(Jos., xv, 11, 45) and then to Dan (Jos., xix, 43). Juda conquered it for a time (Judg., i, 18), but it fell again into the hands of the Philistines. who brought here the captive ark of the covenant after it had passed through Azotus and Geth (I K., v, 10). It came near being reconquered by Israel after the defeat of Goliath (1 K., vii, 14). The city possessed a famous sanctuary of Beelzebub (IV K., i, 2, 3, 6, 10), and was often denounced by the prophets (Jer., xxv, 20; Am., i, 8; Soph., ii, 4; Zach., ix, 5). King Alexander Bales gave the city to Jonathan Machabeus (I Mach., x, 89). Robinson identified it with the village Akir, a station on the railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem.
Hagen, Lexicon Biblicum (Paris, 1905); Guerin in Dict. de la Bible (Paris, 1895).
Accentus Ecclesiasticus, the counterpart of concentus. In the ancient Church music all that portion of the liturgical song which was performed by the entire choir, or by sections of it, say two or three singers, was called concentus. Thus hymns, psalms, and alleluias were, generally speaking, included under the term concentus. On the other hand. such parts of the liturgy as the priest, or the deacon, or subdeacon, or the acolyte sang alone were called accentus; such were the Collects, the Epistle and Gospel, the Preface, in short anything which was recited chiefly on one tone, rather than sung, by the priest or one of his assistants. The accentus should never be accompanied by harmonies, whether of voices or of instruments, although the concentus may receive an accompaniment. The words Gloria in excelsis Deo and Credo in Unum Deum, being assigned to the celebrant, should not be repeated by the choir or accompanied by the organ or other musical instrument.
Acceptance, in canon law, the act by which one receives a thing with approbation or satisfaction. The collation of a benefice is not complete till it has been accepted by him on whom it has been conferred. Acceptance is the link between the benefice and the benefited. It is therefore necessary to accept the benefice, to have jus in re; till the acceptance, there is at most a jus ad rem. (See Right.) Acceptance is needed for the validity of an election. If the person chosen be absent, a specified time may be given for acceptance, and a further time may be allowed to obtain the confirmation of the election to an office. Acceptance is of the essence of a gift, which, in law, means a gratuitous transfer of property. Delivery of personal property with words of gift suffices; if delivery is not made, a deed or writing under seal should be executed and delivered. For the transfer of real property, a deed is generally necessary. In all cases acceptance is necessary to make the transfer binding in law.
Acceptance of a law is not necessary to impose the obligation of submission. Even in a democracy, where the organized people may, or should, take part in the preparation and making of the laws, it may not refuse to accept and to obey the laws when made and promulgated. Otherwise the legislative authority would be a mockery, and all governmental power would vanish. We are not now posing the question whether an unjust law is binding; nor are we discussing how far either custom or desuetude may take away the binding force of a law; both may imply the assent of the law-making power. Acceptance by the faithful is not required for the binding force of ecclesiastical laws. The Apostles received from Christ the power of binding and loosing, and the hierarchy (i.e. the Pope, bishops and other prelates) have inherited this power, as has always been recognized in the Church. In the Catholic Church the law-making power established by Christ will ever have the authority to make laws previous to, and independent of, the acceptance of the faithful. If bishops or other prelates should enact a law contrary to the canons, there is the remedy or an appeal to the highest authority of the Church for its annulment. Wyclif attacked this authority when he proclaimed, in the fifteenth thesis condemned by the Council of Constance and Martin V, that "no one was a temporal prince, or prelate, or bishop, who was in mortal sin." Huss (ibid., Prop. 30) declared that "ecclesiastical obedience was an invention of the priests of the Church, and outside the authority of Scripture." Luther, in the proposition condemned (1521) by the University of Paris, taught that neither pope nor bishop nor any one among men has the right to impose on a Christian a single syllable without his full acceptance; anything otherwise done is in the spirit of tyranny. The Jansenists favoured the theory that the authority of the bishops and Pope was representative of the will of the whole body of the Church; hence Clement XI, in 1713, condemned the 90th proposition of Quesnel: "The Church has the power to excommunicate, to be used by the chief pastor, with the (at least presumed) consent of the whole body." Against a natural or divine law, no custom or desuetude can avail for the cessation of obligation. From a merely ecclesiastical law either custom or desuetude may withdraw the obligation, wherever they may properly imply the assent of the lawmaking power in the Church. (See Law, Custom.)
D'Avino, Enc. dell' Ecclesiastico (Turin, 1878); Andre-Wagner, Dict. de droit can. (3d ed., Paris, 1901); Didiot in Dict. de théol. cath. (Paris, 1903), s.v.
Acceptants, those Jansenists who accepted without any reserve or mental restriction the Bull Unigenitus, issued in 1713 against the Jansenist doctrines as set forth in the Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament of the Oratorian, Pasquier Quesnel. As is well known, the error of Jansenius gave rise to two conflicts in the Church: the first, early in the second half of the seventeenth century, centred about his book Augustinus, and ceased with the Pax Clementina, also called the paix fourrée or False Peace (l669); the second, which began with the eighteenth century, was waged around the above-mentioned work of Quesnel. The peace too hastily granted by Clement IX was favourable to Jansenism. The doctrine took deep root in the French Parliaments and affected several religious orders, Benedictines, Fathers of Christian Doctrine, Genevievans, and especially Oratorians. Attention was called to the spread of the heresy by the success of the Réflexions morales. This work, published as a small volume in 1671 with the approval of Vialart, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne, had been steadily enlarged in succeeding editions until, in 1693, it numbered four compact volumes bearing always the approbation of Vialart, who died in 1680. De Noailles, the new Bishop of Châlons, sanctioned the work in 1695, but the following year, as Archbishop of Paris, he condemned it. The edition of 1699 was published without the changes demanded by Bossuet, without the preface which he composed for it, and without the approval of the diocesan bishop. The following year (2 July, 1700) the anonymous work Problème ecclésiastique, etc., and the controversies to which it gave rise, again drew attention to the peril of Jansenism. At the Assembly of the French Clergy, in the same year, Bossuet brought about the condemnation of four Jansenist propositions and of 127 others of lax morality. After the death of Bossuet (1704), Fénelon led the contest against Jansenism and especially against the distinction between "fact" and "right" (fait et droit). Finally, at the request of Louis XIV, and following the example of his predecessors,
