITH Is the proportion that the doctrines of the gospel bear to each other, or the close connexion between the truths of revealed religion, Rom. 12:6. This is considered as a grand rule for understanding the true sense of scripture. It is evident that the Almighty doth not act without a design in the system of Christianity any more than he does in the works of nature. Now this design must be uniform; for as in the system of the universe every part is proportioned to the whole, and made subservient to it, so in the system of the Gospel all the various truths, doctrines, declarations, precepts, and promises, must correspond with and tend to the end designed. For instance, supposing the glory…

BIGOTRY Consists in being obstinately and perversely attached to our own opinions; or, as some have defined it, "a tenacious adherence to a system adopted without investigation, and defended without argument, accompanied with a malignant intolerant spirit towards all who differ." It must be distinguished from love to truth, which influences a man to embrace it wherever he finds it; and from true zeal, which is an ardour of mind exciting its possessor to defend and propagate the principles he maintains. Bigotry is a kind of prejudice combined with a certain degree of malignity. It is thus exemplified and distinguished by a sensible writer. "When Jesus preached, prejudice cried, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Crucify him, crucify him, said bigotry. Why? what…