Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/19

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arrangements to which I have just referred; but it is also unquestionable that, in process of time, a symbolic meaning was attached to each part of the Church. Thus we are told by old writers, and by some moderns who favour them, that the great tripartite division of a Church into nave and aisles was meant to symbolize the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, that the cruciform shape set forth the mystery of our redemption, that the chancel and nave typified respectively the Church triumphant and the Church militant. Indeed, the symbolism of ecclesiastical architecture did not confine itself to the essential arrangements and principal features of a Church, but extended itself to its minutest details.