V. WORSHIP, LIFE, DISCIPLINE AND MORALS.
§ 55. Worship in General.
Christian worship freed by Constantine from the pressure of persecution developed a great wealth of forms with corresponding stateliness of expression. But doctrinal controversies claimed so much attention that neither space nor time was left for carrying the other developments in the same way through the fire of conflict and sifting. Hence forms of worship were left to be moulded in particular ways by the spirit of the age, nationality and popular taste. The public spirit of the church, however, gave to the development an essential unity, and early differences were by and by brought more and more into harmony. Only between East and West was the distinction strong enough to make in various ways an impression in opposition to the levelling endeavours of catholicity.
The age of Cyril of Alexandria marks an important turning point in the development of worship. It was natural that Cyril’s prevailing doctrine of the intimate connection of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ should have embodied itself in the services of the church. But this doctrine was yet at least one-sided theory which did not wholly exclude its perversion into error. In the dogma, indeed, thanks to the exertions of Leo and Theodoret, the still extant Monophysite error had no place given it. But in the worship of the church it had embedded itself, and here it was not overcome, and its presence was not even suspected, so, it could now not only develop itself undisturbed in the direction of worship of saints, images, relics, of pilgrimages, of sacrifice of the mass, etc., but also it could decisively deduce therefrom a development of dogmas not yet established, e.g. in the doctrine of the church, of the priesthood, of the sacraments, especially of the Lord’s Supper, etc., etc.