in the church of Rome, the office or prayers used at the celebration of the eucharist; or, in other words, consecrating the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and offering them, for transubstantiated, as an expiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead. As the mass is in general believed to be a representation of the passion of our blessed Saviour, fo every action of the priest, and every particular part of the service, is supposed to allude to the particular circumstances of his passion and death.

The general division of masses consists in high and low. The first is that sung by the choristers, and celebrated with the assistance of a deacon and sub-deacon; low masses are those in which the prayers are barely rehearsed without singing.

There are a great number of different or occasional masses in the Romish church, many of which have nothing peculiar but the name: such are the masses of the saints; that of St Mary of the snow, celebrated on the fifth of August; that of St Margaret, patroness of lying-in women; that of the feast of St John the Baptist, at which are said three masses; that of the Innocents, at which the glory in excelsis and the hallelujah are omitted, and it being a day of mourning the altar is of a violet colour. As to ordinary masses, some are said for the dead, and, it is supposed, contribute to fetch the soul out of purgatory. At these masses the altar is put in mourning, and the only decorations are a crois in the midst of six yellow wax-lights: the drefs of the celebrant and the very mass-book are black: many parts of the office are omitted, and the people are dismissed without the benediction. If the mass be said for a person distinguished by his rank or virtues, it is followed with a funeral oration: they erect a chapelle ardente, that is, a representation of the deceased, with branches and tapers of yellow wax, either in the middle of the church, or near the deceased's tomb, where the priest pronounces a solemn absolution of the deceased. There are likewise private masses, said for stolen or strayed goods or cattle; for health; for travellers, &c., which go under the name of votive masses. There is still a further distinction of masses denominated from the countries in which they were used; thus the Gothic mass, or missa mosarabum, is that used among the Goths when they were masters of Spain, and which is still kept up at Toledo and Salamanca; the Ambrosian mass is that composed by St Ambrose, and used only at Milan, of which city he was bishop; the Gallic mass, used by the ancient Gauls; and the Roman mass, used by almost all the churches in the Romish communion.