CONCORDANCE A dictionary or index to the Bible, wherein all the leading words are ranged alphabetically, and the books, chapters, and verses wherein they occur referred to, to assist in finding out passages, and comparing with the several significations of the same word. Cardinal Hugo de St. Charo seems to have been the first who compiled a concordance to the Holy Scriptures; and for carrying on this work, it is said, he employed 500 monks to assist him. Rabbi Mordecai Nathan published a Hebrew concordance, printed at Venice in 1523, containing all the Hebrew roots, branched into their various significations, and under each signification all the places in Scripture wherein it occurs; but the best and most useful Hebrew concordance is that of Buxtorf, printed…

COMMENTARY An exposition, book of annotations or remarks. There are some people so wise in their own conceit, and think human helps of so little worth, that they despise commentaries on the Scriptures altogether: but every student or preacher whose business is to explain the sacred oracles, to make known the mind of God to others, to settle cases of conscience, to oppose the sophistry of sceptics, and to confound the arguments of infidels, would do well to avail himself of the most judicious, clear, copious, critical, and sound commentaries on the Bible. Nor can I suppose that commentaries can be useless to the common people, for though a spirit of serious enquiry, with a little good sense, will go a great way in understanding…

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…