Liturgy

Liturgy is sometimes used as including any form of public worship, but more strictly it denotes the form for the observance of the Eucharist. As development from the simple form of their institution in the primitive Church liturgies assumed various forms, and only by degrees certain marked types began to prevail: viz., the Roman, ascribed to St. Peter, in Latin, and prevailing in the Roman Catholic Church all over the world; the Ephesian, ascribed to St. John, in corrupt Latin, included the old Scottish and Irish forms, heard now only in a few places in Spain; the Jerusalem, ascribed to St. James, in Greek, the form of the Greek Church and in translation of the Armenians; the Babylonian, ascribed to St. Thomas, in Syriac, used still by the Nestorians and Christians of St. Thomas; and the Alexandrian, ascribed to St. Mark, in a Græco-Coptic jargon, in use among the Copts; these all contain certain common elements, but differ in order and in subsidiary parts; the Anglican liturgy is adapted from the Roman; other Protestant liturgies or forms of service are mostly of modern date and compiled from Scripture sources.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)