^ PRINCETON, N. J. BX 5145 .E4 1896 Eland, Edwin Harding. The layman's introduction td ulf the Book of Common Prayer THE LAYMAN'S INTRODUCTION TO €&e l6ook of Common ptaper Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/laymansintroductOOelan ctit m a: mpnttflo ^ imr * fony eb the Hunterian Library Glasgow Date aSeul I33C THE LAYMAN'S INTRODUCTION TO Wljt 38ooit of Common draper BEING A SHORT HISTORY OF ITS DEVELOPMENT BY THE REV. EDWIN H. ELAND, M.A. BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD WITH FACSIMILE LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 1896 All rights reserved PREFACE It has been my aim, in writing the following pages, to produce a book at once reliable, short, and clear, which should help to a sound under- standing of the Book of Common Prayer. My experience of the requirements of the public schools, and indeed of the educated laity generally, seems to show that nothing is so much needed in order to complete and justify the general appre- ciation of the beautiful Services of the Church of England, as some knowledge of the history of those Services, and of the principles and causes which have guided their development. In my attempt to supply this need, I have tried to put the assured results of the most recent criticism in as brief and clear a form as possible. Although the title of this Introduction would appropriate its use to lay people, it is hoped that the clergy also may find it useful in their teaching, and that it will be found sufficiently complete and accurate for use in the ordinary curriculum of theological colleges and elsewhere. I have, wherever possible, gone to original authorities for information ; but I have also availed myself of the latest modern research which seemed vi Preface. to bear upon the subject, especially of the recent works, in French or German, by M. Batiffol and M. Duchesne, and by Professors Bickell, Thalhofer, and Harnack ; as well as of the well-known standard works of English authors. In this con- nection I have to thank two friends for most kindly reading the manuscript before it went into the printer's hands, and for making many valuable suggestions — the Rev. Dr. Barmby, Vicar of North- allerton, late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Principal of Hatfield Hall, Durham; and the Rev. W. H. Frere, of Radley. I can scarcely venture to hope, in dealing with a subject so wide and so full of many different kinds of difficulties — historical, theological, litur- gical, and antiquarian — that I have altogether succeeded in avoiding mistakes. But if this Intro- duction should stimulate further interest, and lead to a greater appreciation of a Book already dear to so many thousands of Englishmen and English- women in all parts of the world, its end will have been in a great measure fulfilled, and the pleasant labour of its composition well repaid. E. H. E. Dorking, April, 1896. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGF I. The Contents of the Prayer-Book ... i II. The Forms of Early Christian Worship . 4 III. The Canonical Hours 13 IV. How Christianity in our Island fell under Roman Influence 20 V. English Uses and Service-Books before the Reformation 28 VI. The English Primer 37 VII. Tendencies to Reform in the Reign of Henry VIII 45 VIII. The "Order of the Communion" ... 52 IX. The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. . 55 X. The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. — Continued 65 XI. The Prayer-Book of 1552 70 XII. The Crown and the Puritans 80 XIII. The Puritan Ascendency, and the Direc- tory for Public Worship 91 viii Contents. CHAPTER PACE XIV. The Savoy Conference 98 XV. The Psalms and Canticles 116 XVI. The Collects and other Prayers .... 126 XVII. The Creeds 136 XVIII. The Calendar and Lessons — Ember Days — Rogation Days and Litany 151 XIX. The Communion Office 162 XX. A Few Prayer-Book Terms not explained in the Preceding Pages 174 Index 185 CHAPTER I. THE CONTENTS OF THE PRAYER-BOOK. A GLANCE at the title-page of the book which is known as the " Book of Common Prayer " will show what a large field of inquiry is opened out to any one who thoughtfully considers the meaning of the various terms which are there employed. It is the Book not only of Common Prayer — that is, the book containing the forms according to which the " common " or " public " worship of the Church of England is carried on (as distinct from private prayer) in her daily services of Mattins m t and Evensong ; but it is, besides, the service-books book providing for the due performance thePrayer- of many other public religious offices. It is the book of the " administration of the Sacra- ments " — the Sacraments which are recognized as universally necessary by the Church of England, namely, Baptism and the Holy Communion ; pro- viding, in fixed forms, from which the minister may not depart, everything which is essential to the right administration of these ordinances. It contains also forms for " other rites and ceremonies," such 2 The Contents of the Prayer-Book. as those needed for Confirmation, or for Marriage, or for the Visitation and Communion of the Sick ; or such forms as those for the Burial of the Dead, for the Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth ; for the service appointed for Ash-Wednesday, the first day of Lent, called the Commination Service ; or for the commemoration of the sovereign's Acces- sion to the throne. All these the title-page of the Prayer-book speaks of as " rites and ceremonies of the Church." Not, be it observed, " rites and ceremonies of the Church of England ; " for such rites and ceremonies belong properly to the Universal Church. But they are printed here in the particular form adopted in our own branch of the Universal Church, " according to the Use of the Church of England." The Prayer-book contains also a translation, in English, of the Hebrew Psalter, or Psalms, portions of which are appointed to be sung or said at Morning or Even- ing Prayer, and which are here provided for this purpose or for separate devotional uses. It con- tains also the forms to be followed in ordaining the clergy to their various offices — " the Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." And besides all this, we find in the Prayer-book various Prefaces, which explain why alterations have been made in the book itself and in the ceremonies with which it is concerned ; various tables, such as those of the proper Lessons, or readings from The Contents of the Prayer-Book. 3 the Bible, which are to be used day by day in the Morning and Evening Prayer ; a Calendar, show- ing the Festival days of the Christian year ; rules for finding Easter Day and the other Festivals ; the so-called Athanasian Creed ; the Litany ; Prayers and Thanksgivings for use on particular occasions, such as the prayers for candidates to be ordained, for rain, for fine weather, etc. Bound up with the Prayer-book proper are also the Thirty-nine Articles, which summarize the theological views of the Church nine Articles of England, as distinguished from system of those of other religious bodies in d00trme - England at the end of the sixteenth century. It is not unimportant to notice that all these various services, prayers, tables, etc., are now col- lected together in one book ; for, as we shall see, in the days before printing was invented, the materials for each different office formed a separate volume, the Communion Service being contained in one book, the Service for the Burial of the Dead in another, and so on ; so that right up to the time of the Reformation a parish church or a cathedral required a small library of books before it was properly equipped for performing every service that might be required. CHAPTER II. THE FORMS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. The first requisite for understanding the Prayer- book of the Church of England is to know that its offices are the products of development. They grew up naturally with the Church, and are not the arbitrary compilations of one man or of one set of men. Their origin is contemporaneous with Christianity itself, and they represent the religious devotion, not of one particular century, but of many centuries. We have seen that the Prayer-book contains many different offices. Let us first take those which are the most familiar of all — the Communion Office and the Offices for Morning and Evening Prayer — and try to under- stand where they came from, and why they have taken the particular shape that they have taken. Now, to do this we must go right back to the very beginning of Christianity — to those times of the infant Church in Jerusalem which fl^comected came immediately after our Lord's as- wlth Judaism. . , , . , , . cension, and which are spoken about in the Acts of the Apostles. We must remember that The Forms of Early Christian Worship. 5 the Apostles were Jews, and that our Lord Himself had been a constant attendant both at the syna- gogue-worship of the various towns in Palestine and at the temple-worship in Jerusalem. It is only natural, then, that the Apostles, so long as they remained in Jerusalem, continued to visit the temple and to join in its worship after our Lord's departure from them. We read in Acts ii. 46 that they continued "daily with one accord in the temple." We gather also that they kept up the habit of every devout Jew, of praying at fixed hours in the day. Daniel, in his captivity at Babylon, three times" a day " kneeled upon his knees, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God " (Dan. vi. 10). Devout Jews, after their return from the Exile, still kept up the traditions of their country- men, and sang their praises " seven times a day " (Ps. cxix. 164). And so the Apostles probably kept certain hours for prayer, such as we find marked very clearly a few centuries later. The third hour was that at which they were all gathered together in one place, when the Holy Ghost descended upon them (Acts ii. 1, 15); the sixth hour was that at which Peter went up upon the house-top to pray (Acts x. 9) ; the ninth hour, "the hour of prayer," was that at which Peter and John went up together to the temple (Acts iii. 1). The other early Christians in Jerusalem can have done no other than follow the example of the Apostles themselves, and, though the 6 The Forms of Early Christian Worship. morning and evening sacrifices of the temple had not the same significance to Christians after the Crucifixion — the One Sacrifice for sins — yet the Christians did apparently join also in the services of prayer and praise which were offered on the occasion of these sacrifices. Now, the synagogues of Jerusalem and of the rest of the world throughout which the Jews were dispersed had not this distinct national character which the temple-worship possessed. The synagogue-worship admitted of more or less adaptation to local circumstances, and christian even to peculiarities of belief. So, synagoeues. while the early christians in Jerusalem took part in the temple services, they preached in the synagogues everywhere their own belief that the old Jewish dispensation had been fulfilled in Christ. 1 As time went on, the Christians became numerous enough to form synagogues {i.e. " congregations," avvayu-yai 2 ) of their own, and it is in them, accordingly, that we must look for the earliest forms of Christian worship. Here, probably, in the Christian synagogues, but along the lines of public worship which had been observed for many ages, we must look for the origin of the offices of prayer and praise such as 1 See St. Paul's sermon in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia (Acts xiii. 14, sq.). * St. James (Epist. ii. 2)'uses this term of an assembly of Christians. But eK/c\ij(ri'a is the word more generally used, Jewish appellations being for the most part avoided. The Forms of Early Christian Worship. 7 those which developed into the Morning and Evening Prayer of the English Church. The Office introductory to the Eucharist bears signs of a similar origin. The celebration of the Eucharist was an element entirely new to the Jew, though he was familiar, from his own meal offering, or Mincha, with the idea of a sacrifice unconnected with blood. Instead of the bleeding victims and the smoking altars of the temple-worship, which had looked forward to a perfect Offering for sin, ar.d which were but types of a perfect Sacrifice (Heb. x. 12); and which, moreover, could be offered only while the temple stood ; a new sacrifice, com- memorative and not prospective, was now offered by the Christian Church — the unbloody sacrifice of the Eucharist, around which gathered a ritual of its own. Of what did the synagogue-worship consist, which was the basis of Mattins and Evensong, and of the preparatory part of the Eucharistic , TT , , . . , , Elements of Office? We know that it contained four the synagogue- elements. There were readings aloud from the sacred books : first from the Law, that is, from the Books of Moses ; and then from the Prophets, that is, from the other books of what we call the Old Testament. Besides these lections, or " lessons," there was chanting of Psalms ; there was generally a homily, delivered by some teacher of the synagogue, the subject of which was fur- nished by the previous reading ; and there was 8 The Forms of Early Christian Worship. prayer in common, either silent, or led by some one present. These four elements — reading aloud from the Scriptures, singing of Psalms, a homily or sermon, and prayers — formed the usual sabbath- day course of the synagogue service, and could be adopted without difficulty by the Christian com- munities. 1 As time went on, and the Apostolic Epistles came into existence, passages from these were read aloud as well as from the Old Testa- ment ; and the Gospels, as they in time appeared, with the record of our Lord's own acts and words, furnished another source of instruction to which a place of the highest dignity was accorded. We must be careful at this point to notice the two different directions in which the development of Christian worship proceeds. On the one hand, we Communion . office con- find the Euchanstic rite combining ele- nected with m m Passover ments of this synagogue-worship with others derived from the Passover ritual and so forming the Communion Service, or Liturgy 2 1 Three of these elements — reading, exhortation, and prayer — are mentioned by Justin Martyr, about A.D. 150 (Apol. Major., sub Jin.), as forming part of the Sunday observances of Christians (to a.7rofiv7j^.oP€vfxaTa twv aTrofrr6\wv ra cvyy paixfxaT a tuv Trpo Sejrt _ and the ninth, and the hours of rising None - and going to bed, the whole cycle of the day and night must be completed and enforced by rule, provision being made only for needful rest. Thus, from a custom originally followed in private devotion, came the offices of Terce, Sext, and None, with Nocturns, and urns ' the other hours completing the daily cycle. It had been the custom among Christians, probably from the very first Easter dawn, to keep the night before Easter Day in solemn Originofthe vigil. As the destroying angel had vieiL entered the houses of the Egyptians in the night of the first Passover, while the Hebrews stood with their loins girded for the march, so Christ would come in the middle of the night, and it behoved His followers to be ready for 16 The Canonical Hours. His advent. 1 And as Sunday, the day after the Jewish sabbath, was the day on which Christ had risen from the tomb, and was always kept as a weekly festival commemorating that event, so also the Easter vigil came to be kept on the eve of every Sunday. But must not men who are devoted to the religious life spend each day looking for the Lord's coming ? This question was answered by keeping this nightly vigil, though in a modified form, not merely once in the year, or on the eve of every Sunday, but on the eve of every day. From its being held in the night, the office of this vigil was called Nocturns, and its open- ing portion, separating from the rest, became the origin of the evening service known as Vespers. 2 But, the vigil over, the day could not begin without prayer. As soon as the dawn appeared the watchers broke forth into the Psalms of the dawn — the Laudate Dominum(" O praise the Lord of heaven "), the " O God, Thou art my God : early will I seek Thee," the "Glory to God in the highest," in praise and thanksgiving for the daylight. Thus arose the Office of Lauds. The Office of Prime was first, it is said, observed 1 St. Jerome, Comment, in Matt. iv. 25. * So Batiffol, Histoire du Breviaire Romain, p. 4. A recent authority, however, connects Vespers with the ceremony of " light- ing the lamps" for the agape, or supper in the evening (Church Quarterly, January, 1896). The Canonical Honrs. 17 in the monastery of Bethlehem, where the ten- dency of the brethren to sleep after their earlier devotions was curbed by this fresh service imposed by the sternness of their Order. 1 It came after Nocturns. Again, Vespers could not end the day, for the evening meal came after Vespers. Hence arose naturally an office to complete the day, to ... r . . — , . Compline. be said just before retiring to rest. This office received the name Completorium (Compline) in the monastic rule of St. Benedict, and with it the cycle of the hours was complete. It must be clearly understood that the whole of this cycle was not observed by the Churches outside of monastic rules. In the latter the daily services were simpler and less numerous, though the tendency of the secular clergy was always to emulate the zeal of their monastic brethren. But in many of these Eastern monasteries, especially in those of Egypt, the observance of the hours went on with little interruption throughout the whole day, during the course of which the whole Psalter would be sung through. 2 1 See Cassian, Instil., iii. 4, where, however, prima liora does not necessarily refer to this office, though the custom referred to certainly led to a service at daybreak. Cassian was in Bethlehem a.d. 390-403. It has been argued lately, with some reason, that Prime and Compline were both developments of Italian, not of Eastern, monasteries (Church Quarterly, January, 1896). 4 Cassian, Instil., iii. 2, 3 ; cf. Baumer, Geschichte des Breviers, p. 127. C i8 The Canonical Hours. When we consider that each psalm was followed by a prayer, and that there were frequent readings from Scripture interspersed throughout, it becomes obvious that little leisure for other pursuits was allowed by these monastic offices. In Western Europe they were soon cut down, princi- spreaito pally owing to the influence of Benedict the West. r „ * . ? , , , of Nursia, 1 under the patronage of the Roman see. The monastic system of the East had spread into other Christian Churches. Many of the monasteries which existed in Italy during the fifth century had become lax in discipline. It was Benedict's work to reform them, and to arrange their daily offices into a shape which put less strain upon human capacities. In the rules which he drew up for his monasteries (about A.D. 530) the Psalter was apportioned in such a way that, instead of being said through once a day, it was spread out over the seven days of the week. This short- ened form of the daily offices came in Mediaeval The secular times to be called the Breviarium, when cop?" the a ^ that was necessary for the perform- monastic. ance 0 f ^ hours was comprised in a single volume. 2 It was the basis, not only of the monastic rule for all Latin-speaking countries, but 1 Not to be confused with Benedict of Aniane, who lived in Gaul towards the close of the eighth century (died a.d. 821), and whose influence over the Gallican monasteries was almost as great as that of his earlier namesake over those in Italy. 2 The name " Breviary " is not found till the eleventh century. The Canonical Hours. 19 also of the secular Breviary, i.e. the Breviary used in ordinary churches. It was from the Nocturns, Lauds, and Prime of the secular Mediaeval Breviary that, at the Refor- mation, our present Order for Morning Prayer was constructed ; the Evening Prayer, in like manner, coming from a combination of the Offices of Vespers and Compline. Augustine doubtless brought this secular Bre- viary and the Gregorian Sacramentary with him from Rome to England. He had been head of the monastery of St. Andrew on the Ccelian Hill, in Rome, a monastery founded by Pope Gregory, who is well known to have favoured Benedict's Rule. Consequences so important are connected with this matter that, at the risk of an apparent digression from our real subject, we must, in the next chapter, enter upon some consideration of the early history of the English Church, so as to understand how it fell under Roman influence. CHAPTER IV. HOW CHRISTIANITY IN OUR ISLAND FELL UNDER ROMAN INFLUENCE. While Christianity was growing to a settled life in the great Churches of the Roman world, in Palestine and Asia Minor, in Greece and Egypt, in Northern Africa and Italy, in Gaul and Spain, uncertain who wnat was ^ e con dition of our own island? mTss'oiries Who first brought Christianity to Britain to Britain. we probably never know, though mediaeval fable ascribed its introduction either to Joseph of Arimathaea or to St. Paul himself. The Roman occupation of Britain lasted for about four hundred years after Christ, and it is at least probable that the religion which gained a footing in the very Praetorium at Rome was represented here during the early part of that period. But of British Christianity, even in the second century, we have no clear testimony, though the channel of communication between Gaul and Britain, kept open by the Romans, must have allowed the zeal of Gallic Churches to overflow into Britain in missionary enterprise. There is a story of Lucius, Growth of Roman Influence. 21 a British king at the end of the second century, sending to the Bishop of Rome an entreaty that he might be made a Christian ; x and though the origin of this story can be traced to Rome some three centuries later, it may indicate the presence of Christian influence in Britain at the earlier period. In the fourth century, the Church in Britain seems to be established. Three British bishops are present at the Council of British Chrla . Aries (A.D. 314), and take the orthodox tia ""^ the side in the Arian controversy. 2 Hilary centur y- of Poitiers, in 358, congratulates his British brethren on their freedom from all contagion of this detest- able heresy. Athanasius, Chrysostom, Jerome, all speak of British orthodoxy 3 in a way which shows that the British Church had attained in the fourth century a respectable position. Now, what liturgical forms were in use in Britain ? So few traces are to be found, that to answer the question we have to go further back to ask what forms the missionaries them- Br found^don By selves used, for these would naturally become the forms to be observed by their British converts. They can hardly have been other than Gallican. As the missionaries came from Gaul, in 1 Bede, Hist. Eccl., i. 4. * Arius lived A.D. 256-336. He was a presbyter in the Church of Alexandria, who held the heretical view that Christ was of a different substance (ovaia, " essence ") from the Father, having been created by Him. 5 See Dr. Bright's Chapters of Early English History, p. 12. 22 Growth of Roman Influence. which country the Gallican Liturgy prevailed, the British Use must have been, at any rate, based upon that Use, though it probably had certain peculi- arities of its own. 1 Now, about the middle of the fifth century occurred the displacement of the Britons by the English — that is, by tribes of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons — who, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the Romans and of the defenceless state of the Britons, landed on the eastern and southern coasts British chris- °f Britain and overran the country. So "^I'yby the pitiless and sweeping was this invasion, English. that the g reater part 0 f t he island was plunged into heathenism again, and every trace of Christianity was swept away. This is the period of the legendary British King Arthur, who sought — " To crush the heathen and uphold the Christ." The Britons who escaped took refuge, some in Armorican Gaul, others in the parts now called Wales and Cornwall, and in the far north in Cumberland, where their Christianity still lived on. But for the rest of the island, now occupied by the English, Woden and Thor and the rest of the Scandinavian deities held for a time unhindered The cem c sway. The conversion of the English to Missions. Christianity came, not from the feeble remnants of the British Church, but from other sources. The north owed its Christianity to St. 1 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i. p. 141. Growth of Roman Influence. 23 Aidan, who came from a monastery founded by the Irish monk Columba, on the little island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. The south owed its Christianity, in part at least, to the well- known mission of St. Augustine from Rome (A.D. 597). But by far the greatest influence in the island were those Celtic Missions which had been started by St. Columba forty years before St. Augus- tine landed in Kent, and which Aidan now carried on. 1 These Irish or Celtic missionaries worked from the centre of the little island of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland ; and the Liturgy used by them (which was of close kin to the Gallican Liturgy used, as we suppose, by the earliest British Church) thus found its way into many of the Anglo-Saxon Churches. On the other hand, St. Augustine used the Roman form of Liturgy, and, as time went on, conflicts arose between the two Uses. But there were other points at issue between the British, or Celtic, and the English Churches. Three in particular are mentioned 2 in Differencea which the Britons were schismatical : c^™ 6 ^ (1) in their observance of Easter; (2) in Romanrituai. their form of the tonsure ; (3) in their mode of administering Baptism. The last difficulty, which probably referred to the question of one or three 1 For striking testimony to this effect, see the Romanist writer Montalembert, Les Moi?ies d? Occident, IV. v. p. 127. 1 Bede, Hist. EccL, ii. 2, 24 Growth of Roman Influence. immersions, 1 and the second also, might possibly have been overcome ; the first was more serious. Many of the early Christians in Asia were " quarto-decimans ; " that is, they reckoned Easter from the Jewish Passover, the fourteenth day of the moon, on whatever day of the week it might happen to fall. The other view, observed by the Roman Church, saw an appropriateness in keeping Easter always on the first day of the week, that having been the day of the Lord's resurrection. And that this Sunday might come as near as possible to the actual anniversary, i.e. to the Jewish Passover-time, the Roman Church fixed it as the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon, or next after, the 21st day of March. The Britons, apparently, were not " quarto-decimans," for they always kept Easter on a Sunday, but they followed an old cycle which the progress of astronomical science had shown to be inaccurate, and which led then, to discrepancies with the rest of Christendom, which were expressly forbidden by the Council of Nicaea. It was impossible for such differences to exist long side by side, and it is without surprise that we notice during the history of the next few 1 Bede's words are, ut ministerium baptizandi complcatis, which have been interpreted by some authorities (e.g. Lingard, A.-S. Church, i. 69, 322) to refer to the Roman custom of completing the baptismal rite immediately by the ceremony of Confirmation. Grozvth of Roman Influence. 25 centuries the growing influence of the Roman party. They were the evangelists of the now dominant race within the island, and the Roman political advantages that this position ore ^^ tion of itself involved were furthered by their superior organization and by a far-seeing states- manship to which the Britons were total strangers. As early as 602 a conference had been held by Augustine at Augustine's Oak, 1 in order to adjust differences between himself and British Aug . us tine'B bishops, and had ended in the latter 0ak ' rejecting his proposals. Sixty-two years later we find a missionary of Celtic origin and training advocating the Roman claims. Wilfred, trained in the monastery of Lindisfarne, under St. Aidan himself, had afterwards travelled to Rome, where he learned the more accurate way of calculating Easter, and fuller rules of monastic discipline. At the Conference of Whitby, held in 664, conference of his arguments on the disputed points Wnitby - proved unanswerable, and King Oswy and the majority of the assembly gave their votes against the Celtic usages. In Kent and the south, Roman customs already prevailed, and by this conference the northern part of the island also came under Roman influence. Henceforth it would be to Rome that men would look to settle important matters. So, in 668, when a new consecration was 1 Probably on the Severn, near Bristol. (For the date, see Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. p. 40.) 26 Growth of Roman Infltimce. required to the archbishopric of Canterbury, Oswy King of Northumbria and Egbert King of Kent, agreed in sending a man to Rome to be consecrated. The man whom they selected died in Rome ; and the Pope, casting about for a successor, chose Theodore, a monk of the Greek Church (668). The choice was in some respects a fortunate one, Theodore f° r Theodore was a man of enormous pZo'w practical ability. To him we owe the system, consolidation of the various missions of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and the foundations of our parochial system. But with him came, naturally, further relations with Rome, which became still closer as time went on. By the Council of Clovesho 1 (September, 747), at which all branches of the Anglo-Saxon Church were represented, the Celtic usages were finally put aside. The decisions of this Council mark the triumph of the well-ordered Roman discipline. No priest or council of ecclesiastical community was henceforth ciovesho. to chant or read Psalms or Scripture outside of the "common use ; " but only that "per- mitted by the custom of the Roman Church." 2 In this way the British, or most ancient Liturgy, which had been used in this island, was supplanted by that in which Roman influence prevailed. It is certain that there were still British Churches, 1 Probably Clyff-at-Hoe, near Rochester. 2 Fifteenth Canon of Council of Clovesho. Growth of Roman Influence. 27 especially in Wales, which stood outside of the movement represented by this Council ; but, one by one, they adopted Roman customs, and came under the prevailing rule. In 874 there was a Saxon Bishop of St. David's who was consecrated from Canterbury. Later, we find Welsh Eomail in . bishops in ecclesiastical disputes appeal- P reme C fn S the ing to Rome. And finally, at the begin- oountr y- ning of the twelfth century, the Archbishop of Canterbury claims, without serious dispute, the whole of Wales as being within his ecclesiastical province. CHAPTER V. ENGLISH USES AND SERVICE-BOOKS BEFORE THE REFORMATION. THUS, then, Roman influence was established throughout England. Yet it must not be sup- posed that the English Church grew up without the characteristics which made it a National Church. Augustine is represented by Bede as writing to the Pope for advice in dealing with liturgical Augustine's questions arising in England from the difference between the Gallican and questions. Roman Uses. And the famous passage in Pope Gregory's answer to St. Augustine, which is quoted by Bede, 1 declares that " things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things." He, therefore, advises Augustine to " select from the Roman, or Gallican, or any other Church, those things which are pious, religious, and correct ; to make these up into one body, and instil them into the minds of the English 1 Bede, Hist. Eccl., i. 27. Pre- Reformation Service-Books. 29 for their use." 1 Now, whether this letter was really written to Augustine or not, 2 it beyond doubt expresses what really happened with regard to the services of the English Church. They were not merely copies of the Roman services. " They abound in Gallican details," says a modern Romanist writer. 3 In spite of the uniformity aimed at by the Council of Clovesho, there was sufficient latitude allowed in minor details to constitute truly " English " Uses, which became more definite as time went on. A " Use " means the par- r "Uses." ticular arrangement of prayers, psalms, readings, and ceremonial used by any individual Church in its services. Every great cathedral had its own way of celebrating, not only the occasional offices, but those of the " Hours " and of the Eucharist itself. To some extent, dis- similarity between the Uses of different Churches 1 Greg., Op., ii. 1151 (Bened. edit.). 2 It has been questioned lately by the Abbe Duchesne {Origines du Citlte Chretien, p. 94), who points out that St. Boniface caused Gregory's letter to be looked for in the archives at Rome in 745, and was unable to find it ; and who thinks that the indifference expressed is distinctly against Gregory's ordinary practice, and more likely to be due to Theodore. Even if the abbe is right— which, however, there is every reason to doubt — he only proves that, if the letter was a later fabrication, and not written to Augustine, these liturgical changes took place in spite of the Pope. For Gregory's " indifference " on matters of ritual, cf. his views on single immersion in the Spanish Church, though the Roman custom was to immerse three times in baptism. Regist. Epist., i. Ep. 43 (Migne). * Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chretien, p. 93. 30 Pre- Reformation Service-Books . was unavoidable, for every bishop had the ordering of Divine worship in his own diocese, and there was no such unconscious fixity, and uniformity of language, such as has followed from the inven- tion of printing. In Italy, the great Church of Milan maintained an entirely separate Liturgy, which has lasted till to-day, in spite of its proximity to Rome ; and in this island, before the Norman Conquest, the Cathedrals of St. Paul's in London, of Lincoln, Hereford, Bangor, Exeter, Aberdeen, York, and Salisbury, possessed Uses of more or less celebrity, which probably were fol- lowed in the parish churches throughout their own dioceses. Pre-eminent among these English Uses was that of Sarum, or Salisbury. Great inconvenience and Thereof even irregularity arose from the Use of sarum. one Church being different from that of another. Osmund, a nephew of William the Con- queror, who was Bishop of Salisbury during the years 1078 to 1099, set himself to remodel the offices of his own diocese, in the hope of remedy- ing this confusion. He was at pains to secure the help of men skilled in liturgical studies ; and for the Cathedral of Old Sarum he established an " Ordinal," i.e. a book which showed what service was proper on a particular occasion ; and also a " Consuetudinarium," prescribing the special forms by which such a service was to be accompanied. This work of St. Osmund underwent revision Pre-Reformation Service-Books. 3 1 about 150 years later. In 1225 the cathedral was removed from Old to New Sarum, and it was probably about this time, during the bishopric of Richard Poore, that the Sarum Offices received their final shape for the new cathedral. 1 This was the famous " Sarum Use," which prevailed in most of the dioceses of England up to the time of the Reformation. This Sarum Use consisted of (1) the Portiforinm, or Breviaritim, containing the daily services of the canonical Hours ; (2) the Missal, or Mass-book, containing the Office of the Mass, or Holy Communion ; (3) the Manual, containing the occasional offices, i.e. those used, not at fixed hours, but on particular occasions, such as Baptism, Mar- riage, Burial of the Dead, Consecration of Holy Water, and the like. It is needless to say that all these offices were in Latin. We must be on our guard against imagining that a Service-book was 01dEnelish necessarily Roman because it was in Latin. All the Service-books of the West Latin - of Europe, in whatever country, were in Latin, even in such Churches as those of Toledo, or Lyons, which were long in complete independence of Rome. As Greek was the literary language of the East, so Latin was of the whole of Western Europe. It was not the classical Latin of the great Roman writers that had lent itself in the first centuries to express the new ideas brought in by the 1 See the Velus Registrum Sarisberiense, Introd. xx. Pre- Reformation Service- Books. Christian Church, but the vulgar Latin, spoken wherever the Roman soldiers had been, as the language of ordinary intercourse, 1 and which after- wards became so excellent an instrument for ecclesiastical purposes. It was to the interest of the Roman see to maintain the Latin after the original reason for its use had disappeared. But English, as a language common to the whole island, can hardly be said to have existed English not even so as the time of Osmund of dlveiope 1 ! Salisbury. For Augustine, when he first language, drew up services for the use of the English Church, at the beginning of the seventh century, English was nothing better than a dialect, or rather, a number of dialects. It was not until the thirteenth century that the fusion of the Anglo-Saxons, or English, with their conquerors the Danes and the Normans, resulted in a common language capable of being fixed in literary form. It was one of the principal aims of the Reforma- tion in England to simplify the Service-books, and to make them intelligible to ordinary people. But before we can realize how necessary this was, we must understand something of the condition of things which existed at this period. To begin with, we must realize that Service- books of the Church of England were not one, but many. Different services were contained in 1 Thalhofer, Handbuch dcr Katholischen Liturgik, i. § 27, p. 402. Pre-Reformation Service-Books. 33 different books, and besides the actual words of the service said aloud by the priest, and which were written in black, there were in the later Mediaeval times full directions for the ceremonial which was to accompany the words, these direc- tions being known as " rubrics," because they were written in red characters. The Service-books pre-Reformation Service-books were, n useo e f a the for almost all of them, meant for the use of laity- the clergy alone. Not only was it impossible, before the invention of printing, to multiply copies in sufficient numbers for the use of the laity, but very few of the latter could read or understand Latin. And the directions for the most ordinary service had become so complicated by the consideration of special occasions, such as saints' days, — those observed being far more numerous than now, — each of which had its own special Psalms, Lessons, Hymns, etc., to which the ordinary course gave way, that none but a skilled officiant could under- stand them. An inspection of those bulky, but magnificent volumes, which represent these Medi- aeval Service-books of the English Church, and specimens of which are still to be seen in our great libraries, will make this fact abundantly clear. Let us try to understand what would be the literary furniture of a cathedral or well-appointed parish church. First of all, there would be the Missal, or Mass-book, containing the Office for Celebrating the D 34 P re-Reformation Service-Books. Holy Communion, generally of vellum, adorned, perhaps, on every page with rich painting and illu- Missai for mination, the result of months or years the Mass. Q f patient an d devoted care lavished upon its preparation in the writing-rooms of some monastery. Then there would be the Breviary, Breviary for or, as it was usually called in England the Hours. in the Anglo-Norman period, the Porti- forium, or Portehors, with the materials for the Canonical Hours, i.e. for the ordinary daily services, Mattins, Lauds, Evensong, etc., which were known as the "Divine Office," containing the necessary psalms, canticles, antiphons, hymns, readings from Scripture and from the Fathers, responds and versicles. Most editions of the Breviary contained more even than this, as, for example, services known as the Hours of the Dead, Hours of the Blessed Virgin, various Litanies, and an arrangement of Psalms, Prayers and Hymns, much shorter than those of the Divine Office, and therefore called the "Little Office." The Manual comes next in im- portance — a " handbook," as its name Manual for J ' „ the occasional implies, of the occasional offices, such as those for Baptism, Marriage, Burial of the Dead, Benedictions of Water, Candles, etc., for the Visitation of the Sick, Extreme Unction, and the like. 1 The Gradual, or Graile, was intended 1 Copies of the Manual are extant which contain portions of the Service of the Mass for special occasions ; e.g. C. 35, g. 14, Brit. Mus. (printed at Rouen, 1543)- Pre- Reformation Service-Books. 35 for use at the Mass. It contained the musical part of the Communion Service performed by the choir, consisting of the invariable parts, ' ° Gradual for such as the Kyries, Gloria, Sanctus and the music of J ' ' the Mass. Agnus Dei, and of the variable parts, such as the Graduals, Introits, Sequences, Tracts, etc. 1 The Psalterium contained the Psalms in the usual order. Legenda, as the name implies, con- tained things to be read, and included, in later Mediaeval times, readings from the lives of the saints and from the Fathers, as well as from Scripture. The A ntiphonarium was for the music another book for musical purposes. It ° was the musical counterpart of the Breviary, as the Gradual was of the Missal. It contained the musical notation for the antiphons sung at the services of the hours, and for such other portions of the service as required it — hymns, invitatory psalms, responses, etc. Besides these books, there were separate books for the Gospels and Epistles read at Mass, and called respectively Evangeliaritt.ni and Epistolarimn ; an Ordinate, and Pica or Pie, so called from the spotted appearance of its tables, by which one could find the proper office appointed for any particular day ; the Pontificale, containing 1 The Gradual was, properly, a sentence sung after the Epistles, in gradibus, or on the steps of the chancel or pulpit. The Introit was the psalm, with its antiphon, introducing the Communion Office. The Sequence (or Tract, as the case might be) was the continuation and conclusion of the Gradual. 36 Pre- Reformation Service-Books. such offices as would be performed only by a bishop, such as those of Ordination, Consecration of churches and their furniture, and (sometimes) of Confirmation ; and the Processionale, with directions for the ordering of processions, whenever they occurred. It must not be forgotten that these books were of English use, not Roman. In numberless par- ticulars they differed from the Roman. English ritual independent Roman influence came with Augustine, of the Pope. ... . , ° _ but actual interference from the Pope with English ecclesiastical affairs was of later and gradual growth. Augustine, if he did in fact receive advice from Pope Gregory in ordering the English ritual (as is doubted even by Romanist writers), at least never dreamt of obtaining the Pope's formal sanction to it when the work was done. In the same way, the English bishops at Clovesho in the eighth century, and Osmund of Salisbury in the eleventh, acted in complete in- dependence of papal authority, so far as the settlement of ritual questions was concerned. In company with the Roman Church, the Church of England suffered the gradual intrusion of super- stitious elements into her offices ; but in the self- conscious times of the Reformation the latter was able to purge her offices of the accumulated errors, which a Church committed even then in spirit to the doctrine of infallibility found it impossible to discard. CHAPTER VI. THE ENGLISH PRIMER. THERE was a devotional book in very common use in England for several centuries before the Reformation, called the " Primer," which presents features so peculiar and interesting as to require special consideration from the student of the English Prayer-book. To begin with, it was in comparatively early times written in English. The English Primer, like the Primer in Latin, was entirely different in nature from the J The Primer a books considered in the last chapter tookofpri- ... , ' vate devotion. being intended, not for the use of the clergy in the public offices of the Church, but for the devotional use of the laity, especially of the young, and of such as could not be expected to enter into the full meaning of the ordinary Latin services. The principle of teaching the rudiments of the faith in English was as old as the English Church. We find clear evidence of this as early ' No new as A.D. 734. Bede, in a letter of that date principle involved. to Egbert, Archbishop of York, on the state of the Northumbrian Church, insists on the 38 The English Primer. importance of an intimate knowledge of the Lord's Prayer and of the Apostles' Creed, which, he says, ought to be taught to lay people, and to those who have knowledge only of their own tongue ; on which account, he says, he has put forth the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in the language of the English. 1 Six years later (a.d. 740) there is a canon of King Egbert ordering " every priest to instil carefully the Lord's Prayer and Creed into the people committed to him." 2 Later still (A.D. 970), 3 ^Elfric, Archbishop of Canter- bury, orders his clergy to " speak on Sundays and festivals, as often as they can, the sense Eighth, tenth, ' and eleventh of the Gospel to the people in English. centuries. ° ' and, through the teaching of the Lord's Prayer and of the Creed, to incite men to believe and to cherish their faith." The laws of Canute in the eleventh century show the same solicitude for the proper education of the people in the main facts of their religion. " We enjoin that every Christian whatsoever," says the twenty-second clause of his Leges Ecclesiasticse, "should at least be able to understand the true faith, and learn the Pater Noster and the Creed." 4 Hence, probably, the earliest Primers were those horn-books which are 1 "Et symbolum videlicet et dominicam orationem in linguam Anglorum translatam obtuli." (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, Hi. p. 316.) 2 Wilkins, Concilia, i. 101. 3 Ibid., i. 398. 4 Wilkins, Leges Eccl. Can. Regis. The English Primer. 39 known to have existed in parish churches, extant specimens of which exhibit the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, together with either the Ten Com- mandments or the English " Hail, Mary ! " But although this is the meaning of the Primer — " a first book of devotion " — the word had in later times a highly technical signi- ° J ° Groundwork ficance. Certain elements are invariably ofthe ' Primer. present in the later Mediaeval Primers, namely, the Office of the Dead ; 1 the Office of the Blessed Virgin ; the Penitential Psalms (Pss. vi., xxxii., xxxviii., li., cii., cxxx., cxliii.) ; the " Gradual " Psalms (Pss. cxx.-cxxxiv.), so called because they were supposed to have been sung on the steps of the temple ; the Litany ; the Commendations, i.e. the divisions of Ps. cxix. The two offices of the Primer above mentioned (the Hours of the Dead and of the Blessed Virgin) are the same as those referred to in Offloegsup _. the last chapter as the Little Office, pigmentary to r the Breviary They had their origin in monastic usages Hours, of the eighth and ninth centuries in France, where it became the custom to supplement the regular Offices of the Hours by private devotions performed before the regular offices began. These private devotions were said with particular " in- tention," e.g. in memory of the faithful dead, or of those recently deceased, or in honour of the 1 This was not, of course, an Office for the Burial of the Dead, but one commemorative of deceased persons. 4 o The Engdsh Primer. Virgin, and so on ; and they included sometimes a recital of the Creed and of the Lord's Prayer, as well as of other appropriate prayers and psalms. Being said before the corresponding Hours of the Breviary Offices, they grew up to a definite system of Lauds, Mattins, Vespers of the Dead ; Lauds, Mattins, Vespers of the Blessed Virgin ; and so on. And from the monasteries they passed into the use of the parochial clergy, and thence into the hands of the laity, for whose use their shortness and simplicity made them especially suitable. It was doubtless the use of these private devotions by lay people that led to their being translated into the vernacular of most Christian countries. By about the beginning or middle of the fourteenth century, English Primers, even in their most developed form, seem to have been quite common ; and when we remember that there were in this way whole offices of daily prayer in English gradually acquiring a sort of independence of the regular Breviary Offices (though in practice they were merely supplementary to the latter), we shall see that people's minds were prepared long before the Reformation for a complete system of worship in their own tongue. There is a beautiful manuscript copy in the British Museum of one of these fourteenth-century Primers, written entirely in English, 1 which it may be well to describe, as showing what the laity 1 Brit. Mus. 27592 (additional). The English Primer. 4i actually possessed a hundred and fifty years before the first English Prayer-book was produced. Like the latter, this book is prefaced with a Calendar. The Psalms of the Hours (that is, the Psalms of Mattins, Lauds, etc., to Corn- Description of pline), with their versicles, hymns, and aiaterEng- , r. , Ush Primer. canticles, come next, the Te Deuvi, the Benedictus, the Magnificat, etc., being all in English. In other words, complete Offices for Morning and Evening Prayer. The Litany in English comes after the Hours ; then the Ten Command- ments, with a long explanation of each of them ; then a list of the Seven Deadly Sins, also with comments ; the Seven Works of Mercy ; the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit ; the Seven Words which Christ spoke when He hung upon the Cross ; a discourse of St. Augustine ; the Sixteen Virtues of Charity ; and, lastly, some Texts of Scripture, with commentaries upon them. This may fairly be taken as a specimen of the form assumed by devotional works used by devout Englishmen and Englishwomen in the days before printing was invented ; 1 but it must not be forgotten that the Primer was never more than a book of private devotion. Primers were issued by authority, such as were 1 In the Calendar of Wills of the Court of Husting (p. 669) there is a reference to one of these Layman's Prayer-books. John Preston, a.d. 1353, bequeaths to William, his apprentice, "a sum of money, his Psalter and Primar, together with his girdle and best pouche." Many similar references are extant. 42 The English Primer. the origin of editions known as the Primer accord- ing to the Use of Salisbury, and so on. The " New The primer a Learning," too, found in this book a convenient convenient vehicle for reaching the vehicle for _ fa reforming popular ear, and Primers were issued bv ideas. , individual religious teachers. About the time of the Reformation we find many editions in which prevailing Romanist doctrines, such as the worship of the Virgin Mary and of the saints, are attacked in unsparing terms. The attention of the authorities was naturally called to the subject, and in 1535 Dr. Marshall published a second edition of his Primer, which probably was in part inspired by Archbishop Cranmer and furthered by Cromwell. The notions of the Reformers with regard to worship of the saints and of the Virgin, and with regard to prayers for the dead, are here very clearly expressed. In the Litany there are addresses to the Virgin, to the Angels, to the Twelve Apostles, to Martyrs, Con- fessors, and Virgins, to "pray for us." But the reader is explicitly reminded that there is "no commandment of Holy Scripture that we must of necessity pray to our Blessed Lady and saints, or that otherwise we cannot be heard." This book was well known, but soon suppressed. It was followed in 1539 by Hilsey's Primer. Hilsey was Bishop of Rochester, and the book was pub- lished with some show of authority, bearing on its title-page the words, " Set forth by the Bishop of The English Primer. 43 Rochester at the command of Thomas Cromwell." In " the bidding of the bedes " 1 in this book, the royal supremacy over the Church of England, which had been asserted by Henry VIII. five years before, appears in explicit terms : " The Kynges moost excellent maiestie, supreme head immediately under God of the spiritualty and temporaltie of this Church of Englande." But these Primers all gave way to the Henry , 8 "King's Primer" of 1545, a book care- Primer - fully drawn up with the intention of securing uni- formity, and issued under the immediate authority of the king. Its title-page runs, "The Primer, set foorth by the Kinges maiestie and his clergie to be taught, learned, and read : and none other to be used throughout all his dominions." With some notable omissions (for, of course, it did not contain such offices as the Communion Office or the occasional offices), this book bears a curious super- ficial resemblance to the Book of Common Prayer which was so soon to be produced. Together with the ordinary contents of a Primer, such as the Calendar, and Mattins and Evensong, with Psalms and Prayers, there were bound up with this volume the " Pistels and Gospels " for Sundays and holy days throughout the year, beginning with New Year's Day and ending with the Sunday after Christmas. So near were the laity even at that time to possessing a Book of Common Prayer. 1 Bedes = prayers ; Germ, beten, " to pray." 44 The English Primer. Several editions of this King's Primer were issued, some entirely in English, others in English with the Latin alongside. And all schoolmasters were ordered to teach this Primer to the young in English, "next after their A, B, C," until they should be competent to understand it in Latin. Before leaving the subject of the Primer, it may be mentioned that the publication and enforcement later of the Book of Common Prayer in the primers. re jg n Q f Edward VI. and later sovereigns did not do away with the publication of these books of private devotion. A Primer was issued under authority in the reign of Edward VI., others are found in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; and a book of private devotion, drawn up by Bishop Cosin, at the instance of Charles II., for the use of the ladies of the court, naturally fell into the shape assumed by these earlier devotions, and, like them, was based upon the services of the Hours. CHAPTER VII. TENDENCIES TO REFORM IN THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII. We shall now be prepared to some extent to understand the gradual progress of that movement, or combination of movements, which finally evolved the English Book of Common Prayer. We have seen how the early English Church fully recognized the principle of teaching her children the essentials of the Christian faith in their own tongue, and how this principle was enforced by definite eccle- siastical canons put forth by the kings. That principle, though shadowed over in the darker days of the Mediaeval Church, when the influence of Rome during the reigns of the Norman and Planta- genet kings lay like a pall of spiritual darkness on the people, received very appreciable Translation aid from an event which took place early °f"MBibie. in the fourteenth century — the translation of the Bible. In this fact lay the possibility of an English Prayer-book. Wycliffe's translation did more than put the Holy Scriptures within the reach of 46 The Reformation Period. all who could read or listen ; like Luther's Bible in later times in Germany, it did much to fix the language in which it was written. Henceforth, Latin ceased to be necessary in England for the expression of religious truth. The development of the Primer from its simplest form, which con- tained only the barest elements of religious know- ledge, to a complete book with a very definite significance, such as was described in the last chapter, would have been impossible without some such work as this, which provided translations of the Psalms, and even, as we have seen, of the Epistles and Gospels, ready to hand. And, a little later, all this tendency towards an intelligent form of worship joined the great flood of the Reforma- tion, and swept away, bit by bit, not only a mass of accumulated errors, but the veil which had so long hidden from ordinary people the spiritual light and beauty of the old services. In the reign of Henry VIII. we naturally find the inclination to purge the old services, and to render them into the vernacular, growing to a head in connection with the general course of the Reformation. The movement for Reform, which was convulsing Europe, had forced the attention of the Roman see itself to a recon- Bevisionof , , Roman sideration of its Service-books. In Service-books. , _ 1520 the Pope (Leo X.) himself had ordered a revision of the Breviary Hymns, into which had crept almost inconceivable absurdities of The Reformation Period. 47 superstition. And in 1536 Cardinal Ouignonez, a Spaniard, under the express patronage of the Pope (Clement VII.) published a reformed Breviary, which, though suppressed about thirty years later, shows the recognition by the Roman see of the necessity for reform. In England, events took a very different course. As early as 1509 we find a Missal described as "amended." In 15 16 a Breviary appeared, with rubrics curtailed and Lessons from Scripture given at their full length. In 1 53 1 the Sarum Breviary was issued in a thoroughly revised form ; and a revised Sarum Missal followed in 1533. 1 In 1534 Cranmer and other bishops began to revise Tyn- dale's Bible. This is the great date of , t> r ■ „ °, , r . 1534 ' Head- tne Reformation in England; for it ship of the Pope denied marked England's formal declaration of by English independence from the Pope. On the 31st of March 2 the Lower House of the Convo- cation of Canterbury reported to the Upper that "The Pope of Rome has no greater jurisdiction conferred upon him by God in Holy Scripture, in this Kingdom of England, than any other Bishop." The Synod of York assented unanimously to this proposition on the 5th of May following ; and on the 9th of June the king openly proclaimed him- self, with the sanction of both Convocations, as 1 By an order of Convocation, in 1542, the Sarum Breviary was to be used all over England. Cf. Wilkins, Concilia, vol. iii. pp. 771, sq, 1 Joyce's Sacred Synods, p. 351. 4 8 The Reformation Period. the " only Supreme Head upon earth of the Church of England." It was now a matter of only a few years for the English Church, with a recognized English head, to offer up its public worship in its own tongue. In 1535 (October 4) Miles Coverdale's trans- lation of the Bible appeared. It was translated from the Latin, with the help of the recent Dutch Version, and was the first whole Bible printed in English. It was dedicated to the king, and was allowed in England by authority. Next year an The Bible read injunction from the king ordered that publicly. « on£ boke of the whole B J bl£( of the largest volume in Englyshe " should be " set up in summe convenyent place" within every parish church where parishioners might most commo- diously resort to the same and read it. In the same year an order of the Archbishop of York 1 went still further : " All curates and heads of congregations, religious or other, privileged or other, shall every holy day read the Gospel and Epistle of that day out of the English Bible, plainly and distinctly." They were probably to be read in English after the Latin version had been read, in pursuance of a custom at that time observed in Germany, but as ancient in principle as the first century, when in Rome the Gospel and 1 Probably the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a similar order ; but the Canterbury records were burnt in the great fire of London (1666). The Reformation Period. 49 Epistle were read aloud, both in Greek and Latin, to suit both classes of hearers. 1 Other books in English, such as versions of the Psalms, reformed Primers, and the like, were issued from the press in the next few years, and at length, on the 2 1st of February, 1543, Cranmer gave formal information to the Convocation of Canterbury that it was His Majesty's wish " that all Mass-books, Antiphoners, Portuises [i.e. Brevi- aries] in the Church of England should be newly examined, corrected, reformed, to be re- and castigated, from all manner of men- tion of the Bishop of Rome's name, from all apo- cryphas, feigned legends, superstitions, orations, collects, versicles, and responses: that the names and memories of all saints which be not mentioned in the Scripture or authentical doctors should be abolished, and put out of the same books and calendars, and that the service should be made out of the Scripture and other authentic doctors." The work of revision was accordingly handed over to the bishops and others, and the king showed his sense of the urgency of the matter by sending word to the Convocation that ° English New none of its members should absent him- Testament in the churches. self without leave, under penalty of the royal displeasure. Convocation also ordered that on every Sunday and holy day throughout the 1 Thalhofer, i. § 27, p. 400. 5° The Reformation Period. year the curate of every parish church, after the Te Denm and Magnificat, should openly read to the people one chapter out of the New Testa- ment, in English, without exposition, and when the New Testament was over then to begin the Old. 1 In 1544 Cranmer published a revised Litany, in which were left out the numerous petitions to various saints, all mentioned by name. Yet he retained three clauses calling for the prayers of the Virgin Mary, of the Angels, and of the Patri- archs, Prophets, and Apostles. But the hand of the wilful monarch who then occupied the throne of England lay heavy on all who dealt with theological matters. He would allow no full office except the Litany to be used publicly in English. Yet a great advance had been made, and the Reforming party had every reason to be content with this and its other gains Summary of during this reign, namely, the reading advance. of the Epistles and Gospels in English, and the English Lessons on Sundays and Festi- vals at Morning and Evening Prayer. When to all this were added the contents of the Primers, which already contained the Psalms, and regular forms for Mattins and Evensong, all in English, there seemed little to be required except their authorization for public use. The great office of the Church— the Communion Office — still awaited 1 Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 863. TJie Reformation Period. translation. How this object was partly achieved must be told in the next chapter. With this last concession, the whole principle of an English Book of Common Prayer seems to have been already gained. CHAPTER VIII. THE "ORDER OF THE COMMUNION." The death of Henry VIII., towards the end of 1 547, set the minds of the Reformers free to proceed with their work of revising the Service-books. While the revision went on, the young king Edward VI. did what he could to calm the ferment of men's minds, for the times were rife with contemplated theological discussion. He forbade all reform. con t rove rsy on the great subjects con- nected with the Mass " until such time as he, with the advice of his Council and his clergy, should set forth an open doctrine thereof." And so, for the first two years of his reign, the old English Use of Salisbury, in the Latin tongue, continued to be used for all ordinary services throughout the land. Before the year 1547 came to an end, Convoca- tion had decreed the restoration of the cup to the laity, 1 and a statute confirming this all-important 1 Communion in one kind, i.e. in the bread only, following from the doctrine that Christ's Body was conveyed in either of the two elements separately, had not received full synodical authority in the The " Order of the Communion? 53 decision had been passed by Parliament (December 24). The revision of the Mass, 1 or Communion Service, followed as a matter of course. For the present, the old Sarum Use for the celebration of the Mass was retained untranslated, as far as the point where the celebrant communicates 1 This "Order " himself: but after that point provision tackedonto ' 1 r the old rite. was made for the intelligent communion of the laity by the addition of an entirely new portion in English. This was called the " Order of the Communion," which, having passed the Convocations, received the civil sanction on the 8th of March, 1548. This "Order of the Com- munion " was confessedly a temporary arrangement. One of its rubrics expressly forbids " the varying of any other rite or ceremony in the Mass, until other order shall be provided? But the form in which it was conceived anticipates in some degree the final form assumed by the Communion Service under the hands of the Reformers. Its Exhorta- tions are characteristic of the change, and are akin both in spirit and language to those in our Roman Church till the thirteenth session of the Council of Constance, which was begun in a.d. 141 4. 1 The English word " Mass " is the same as the French Messe (from Latin Missa, like promesse from promissa). The name comes from the formula, Ite, missa est, pronounced in early times when the catechumens were dismissed before the more solemn part of the service began. The full phrase was, perhaps, Missa est ecdesia, "The assembly is dismissed ; " though some take missa as a sub- stantive = missio, "dismissal." There is no objectionable signifi- cance in the word itself. 54 The " Order of the Communion." present Communion Office. The General Confes- sion is identical with our own ; it is followed by a Form of Absolution, by the " comfortable words," by the Prayer of Humble Access ("We do not presume," etc.), and then by the words of dis- tribution of the elements, " The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body unto everlasting life ; " and, " The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy soul to everlasting life;" the whole ending with a dismissal in the peace of God. It is noticeable that many of the Mediaeval offices prescribe no form of words to be used at the administration to the laity. Communion of the laity, even in one kind, had become very rare. This " Order of the Communion," tacked on to the old rite, served for the celebration of the Holy Communion for the next thirteen months, after which the services of the new Prayer-book entirely in English superseded all others. CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST PRAYER-BOOK OF EDWARD VI. OUR inquiries have brought us at length to the English Prayer-book of 1549. It, and not the Prayer-book of 1552, must be considered as the crowning point of the Reformation in England, properly so called. It was the mature work of the most eminent Churchmen of the time, and was far more correct, from the point of view of liturgical science, than the book by which it was so soon superseded. In it was represented most F ir S t English of what was Catholic 1 in doctrine, pure Pr ttricuy° k in ritual, and beautiful in thought or Catholic - expression, in the worship of the Christian Church since its foundation. The alterations to which this book was subjected a year or two later were due, not to any desire for liturgical correctness, or for returning to ancient purity, but rather to the mere spirit of reaction and the ill-advised prejudices of continental Reformers. 1 Catholic = universal. Catholic doctrine is that which has been held by the Christian Church as a whole — Kaff '6\ou, " by all, at all times, and in all places " — as opposed to what hasbeen taught only in particular Churches. 56 The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. We must examine the book in detail, remember- ing what it was meant to supersede. In the Many old chapter dealing with the ancient Service- S rS C es;n 0 t°ed S books, we saw that the various services mit- in use were contained in many separate books. Now all these services had been revised, and were bound up together in one volume : the Mattins and Evensong (with the Psalter 1 ) represent- ing the old Sarum Breviary ; the Order for the celebration of "the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass " (with the arrangement of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels belonging thereto), repre- senting the old Missal ; the services for Baptism, Burial, Marriage, Visitation of the Sick, etc., re- presenting the old Manual. Other of the old Service-books, such as the Ordinal and the Pontifical, containing the forms for making Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, were not represented at all in the Prayer-book of 1549. 2 Let us take first the Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, and see how they differed from the old offices. The need for simplify- The Morning ... , . , . and Evening ing the latter, and an idea as to what was actually done in this direction, can be best realized by reading the original preface to the book, now printed in our Book of Common 1 The Lessons were no longer bound up in the volume, the Bible being referred to in a Table of Lessons. 2 An Ordinal was published early in 1550 as a companion to the Book of Common Prayer. It was revised afterwards, and was in- cluded in the book of 1552. The First Prayer- Book of Edward VI. 57 Prayer under the title " Concerning the Service of the Church." It mentions how the rule in the first ages of the Church was to read the whole Bible over once in the year in the daily services, and how "this godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories, and legends, with multitude of responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals ; that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, after three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread." It mentions how, " whereas St. Paul would have such language spoken to the people in the Church, as they might understand, and have profit by hearing the same ; the service in this Church of England these many years hath been read in Latin to the people, which they understand not." It refers to the manner in which some of the Psalms were never read in church at all ; to the " number and hardness of the rules called the Pie ; " and to the manifold changings of the service, which made it so hard and intricate a matter to turn the book, " that many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out." Thus we are prepared for the two great altera- tions which transformed the Mediaeval The Lessons Mattins and Evensong to something- like nottobe & & interrupted. their present form, namely, the provision of two uninterrupted Lessons, one from each of the 58 The First Prayer- Book of Edward VI. Old and New Testaments, instead of the numerous Lessons previously read with interruptions of the various kinds mentioned just now ; and, secondly, the division of the Psalms into two daily portions (one for Morning and one for Evening Prayer), of such length that the whole Psalter should be sung through once a month. 1 For the rest, the Morning Prayer was an amal- gamation of the three ancient offices of Mattins, Lauds, and Prime ; the Evening Prayer an amal- gamation of Vespers and Compline. How can this amalgamation be justified ? We have seen that the round of secular services known as the Canonical Hours were founded upon those observed in monastic institutions ; and it must be remem- bered that the monasteries of England had been swept away a few years before the date of the first English Prayer-book. All that the revisers aimed at was provision for the common A book for , , i • laity as weii worship of the secular clergy and laity, as cierey. jr_j ence fa e re wa s no scruple in the minds of the Reformers in adhering to a principle which was apparently in general use in their day, of " accumulating " various offices ; that is, of saying various offices one after the other, just as is done in some churches of England at the present day, 1 The Mediaeval theory was, as we have seen above (Chapter III.), to sing the Psalter through once a week ; but this had come to be impossible through the accumulation of anthems, responds, etc., which caused most of the Psalms to be in practice left out alto- gether. The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. 59 where we have Mattins followed immediately by the Litany and Holy Communion. This tended to shorten the combined offices, for, as some parts of the old Mattins occurred again in Lauds and Prime, and so on, the recurring portions could be left out, and the rest combined into one Office of Morn- ing Prayer. In the same way, the new Office of Evening Prayer was shorter than the two offices of Vespers and Compline from which it was com- posed. The two new services of Morning and Evening Prayer were practically identical with the same offices in our present Prayer-book, with the exception that each began at the point where the Lord's Prayer now occurs, and ended with the Third Collect. The Sentences, Exhorta- Later altera . tion, Confession, and Absolution, which M^^^nd begin our present daily offices, had no Evenson »- ancient counterpart, and were not prefixed to the Morning Prayer till 1552 ; and the prayers after the Third Collect and anthem were not added till 1661. It may be added, in explanation of the fact that the Lord's Prayer occurs twice in both Morning and Evening Prayer, that the first reci- tation was no integral part of the service, but preparatory, following the old custom of the Roman and English Churches. Hence, as at the beginning of the Communion Service, it was said by the priest alone, the public office not beginning till the following versicle, " O Lord, open Thou our lips," which the priest said aloud. 60 The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. The prefixing of the Sentences, Exhortation, etc., in 1552, left the Lord's Prayer in a false liturgical position ; but it was not until 1661 that the ancient custom was overruled by the present rubric, ordering the minister to say the Lord's Prayer in an audible voice, and the people to repeat it with him. It would take long to describe at length the points altered from the Sarum Missal in the Communion Service of 1549. The general result of the alterations was far greater simplicity of ceremonial, and a shortening of the service, due not only to this fact, but also to the omission of the memorials of the numerous saints, apostles, martyrs, etc., who had been mentioned by name in the earlier office. It must be remembered that this Communion Office of 1 549 was intended for the use of the laity as well as of the clergy. While the ancient Missal, meant solely for the use of the officiating ministers, contained the most minute rubrical directions to the priest and choir for the due celebration of the most solemn office of the Church, the present book contained the minimum of such guidance. The Missal had directed the movements of the priest and his attendants at every point of the service, regulating their respective positions at the altar, their genu- flexions, their use of the censer and of the sign of the cross, down to minute details. The new book contained, perhaps, too little of this sort. It The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. 61 supposed a knowledge of tradition in the clergy ; but provided for no permanent maintenance of it. It did not even, for instance, prescribe Much left to words with which the celebrant himself traditlon - was to communicate ; and though, for the present, such omissions were of no great matter, while the ordinary ceremonial was fresh in the minds of the clergy, it has led to great variations of usage since. The discretion of the clergyman, in many points which acquired a special importance through being combated in later times, has often proved an unsatisfactory substitute for definite rubrical in- struction given under proper authority. The actual service appointed for the Communion was in almost all essential points the same as our present office, as will be seen from TheCommu . the following brief description. The Dion office, prayers, it will be noticed, differ rather in their arrangement than in actual content. The office began with the Lord's Prayer and the Collect as in our office. Then came (not the Ten Com- mandents, but) the psalm appointed as the In- troit, 1 after which came the Lesser Litany (" Lord, have mercy upon us ; Christ, have mercy upon us ; Lord, have mercy upon us "), the Gloria in Excelsis, the Salutation of the priest and people (" The Lord be with you : " " And with thy spirit "), the Collect for the day, the Collect for the King, The Introits of the Prayer-book of 1549 were printed with the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels. 62 The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. the Epistle, Gospel, and Nicene Creed. The Ex- hortations, which were to be read in certain cir- cumstances, were printed next, and then followed the offertory Sentences. The priest, in preparing the elements for consecration, was directed to add to the wine in the chalice " a little pure and clean water." Then came a second mutual Salutation of priest and people, the " Lift up your hearts," and the proper Prefaces as at present. Then the priest turned to the people and said, " Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church," after which he turned to the altar and proceeded with the long Prayer of Consecration. From the latter have been formed three prayers of our Prayer-book, the first part forming our Prayer for the Church Militant ; the middle part, our Consecration Prayer ; and the last part, the prayer after Communion, which begins, " O Lord and heavenly Father." One passage in the Consecration Prayer differing essentially from our present prayers, was that commemorating the faithful departed, which ran as follows : — " And here we do give unto Thee most high praise, and hearty thanks, for the wonderful grace and virtue, declared in all Thy saints, from the beginning of the world : and chiefly in the glorious and most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Thy Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, and in the holy Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs, whose examples (O Lord) and steadfastness in Thy faith and keeping Thy holy commandments, 77/1? First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. 63 grant us to follow. We commend unto Thy mercy (O Lord) all other Thy servants, which are departed hence from us, with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the sleep of peace : Grant unto them, we beseech Thee, Thy mercy, and everlasting peace, and that, at the day of the general resurrection, we and all they which be of the mystical body of Thy Son, may altogether be set on His right hand, and hear that His most joyful voice : Come unto Me, O ye that be blessed of My Father, and possess the Kingdom which is prepared for you from the begin- ning of the world." It will be seen that, though the Virgin is here expressly mentioned, no petition is offered to her ; while in the commendation of the faithful departed to the Divine mercy, the English Liturgy followed no peculiarly Romanist doctrine, but one held by the Universal Church in the purest ages. The Consecration Prayer contained also a definite Invo- cation of the Holy Spirit upon the elements, which in our office is lacking — "With Thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these Thy gifts, and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ." The Sarum Use had ordered the elevation of the Host, or consecrated bread, so as to be seen by the people ; but a rubric now expressly forbade this. After the Prayer of Consecration came the Lord's Prayer and the Peace ; after which the priest said, " Christ our Paschal Lamb is offered up for us, 64 The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. once for all, when He bare our sins on His body upon the Cross ; for He is the very Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world ; wherefore let us keep a joyful and holy feast with the Lord." The office then went on as in the " Order of the Communion " described in the last chapter. The Exhortation, " Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins," was followed by the Confession, Absolution, Comfortable Words, the Prayer of Humble Access, and the words of ad- ministration — all as in the "Order of the Com- munion." Differing from our present use, the bread was to be delivered into the mouth of the communicant, not into his hand. The Agnus Dei (of course in English) was directed to be sung during the Communion ; and after the Communion some one sentence of New Testament Scripture was to be sung as an anthem out of a list provided for the purpose. After this came a third salutation of the priest and people ; and then the priest gave "thanks to God in the name of all them that had communicated," the prayer appointed for this purpose being the second prayer after the Com- munion in our present office, " Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank Thee," etc. The whole concluding with the Peace of God. It may be mentioned that two separate sets of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels were provided for Christmas Day and Easter Day, following an ancient custom founded upon the necessity on those festivals of more than one celebration. CHAPTER X. THE FIRST PRAYER-BOOK OF EDWARD VI. Continued. The other principal differences between the Prayer-book of 1549 and our own will be sought in the other offices which have not yet been con- sidered, notably those for Baptism, for Matrimony, for the Visitation of the Sick, and for the Burial of the Dead. In the Office for the Public Baptism of Infants the hortatory parts are, as usual, an addition to the old offices, and are taken princi- r Office for pally from the exhortations in a book Public) Baptism. called " Hermann's Consultation," 1 the influence of which on this part of the Prayer-book is very considerable. For the rest, we must notice in this (and in our own) office three dis- ' . Three distinct tinct parts, lne first part is really (at parts iu this least in origin) an introductory office, and is marked as such in the Prayer-book of 1549 by a rubric directing the people to assemble at the 1 A Continental work drawn up for Hermann, the Archbishop of Cologne, by Melanchthon and others, reproducing in many instances a previous work of Luther. F 66 The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. church door, not at the font, as at present. It corresponds with the old Sarum Office for making catechumens, which, in accordance with the earliest custom of the Church, would naturally precede the rite of Baptism itself. It contains also a form of exorcism, commanding the unclean spirit, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to come out of the infants who are to be baptized. This over, the children were introduced as catechu- mens into the church with the words, " The Lord vouchsafe to receive you into His holy household, and to keep and govern you always in the same, that you may have everlasting life. Amen." After which the next part of the Baptismal Office followed at once. The second part is derived largely from the Sarum Benedictio Fontis, or consecration of the baptismal water, the characteristic point of this part being the prayer to "sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin." This neces- sitated another rubric. The water in the font was to be changed once a month at least, and the form of consecration was to be used every time it was changed. Again, the priest was to demand of the child whether he renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil ; and each renunciation was to be given separately, the sponsor, of course, answering Trine im- f° r child. The third part of the mersion. 0 ffi ce) or t h e actual Baptism, was ad- ministered in the same words as at present. But trine immersion, or dipping of the child three times The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. 67 into the water, was enjoined, though "affusion," or merely sprinkling with water, was allowed, as at present, in the case of weakly children. The other important differences from our own in this office of 1549 were the direction to the minister to put " his white vesture, commonly called the chrisom," upon the newly baptized child, and to anoint the infant upon the head ; the former ceremony for a token of the innocency granted by God's grace in this sacrament ; the latter with the prayer that the Almighty would vouchsafe to anoint the infant with the unction of His Holy Spirit. In the Marriage Service the vow of the man and woman was " till death us depart" the old English word, meaning "to separate," The Marriaee being changed to "do part" in 1662. Se ™<=e. The man was to give to the woman " other tokens of spousage," such as gold or silver, as well as a ring. The sign of the cross was to be used by the priest in the benediction after the joining of hands, as well as in the final blessing. And the concluding rubric, in the spirit of the Sarum Office, where the Wedding Mass formed part of the Marriage Service, added that the new-married persons (the same day of their marriage) must receive the Holy Communion. In the Order for the Visitation of the Sick the form of Absolution was as now ; but the ..... . , Office for the rubric ordering its use contained another visitation of clause (removed in 1552) directing the same form of Absolution to be used in all private 68 The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. confessions. Provision was also made for anoint- ing the sick person if he desired it, with oil, the anointing to be done on the forehead or breast only, with the sign of the cross. The Office for the Burial of the Dead has under- gone many alterations since 1549. The dead body, according to the rubric of 1549, was to Office for the . ° , , Burial of the be met at the church stile ; and, at Dead. . , the grave, the priest, casting earth upon the corpse, was to say, " I commend thy soul to God the Father Almighty, and thy body to the ground : earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust " — and so on as at the Committal in the present office. The prayers following contained petitions that the soul of the departed, and all the souls of God's elect, might fully receive God's promises and be made perfect altogether. The office ended with a Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for a celebration of the Holy Communion. This would mean, in pre- Reformation times, provision for a Mass for the dead. There is a "collect," ex- pressly so called, at the end of our present office, which is a remnant of this old usage, but the collect of 1549 contained a petition, no longer there, that the departed soul might at the general resurrection rise to eternal joy. Provision was made with regard to vestments, in " certain notes " printed at the end of the book. In the saying or singing of Mattins or Evensong, in baptizing, and burying, the minister, in parish The First Prayer- Book of Edward VI. 69 churches and chapels annexed to the same, was to use a surplice. The clergy belonging to cathedral churches and colleges, and any graduate & ' } b Vestments. when preaching, might also use such hoods as pertained to their several degrees. A bishop, when celebrating the Holy Communion in a church, or when executing any other public ministration, was to wear, besides his rochette, a surplice or albe, and a cope or vestment, and also his pastoral staff " in his hand, or else borne or holden by his chaplain." This Prayer-book of 1549 was published after many years of careful consideration. The com- mittee appointed for the revision of the Service- books had met early in 1543, 1 and we know that they had before them the views of the Continental Reformers. The book was submitted to Convoca- tion at the end of 1548, and was there discussed. It was then laid before Parliament on the 9th of December. The First Act of Uniformity, ordering its general use on Whit Sunday, the 9th of June fol- lowing, passed the House of Lords on the 15th, and the House of Commons on the 21st of January, 1549. Its publication put an end to the different Uses of the great cathedrals, for the Act provided that henceforth there was to be but one Use throughout the realm. 1 Joyce's Sacred Synods, p. 466. CHAPTER XI. THE PRAYER-BOOK OF 1 552 It was said above that the Prayer-book of 1 549 was to be regarded as the culminating point of liturgical reformation in England. For the changes that it has undergone since have been due, not so much to a feeling that there was any- thing false in its doctrine, or anything in it which was without precedent in the earliest usage of the Church, as to the spirit of reaction against Romanism as such. The revisers of 1549 set themselves to find out what was Catholic Principles of the first truth, and were not prejudiced against revision. . ' , any doctrine or ceremony simply be- cause it had been used during the period of Roman influence. They took the Bible and the belief of the Christian Church of the first five centuries as their standard in doctrinal matters, recognizing the fact that by so doing they would be independent of any peculiarly Roman error which had grown up since that time and been grafted into the various formularies of the Church. So far as was consistent with these principles, they The Prayer-Book of 1552. 7i retained the ancient forms ; and they added nothing which had not some authority in ancient precedent. In the further history of the Prayer-book we encounter a different spirit. Rites and ceremonies which were not peculiarly Roman, but which were common to the worship of the whole Christian Church long before the East separated from the West, began now to be called in question, because they were known to most people only DislUceof through their association with the Soinanism ' manifold abuses of Rome. And so such things as vestments, and incense, and the like, the use of which had been actually enjoined in Old Testament times by Holy Writ itself, in the temple as well as in the tabernacle, came to be looked upon with the same dislike as the sale of indulgences or the worship of images. It was on the continent of Europe that the reaction against Rome went furthest : in England it had been restrained within due bounds by the strong-handed interference of Henry VIII., who disliked the overbearing tone of the Continental Reformers. But after his death their influence began to tell more strongly, and it was probably due to the desire to come to terms with their followers in England that the changes of 1552 were made. Calvin made it his business to write to the young king (then only twelve years old) and to the 72 The Prayer-Book of 1552. Protector Somerset, urging them to push the Reformation further than it had gone at present. 1 Foreign And so we find two foreigners, neither influence. Q f w h om could even speak English, established in Edward VI.'s reign, as King's Pro- fessors of Divinity — Peter Martyr at Oxford, and Martin Bucer at Cambridge — whose Protestantism would, it was hoped, effectually influence the rising generation of the English clergy. Bucer made the acquaintance of the First Prayer-book through the medium of an inter- Bucer s preter, 2 and gave God thanks that its ^thfbookof* reformation had reached so high a 1549. degree of purity, for he had noticed nothing in its ceremonies which was not either taken from the Word of God, or which was not at least agreeable to it on a reasonable inter- pretation. 3 He, nevertheless, drew up in Latin an elaborate Censura, or criticism of the whole book, savouring of the prevalent Continental Protestantism of his day. His principal fear is that of superstition, the avoidance of which, as to so many men of his school, seems to be of more importance than reverence. Hence he objects to 1 See Letter to Duke of Somerset, in State Paper Office, dated October 22, 1548. (Op., torn. viii. p. 39, " Epistolse et Responsa.") 2 " Librum istum sacromm per interpretem, quantum potui, cognovi diligenter " (Buceri Prologiis in Ccnsuram). 3 His words are, " Nec enim quicquam in illis [cserimoniis] deprehendi, quod non sit ex verbo Dei desumptum, aut saltern ei non adversetur commode acceptum " (ibid.). The Prayer-Book of 1552. 73 kneeling at the Communion, and to the direction to place upon the altar only so much bread and wine as the communicants were likely to require, as implying a superstitious notion as to the effect of consecration on such portions as were not con- sumed. He objects to prayer for the dead, and to the phrase, " sleep of peace," as implying a sleep of the soul ; he objects to making the sign of the cross in consecrating the elements, and to the clause of the Prayer of Consecration asking that the elements may become to us the Body and Blood of Christ. He dislikes also the practice of having a second Communion on Christmas Day and Easter Day, as it implies some peculiar sanctity in those festivals, whereas people ought to communicate every Lord's day. The Office of Public Baptism, he thinks, ought to be begun at the font, where the congregation can hear, instead of at the church door. He objects to the chrism, the anointing, the signing with the cross, and the exorcism ; and he would do away with the clause intimating the sanctification of the baptismal water. He would alter the phrase " come " (used of the infants) to some other, signifying that they were brought ; and he would have no phrase, not even when signing with the cross, addressed to the infant himself. In the Office for the Visitation of the Sick, he would have the anointing removed, and in the Burial Service all commendation of the departed soul to God. He would have churches 74 The Prayer-Book of 1552. closed except during divine service, in order to prevent persons walking about and talking in them ; and he would stop bell-ringing altogether, except, perhaps, as a reminder to the public services. The tendency of the foreign criticism is well expressed by Bucer, in this Censura. But, although Bucerre- almost all the points mentioned were toreij£ s al tered in the revised book of 1552, the criticism, changes were not immediately due to Bucer's personal opinions, having been in the air for some time previously. The point to be observed is the entirely different spirit from that of the first English Reformers, in which the work of revision is approached, the prescriptive usage of centuries counting little against the more widely interpreted right of private judgment (amounting too often to personal prejudice), and the ever-present dread of superstition. The representations made to the king and to Cranmer apparently had their effect, and the work of revising the First Prayer-book was proceeded with almost immediately after its publication. The revision was submitted, not to Convocation, but to a committee of divines with the archbishop at their head. It is generally thought that this committee must have been the same as that to which the revision of the Ordinal 1 was entrusted. This Ordinal was included in the second book by the second Act of Uniformity. As for the 1 See p. 56 (note). The Prayer-Book of 1552. 75 canonical authority of the book, there are no records to show that it ever received the sanction of Convocation, and there are many reasons for thinking that it was submitted to Par- liament without this. The rubric at the end of the Communion Service, commonly ^3^^ known as the Black Rubric, declar- ing that by kneeling at the Communion no adoration was intended to the " real and essential presence 1 of Christ's natural flesh and blood," was apparently inserted at the last moment before printing, at the mere instance of the Privy Council. 2 The second Act of Uniformity passed both Houses on the 6th of April, 1552, and the book was to come into general use on All Saints' Day in that year. The alterations to be noticed have already been anticipated in some degree in the account of 1 The words now are, "No Adoration is intended . . . to . . . any Corporal Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood." The revisers of 1661 made this alteration, holding the real and essential, if not corporal presence. 2 Privy Council Register, October 27, 1552. Hooper, who had lately returned from Zurich, and many others who were under Cal- vinistic influences, violently opposed kneeling at the Holy Com- munion, on the ground both that it was contrary to the posture observed at the institution of the Sacrament, and that it implied superstitious adoration of the elements. Cranmer wrote to the Council, that if the first objection were to be followed, reclining on the ground ought to be the proper posture ; as to the second, it would imply an actually contemptuous reception if people kneeling were to stand or sit to receive, and then immediately to kneel down again. (Dom. Ed. VI., xv. 15.) 7 6 The Prayer-Book of 1552. Bucer's objections, which represent fairly the opinions of the Protestant party at this time. The changes may be summarized as follows : — In the Daily Morning Prayer the list of Scripture Sentences, with the Exhortation, Confession, and sentences, Absolution, were all inserted before the et Mo a rn1ne to Lord ' s Prayer, which in the office of prayer, : ^ had j-, e g un Mattins. This was in accordance with a general principle of the Reformers to explain to the people the meaning of the service in which they were about to engage. With this Exhortation, explaining the various pur- poses of thus publicly assembling together, may be compared the similar opening of the Office for Public Baptism and of the Commination Service. In the Communion Office the Introits were removed. After the Lord's Prayer and Collect Alterations tne Ten Commandments were inserted commuLn with their responses, as a means of self- 0ffice - examination for those intending to com- municate. In the Consecration Prayer the name of the Virgin, the thanksgiving for the Patriarchs and Prophets, the sign of the cross at the Con- secration of the Elements, and the Invocation of the Word and of the Holy Spirit, were all left out. The prayer itself was cut up into three separate parts, forming now the Prayer for the Church Militant, the Prayer of Consecration, and the first of the two Prayers after the Communion. The words of Administration were changed to " Take The Prayer-Book of 1552. 77 this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him by faith with thanksgiving," and " Drink this in remembrance that Christ's Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful " — these words being chosen as colourless of the doctrine of Tran- substantiation, which the words before used seemed to imply, by speaking of the " Body of Christ " and the "Blood of Christ" at the delivery of the elements. For a similar reason the Prayer of Humble Access, which had hitherto been said kneeling in front of the altar after the consecra- tion, was removed to a position before the Conse- cration Prayer, lest it should imply an adoration of the Sacrament. The " Hosannah in the highest : Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord," was attenuated down to the last clause of the Preface, " Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high ; " and the Agnus Dei, which the Book of 1549 had ordered to be sung "in the Communion time," was left out altogether. In Baptism the form of exorcism was omitted, as were also the anointing with the chrism, the use of the chrisom or white Baptism ' robe, and the trine immersion. In the Offices for the Visitation and Communion of the Sick, the anointing with oil was left out, and also the rubric about using, in all private confessions, the form of absolu- v Tfthe° n tion there prescribed. And no direction Sl ° k ' was given about reserving portions of the bread 78 The Prayer-Book of 1552. and wine which had been consecrated at a public celebration. In the Marriage Service the tokens of spousage — the gold and silver — were no longer required, Marriage ar, d a ^ mention of them was omitted. Service. -p^e s jg n Q f cross was a ] SQ re mOVed from both of the forms of blessing. In the Burial Service the principal alterations were connected with the desire to avoid praying Burial f° r the dead person. All clauses imply- service. j n g va iidity G f this doctrine were removed. And, to prevent the Communion Office provided by the First Prayer-book from being used as a Mass for the Dead, it also was omitted altogether. The rubric about vestments reversed the direc- tions of 1 549. It enjoined that " the minister at the time of the Communion, and at all vestments. Q ^ er times in his ministration, shall use neither alb, vestment, nor cope ; but, being arch- bishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a rochet ; and, being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only." The Act of Uniformity, which enforced the universal use of the Second Prayer-book of Edward VI., expressly declares that the First Prayer-book had contained nothing but what was agreeable to the Word of God and the Primitive Church, and states that the reason why the earlier book had been altered, or, as the phrase ran, " been Tlie Prayer-Book of 1552. 79 faithfully and godly perused and made fully perfect," was because divers doubts had arisen about the ministration of the same, " rather by the curiosity of the Minister and mistakers, than of any other worthy cause." The revisal of 1552 left the Prayer-book, in the main, as we have it. The changes since made have been for the most part additions, or made chiefly in its arrangement and verbal expression. Henceforth we have to consider how objections made against it were dismissed, rather than any alterations of great doctrinal significance. CHAPTER XII. THE CROWN AND THE PURITANS. Probably the events which did more than any- thing to establish the English Prayer-book in the real and lasting favour of the English people were those of the reign of Queen Mary. Then, for the first time, when the queen's unhappy Effect of . . . , ,,. , . , aueen Mary s opposition to its use seemed allied with the enemies of national liberty, it began to appeal to the hearts of Englishmen. At the thought of the Spanish Inquisition and of the re-intrusion of the Papal authority, the principles of the Reforma- tion assumed a tinge of patriotism which they had never previously worn. But in the first year of Queen Mary, Edward VI.'s Acts of Uniformity were repealed ; all copies of the English Prayer- book were ordered to be delivered up to be burnt within fifteen days, and the old Latin services were everywhere restored. And many of the more prominent Protestant divines fled to the Continent, to return in more congenial times, with ideas, as we shall see, gathered on foreign soil, which had better been left behind. The Crown and the Puritans. 81 Elizabeth succeeded to this state of things on the 17th of November, 1558. She proceeded in religious matters with her usual caution, and though such changes as were made in her reign were pro- bably the expression of her own views, she took care that they should always have the appearance of proper authority. She accepted from Parliament the title of "Supreme Governor" of the English Church, with all that it involved. But to begin with, she ordered, by a proclamation, that no change whatever should be made " in ... ,. Preliminary any public prayer, rite, or ceremony, directions of though she allowed to be read in English the Gospels and Epistles, the Ten Com- mandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and the revised Litany of Henry VIII. When the work of dealing with religious matters was taken in hand at the beginning of the following year, it appeared that, if the queen's wish was to avoid anything like idolatry and superstition, it was also her intention to discourage the other extreme of laxity in divine service. The queen's adviser was Guest, afterwards Bishop of Rochester and of Salisbury, her almoner. A committee of divines was appointed to consider the question of divine service, and Guest acted therein for Archbishop Parker, who was absent from ill- ness. The queen's influence was also exercised over this committee through the Secretary of State, Lord Cecil, who nominally represented the G 82 The Crown and the Pur it mis. Privy Council, 1 and who saw that the proposed changes did not go beyond the queen's wishes. On the 2nd of April, 1559, an Act of Parliament repealed that of Queen Mary, which had annulled Edward VI.'s two Acts of Uniformity, and thus the Prayer-book of 1552 was re-established. It contained, however, the following additions and alterations due to the action of the queen's committee : — (1) The words of administration of the elements in the Communion Service — the change most changes of characteristic of the book — were the 155a combination of the clause used in the First Prayer-book with that used in the Second. This is our present form. It does not enforce the doctrine of the Real Presence, but is compatible with it. (2) The "Black Rubric" on kneeling at the Communion was omitted. (3) In the Litany, the clause, " From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities," was omitted. (4) The "accustomed place," i.e. the chancel, was reappointed for the reading of the Morning and Evening Prayer. (5) A table of special Lessons for Sundays was inserted, thus breaking the earlier theory of a daily service, in which the Scripture reading went 1 Cf. Caldwell's Conferences, p. 48 ; and Stiype's Ann., i. 120, and ii. 459. The Crown and the Puritans. 83 on continuously. (No parallel arrangement of special Psalms for Sundays was made ; they were still read continuously, as now, following the rule of 1549.) (6) A rubric ordered "that such Ornaments of the Church, and of the Ministers thereof, at all Times of their Ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the Authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth " {i.e. in 1549). 1 With regard to the Prayer-book as it stood even now, it is almost certain that the Pope, Pius IV., acknowledged the catholicity of its The pope said doctrine ; and it is said that he offered ^ed^thT to sanction its use, provided the queen Prayer - b ° ok - would acknowledge the Papal Supremacy. 2 It re- mained without any alteration throughout the rest 1 This is the "Ornaments Rubric," which has acquired such notoriety of late years. It is based on I Eliz., cap. 2, sec. 25, which adds to the words above quoted, " until other order shall be therein taken." The disputes have turned upon two points: (1) What the ornaments were which were in use in the second year of Edward VI. (2) Whether " other order " has been since taken. For Archbishop Parker published some "Advertisements" on the subject a few years later, which it is probable the queen desired to be observed, though she was unwilling to incur any odium by enforcing them by her own authority. 2 See a despatch from Walsingham to Burghley, in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign, Eliz., 1571, cxviii. p. 138). "Which form of prayers the Pope, as I am informed, would have by councell confirmed as Catholic, so the Q. my mistress would have acknow- ledged the same as received from him." Lord Coke's Speech and Charge (London, 1607) is emphatic to the same effect. 84 The Crown and the Puritans. of Elizabeth's long reign ; for though the ferment of theological discussion had by no means subsided, Elizabeth would listen to no further proposals of change, having her father's dislike to the restless and factious spirit which seemed to be engendered by the unlimited right of private judgment. Accordingly, though discontent with the Prayer- book was not allowed to have its way, it went on smouldering beneath the surface. In fact, no alteration short of tearing the ancient offices to pieces, and substituting for their Catholic breadth the new and narrow developments of favourite Lutheran or Calvinistic doctrine, could have satis- fied the present opponents of the Prayer-book. As this foreign spirit of reaction against Romanism, rather than anything of purely English growth, had intruded itself into the revision of the Liturgy, so it fostered the movement which had now begun to lay the foundations of modern Nonconformity in England. We have seen that the Marian persecution forced many of the English Protestants to flee to Biseofthe the continent of Europe. They found puritans. re f u g e there in the various Churches which had parted most completely from anything like tradition in the past, and they came back to England in Elizabeth's reign full of ultra- Protestant notions. From basing religious doc- trine upon the written Word of God alone, interpreted by the individual reason as distinct The Crown and the Puritans. from the interpretation of the Church, and from divesting religious worship, as far as possible, of all ceremonial, they received the name of Puritans. The history of some of the Continental Churches, particularly Frankfort and Geneva, where these apparently harmless doctrines were followed out to their logical conclusions, presents a lamentable picture of strife and disunion. And some of the saddest pages of English Church history follow the sincere propagation of similar tenets in England. No sooner was Elizabeth removed by death, than the Puritans, who during her reign had been steadily growing in number, took the op- ^ portunity of approaching the new sove- Millenary t t • i , r , Petition. reign, James I., in the hope of obtaining from him the redress which they had been unable to obtain from his predecessor. A petition, com- monly called the " Millenary Petition," from its mention of more than a thousand of His Majesty's subjects and ministers, whose names were ap- pended, " all groaning as under a common burthen of human rites and ceremonies," was presented to the king immediately upon his accession. This "common burthen" consisted of the following offences, which it proceeded to mention : Puritan The cross in baptism, and interrogatories ° b .> ection s. ministered to infants, and the whole rite of Con- firmation, — all of which, the Petition urged, as being superfluous, might be removed ; as well as the order 86 The Crown and the Puritans. for the use of the cap and surplice, and of the ring in marriage. It prayed that baptism might not be ministered by women 1 ; that the Communion should not be administered without a previous examination of the intending communicants ; that it should be ministered with a sermon ; that the longsomeness of service should be abridged, and church songs and music moderated ; that no popish opinion should be any more taught or defended; that no ministers should be charged to teach their people to bow at the name of Jesus ; and that the Canonical Scriptures only should be read in the church. The king made answer that he was persuaded that the Church of England was, both in constitu- tion and doctrines, agreeable to God's J ames L decides for a Word, and near to the condition of the conference. Primitive Church. Yet, although the bishops and the universities would fain have allowed things to remain under their present settle- ment, he proceeded at once to arrange for an assembly of divines, in which ecclesiastical differ- ences might be debated. This assembly did not meet till the year after the king's accession, being apparently delayed a tit d ky the prevalence of the plague. In of the the meanwhile the Puritans seem to Puritans. have shown their real spirit. They agi- tated in a very violent if not seditious manner, and 1 The rubric of 1 549 had never ordered this, only allowed it, and that only by implication and in cases of emergency. The Crown and the Puritans, 87 called down upon themselves a sharp rebuke from the king, in the shape of a proclamation, 1 in which he refers to " some men's spirits, whose heat tendeth rather to combustion than to reformation ;" and in which he notices their " gathering subscrip- tions of multitudes of vulgar persons to suppli- cations to be submitted to us, to crave that reformation, which if there be any cause to make, is more in our heart than in theirs." And so the Conference met at Hampton Court Palace on the 14th of January, 1604. The Puritans were represented by Dr. Rai- nolds, Dr. Sparkes, Mr. Knewstubbs, at Hampton and Mr. Chaderton ; the other side, Court ' by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Whitgift), eight bishops, seven deans, and two doctors of divinity. The king apparently proceeded upon his authority as Supreme Governor of the Church, 2 and upon the statute of Queen Elizabeth, which empowered the sovereign with proper advice to take " other order " in ecclesiastical matters. James's confidence in his own theological acumen made him accept this position with great complacency. Hence the Hampton Court Conference centres about the king. He argues first with the bishops . . Ceremonies and then with the Puritans about the the great difficulty. disputed points, having no difficulty in satisfying both parties with regard to doc- trine, but finding the Puritan ministers averse to 1 1 Jac. I. Cardwell, Doc. Aim., ii. 46. 2 See p. 81 above. 88 The Crown and the Puritans. many of the ceremonies allowed by the Prayer- book. But this question of ceremonies seemed to resolve itself into one of obedience to Church authority. " If they had no Word of God against them," he remarked, " but all authority for them, being already in the Church, he would never take them away." \ No arguments of any weight seem to have been brought against these cere- monies, and the contention of the king and the bishops that they "could not be proved to be con- trary to the Word of God, but were all confirmed by the Fathers, and that long before Popery," seemed to be unanswerable. The four represen- tatives of the Puritan party, men apparently of learning and moderation, doubtless acquiesced in the practical justice of the decisions finally arrived at, though they may not have been to their per- sonal taste. But the more violent of the party outside were at no pains to conceal their dis- appointment when the results of the conference were made known, and their violent and intem- perate language made it obvious that the ecclesi- astical war in England was not yet at an end. Perhaps the most important result of the Hamp- ton Court Conference was the order (arising from Besuitsofthe a vei 7 j ust complaint of the Puritans) conference. made for a un jf orm translation of the Bible, which, completed seven years later (1611), 1 The letter of Dr. James Montague, who was present at the Con- ference. Printed in Cardwell's Conferences, p. 140. The Crown and the Puritans. 89 is our present Authorized Version. The changes made in the Prayer-book may be summarized as follows : — (1) The Absolution was explained by the ad- dition of the words " or remission of sins." (2) The rubric of 1549, in the Office for Private Baptism, had implicitly allowed any person, and therefore a layman or a woman, to baptize an infant in urgent cases. The rubric was now altered in such a way as to allow only a " lawful minister " to perform the ceremony. (3) The Office of Confirmation was explained by adding to its title, "or Laying-on of hands upon children baptized and able to render an account of their faith." (4) In the Gospels for the Second Sunday after Easter and for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity the opening words, " Christ [or, ' Jesus '] said to His disciples" were changed to " Jesus said." (5) In the Catechism an explanation of the Sacraments was added. (6) The request of the Puritans, that Lessons should not be taken from the Apocrypha 1 was 1 Apocrypha: £i'j8Aa — "books the origin of which was not clear to the Fathers" (Augustine, Da Civ. Dai, xv.). 'AirSupvipos means (i) hidden, secret ; (2) spurious. The Apocryphal books are (1 and 2) the two Books of Esdras ; (3) Tobit ; (4) Judith ; (5) the conclusion of Book of Esther ; (6) Wisdom of Solomon ; (7) Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus ; (8) Baruch ; (9) Song of the Three Holy Children ; (10) History of Susannah; (11) Bel and the Dragon ; (12) the Prayer of Manasseh ; (13 and 14) the two Books of Maccabees, 90 The Crown and the Puritans. acceded to, except in the case of a very few chapters, which, however, were not to be read as having the canonical authority of Scripture. (7) A Prayer for the Royal Family (the basis of the present prayer) was inserted. (8) Special Thanksgivings were added, at the request of the Puritans, to correspond with the special Prayers for rain, fair weather, plenty, peace, and deliverance from enemies, and deliverance from plague. Matters of mere ceremonial remained as before. Objectors to vestments, to the sign of the cross in baptism, to the use of the ring in marriage, were reminded of the authority of the Church, which might well be followed in such small matters, since not even their defenders attached any spiritual significance to them. CHAPTER XIII. THE PURITAN ASCENDENCY, AND THE DIRECTORY FOR PUBLIC WORSHIP. The history of the Prayer-book during the half- century that followed the Hampton Court Confer- ence is involved in the political and religious turmoil of that period. But, as the furious opposi- tion of the Romanists in the reign of ° Effects of Queen Mary made the book dear to many Puritan ~ opposition. who, till then, had looked upon it as the expression of a " State religion"," so the equally bitter opposition of the Puritans, in their period of ascendancy, made it clear to the majority of Englishmen that no real religious freedom lay in the other extreme. During the Commonwealth, the Book of Common Prayer was rigorously sup- pressed, and the Presbyterian form of worship was imposed by law. But the book which was sub- stituted by the Parliament fell from its own utter unfitness to meet the religious aspirations of the nation ; and, when the experiment was over, the Prayer-book was left at a height of popularity which has never since been seriously threatened. 92 The Puritan Ascendency. Yet it is well, perhaps, that the opposition to the English Liturgy should for once have been suc- cessful — should for once have allied itself with the full strength of the civil power, and have shown its unloveliness in supremacy ; for so men have before their eyes an object-lesson which they will not readily forget. To pass briefly over this period. The Long Parliament, which met in 1640, was composed for the most part of Puritan members, and before the end of the next year it had taken a way of its own in ecclesiastical reformation. Bishops were thrown into prison ; in many places fonts and organs and ecclesiastical vestments of all kinds were removed from the churches ; statues of saints, monumental effigies, and stained -glass windows were ruthlessly broken to pieces, as "monuments of superstition ; " and copies of the Book of Common Prayer were seized and committed to wholesale destruction. On July 1, 1643, the "Westminster Assembly" of divines was convened by the Parliament. Before it separated, it had pledged itself to re- Westminster 1 i o Assembly of place the bishops by presbyters, and the Book of Common Prayer by the Scottish " Directory for Worship." It was not, however, till the 3rd of January, in 1645, that the two Houses of Parliament agreed to the exact form of the Directory which was to be authorized ; and not until August 23 in that year that it was forbidden to use "in any church, chapel, or public The Directory for Ptiblic Worship. 93 place of worship ; or in any private place or family within the kingdom of England," the Book of Common Prayer. By this ordinance those who used the Book of Common Prayer, either in churches or in their families, were to forfeit five pounds for the first offence, ten pounds for the second, and were to suffer a year's imprisonment without bail or mainprise for the third. 1 It may be well to describe briefly the " Direc- tory," which the Parliament of 1645 enforced as a substitute for the Book of Common Prayer. As an unique experiment, deliberately made, and tried for twenty years in England, during which time the opponents of the Prayer-book and of the ancient Church of the country really had their own way, this measure is full of interest and instruction for our own times. The Directory was practically the same as that drawn up by the Scottish The Solemn League and Covenant, and was Dir ectory. therefore not English in its origin at all. Its full title was, "A Directory for the Publike Worship of God throughout the three kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland." As its name implies, it was not a collection of forms of prayer, but rather a book of hints and directions to ministers as to the manner in which public worship was to be conducted. It was not meant for the use of the laity, the latter being entirely in the minister's hands during divine service. 1 See Collier, Eccks. Hist., viii. 291. 94 The Directory for Public Worship. Being a manual of directions, and not of set forms, the Directory was a much smaller work contents of than the Book of Common Prayer. An the Directory. ordinary CQpyj l wh j ch we wiU briefly examine, consists of only sixty-five moderate-sized pages. Of these, eight are occupied by the pre- face, explaining how the Liturgy of the Church of England had " proved an offence, not only to many of the godly at home, but also to the Reformed Churches abroad ; " 2 and how the present work was meant to " satisfy consciences, and answer the expectation of other Reformed Churches." 3 The next twenty-four pages (which, added to the preface, make about one-half of the book) are occupied with general directions about public worship in the assembly. The minister is to begin Morning and with prayer, extempore, but following service"? the tne directions which are given. Reading Directory. of Holy Scripture follows. How large a- portion shall be read at once is left to the dis- cretion of the minister : it is to be "out of the best allowed translation," but nothing out of the Apocrypha. 4 Then the minister who is to preach is directed to endeavour, by prayer before the sermon, to get his own and his readers' hearts to be rightly affected with their sins, and to call upon God to the following effect. After which follow no fewer than twelve pages of suggestions for this 1 Brit. Mus. 3408, cc. 35. 5 Page 2. a Page 6. 4 Page II. The Directory for Public Worship. 95 prayer. Beginning with an acknowledgment of both original and actual sin, "he is to bewail our blindnesse of minde, hardnesse of heart, unbelief, impenitency, security [i.e. carelessness], lukewarm- nesse, barrennesse," etc., 1 and "earnestly to sup- plicate for mercy onely for the bitter sufferings and precious merits of that our onely Saviour Jesus Christ." " To pray for the blessing of God upon all the Reformed Churches," and " for the Kings Majestie;" for the Royal Family, for Parliament, for the Universities and Schools, for seasonable weather and fruitful seasons, for the minister, and for his hearers, " that the Lord would circumcise their ears and hearts to hear, love, and receive with meeknesse the ingrafted Word, and strengthen them against whatsoever may hinder their profitable and saving hearing." By an extempore prayer in this strain (which must have attained a consider- able length by the time the minister had touched upon all these and many other suggested points) the minister was to introduce his sermon, the suggestions for which occupy the next six pages. The sermon ended, the minister is to offer up prayer again. This time he is to give thanks for the rich and heavenly blessings revealed in God's Word — "as, namely, Election, Vocation, Adoption, Justification, Sanctification, and hope of Glory." Other fit themes for prayer are also suggested : for the Covenant, for preparation for Death, for the Armies, etc. ' Page 14. 9 6 The Directory for Public Worship. The rest of the book comes under the following heads : of Baptism, of the Lord's Supper, of the Solemnization of Marriage, of Visitation of the Sick. At all of which the minister exercises to the full his own " gift of prayer." We may notice that the words of administration at the Communion are — for the bread, "Take At ye, eat ye ; this is the Body of Christ Communion. whkh j g broken for yQU . D(J th j s j n re _ membranceof Him;" for the cup, "This Cup is the new Testament in the Blood of Christ, which is shed for the remission of the sins of many ; Drink ye all of it." In the Marriage Service, after the preliminary prayer and exhortation, the contracting parties make their vows to one another " before At Marriage. a competent number of credible wit- nesses," and without any further ceremony the minister pronounces them to be husband and wife. In the Visitation of the Sick, the minister is to examine the sick person, especially touching visitation of Repentance and Faith, and to give him the sick. a jj necessar y instruction ; and he " may improve the occasion to exhort those about the sick person to consider their own mortality." Only a few lines are given to directions for the Burial of the Dead, but these are com- uria prehensive, at least in what they forbid. There is to be no prayer, reading, and singing, " either in going to, or at, the grave." The Directory for Public Worship. 97 By the Directory the strict observance of Sundays was enjoined, but saints' days were not to be observed. On Sundays there was to be cessation not only from unnecessary labour, but from all sports and pastimes. What time was vacant before or after public prayer was to be spent in reading, meditation, and the repetition of sermons, and the heads of families were to call the latter to an account of what they had heard. Such, in barest outline, was the substitute devised by the Puritans for the Book of Common Prayer. From 1645 till the restoration of the monarchy, its use was enforced by law. Irk- some, indeed, must that period have been to loyal adherents of the Church of England, during those fifteen years when the me Puritan Puritan Interdict lay upon the land; Inter reoedent - the Church. It was to consider the objections and exceptions to be raised about the directions, rules, and forms contained in that book. But it was expressly stated that all unnecessary alteration of the forms and Liturgy of the Church of England, with which the people were already acquainted, was to be avoided. Hence, as at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, the Book of Common Prayer was to be the object of attack, and the aim of the bishops would be the comparatively easy task of meeting the objections raised against it. This would be a very different business from compiling a new Liturgy, which was the task to which, apparently, the Presbyterians would fain have set themselves. 1 At the first meeting of the Conference, which did not take place till the 15th of April, the Bishop of London called upon the Presbyterians 1 Cardwell, Conferences, p. 282. 102 The Savoy Conference. to deliver their exceptions in writing, together with the additional forms and alterations which they desired. They entrusted this duty of preparing Baxters the additional forms to Richard Baxter ; Liturgy. w ^ o forthwith drew up an entire Liturgy of his own, entirely ignoring those ancient models which for so many centuries had guided the public worship of the universal Church. Baxter also urged his friends to ask for everything which they thought desirable, and not to take account of the sentiments of their opponents. Accordingly, their exceptions to the Prayer-book, and Baxter's Liturgy, were submitted to the Commission. 1 When the bishops gave in their answers to the objections which had been raised, they did so rather as men to whom matters had been referred for decision than as disputants. And in doing so, they adhered strictly to the terms of the royal warrant, which forbade alterations in the Prayer- book unless they could be shown to be necessary, and were approved of by both parties. During the last ten days of the Conference an attempt was made to come to closer quarters by means of a personal disputation. The bishops agreed to this, and three men were appointed by each side to conduct the controversy ; but it naturally resolved itself into a dispute between the two most impetuous champions of the six — Gunning and Baxter — from 1 Baxter desired an optional use either of his " Reformed Liturgy ' : or of the old. The Savoy Conference. which, of course, nothing could be gained. From the Presbyterian point of view nothing was gained by this Conference. The very extravagance of their demands, under Baxter's leadership. . \ Presbyterians made compromise impossible, while it ruintneir r r own cause. was not difficult for the bishops to refute logically the objections urged against particular points. It may be interesting to quote a few of the exceptions of the Presbyterians, with the bishops' answers to them. They are important, as dealing with points raised at the last revision of the Prayer-book, and which, not being altered then, remain to this day stumbling-blocks to many Non- conformists. With regard to the use of the old-fashioned Liturgy, the bishops urged that it was no argument to say that multitudes of sober, pious An6W persons scrupled to use it, unless it Liturgy L 1 impossible. became apparent that the Liturgy gave just grounds to make such scruples ; and, on the other hand, the alterations proposed by the Presby- terians would themselves, if adopted, offend the generality of the soberest and most loyal children of the Church of England. For this reason they could not consent to accept the new Liturgy which was submitted for their approval. With regard to the use of the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, and kneeling to receive the Communion, the bishops answered first in general terms, that not only power, but a command, had 104 The Savoy Conference. been given for all things to be done decently and in order (i Cor. xiv. 40). Further, not inferiors but superiors must judge what was Ceremonies r have their convenient and decent, and pretence use. 1 of conscience was no exemption from obedience. So those things, admittedly indifferent, yet had in them a real goodness, a real fitness and decency, which had led to their being imposed. That these ceremonies had occasioned many divisions was no more fault of theirs than it was of the gospel that the preaching of it occasioned strife. As to the surplice, reason and experience taught that decent habits and ornaments preserved reverence — as in royal acts and acts of law, so in religious worship. And, in particular, there was no habit more suitable than white linen, which resembles purity and beauty. As to the cross, it was always used in the Church ; and in token that we should not be ashamed of the cross of Christ, it was fit to be used still, and could not trouble the conscience of any that had a mind to be satisfied. As to kneeling at the Communion, it is the most decent posture for us, when we are to receive as it were from God's hand the greatest of the seals of the kingdom of heaven. It was complained that the Lord's Prayer was Thexorovs s0 often used. Yet, said the bishops, prayer, jj. was usec i only twice in the Morning Service and twice in the Evening Service. 1 For 1 The reason why the Lord's Prayer occurs twice in the Mattins The Savoy Conference. 105 though it occurred in the Litany, in the Communion Service, and at Baptism, etc., yet these must be held to be quite separate offices, and it was not fit that the Lord's Prayer should be absent from any of them. The Gloria Patri, it was said, was also sung too often. But this doxology, 1 being a solemn con- fession of the Blessed Trinity, was very The short, and we could not give God too Doxo10 ^ much glory. It was not so often repeated as the clause, " For His mercy endureth for ever," in Ps. cxxxvi. There seemed no reason, the bishops averred, except the desire for change, to alter in the Litany the phrase "deadly sin" to "heinous TheLitany sin," since the wages of sin is death ; the phrase, " from sudden death," to " from dying suddenly ; " the phrase, " all that travel," to " those that travel." In the Communion Service, although some of the offertory sentences were from the Apocrypha, the bishops urged they might be useful The to exhort people to pious liberality. The C 0 ™ 011 words, " That our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, and our souls washed and Evensong is, in origin, because of the combination of two old offices, in each of which it occurs (see p. 58). So the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the Communion Service was not (in origin) a part of the public office, having been said by the priest in his private preparation. Even now this fact is marked by the con- gregation not joining in the "Amen" at its conclusion. 1 Doxology = ascription of praise, So^oAoyia. 106 The Savoy Conference. through His most precious blood," were objected to on the ground that greater efficacy was ascribed to the blood than to the body. Yet, the bishops answer, " Our Lord's own words are, ' This is My blood, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins,' which He saith not explicitly of the body." As the Presbyterians desired the minister to have power both to admit and to keep from the „ „ „ Lord's Table, so also they would have Baptism of ' children of prevented the baptism of the children atheists, etc. r _ r of atheists, heretics, and evil livers gene- rally. The bishops answer that this is punishing the children for the parents' sake, and giving too great a power to the minister to judge which of his parishioners are atheists, heretics, or evil livers. It must be remembered that children have rights of their own to baptism, other than through their parents. As to the objection that every child that is baptized is calied " regenerate," we must imagine that God's sacraments have their effects where the receiver does not actually put any bar against them — which an infant does not ; and accordingly we may say (in faith) that every child baptized is regenerate by God's Holy Spirit; otherwise it seems this sacrament is nothing worth. With regard to baptism in private, the bishops agree that it is undesirable, but fitter than none at all. From 1549 the Catechism had formed the introductory part of the Confirmation Service. The Savoy Conference. 107 And until now the Catechism had ended with the explanation of the Lord's Prayer. In 1661 it was completed by the addition of the pre- CatecnUm sent explanation of the sacraments. an j t 0U ght not to be left to the minis- ter's pleasure to deny him absolution. As for the words objected to, they were more scriptural The Savoy Conference. (St. John xx. 23) than those which were suggested ; while repentance, as the condition of absolution, being in all cases presupposed, needed not to be expressed. In the same way, it was sought to leave it to the minister's discretion whether to give the Communion to a sick person or not ; the bishops, on the other hand, denying that a minister had power to refuse it to any who humbly desired it, and who in charity must be presumed to be penitent and fit to receive. In the Burial Service, exception was taken against the form of committal to the ground, especially the clause, "in sure and cer- The Burial tain hope of the resurrection to eternal Service - life." These words, and those of the prayer, " We give Thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world," and " That when we shall depart this life, we may rest in Him, as our hope is this our brother doth," could not, it was alleged, be used of persons who had not by their actual repentance given any ground for the hope. The answer of the bishops was a plea again for the widest charity, since none could say whether such persons did not inwardly and heartily repent at the last act. Before the Conference of bishops and doctors was finished, 1 the Convocation of the Clergy of the 1 By the terms of the Royal warrant it was only to sit for four months, thus ending on the 24th of July, 1661. no The Savoy Conference. Canterbury province had met elsewhere (May 8), and drawn up a form of prayer for the 29th of May (the anniversary of the restoration of the monarchy), and another for the Baptism of Adults (our present form), made necessary by the neglect of this sacrament during the Commonwealth period. It was in the following sessions of this Convocation at the end of the year, at which the convocation results of the Savoy Conference were con- ™t a erItion e s sidered,and not by the Savoy Conference ofieei. itsel{ - that alterations were made in the Prayer-book. The Synod of York was represented in that of Canterbury by proxies, and on the 20th of December, 1661, the Book of Common Prayer, with its alterations, was thus adopted and sub- scribed by both Convocations. In April of the following year (1662) the book received the final assent of both Houses of Parliament. 1 The principal alterations and additions in this book of 1661-2 are given below. Besides these, there were many merely verbal alterations, which, numbering something like six hundred, were un- suitable for discussion in Convocation and in Parliament. These verbal alterations had probably been made in the margin of a copy of the Manuscript b srJ ejections Prayer-book printed in 1634, by Cosin, Wren, and the other bishops whohad been directed by Convocation to look after the matter ; 1 See the account in Joyce's Sacred Synods ; and Cardwell, Conferences, p. 372. The Savoy Conference. Ill and they were adopted, with all the other altera- tions, when the whole of this volume was submitted to Convocation and adopted. 1 It was a copy of this Prayer-book of 1634, so corrected, and con- firmed under the Great Seal, which was sent by the king to the Committee of the House of Lords on the 25th of February, 1662, and to which the Commons as well as the Lords finally gave their assent 2 It will be seen that such changes as were made in 1661 were not all in the direction desired by the Presbyterians. The Absolution was • General directed to be pronounced bv the tendancyo* \ the changes. " priest," not by the " minister ; ' and the words, "bishops, priests, and deacons," were substituted in the Litany for " bishops, pastors, and ministers." The word "'church," or " people," was also put in several places instead of " congregation," in order not to countenance the Presbyterian theory of Church government ; and the Apocryphal book Bel and the Dragon was reinserted in the Calendar of Lessons. The Morning and Evening Prayer were length- ened by the addition of the Prayers for the King, the Royal Family, the Clergy and people, the 1 Cardwell, Conferetues, p. 370. 1 Before the Conference at the Savoy was over, the Commons (July 9, 1661) had revised a copy of the Prayer-book of 1604, which they seem to have chosen in preference to the later one of 1634, for fear of adopting interpolations said to have been made in the latter by Archbishop Laud (Cardwell, Conferences, p. 376). 112 The Savoy Conference. Prayer of St. Chrysostom, and the Grace. All these had previously been printed at the end of the Litany. The Sentences, Exhor- Additions to J Morning tation, Confession, and Absolution were Prayer. now printed for the first time at the beginning of Evening Service, exactly as they were at the beginning of the Morning Service in 1552. In the Litany, the words " rebellion " and " schism," suggested, of course, by the late re- bellion, were added in the petition against " sedition and privy conspiracy." Now were added also the two Ember Prayers, the Prayer for the Parliament, the Prayer for all sorts and conditions of men, the General Thanks- giving, and the Thanksgiving for restoring public peace at home. In the Communion Office some very significant additions were made. A rubric was added before significant the Prayer for the Church Militant, commu"Son directing the priest to place the elements omce ' upon the holy table. This was to be done after the alms had already, in accordance with a previous rubric, been placed upon it ; and a corresponding clause, " and oblations," added after the word "alms," thus included the elements with the alms in the prayer for their acceptance. The books of 1552 and 1559 had only, " accept our alms." The bishops here followed the book prepared for the Church of Scotland in 1637, and by making the prayer "accept our alms The Savoy Conference. "3 and oblations" they no doubt intended to restore distinct expression of the " First Oblation " or " Lesser Oblation " of primitive times, where not only the elements but other gifts also were offered formally before the act of consecration, and before the Eucharistic Offering properly so called. 1 In this connection we may notice that the priest is now directed not to begin the prayer till " after this done." The important clause, " For all Thy servants departed this life," etc., was added at the end of the Prayer for the Church Militant ; and the order about kneeling at the reception of the elements (removed by Queen Elizabeth) was restored, with the explanation that no adoration was intended to any corporal presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood. The doctrine of the "real and essential" presence was thus implicitly retained, while the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation was repudiated. The Epistles and Gospels were now taken from the Authorized Version of 161 1, and the words, "for the Epistle," were substituted for " the Epistle " in those cases in which passages from the Old Testament, etc., were read as Epistles. Two whole offices were added which still retain their place in the Prayer-book, namely, that for the Baptism of Adults, rendered neces- Twonew sary by the neglect of the sacrament of offices - Baptism during the Commonwealth time ; and the Form of Prayer to be used by those at Sea. 1 The Greater Oblation is that which is spoken of in Chapter XIX. I ii 4 The Savoy Conference. Offices were also inserted for the 30th of January, the anniversary of Charles I.'s execution ; and for the 29th of May, the anniversary of the Restoration. The Office for the Fifth of November, commemo- rating the deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, received some corrections. Copies of this book of 1662 were annexed to a printed copy of the Act of Uniformity which The ordered its use, and, having been carefully A Books e 2 in which he prayed to be allowed to depart in peace now that he had seen the Messiah, the promised Salvation of his own people Israel, and the Light to lighten the rest of the nations of the world. From the earliest ages this song has been sung at evening-time before sleep, which is the type of death. The alternative to the Nunc dimittis was pro- vided in 1552. The Deus Miser eatur, or Ps. lxvii., Deus is allowed, by the rubric of 1 5 52, in place misereatur. c f j^ unc dimittis, except on the twelfth evening of the month, when it comes in the ordinary course of the Psalms. As to the Versicles (versiculi = little verses), 1 Luke i. 46. 2 Luke ii. 29. The Versicles. 125 those at the beginning of the old Mattins, after the Lord's Prayer, " O Lord, open Thou our lips," etc., with their responses, come from the , „ , , r ' The Versicles. Psalms (Pss. li. 15 and lxx. 1 respectively). The six versicles before the collect of the day come also, ultimately, from the Psalms (Pss. lxxxv. 7 ; xx. 9 ; cxxxii. 9 ; xxviii. 9 ; [not the fifth] ; li. 10, 11). The fifth, "Give peace in our time, O Lord," was an antiphon to the ancient Collect for Peace, which is now the second collect at Morning Prayer. Nor is it altogether fanciful to consider all six of the versicles in the light of this instance ; for each of them corresponds in some such way with one or other of the prayers which follow them. The first, " O Lord, show Thy mercy upon us," with the collect of the day, for mercy and salvation ; the second, " O Lord, save the Queen," with the Collects for the Queen and Royal Family ; the third and fourth, " Endue Thy Ministers with righteousness," " O Lord, save Thy people," with that for Clergy and People ; the fifth, " Give peace in our time, O Lord," with the Collect for Peace ; and the sixth, " O Lord, make clean our hearts within us," with the Collect for Grace. CHAPTER XVI. THE COLLECTS AND OTHER PRAYERS. The term "collect" is properly applied only to that prayer for the day which precedes the Epistle in the celebration of the Eucharist ; but in our Prayer-book the word is used in a much wider sense than this, being applied, e.g., to prayers The term which come in the ordinary Mattins -collect.- anc j j7 venson g ) and even to such prayers as that " for all sorts and conditions of men." The name is derived from the Church-Latin word collecta, which meant the assembly of worshippers gathered together to hear Mass. Hence in the old Sacramentaries we have the expression, oratio ad collectavi, meaning " the prayer at the assembly " — a prayer offered at a particular church just before the congregation moved in procession to the so- called " station-church," at which the Mass was really to be celebrated. This expression is soon shortened to ad collectam, still meaning the prayer at the assembly ; and so, by a very natural transi- tion, the first prayer of the Mass, preceding the Epistle, came to be called the collecta, or " collect." 1 1 An old derivation of the word refers it to collectio, because the The Collects and other Prayers. 127 The collects of the Prayer-book, together with the Epistles and Gospels, 1 follow, in the main, the arrangement of the Sarum Missal, though the collects themselves have undergone changes of many kinds. Some of the old ones have been left out and new ones substituted ; others that have been retained have been altered, either in their contents or in their expression, at the various periods when our offices have been revised. Besides being properly a Eucharistic prayer, a collect seems to possess the further characteristics of being very short : and (1) of being , v, , , . character- addressed to God the Father, certain of iaticsofa .... collect. whose attributes it mentions as a reason for our addressing Him ; (2) of conveying only one petition, though it may be in several clauses ; (3) of pleading the merits of Jesus Christ, through whom alone the petition can be made. The Collect for Sexagesima Sunday may be taken as an instance. (1) "O Lord God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do ; (2) " Mercifully grant that by Thy power we may be defended from all adversity ; (3) "Through Jesus Christ our Lord." priest, on behalf of the assembly, collected their prayers into one. This meaning is certainly not absent from its later uses. But the evolution of the word is plain from the Sacramentaries. 1 The selection of Epistles and Gospels is substantially the same as that in the oldest Lectionaries of the Roman Church, and is attributed to St. Jerome, during the latter half of the fourth century. 128 The Collects and other Prayers. Some, like the Ascension and Whitsuntide Col- lects, end with an ascription of praise to the Trinity, "through our Saviour Christ, who liveth and reigneth, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end." Only three of our collects are addressed to God the Son (those for the Third Sunday in Advent, St. Stephen's Day, and the First Sunday in Lent), thus failing in the third of the five characteristics mentioned. These three exceptions prove the rule, for they are of modern composition. The old collects, being intended for use in the Eucharistic Service, where the sacrifice of the Son is pleaded to the Father, invariably address the First Person of the Holy Trinity. Most of the Prayer-book collects are of very high antiquity. Five entire collects come from the Sacramentary of Leo the Great, who Sources from whichour was Bishop of Rome from 440 to 461, collects come. , , ~ 7 , and whose Sacramentary was certainly in use before the end of the fifth century. The originals of others are to be found in the later Sacra- mentaries of Gelasius (a.D. 494) and of Gregory the Great (A.D. 590). All these, forty-seven in number, were in the Sarum Missal, and were adopted with more or less alteration by the trans- lators of 1 549. Others owe their entire composition to 1549, especially most of the Saints' Day collects, which were entirely remodelled because the earlier ones generally asked for the intercession of the particular saints, or, at least, referred to their The Collects and other Prayers. 129 merits. Only two new ones were composed at the revision of 1661. The Latin originals exhibit the pregnant brevity and antithetical force so congenial to the language in which they are written, and so difficult of similar expression in English. Yet some of them are rendered almost word for word. On the other hand, most of the translations of 1 549 show that the claims of clear- ness and melody of language were not unrecognized, even though they led to rearrangement and ex- pansion of the original. The collects which were freshly composed for the First Prayer-book — among them the beautiful collects for the First Sunday in Advent, for All Saints' Day, and for Christmas Day — that "masterpiece of the great workmen of 1549," as it has been called by Dr. Bright, are standing monuments of the capacity of the Reformers for their work. Nowhere in the Prayer-book is the soberness and dignity of the English Liturgy, its combined beauty and theological soundness, so well exemplified as in the collects. For reference, the collects are arranged in the following list, according to their origin : — (1) From the Sacramentary of Leo: Third Sunday after Easter; Fifth, Ninth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth Sundays after Trinity. (2) From the Gelasian Sacramentary : Fourth Sunday in Advent ; Innocents' Day; Palm Sunday; the second of the three Collects for Good Friday ; Fourth and Fifth Sundays after Easter ; First, K 130 The Collects and other Prayers. Second, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Eleventh, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first Sundays after Trinity. (3) From the Gregorian Sacramentary : St. Stephen ; St. John the Evangelist ; the Epiphany ; First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth Sundays after the Epiphany; Septuagesima; Sexagesima; Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth Sundays in Lent ; the first of the Good Friday Collects ; Ascension Day ; Whit Sunday, and Trinity Sunday 1 ; Third, Fourth, Seventeenth, Twenty - second, Twenty - third, Twenty- fourth, Twenty-fifth Sundays after Trinity ; Purification ; Annunciation ; St. Michael. (Tenth and Twelfth Sundays after Trinity, and Easter Day, have elements derived from one or other of the two earlier Sacramentaries.) (4) Composed in 1549: First and Second Sun- days in Advent ; Christmas Day ; Circumcision ; Ouinquagesima ; Ash Wednesday; First Sunday in Lent ; the third Good Friday Collect ; First and Second Sundays after Easter ; St. Thomas ; SS. Philip and James (altered later) ; St. Matthias ; St. Mark ; St. Barnabas ; St. John Baptist ; St. Peter ; St. James ; St. Matthew ; St. Luke ; SS. Simon and Jude ; All Saints ; St. Bartholomew ; St. Paul. (5) Composed in 1552: St. Andrew. (6) Composed in 1661 : Third Sunday in Advent ; Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. 1 For Trinity Sunday as a separate festival, see some observations on the English Calendar in Chapter XVIII., p. 153. Tlie Collects and other Prayers. There are one or two special rubrics directing the use of certain collects, which must not be over- looked. The Collect for the First Sunday special in Advent is to be read in the other rubrics - weeks of Advent also, after the proper collect for the day. In the same way, the Ash-Wednesday Collect is to be said every day throughout Lent, after the proper collect for the day. The Collect (with the Epistle and Gospel) appointed for the Circumcision is to be read every day after until the Epiphany. And in years in which there are more than twenty-five Sundays after Trinity, the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel appointed for the Twenty-fifth Sunday is to be reserved, and read always on the last Sunday before Advent, the intermediate days being supplied by the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels for Sundays after the Epiphany, which in this case will not have been needed earlier in the year. It remains to consider various other prayers, some of them real collects, at least in origin, others with a different history. To the former class belong the two collects which, in Morning and Evening Prayer, follow the collect of the day, and which are, there- fore, called the Second and Third Col- collects at lects. The " Second Collect, for Peace," in the Morning Prayer, came from the Sacramentary of Gelasius into the Breviary, and thence into the Mattins of 1549. The "Third Collect, for Grace," 132 The Collects and other Prayers. has a similar origin, and passed first into the Breviary Office of Prime, and thence to its present position. The Second and Third Collects of Evening Prayer are both translations of prayers from the Sarum Breviary, which are first found Fixed J collects at in the Sacramentary of Gelasius. All Evensong. of these four collects, like so many others which have their origin in the old Sacra- mentaries, bear signs of the troubled life of the fifth century, in the constant prayer they offer for peace and for aid against all perils. As we have seen above, the Mattins and Even- song of 1549 ended with the Third Collect. In 1661 the following five prayers, which had pre- viously been printed at the end of the Litany, were brought to their present position. (1) The original of the "Prayer for the Queen's Majesty," or, as it was then, the "Prayer for the me Five King's Majesty," is found in a Book of prayers. p ra y ers printed towards the end of Henry VIII.'s reign. It was not, however, in either of Edward VI.'s Prayer-books, but first appeared, much curtailed and altered, in the Book of Common Prayer in Elizabeth's reign (1559). (2) The "Prayer for the Royal Family" is attributed to Archbishop Whitgift (1604), whose original composition, mentioning the actual names of the prince and princess, has been altered to general terms. The Collects and other Prayers. 133 (3) The " Prayer for the Clergy and People " comes from the Sacramentary of Gelasius, through the Sarum Breviary. (4) The " Prayer of St. Chrysostom " was not in the Sarum Breviary. It was placed by Cranmer, in 1 544, at the end of the Litany, and thence was moved, with the other prayers, to its present position. Cranmer took it from the Liturgy of Constantinople, in which it bears St. Chrysostom's name. Yet it cannot certainly be attributed to St. Chrysostom ; it occurs also in the Liturgy of St. Basil, and its authorship might with equal probability be assigned to the latter. (5) The " Grace " is the same as St. Paul's bene- diction to the Church at Corinth (2 Cor. xiii. 14). The mention of the Trinity recalls the triple benediction of Old Testament times (Numb. vi. 24-26), the counterpart of which is found in every ancient Liturgy. There are other prayers, directed by the rubric to be said " before the two final prayers of the Litany, or of Morning and Evening ^ Prayer," which since they are to be occasional . , . , Prayers. used on particular occasions, are known as the " Occasional Prayers." There are also Thanksgivings corresponding to some of these prayers. Of the Occasional Prayers, those " for Rain " and " for Fair Weather," and that " to be read in the time of War and Tumults," are derived, in 134 The Collects and other Prayers. idea at least, though not in expression, from the Sacramentary of Gregory, through the Sarum Missal. They are in the book of 1549, at the end of the Communion Office. The " Prayer that may be said after any of the former" is of similar origin. The two alternatives " In time of Dearth and Famine " were composed and inserted in 1552 ; as was also the prayer " in time of any Common Plague or Sickness." The two prayers for the Ember Ember 1 weeks have no ancient prece- prayers - dent, and are peculiar to the English ritual. They were both inserted in 1661. The first may have been composed by Cosin, Bishop of Durham, as it occurs in his book of private devotions ; the second occurs in the Prayer-book of ^_^7j which was prepared by the Scottish bishops for the Church of Scotland, and may possibly have been Archbishop Laud's composi- ng tion. The Prayer for the High Court parliament. of p ar i iament is a i so attributed to Laud. It appears first in an "Order of Fasting" of 1625, and was inserted in its present place in 1661. The prayer " for all conditions of For all f J conditions of men" was probably composed by Bishop Gunning, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. It is said that the original draft was much longer, containing petitions for the king, the royal family, and the clergy, and 1 See Chapter XVIII., p. 155, for the meaning of the word " Ember." The Collects and other Prayers. 135 that the word "finally" is out of place in its present shortened form. 1 This prayer also was inserted in 1661. Of the Thanksgivings, the General Thanks- giving, as it is called, in order to distinguish it from the Thanksgivings which are for T he Thanks- particular blessings, is the composition livings, of Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich, and was added in 1661. The other Thanksgivings — for Rain, Fair Weather, etc. — have no ancient counterpart. They were added after the Hampton Court Conference, in 1604, at the request of the Puritans, — all except that " for restoring Public Peace at home," which has reference to the times of the restoration of the monarchy, and was inserted in 1661. 1 Procter, History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 282. CHAPTER XVII. THE CREEDS. ANOTHER element which appears in many of the English offices is the recitation of the heads of Christian belief, which are gathered Three forms ° ofthe together in the forms called Creeds Creed. h (credo, " I believe "). The Church of England recognizes three Creeds, or rather, three forms of the same Creed, for the two longer ones, the Nicene and the so-called Athanasian Creed, are for the most part only expansions of that known as the Apostles' Creed. One or other of these forms occurs in the daily Mattins and Evensong, in the Communion Office, and in the Offices for Baptism and for the Visitation of the Sick. These are elements which the Jewish synagogue offices did not contain, and which did not appear in Christian offices (except those for Baptism) till the fifth century. We must inquire briefly into their origin. It appears plain that the origin of the Christian Creeds lay in the profession of faith required of every convert before he was baptized. Before he The Creeds. 37 could be baptized into the Christian faith, he must at least know something about Jesus Christ, and be able to say that he believed in Him, . . ' Origin m the and in the most important facts con- Baptismal c # profession. nected with His redemption of the world. Hence many old Creeds occur in the interrogative form in which the Apostles' Creed occurs in our own Baptismal Service : " Dost thou believe in God the Father ? " and so on. Many, too, begin, " We are baptized into," instead of " I believe in." The custom of turning to the east during the recitation of the Creed is, perhaps, a reminiscence of this ancient use. The candidate for Baptism turned to the west, and renounced the devil and powers of evil ; then to the east, from whence Christ should come, as he recited his declaration of faith in Him. It is thought that in such passages of the New Testament as I Cor. xv. 3, 4 — where St. Paul says to the Corinthians, " I de- livered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins accord- ing to the Scriptures ; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures " — we have traces of actual forms of belief, i.e. Creeds, which were used for the instruction of catechumens, or candidates for Baptism. The earliest Creeds were very short. That of the Ethiopian eunuch, whom St. Philip found reading the Prophet Isaiah, was simply, " I believe 133 The Creeds. that Jesus Christ is the Son of God ; " 1 and, satis- fied with this, St. Philip immediately baptized _ him. But even this simple clause in- Earhest form r had to be volves the knowledge of much more than expanded. ° it expresses, and would be unintelligible, without further explanation, in most countries of the Gentile world. For who was this Jesus Christ who was said to be the Son of God ? And what were the attributes of this God whom Christians called the Father of Jesus Christ ? All this had to be expressed clearly as time went on, and as fresh converts were gathered in. So other additions were made as the subtle minds of the East found one difficulty after another as they dwelt upon the mysteries of the Creation of the world, of the Incarnation, of the work of the Holy Spirit, and upon the other heads of the Christian belief. And thus, under the combined influences of the necessity for clear teaching and for guarding against heresy, the earliest Creeds added clause to clause, until in some cases they became quite lengthy documents. The detailed array of explanations and defences which we find in the Athanasian Confession is due to no other cause. The Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed comes into our Mattins and Evensong through the Mediaeval Office of Prime. 1 Acts viii. 37 (Authorized Version). The Creeds. 139 We know that the Synod of Aquis-Grani (Aix- la-Chapelle), in 816, ordered its use in that office, and it was so used in the Anglo-Saxon „ ° Conveys the Church. 1 It most probably owes its teaching of ..... , the Apostles. name to the belief that it was drawn up by the Apostles themselves ; and there is a well- known legend of the eighth century, given by Pirminius, 2 telling how the Twelve Apostles, sitting together at Pentecost, were filled with the Holy Spirit, and under His influence composed this Creed. The first clause of the Creed in this legend is ascribed to St. Peter, the second to St. John, and so on through all the clauses, which together make the full Creed as we know it. But, leaving such an account out of the question, there must have been forms in existence, containing at least the substance of the Apostles' Creed, as early as the second century, and that even in the West of Europe. " We may regard it as an assured result of research," says Professor Harnack, 3 "that the old Roman Creed came into existence about or shortly J Second and before the middle of the second century." third » centuries. St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in Gaul (A.D. 170), and Tertullian of Carthage (A.D. 200), both have forms declaring belief in most of the 1 Palmer, Origines Liturgka, I. i. 14. 2 See the Libdlus Pirminii, published by Mabillon. Pirminius died about A.D. 758. Cf. Rufinus, Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum, 2. 3 Dr. Adolf Harnack, in his treatise (lSo2), Das Apostolischc Glaubensbekenntniss. 140 The Creeds. articles which are mentioned by the present Creed, though doing so in words which differ both from it and from each other. The articles which most of these second-century Creeds do not mention are — (1) The Conception by the Holy Ghost. (2) The Descent into Hell. (3) The Holy Catholic Church. (4) The Communion of Saints. (5) The Forgiveness of Sins. In the third century, however (A.D. 250), we find two of these five clauses, (3) and (5), brought together in St. Cyprian's account of the Christian belief ; thus, the Forgiveness of Sins and Eternal Life through the Holy Church. 1 The old Roman Creed of the second century also mentions the Holy Church (not " Catholic ") and the Remission of Sins. In the fourth century, in the Creed of Aquileia in Italy, which is given to us by Rufinus, we get clause (2), the Descent into Hell. And Fourth to " sixth i n the sixth century (A.D. 550), in a centuries. J v JJ " Creed preserved by Eusebius Gallus, 2 we find the other two clauses, (1) and (4), "was conceived " and "Communion of Saints," complet- ing the Creed. 1 St. Cyprian, Ep. 76, Ad Magnum. 2 See a sermon of Eusebius Gallus, in Heurtley's Harmonia Sym- bolka, p. 59, where, besides the two clauses mentioned above, we have for the first time the word " dead " before "buried;" and "sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty " instead of simply " at the right hand of the Father." The Creeds. 141 The addition of the word " Catholic " to the clause about the Holy Church seems to have been made in the Creed of Aquileia, since we find the whole expression there in the time of Nicetas, who was Bishop of Aquileia in A.D. 450. The Creeds above mentioned differ greatly in verbal expression ; but the later ones seem all to tend gradually towards that form of Pirminius mentioned above, which became the settled form in the Service-books of Western Europe, and which, translated, is our Apostles' Creed. Its final shape is thus as late as the eighth century, but it will be seen that such additions as were made after the second century neither affect the main scope of the Creed, nor can be considered as departures from primitive belief. 1 The exact expression of a Creed was often a matter of local convenience, and it does not follow, because in some cases the less important facts were omitted, that they were not believed. The Nicene Creed. The history of the Nicene Creed exemplifies fully the statement made above, that the original Creed of Baptism owed, in a great TheNicene degree, its expansion to the necessity Creed - for refuting heresy. The East was prolific in 1 Professor Harnack's recent objections on this point seem to be adequately answered by Dr. Swete, in his able reply, The Apostles' Creed: its Relation to Primitive Christianity (1894). 142 The Creeds. heresy during the first few centuries of the Chris- tian era. It was in the year A.D. 325 that Con- stantine, the Emperor of the Roman world, called the Council of bishops and presbyters at Nicaaa, in Asia Minor, to remedy the heretical teaching of Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who had denied the eternal Divinity of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The statement of Arius himself upon this point was that the Son of God was produced influence of from things non-existent ; there was a he?et?on time when He was not ; He was a this Creed. creature> and a thing produced. No fewer than three hundred and eighteen bishops were present at this Council. Eusebius, who was Bishop of Caesarea at the time, was one of its members, and he has handed down to us some account of the decisions which were arrived at. He himself, apparently, laid a Confession of Faith before the Council, in which the Godhead of Jesus Christ is declared in emphatic terms similar to those which ultimately were adopted by the Council, and which are set forth by the present Nicene Creed. The Creed put forth by the Fathers at Nicsea was not exactly like that which we call the Nicene Creed. But the clauses which relate to Jesus Christ are expressed in almost identical terms : " The Only Begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father ; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God [i.e. God from God, The Creeds. 143 Deuvi de Deo, etc., Qtbv Ik GfoG] ; begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things on earth ; Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was in- carnate, made man, suffered, and rose the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come to judge the living and the dead." The eternal Divinity of Jesus Christ is here ex- pressed over and over again in the most explicit terms ; twice in this Confession He is declared to be of the same substance (u/ioovaiov) with the Father, and therefore, like Him, uncreated. Since this point only was in question, the Nicene Symbol, as given by the historians, does not amplify the last clause, which relates to the Third Person of the Trinity, but ends simply, " And we believe in the Holy Ghost." About fifty years after the Council of Nicaea arose other heresy, to which the express additions to this last clause are probably due. ' Heresy of Macedonius, who had been Bishop of Macedonia, ' r A.D. 375. Constantinople, began to teach that the Holy Ghost was not truly God. Hence we find, in the Creeds of that time, clauses added to the simple statement of belief in the Holy Ghost ; namely, that He is the Lord, and the Life-giver, proceeding from the Father, worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, and that He spoke by means of the prophets. i 4 4 The Creeds. These clauses are all in a Creed given by Epi- phanius, 1 who writes, according to his own state- ment, in the year A.D. 373. It was not until A.D. 381 that the Council of Constantinople was summoned to combat the councilor heresy of Macedonius, so that it cannot wpiTlv. be correct to say that the clauses ex- 381 " pressing the Divinity of the Holy Ghost were added by this Council. The Nicene Creed, with these additions, can only be called " Constanti- nopolitan" in the sense that the opinion of the Council of Constantinople is expressed by it ; and that it was probably used throughout the patri- archate of Constantinople. 2 It was at the Council of Chalcedon (the Fourth General Council of chaicedon, Council), in A.D. 45 1, that the Creed of Nicsea, with these Constantinopolitan additions, was accepted as the Creed of the Universal Church. This Council also amplified one or two of the earlier clauses. The words of the present Creed which were added by the Council of Chalcedon were, "of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary," " He sitteth at the right hand of the Father," and " Whose kingdom shall have no end." The clause appearing in the Creed given 1 Epiphanius, Ancorate, cc. 120, 121. 2 Besides the fact of the additional clauses being found at least seven years before A.D. 381, none of the early historians mentions a Constantinopolitan Symbol. The Creed is wanting even in some records of the seventh canon of the Council, and this canon is the only evidence we have that the Council put forth a Creed at all. The Creeds. 145 by Epiphanius, " Lord, and Giver of Life," was also added to the article on the Holy Ghost. Even now this developed Nicene Creed did not contain one clause which stands in our own — the famous words et Filio, declaring that the Holy Ghost proceeds " from the Father "Filioque" and from the Son." This addition first appears in the Churches of the West of Europe, and particularly in the Creed of the Third Council of Toledo in Spain (a.d. 569), where it was pro- bably used as an additional safeguard against Arianism. All the Latin Churches seem to have adopted it more or less unconsciously, but the Greek Churches in the East looked upon it from the first as unwarrantable. By the eighth century it had become a reproach between East and West, and the breach between the two grew gradually wider until it led to the great schism which has separated Eastern from Western Christendom. The Nicene Creed comes into our Communion Service through the Sarum Missal. The influence of the Third Council of Toledo (above mentioned), which had adopted the Creed, led to its becoming the Creed of the Mass in Spain. From Spain it passed first into the Gallican, and then into the Roman Mass. The Athanasian Creed. The third form of Creed which finds a place in L 146 The Creeds. the English offices is that which bears the name of St. Athanasius. In the First Prayer-book of Athanaaian Edward VI., and up to the revision of creed. jgg^ jt wa s called simply the Quiamque vult, the words, "commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius," being added in the latter year. If, however, there is one thing certain about this document, it is that St. Athanasius did not write it. St. Athanasius was one of the bishops present at the Council of Nicsea, in A.D. 325, and it is very likely that, like Eusebius of Caesarea, he had prepared a Confession of Faith of his own, in which the orthodox views about the Holy Trinity were clearly put. But in this case his Confession would have been in Greek, and not in Latin ; and though there are early Greek versions of the first part of the Quiamque, yet a close examination shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that they are translations from the Latin, not that the Latin versions are translations from the Greek. Further, it seems quite clear, from the most recent research, that this Confession consists of two different portions, each of which had a separate origin. The The first part - . , , ' , . , about the first twenty-eight verses (following the Prayer-book arrangement) form a decla- ration of faith in the Holy Trinity, most of which is found, without the later verses, in various manu- scripts which cannot be later than the eighth century. We must consider these twenty-eight verses separately from the rest. Their substance, The Creeds. 147 at any rate, if not their actual expression, may be much earlier than that century, and, as they really express the views for which St. Athanasius con- tended, it is not remarkable that they came to be called Athanasian. Taking into account the fact that they certainly had their origin in the Gallican Church, it is not hard to believe, with G aiiicanin Professor Harnack, 1 that they were there orism- used as a Confession of Faith to combat the Arian Wisigoths of Spain, just as the Nicsean or Constantinopolitan Creed served to combat Eastern Arianism. The origin of the treatise was probably very similar, both in time and place, to that of the Te Deum, which is in reality just as much a Confession of Faith, or Creed, as it is a Psalm ; while the Athanasian Creed, conversely, is just as much a Psalm as a Creed, and is, in fact, called a Psalm in many ancient documents. Like the Te Deum, too, its authorship is quite uncertain ; and both have been ascribed by eminent authorities to Hilary, Bishop of Aries, who died in a.d. 449. As the first part of our Athanasian Creed must be considered as having been originally a separate treatise upon the doctrine of the Trinity, so there is reason for thinking that the partTn the latter half was a separate treatise upon Incarnatl0n - the Incarnation of our Lord. In the famous Treves Manuscript, the date of which is possibly about the end of the seventh century, the latter 1 Harnack, DogmengeschichU, ii. 298, sq. 14$ The Creeds. half of the Quicunque (beginning with our twenty- ninth verse) appears without the former, and this with no indication that anything has been omitted. Of its authorship we have no indication whatever, but the clauses in which it guards against various heresies point to a date later than the fourth century. The combination of both treatises is not found until the ninth century, when they occur nearly in their present form as one Confession, in a Prayer- book of Charles the Bald. Hayton, Bishop of Basle (died A.D. 836), ordered the Quicunque to be learnt by heart by his clergy, and recited every Sunday at Prime 1 — a Later history „ ' * _ of Athanasian fact which shows that by the beginning Creed. .... . . f of the ninth century its authority was well established. Two centuries later it had ac- quired a place of honour equal to that of the Te Deum, and was recited in most churches every day at Prime — a position it held in the old English offices. In 1549, however, the Apostles' Creed was appointed for daily Mattins, and the Athanasian Creed was reserved for the six most important festivals in the year. The book of 1552 added the other seven holy days to the rubric directing its use, so that we have it now practically about once a month. To a mind unacquainted with its history, the Athanasian Confession appears to bristle with an 1 Migne, Pairologia Latim? Citrsiis, cxv. p. n. The Creeds. 149 almost aggressive array of dogma. But there is not one word in this Creed which has not done duty at some time in the history of the ' Heresies Church in defending her faith against combated by & & the Creed. actual error. Patnpassians and Sabel- lians have " confounded the Persons," by maintain- ing that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were not three Persons, but one Person ; Arians have " divided the substance " of the God- head, by making that of the Son differ from that of the Father. As Arians and Ebionites have said that Christ was not perfect God, so Gnostics and Apollinarians and Eutychians have denied that He was perfect Man. As Nestorius taught that in Christ there were two Persons, the Son of God and the Son of Man, so Eutyches taught that He had not two natures, the human and the Divine. Even the twenty-third verse, "So there is one Father, not three Fathers ; one Son, not three Sons ; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts " — apparently so unnecessary to the unimaginative Western mind — was framed to meet a heresy which taught that there were three unoriginated principles, and there- fore three Fathers, and three Sons, and three Holy Ghosts. 1 Nor can we think that the days of these heresies are yet over, or that this Creed, having done its 1 Note that the word "incomprehensible" in the phrase, "the Father incomprehensible," is in the original, immensus, &iretpos, i.e. " unbounded," " immeasurable." The Creeds. work, may be dispensed with. In many fresh forms such difficulties have recurred, and may do so again, in the conflict of Christianity with the other religions of the world, so that, as a plain statement of what is not true with regard to the Christian faith, it is invaluable still. With regard to the so-called damnatory clauses, they express no more, when properly understood, than the texts of Scripture upon which damnatory they are founded (e.g. Mark xvi. 1 6, clauses. J A " He that disbelieveth shall be con- demned " 1 ). In the light of this and other verses of the New Testament they are better understood as " monitory " clauses, or clauses of warning, than damnatory clauses. Speaking generally, it would seem that if a special revelation of religious truth, about sin and the necessity for its atonement, has been given to men, it cannot be a light matter whether it be rejected or not. The last clauses of the Athanasian Creed cannot refer to any but a wilful rejection of the faith of Jesus Christ. And the Church, in still using the Creed, does not presume to judge : it simply warns. But if these clauses of the Creed are to be rejected, one must explain away many texts of the New Testament and ignore the whole spirit of the Old. 1 Revised Version. CHAPTER XVIII. the calendar and lessons— ember days- rogation days and litany. The Calendar. The Prayer-book Calendar comprises two things : (i) the order of the months and days in the year ; and (2) a list of the saints commemorated in the English Church. The former (i), of course, like the order of any other calendar, depends ultimately upon astronomical considerations, and Easter is the point from which the rest of the ecclesiastical year is reckoned. The so-called movable feasts are those which depend upon Easter Day, and which occur earlier or later, according to the date on which Easter falls. Such are Septuagesima Sunday, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, etc. The latter (2) owes its present state mainly to a re- vision made in Elizabeth's reign, in the year 1561. The saints' days are immovable feasts, because they, like Christmas Day, which falls always on the 25th of December, are fixed to certain days in certain months. Altogether there are seventy- one saints now mentioned in the English Calendar. 152 The Calendar and Lessons. Of these, the most important were recognized in the Prayer-books of 1549 and 1552, and their Red-ietter festivals are observed still by the use of days - special Collects, Epistles, and Gospels. In 1561, though the pre- Reformation calendar was consulted, only forty-eight of the minor holy days were restored out of the hundred and fifty-one which were recognized in the reign of Henry VIII. Biack-ietter Of these forty-eight minor holy days, for days. which proper Collects, Epistles, and Gospels are not provided, twenty-one commemorate saints like St. George, the patron saint of England ; St. Alban, the first English martyr; St. Augustine, the missionary to the English ; St. David, the patron saint of Wales ; and others connected with our own island. There are some unaccountable omissions, for St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, and even St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, find no place in our calendar. They were over- looked even in 1661, when the names of the Venerable Bede, St. Alban, and St. Enurchus were added to the list of 1561. The observance of saints' days probably arises from a very early practice of keeping the anni- versary of the day on which a saint died by martyrdom. The night before such anniver- saries used to be spent in watching, and Vigil. , ..ii-'. . was observed with lasting and prayer. Hence the term "Vigil" (vigilare, "to watch") now applied to the day preceding certain festivals. The Calendar and Lessons. 153 A vigil implies a fast, and is not to be confused with the Eve of a festival. Some festivals have no vigils, either because they occur in seasons when fasting would be out of place, as in the case of those falling in the joyous seasons of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide ; or because they do not commemorate the pain of martyrdom, as is the case with the Festival of St. Michael and All Angels. St. Luke's Day is without a vigil, either because the Evangelist is thought to have died in peace without martyrdom, or because the Festival of St. Etheldreda used to occupy the day before. 1 As every Sunday is a festival commemorating the Lord's resurrection, it is forbidden ever to fast on that day ; so, in the case of a holy day falling on Monday, its vigil (if it has one) is kept on the previous Saturday, not on Sunday, its eve. The beginning of the ecclesiastical year is Advent Sunday, which is always the nearest Sunday to the Feast of St. Andrew (November 30), whether before or after. The greater holy days of the Church of England are mainly the same as those which have always been observed by the Universal Church since their first institution. The observance of the Sunday which occurs in the octave of Pentecost as a separate festival in honour of the Holy Trinity (our Trinity Sunday), seems to have been for a long time peculiar to the English Church. Its universal observance was 1 Blunt, Annotated Book of Common Prayer, p. 1 18. 154 The Calendar and Lessons. not enforced by papal authority till 1334. In many other Churches than our own the following Sundays are still reckoned after Pentecost, not by such-and-such a number after Trinity. The Daily Lessons. The present system of Lessons, i.e. lections or readings, at Morning and Evening Prayer, was finally settled in 187 1. It consists of Principle J ' of two cycles — one from the Old Testament, arrangement. to be read as First Lessons ; the other from the New Testament, to be read as Second Lessons. The original principle of both was pro- vision for a perfectly continuous reading of the books of Holy Scripture, but this is interfered with in both cycles. In the case of the New Testament Lessons the continuity is broken by the appoint- ment of special passages to be read on Septuagesima Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, Easter Day, First Sunday after Easter, Whit Sunday, and Trinity Sunday, and on all the greater holy days. In the case of the Old Testament Lessons, there is still more displacement, because special passages have been appointed, not only for all the days just mentioned, but for every Sunday in the year. 1 It is to be noticed that the New Testament is read over twice every year, with scarcely any other omissions than those which are caused by the 1 These are almost identical with the Lessons appointed in Queen Elizabeth's reign (1559). Ember Days. 1 55 substitution of special Lessons. It is arranged that when the Gospels are read in the morning, the Epistles are read in the evening, and vice versa ; so that a person attending only Mattins every day and not Evensong, or Evensong every day and not Mattins, will hear almost the whole of the New Testament in the course of a year. Here, as in the arrangement of the Psalms, daily attendance at service is supposed by the scheme of Prayer- book instruction and worship. By the Act of 1 87 1 power is given to the ordinary 1 to alter the appointed Psalms and Lessons for any other day on all occasions in which he may judge it con- venient to do so. Ember Days. The " Ember Days at the Four Seasons " come in the Prayer-book list of days of fasting or absti- nence, and are observed with special prayer for candidates who are to be ordained to the ministry of the Church. Probably the earliest observance of Ember days had no special reference to Ordina- tion. They seem to have been observed Origin of as fasts to consecrate the four seasons the term of the year, and are called the Jejunia Quattuor Temporum, or Fasts of the Four Seasons. Whether the derivation of the word be from this 1 Ordinary = ordinarius, one who orders ; i.e. generally the bishop of the diocese. The archbishop is, however, the ordinary of the whole province (Tomlin's Law Dictionary). 156 Rogation Days and Litanies. expression, quattuor temporum, becoming first quateviber, and then simply ember ; or whether it be from an old Anglo-Saxon word ymbrine, mean- ing a " revolution " of the seasons, — there seems to be no doubt that its significance is connected with recurring periods of the year. Ordinations in early times were held by bishops whenever it might be convenient or necessary. But as early as the fifth century these fasts of the four seasons seem to have become connected with Ordination ; for Gelasius, who was Bishop of Rome in A.D. 492, is said to have limited the times of Ordination to the occasions on which they were observed. It was not till A.D. 1095, at the Council of Placentia, that the actual days were specified which we still observe. The Ember days are twelve in number, being the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after (1) the First Sunday in Lent ; (2) Whit Sunday ; (3) September 14, which in the old calendars was Holy Cross Day ; (4) December 13, which was St. Lucy's Day. The rubric directs that the Ember Collects 1 shall be read every day during the Ember weeks, i.e. during the weeks in which the Ember days occur. Rogation Days and Litanies. Among the fast-days appointed by the English Church are also three days called Rogation days, 1 See Chapter XVI. Rogation Days and Litanies. 157 which are specified as the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preceding Holy Thursday, or Ascension Day. Rogation and Litany are really equivalent terms, the former coming from the TheRogation Latin, the latter from the Greek (ro- days - gatio, Xiravila), but both meaning " supplication ; " so that Rogation days are Litany days, or days of supplication. The name is given to the three days before Ascension Day, which are appointed as the special occasions on which to pray for the Divine blessing upon the land and its fruit. At the last re- vision of the Prayer-book, in 1661, a special Collect, Epistle, and Gospel were proposed for use on the three Rogation days, but they were not adopted. The question was again brought forward in 1689, when the Commission proposed a Collect, which, though not adopted, expresses the object of the Rogation days, in praying : " Almighty God, who hast blessed the earth that it should be fruitful, and bring forth everything that is necessary for the life of man, and hast commanded us to work with quietness, and eat our own bread ; bless us in all our labours, and grant us such seasonable weather that we may gather in the fruits of the earth, and ever rejoice in Thy goodness." It is said that these particular days before Ascension Day were first appointed for solemn * 11 Mamertus, observance by Mamertus, the Bishop Bishop of J ' r Vienne. of Vienne, in the South of Gaul (about A.D. 467), who was led to do so in consequence 158 Rogation Days and Litanies. of the violent earthquakes and other troubles to which the country round Vienne was subjected at that time. 1 The just anger of Heaven was deprecated by a universal observance of fastin g and humiliation. A few years later (A.D. 511) the Council of Orleans prescribed their observance, and since they were the only days in the year set apart for this particular purpose, they became known as the Rogation days. From the days of Augustine they seem to have been observed in the English Church. The form of supplication used on the Rogation days was that from which they took their name, the Rogation, or Litany, which was of earlier institution. The characteristic of the Litany is that it was meant for processional use. In this it differs from all the other offices in the Prayer-book, processional We hear of solemn processions of clergy and people at Constantinople as early as the fourth century (A.D. 398), where the form of supplication adopted was the singing of hymns. But the principle of the minister bidding the subject of the prayer, and of the people endorsing it by answering, " Lord, have mercy " (Kvpit, fXsrjfTov), is as old as the Apostolical Constitu- tions, and may be as ancient as the second or third century. However, the basis of the Litany, as we know it, seems to be of Western growth. The ordinary occasions which called for its use 1 Gregory of Tours, Histona Francorum, ii. 34. Rogation Days and Litanies. 159 were similar to those which led to its appointment by Mamertus, namely, seasons of distress and humiliation ; and it is not wonderful that, in the perilous times of the fifth and sixth centuries, the Churches of Western Europe found in the Litany an office peculiarly suited m times , • , rr,, \ , , , of distress. to their needs. I he old prayer of the Ambrosian Litany at Milan, " Deliver us not into the hands of the heathen," was prompted, doubtless, by the presence of Huns or Vandals at the city gates ; and it reminds us of the later prayer of the Gallican monks against another enemy, " From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us." The three petitions, " Lord, have mercy upon us," " Christ, have mercy upon us," " Lord, have mercy upon us," in which priest and people TheLesser joined, were known in the time of Litan y- Augustine as "The Litany," and are now called "The Lesser Litany" to distinguish it from the more developed form. A Litany was instituted in Rome by Gregory the Great (and possibly drawn up by him) shortly before he became Pope. It was at a time when a pestilence was ravaging the city, and when there was great distress besides from a threatened invasion of the Lombards, and from an overflow of the Tiber, which had destroyed the stores of corn. This Litany was generally used in Rome, and in particular on St. Mark's Day, by a great i6o Rogation Days and Litanies. procession which, starting from seven different points of the city, met at one of the churches. The Greater This Litany, called "The Greater Litany. Litany," and doubtless brought to England by Augustine, was adopted by the English Church at the Council of Clovesho, and may possibly have been the basis of the Litany of the Use of Sarum, from which our own is derived. Bede 1 says that Augustine and his companions entered Canterbury singing the words of Gregory's Litany. The Litany, as we have seen, was the first whole public Office which was allowed in English. In Henry VIII. 's Primer it was called the Common Prayer of Procession. In the book of 1549 it was ordered to be used on Wednesdays and Fridays, before the Communion Office. We may notice in the Litany, as it stands at present, six different kinds of prayer. These are as follows : — (1) The Invocations, like those with which it opens, calling separately upon each Person of the Holy Trinity. (2) The Deprecations — prayers against certain evils, the first of which is, " From all evil and mis- chief, . . . good Lord, deliver us." (3) The Obsecrations — prayers in which we plead on account of the merits of our Lord and His sufferings ; e.g. " By Thine Agony and Bloody 1 Bede, Hist.,i, 25. Rogation Days and Litanies. 1 0 1 Sweat, by Thy Cross and Passion, . . . good Lord, deliver us." (4) The Intercessions, in which we pray for certain people — for the Church, the Queen, the Royal Family, the Clergy, the Magistrates, etc. (5) The Supplications — for material blessings, such as the fruits of the earth ; and for spiritual blessings, for true repentance and forgiveness, etc. (6) The Versicles and Prayers. In Mediaeval Litanies the saints were invoked individually by name, as many as two hundred being sometimes mentioned during a long pro- cession. When Cranmer translated the Litany in 1554, he left in it three clauses containing invo- cations to the Virgin, to the Angels, and to the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, and Virgins, and all the blessed company of heaven ; which, however, were all omitted from the Litany of the First Prayer-book. CHAPTER XIX. THE COMMUNION OFFICE. A SEPARATE analysis of the various offices of the Prayer-book is outside the scope of this work. Yet the paramount importance of understanding the office appointed for the celebration of the Holy Communion makes a little further explanation necessary than can be gathered from the chapters in which it has already, incidentally, fallen under discussion. It is the only Christian ordinance, except that of Baptism, which was Ordained by r r '. Himself ex P ress 'y ordered by Christ Himself ; and throughout all the earliest ages of the Church, this service of the Communion, in which Christ imparted Himself to the faithful, this Eucharistic Feast of Thanksgiving and Praise, was always known as the Liturgy. We cannot tell for certain what was the exact form which the Apostles themselves followed in carrying out the command of our Lord, "This do in remembrance of Me," after He Himself had been withdrawn from them. But there is every reason to suppose that, as He had used the ceremonial The Communion Office. 163 of the Jewish Passover Supper previously to His institution of this sacrament, so also the Apostles used a great part of that ceremonial "in remem- brance of Him." This idea is abundantly con- firmed, as we said in an earlier chapter, by an examination of the various Liturgies which have come down to us from ancient times. These ancient Liturgies may be classified into four distinct groups, as follows : — (1) The Syrian, like that of St. James (or of Jerusalem) ; or that of St. Thaddaeus (or of the East). (2) The Alexandrian, of which St. Mark's is the characteristic type. (3) The Gallican, which was the prevailing type at first in Western Europe ; derived ultimately, it is said, from Ephesus and St. John, the Bishop of Ephesus. (4) The Roman. 1 Certain features are common to all these Liturgies without exception, though they differ greatly from one another in arrangement and in many _ ' , ... , TT , . Features of the less essential points. What van- common to . . , , , , a11 Liturgies. ation there is is not remarkable when we remember the discretion which in early times was used by every bishop in such matters. Since 1 The English Use of Sarum was founded upon the Roman type, with many modifications, as we have seen, chiefly due to Gallican influence. Our own Communion Service, again, comes mainly from the Sarum Use. The Communion Office. there is no question of individual authorship, but only of type, it seems natural to suppose that they were all derived from a common original, and at least some of the materials for this are actually found where we should expect them to be found — in rites observed in the Jewish Church ; others, and these the characteristic Christian features, being naturally referred to our Lord's own institution. Some of these features, which are common to every ancient Liturgy without exception (though they occur in varying order), are — (1) Readings from the Old and then from the New Testament. (2) Intercessions for the living and the departed. (3) A repetition of the words in which our Lord instituted this sacrament. (4) A prayer for the consecration of the bread and the wine. (5) An oblation, or offering of the elements. (6) The Lord's Prayer. (7) The Communion itself — actual participation of the consecrated elements. Besides these points, there are many minor details in which all ancient Liturgies agree. Two in particular of those given above (4) Consecration r ° . ~ and and (?) must be carefully noticed. One Oblation. , w/ , . . ' of the characteristic differences between Eastern and Western Liturgies is in connection with the Prayer of Consecration. The Eastern The Communion Office. 16$ have, and the Western have not, 1 a distinct In- vocation (£7njcAr)(7£c) of the Holy Spirit to descend to make the elements the Body and the Blood of Christ. This would seem to be a logical preliminary to considering that they have been consecrated. But, in common with the Roman and the old English offices, our own Consecration Prayer supposes that it is sufficient for the cele- brant to lay his hands upon the bread and the chalice, with the words, " This is My Body," " This is My Blood." We pray that we, receiving " these Thy creatures of bread and wine," may be par- takers of Christ's Body and Blood ; and we believe that the Holy Spirit effects what sacramental change is necessary without our mentioning the means by which that object is attained. The other point (5) — the oblation — is connected with subjects of great doctrinal importance, and it is in view of the controversies to which this subject has given rise that the structure of the English office has undergone its most significant alterations. It is clear from the arrangement of the ancient Liturgies that an oblation or offering of the elements was made either just before or just after their consecration. This was the "memorial" formally presented to God Euoharistic of the sacrifice of His Son. This, the offering of the bread and wine, as a memorial 1 It is, however, practically certain that the Gallican and Spanish Liturgies once had it. The Communion Office. before God, was the real sacrifice of the Eucharist. It was to be made before the elements themselves were consumed. In Mediaeval times the doctrine had become so corrupt that the Sacrifice of the Mass was held to be not merely the memorial of the Sacrifice on Calvary, but a repetition of it ; the elements, as it was taught by the doctrine Transubstan . of Transubstantiation, were actually tiation. changed in substance, by the act of consecration, to the Lord's Body and Blood. Whereas the ancient and Catholic view was that expressed in our own Communion Office 1 of a sacrifice once offered and completed on Calvary, and therefore one which could never be repeated Real by us ; and of a Presence in the con- presence. secra t ec i elements, real indeed, but spiritual, i.e. supernatural, and appropriated only by faith. In the First English Communion Office of 1549 both of the points which we are consider- ing, the invocation and the oblation, were faith- fully preserved, in accordance with Catholic usage. Following the great models of the purest ages of the Church, the long Consecration Prayer of 1 549 prayed, " With Thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of Thy most 1 The Consecration Prayer: "Who made there (by His one oblation of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." The Communion Office. 167 dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ ; " and after the words of institution had been recited, and the elements presumably consecrated, it went on, "We Thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, the memorial which Thy Son hath willed us to make." This is the key to the whole office. The prayer still went on, praying the Father to accept this sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving ; offering the worshippers themselves, their souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto God ; begging Him, though they were unworthy to offer Him any sacrifice, to accept this their bounden duty and service. Next came the Lord's Prayer, reverently introduced at this solemn part of the service, and as it were formally completing the act of consecration. Then the celebrant greeted the congregation, " The peace of the Lord be always with you," to which they made answer, " And with thy spirit ; " and the priest went on, " Christ our Paschal Lamb is offered up for us once for all, when He bare our sins on His Body upon the cross ; for He is the very Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world ; wherefore let us keep a joyful and holy feast with the Lord." The congregation were then warned to come to the sacrament with pure hearts ("Ye that do truly and earnestly," etc.) ; and then, after their public confession of sin, and the absolution pronounced by the priest ; after 1 68 The Communion Office. listening to the encouragement of the comfortable words, and after the celebrant had uttered in their name the Prayer of Humble Access, " We do not presume to come to this Thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Thy manifold and great mercies ; " — then, and not till then, were they to come forward to the actual participation of the Sacrament of the Body and the Sacrament of the Blood. The structural changes made in this office in 1552 were due mainly to the fear of the erroneous doctrines about the Eucharist which had Changes due to previous been so prevalent, and against which it had been the main business of the Reformation to protest. A brief summary of these alterations has been already given in a previous chapter. The Invocation was removed, because it seemed to give rise to the idea of Transubstantiation, or corporal change ; and the Oblation (offering, sacrifice) was removed to the position it now occupies, after the participation, so as to avoid the semblance of adoration given to the consecrated elements before they were consumed. The Oblation, however, besides being now out of place, is maimed almost beyond recog- nition ; the only characteristic words now remain- ing being the petition to " accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving." If those who were responsible for the changes of 1552 were the same men who expressed the opinion given in the Act The Communion Office. 169 of Uniformity of that year — that the former book of 1549 contained nothing but what was agreeable to the Word of God and to primitive practice — it seems to us, now, unfortunate that other con- siderations prevailed. But the difficulties of the time must have been great, and we may be thankful that their work was really confined to re-formation, and did not, as in some Churches of the Continent, issue in a practical rejection of the old offices altogether. The Introits, or introductory Psalms, were left out in 1552, in accordance with the general ten- dency exhibited at that time to minimize , . , . Omissions. the element of praise. Nor have we in our present office a trace of the old kiss of peace, which was preserved up to the time of the Refor- mation by passing the Pax-bred, or Peace-tablet, from one communicant to another. The order of 1549, to say "Glory be to Thee, O God," on the announcement of the Gospel for the day, though omitted in 1552, and never restored, is preserved in most churches nowadays through tradition. With regard to private Confession in the pre- sence of a priest, we may notice that its advisa- bility, in certain cases, is taught by the p riva te Prayer-book in that Exhortation in the confession - Communion Office which comes immediately after the Prayer for the Church Militant, and which, though seldom read in churches, there is no authority to omit. As in the Order for the Visitation 17° The Communion Office. of the Sick, the recommendation is to such persons as cannot quiet their own conscience, or who feel their conscience troubled with any weighty matter. The responsibility of deciding whether such a confession had better be made or not is in both cases left with the person concerned ; but the consolation of a private confession and absolution before Communion or before imminent death is thus provided by the Church of England for such persons as desire it. It will have been gathered from what has been said that in our present Communion Service every essential element of the primitive office is still pre- served, though two important points which we have been considering exist now only in a weakened form, prayers for The same may be said of the Eucharistic the dead. p rayer for the Departed. All that clause of the Consecration Prayer of 1549 — "We commend unto Thy mercy (O Lord) all other Thy servants which are departed hence from us with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the sleep of peace ; grant unto them, we beseech Thee, Thy mercy and everlasting peace" — was omitted in 1552 ; yet it was replaced in 1661, by a memorial of the departed, which still stands at the end of the Prayer for the Church Militant, 1 " We also bless Thy holy Name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear." And it is interesting 1 The Prayer for the Church Militant was originally, as has been pointed out, a part of the long Consecration Prayer. The Communion Office. 171 to notice that while, in deference to foreign criti- cism, this prayer for the Church was restricted, in 1552, to that part of it "militant here in earth," so excluding the great Majority who have already passed beyond the veil ; yet the phrase in the Prayer of Oblation, " that we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins,'" was consciously retained in 1661, as indicative of our wider privilege. 1 It is also interesting to observe that in English Service-books which 0 Scottish and have been drawn up by the Scotch and American Liturgies. American Churches, free from external pressure, all these points are preserved in a form far nearer to the First English Prayer-book than our own. It has been necessary, in giving some account of this, the greatest service of the Christian Church, to examine it from a standpoint only - ■ , "Worshipthe indirectly devotional. But it must be primary remembered that its fundamental and primary object is to guide the worshipper rightly and reverently to God. Not without reason, not without authority, does one word hold its place in the Communion Office. That office comes down to us from times when men were willing, if need were, to die for a phrase, provided it expressed to them the truth of their religion ; and there are few 1 Compare also the words of the concluding prayers of the Burial Service, "We, with all those that are departed;" "That we may rest in Him, as our hope is this our brother doth." 172 The Communion Office. perhaps of its more significant words which have not, in some age of the Church, been sealed with martyrdom. We pass, step by step, through the initial stages of preparation, ensured to Gradual , , f _ , , . ascent to the thoughtful worshipper by the Lord s Prayer, by the old Collect for Purity, and by the detailed self-examination of the Ten Com- mandments, to pray for our earthly Sovereign, and for the grace especially suggested by the collect for the day ; to listen, in the Epistle and the Gospel, to the revealed will of the heavenly King. We recite, in the weighty words of the Nicene Symbol, our faith in God and in the mysteries of the redemption, and make some offering from our worldly possessions to the Giver of all good gifts. Then come our intercessions for the whole Church carrying on its warfare upon earth ; for the govern- ment ; for the clergy ; for our fellow-worshippers ; for all those who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adver- sity ; not forgetting God's servants who have departed this life in His faith and fear. Then we are invited to confess our sins, and we receive forgiveness of them, if we with hearty repentance and true faith really turn to God. Next we listen to the words which are indeed comfortable to such as have felt the burden of sin, and who feel that it is really taken away by the Redeemer ; and we give thanks for our release, literally mingling our adoration with the song of the angels and The Communion Office. 173 archangels and of all the company of heaven, who, we are told, cease not day or night before the throne uttering their praises, " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high." Then the Prayer of Humble Access, said by the priest in the name of all them that shall receive the Communion, brings us to the threshold of the Consecration Prayer, and so to the highest point of the service, where we are permitted to partake of the sacred food. The Lord's Prayer comes, when all have partaken, as a thanksgiving for the gift just vouchsafed j^ve offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a living sacrifice to God ; and then, with the songs of angels again ringing in our ears, " Glory be to God on high, in earth peace, good will to men," we kneel down to receive " the peace of God." CHAPTER XX. A FEW PRAYER-BOOK TERMS NOT EXPLAINED IN THE PRECEDING PAGES. N.B. — This list is not given as a complete glossary. It may, however, be supplemented from the Index, in which references are made to pages of the text where other terms are explained. Advent {adventus, " arrival," " approach "). The four Sundays and the week-days before Christmas, in which we prepare to commemorate Christ's coining in the flesh, and in which also we prepare for His second coming. Affiance. Trust, confidence. Alb. A white linen tunic, reaching to the feet and fastened with a girdle, having closely fitting sleeves which reach to the hands. The alb, like the cope and surplice, are mentioned in the Book of 1 549 (see p. 69, above), but not in our present Prayer-book. Alms (j:\Eiifioovvti, " pity"). Gifts for the poor. Amen. "So be it." (1) The ratification by the people of the minister's words ; or (2) his own ratification of them. In the former case the Prayer-book prints the words in italics ; in the A Few Prayer-Book Terms. 175 latter case the type is the same as in the rest of the prayer, e.g. after the Lord's Prayer at the opening of the Communion Service, where the people are not expected to say the " Amen." Apocalypse (aTroKaXv^iQ, "unveiling," "revelation"). A term applied to the Book of the Revelation of St. John. Ascension Day ; or, Holy Thursday. The fortieth day after Easter, commemorating the ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven. A sh- Wednesday. The first of the forty days of Lent. In primitive times ashes were sprinkled upon the head, in token of the humiliation of this season. Banns of Marriage (Anglo-Saxon abannan, "to publish "). Public notice of an intended marriage. Bishop (£7r<"(TK07roc, " an overseer "). A member of the highest order of the Christian ministry. Bissextile. See Leap Year. Briefs (Fr. brief, "a short writ"). Letters from the sovereign, directing an offertory or collection to be made for a certain object. They were abolished by Act of Parliament in 1828. Candidate (candidates, " clothed in white "). A classical term for one who seeks a public office or position. Canon (kuviLv, " a rule "). A rule or law of discipline or of doctrine. The canonical books of Holy Scripture are those which are accepted as authoritative by the Church. The term " Canon " is also applied to the rule according to which A Few Prayer-Book Terms. the Holy Communion is celebrated, and hence to that portion of the office which is invariable, as distinct from the earlier portion, containing the variable Collects, Epistles, Gospels, etc. Catechism (kotij^Iw, " to resound "). An instruction by word of mouth, eliciting replies. Cf. our "echo." Citation (cito, " to summon "). Summons to appear before a court. Commination (comminatid). A threatening. Contrite (contritus, " bruised "). Humbled, or peni- tent. Cope (cappa). A full long cloak, semicircular in shape, reaching to the heels, but open in front. It is generally a processional garment, and is worn over the alb or surplice. Craft (Germ, kraft). Power, strength. Curate {euro, "to take care of"). One who has charge of a parish or congregation. Deacon (Staicovoc, " a servant, or minister "). The third order of the clergy (see Acts vi. 1-6). Diocese (Stotioja-te). The sphere of a bishop's jurisdiction. Dominical. Belonging to Sunday. Dies Dominica is the Lord's day. The Dominical letter is the Sunday letter. Easter. The time when we commemorate the Lord's resurrection. Possibly from a Teutonic word urstan, " to rise." Others connect the name with the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, whose A Few Prayer-Book Terms. 177 festival was kept about the beginning of spring. It is to be remembered that the whole calendar year is reckoned from Easter Day ; and the time when Easter Day itself falls depends upon astronomical considerations. Easter Day is always the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon, or next after, the twenty- first day of March ; and if the full moon happens on a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after. Endeavour. A reflexive use (which is now obsolete) of this verb occurs in the Collect for the Second Sunday after Easter, and in the Confirmation and Ordination Services. Epact (twuKTal ri/xspai, " intercalated days "). The calendar year depends upon the revolution of the earth round the sun, which is completed in about 365^ days of 24 hours each. Now, the months (i.e. moons) of the year depend upon the revolution of the moon round the earth, which is completed in about 29J days. Hence the ancient calendar proceeded upon the principle of making the months consist of 29 and 30 days alternately, or, in other words, of an average of 29^ days. But 12 months of this length make only 12 x 29J = 354 days, or about 11 days short of the year as determined by the sun. Thus the last moon of the year (supposing a year when the periods of the earth and moon begin together) is 11 days old when the new N r 7 8 A Few Prayer-Book Terms. year begins. This is the Epact, which may be defined as "the age of the moon on the 1st of January in any year under consideration." The idea of intercalation, from which the name is derived, comes in thus — that the age of the moon on the ist of January has to be allowed for in the calculation of Easter, i.e. in solving the question, " What will be the age of the moon on the 21st of March [see Easter] in such-and- such a year ? " for from that we can imme- diately tell the day of the following full moon, that is, when next it will be 14 days old. The Epact is connected with the Golden Number in the following way : Remembering that at the end of every 19 years the actual completed revolutions of the moon round the earth all but coincide (within about 2 hours) with the com- pleted revolutions of the earth round the sun, we consider these 19 years as a cycle (the " Metonic cycle "), and we number each of the 19 years with the numbers L, II., III., to XIX. These numbers are the Golden numbers. Take as year I. of the cycle (Golden number I.) that on which the age of the moon on the ist of January is o ; i.e. new moon on the ist of January. Then, because of the 12 lunations being 1 1 days short of 365 days in the year, the age of the moon (or the Epact) on the ist of January of year II. is 11 ; in year III. is 22 ; in year IV. is 33, or, since we need not count the A Few Prayer-Book Terms. ' 79 ■whole lunation of 30 days, but only the days which are over, the Epact of year IV. is 3 ; in year V. is 14, and so on. N.B. — These figures are given as round numbers : 30 days exceed a true lunation by nearly two-thirds of a day ; but this error goes to balance another — that of taking exactly 11 days as the excess of the solar over the lunar year. Still, the date of the Paschal full moon can be only approximately fixed by means of the Golden number and Epact. For a considerable number of Metonic cycles these calculations are near enough for practical purposes, but from time to time the Golden numbers have to be readjusted to the years, and the present cycle will only serve till A.D. 1900. Epiphany (iiri(pavuu.) = Manifestation. The season when the Church commemorates the presenta- tion of Jesus to the Gentile kings (Matt. ii. 11). In the earliest times the prominent idea in the Epiphany was the manifestation of the Holy Trinity at Christ's Baptism. Eucharist (evxaptartw, " to be grateful," " to return thanks"). An early name for the Holy Com- munion, the Christian "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving." Fruition {fruor, " to enjoy"). Enjoyment. Ghostly. Spiritual. Golden Number. The moon's revolutions round the earth terminate about the same time as the earth's revolutions round the sun only once i8o A Few Prayer-Book Terms. in 19 years. Starting from B.C. 1 (A.D. 1 being the second of the present series), these years are numbered in order from 1 to 19, the numbers being called Golden numbers. See Epact. Gospel (good spell or tidings). A translation of tvay^iXiov, "good tidings." Hell. The abode of the dead, Hades, considered as a region below the earth. Heresy (a'lptmc, from aipeopai, "to choose"). A personal choice or profession of doctrine opposed to that of the Church. Host (hostia, " victim," or " sacrifice "). The con- secrated bread. The word does not occur in our Prayer-book. Kindly. Natural. " Kindly fruits " are such as it is natural for the earth to produce. Lammas Day. Loaf-mass Day (August 1), on which occurred a special festival for the blessing of bread. Leap Year. The present arrangement of our calendar assigns 31 days to seven months of the year, 30 days to four others, and 28 to the month of February. These together, in an ordinary year, make only 365 days, whereas the actual year {i.e. the year determined by the sun) is almost exactly 365^ days. The odd quarter is made up by adding a whole day every fourth year to February. Such a year is called leap year. Leap year is called bissextile because, in the Latin calendar, the day in February which was A Few Prayer-Book Terms. 1 8 1 called the sixth day before the Calends of March was reckoned twice to make up the extra day. Lent. The five weeks and five days before Easter which commemorate our Lord's forty-days' fast in the wilderness. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon lencten, which means the spring of the year. Lively. Living, active. " Lively members," " lively faith." Mattins (matutinus, " early "). The Service of Morning Prayer. The word was sometimes used as an equivalent for " Nocturns." Maundy Thursday. Dies mandati, the day on which the "new commandment" was given by our Lord, i.e. the day before Good Friday. Metropolitical. Belonging to the fniTptmoXic, or mother-city, i.e. to the seat of the archbishopric. Militant {inilitare, "to perform military service "). The Church Militant is the Church on earth still carrying on its warfare, as opposed to the Church at rest, i.e. the dead. Octave. The eighth day after any principal festival of the Church. Proper " Prefaces " in the Com- munion Service are used for seven days after Christmas, Easter Day, and Ascension Day. Ordinal. In old signification a book showing what service was appropriate for a particular day. Also (and generally at the present time) a book containing the Offices for the Ordination of the various ministers of the Church. A Few Prayer-Book Terms. Parish (irapoiKia, and late Latin parcecid). A district committed to the charge of one person, who has the care of souls therein. Paschal {jdaya, or Hebrew pesach = Passover). Belonging to the Passover or Easter season. Passion (passio). Suffering. Pentecost (TrtvTtjKoaTij = " fiftieth "). The fiftieth day after Easter, i.e. Whit Sunday. Pomp (iro/xin'i, " a procession "). Outward display. Prevent {pro?venire). To go before, and so to assist. Priest (irptafivrtpog, " an elder "). A member of the second order of the Christian ministiy. Proper Prefaces in the Communion Service are the forms of words, appropriate to particular festivals, which introduce the anthem, "Therefore with angels and archangels," etc. Proper Prefaces are provided for Christmas Day and seven days after ; Easter Day and seven days after ; Ascen- sion Day and seven days after ; Whit Sunday and six days after (for the seventh day after Whit Sunday is Trinity Sunday) ; and for Trinity Sunday only. Quick (O.E. cwic). Living, alive. Qninquagesima. Fiftieth. See Septuagesima. Rochet (Ger. rock, "a coat"). The garment of white linen appointed by the Ordination Sen-ice to be worn by the bishop-elect Schism (alalia, " a rent, or division "). The sin of separation from the Church. A Few Prayer-Book Terms. 183 Septtiagesima. Literally, the seventieth day before Easter. Reckoning back from Easter, Ash- Wednesday is the fortieth day (since Lent commemorates the forty-days' fast), the three Sundays before that being called respectively Septuagesima (seventieth), Sexagesima (sixtieth), and Quinquagesima (fiftieth), the terms being, of course, not arithmetically correct. Sexagesima. Sixtieth. See Septuagesima. Sunday Letter. The number of days in the year, as determined by the sun, is nearly 365L This, divided by 7, gives 52 complete weeks and more than a day over. Certain letters being assigned to the various days in each week, if Sunday have the letter A, Monday will have the letter B, Tuesday C, and so on to Saturday, which will have the seventh letter, G. Now, supposing January 1 in any year to be Sunday, its letter will be A ; every Sunday in such a year will therefore have the letter A ; and the last day of the year, left over after the 52 weeks are complete, will also be a Sunday, with the letter A. But the next day, Monday, is the 1st of January in the following year, to which the letter A is assigned. Thus Tuesday in this next year will have B, Wednesday C, and so on, leading to the letter G for Sundays all through the year. Our present cycle began with A.D. 1, Sunday letter G. In leap years there are two Sunday letters, for after the intercalated day 184 A Few Prayer-Book Terms. (the 29th of February) the letters are of course pushed on a day, so that if the Sunday letter were A down to the 28th of February, after that date it will be G. Stirplice {superpelliceum). The garment of white linen worn over the cassock. Like the rochet, it is a modification of the alb, but is shorter and fits closer than the latter. This word does not occur in our present Prayer-book. Turks (in the third Good Friday collect) = Mahometans. Vicar (vicarius). One who supplies the place of another. Generally the representative of a rector, who may be either a cleric or a layman. Vulgar Tongue ; i.e. the ordinary language of the people, as opposed to a foreign tongue. Wealth. Prosperity, well-being. " In all time of our wealth." Whit S?mday. White Sunday, Dominica in albis. Called also Pentecost (wevr^KoarTi'i), because it is the fiftieth day after Easter, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles (Acts ii. 4). The day was a special occasion for baptizing converts to the faith, and acquired its name from the white robes worn at their baptism. Those also who had been baptized at Easter appeared on this day in their white robes for the last time before laying them aside. INDEX. A Absolution, the; at Mattins, 59, 76, 89, in ; in the Order for the Visitation of the Sick, 67, 77, 108, 170; always presupposes repentance as a condition, 109 Access, Prayer of Humble, 77, 168, 173 Accession, Service for the Anni- versary of the, 2, 114 Acts of Uniformity, 69, 74, 75, 78, 80, no, 169; Act for amendment of, 115 Administration, words of, in Communion Office, 54, 77, 82 ; in the " Directory/' 96 Advent Sunday, 153 ; the season of Advent, 174 Affusion at Baptism, 67 Agnus Dei, the, in Communion Office, 64, 77 Aidan, St., 23, 152 Alb (the vestment), 69, 78, 174 Alban, St., 152 All sorts and conditions of men, Prayer for, 112, 134 Alms, 174; to be placed upon the altar, 112 Ambrose and Augustine, 121 Amen, 174 American Prayer-book, 171 Andrew, St., 153 Annexed book, the, 114 Ante-Communion, origin of the, 9 Antiphon, 125 Antiphonal chanting of Psal ms, 119 Antiphonarium, 35 Apocalypse, the, 175 Apocrypha, the, objected to by the Puritans, 86, 105 Apocryphal Books of Scripture, list of, 89 note Apollinarian heresy, 149 Apostles, practice of, in prayer, 4. S>" Apostles' Creed, 138. See deed Apostolical Constitutions, II, 158 Arian controversy, 21 ; influence on the Creeds, 142, 147, 149 ; in Spain, 147 Arthur, the British king, 22 Articles, the Thirty-nine, 3 Ascension Day, 175 Ash-Wednesday, 175 Athanasian Creed, 3, 145, 147 sq. ; at Prime, 148 ; daily and i86 Index. weekly recital of, 148 ; ex- pansion of, under pressure of heresy, 149 ; damnatory clauses of, 150 ; present and future value of, 150 Athanasius, St., at Council of Nicrea, 146 Augustine, St., the Apostle of the English, 19, 23, 25, 28, 160; the Bishop of Hippo, 121 Authority of the Church, 88, 90, 104 Authorized Version of the Bible, 88, 117 B Banns of marriage, 175 Baptism, Private, 86, 89, 106 Baptism, rites at, 23, 65, 77, 85 ; in the " Directory," 96 ; of atheists' children objected to, 106 ; right of every child to, 106 ; regeneration by, 106 ; of Adults, office for, no, 113; creeds originate in, 137 Baptismal Creed, the, 137 Baptismal regeneration, 106, 107 Basil, St., 133 Baxter, Richard, at Savoy Con- ference, 100 ; his proposed Liturgy, 102 Bede, the Venerable, 152 Benedicite, the, 121, 122 Benedict of Nursia, 18 ; of Aniane, 18 Benedictus, the, 123 Bethlehem, monastery of, 1 7 Bible, translation of, 45 ; Tyn- dale's, 47 ; Coverdale's, 48, 117 ; Authorized Version, 88, 117 Bishops, government by, 98 ; names of those engaged in Savoy Conference, 100 ; deri- vation of term, 175 Bissextile, 175 Black-letter days, 152 Black Rubric, the, 75 Blessing, cup of, 10 Bowing at the name of Jesus objected to by Presbyterians, 99 Breviary, origin of term, 18 ; Sarum, 31, 33, 47 ; of Quigno- nez, 47 ; the secular Breviary foundation of Mattins and Evensong, 56 Briefs, 175 British Christianity, 20, 22 ; conflict with Rome, 23 British Liturgy uncertain, 21 Bucer, Martin, 72 Burial Office ; in First Prayer- book, 68 ; in Second Prayer- book, 78 ; in the." Directory," 96 ; exceptions against, by Presbyterians, 109 C Cresarius of Aries, 121 Calendar, the, 3, 151 sq. Calvin's influence on English liturgical revision, 84, 85 Candidate, 175 Canon, 175 Canonical Hours. See Hours Cantate Domino, the, 124 Index. 187 Catechism, the, 89, 107, 175 Catechumens ; order of making, now represented in our Bap- tismal Office, 66 ; taught by Creeds, 137 Catholic, the term explained, 55 ; the term in the Creed, 141 Cecil, Lord, 81 Celtic Missions, the, 22 Ceremonies, Puritan dislike of, 87, 90; objections to, an- swered, 103, 104 Chalcedon, Council of, 144 Charles II., 44, 98 sq. ; restores English liturgy, 98 ; appoints members for the Savoy Con- ference, 100 Chrism (the anointing oil), and chrisom (the white robe) at Baptism, 67, 73, 77 Chrysostom, Prayer of, ill, 133 Church government, ideas of Puritans concerning, 88, 90, 99. hi Church Militant, Trayer for the, 62, 76, 112, 113, 171, 172 Citation, 175 Clementine Liturgy, 9 Clergy, Prayer for the, ill, 133 Clovesho, Council of, 26, 160 Collects, the, 126 sq. ; charac- teristics of, 127 ; origin of, 128 sq. ; list of, 1 29 ; fixed collects at Mattins and Evensong, 131, 132 Columba, St., 23 Commandments, the Ten, taught in English, 38 ; inserted in Communion Office, 76 ; use of, in Communion Office, 172 Commination Service, 2, 76, 175 Committal, the, in Burial Office, 68, 78, 109, 171 "Common" Prayer, I Commonwealth, the, 91 Communion Office ; origin of, 8, 10 ; revision of, 53 ; the, of 1549, 60 sq., 166, 167 ; of ISS2, 76, 168 ; ordained by Christ, 162 ; changes in, due to previous errors, 168 ; omis- sions from our, 169 ; of Ameri- can and Scottish Churches, 171 ; authority of, 171 ; analy- sis of, 172 Communion, in one kind, 53 note ; of the laity, 54 ; of the sick, 77, 109 Communion, second, on Christ- mas Day and Easter Day, 64, 73 ; examination before, proposed, 86 Communion of saints, 140 Compline, office of, 17, 59 Conception, the doctrine of the, in the Creed, 140 Confession, the general, 59, 76, 112 Confession, private, 67, 77, 169 Confirmation objected to by Puritans, 85; explained, 89, 107 ; connection with Cate- chism, 107 ; objections to the office for, 107 Consecration in Communion Office derived from Passover Ritual, 10 ; implying Real Presence of Christ, 73, 77, 166 [88 Index. Consecration Prayer, 76, 164, 166 Constantinopolitan Creed, 144, 147 Consultation, Hermann's, 65 Continental influence on the Prayer-book, 55, 65, 69, 72 sg., 80, 85, 94 Contrite, 175 C onvocation prepares the Prayer- book of 1661, 109, 110 Cope (the vestment), 69, 78, 176 Cosin, Bishop of Durham, 44, 100, no Covenant, Scottish Solemn League and, 93 Craft, 176 Cranmer, 49, 50, 71, 74, 75 note, 133 Creed, Apostles', taught in English, 38 ; said at Mattins, 116, 138, 148 ; origin of name, 139; legend about the com- position, 139 Creed, Athanasian. See Athana- sian Creed Creed, the Nicene, 141 Creeds, the three really one, 136; origin of, 137 ; in inter- rogative form, 137 ; articles not in oldest, 140 Cross, sign of the. See Sign Curate, 176 Cyprian, St., II, 140 D Damnatory clauses of Athanasian Creed, 150 David, St., 152 Deacon, 176 Dead, Office of the, 39 ; prayer for the, 68, 73, 78, 171 ; our memorial of the, 113, 171 ; Office for the Burial of the. See Burial Descent into Hades, the clause in the Creed, 140 Deus Misereatur, the, 124 Diocese, 176 Directory for Public Worship, 92 sg. ; copy of, described, 94 Dominical, 176 Doxology, the, 105, 119 East, turning to, origin of custom, 137 Easter, differences in observing, 24; anthems for, 120; term explained, 176 Edward VI., 52 ; First Prayer- book of, 55 sg. ; Second Prayer-book of, 70 sg. Egyptian monasteries, 15 Elizabeth, Queen, and the Prayer- book, 81 Ember days, 1 56 Ember prayers, the, 112, 134, 156 Ember seasons, 155 Endeavour, the term explained, 177 English language, 32 ; early teaching of religious truth in, 38 English tribes invade Britain, 22 Epact, 177 'ETiKATjuij, the, 63, 76, 165 Index. Epiphanius and the Creed, 144 Epiphany, term explained, 179 ; Collects for the, 131 Epistles, the, in Communion Office, 8, 113, 117, 127, 131, 172 ; St. Paul's, etc., read as Lessons, 155 Eucharist, term explained, 179 Eucharistic memorial, the, 128, 165 ; Office, origin of, etc. See Communion Office Eusebius of Caesarea, 142 Eutychian heresy, the, 149 Eve of festivals, 153 Evensong, origin of, 19, 58; alterations in office, III, 112 Exhortation, the, at Mattins, 59; in Communion Office, 64, 169; at Evensong, 112 Exorcism, 66, 77 F Fair Weather, the Prayer for, 133 Fasts of the Church, 155, 156 Filioque clause, the, 145 Forms of Service,special, allowed in certain cases, 1 15 Fruition, term explained, 179 G Gallican influence on English offices, 22, 29, 163 Gelasius, Sacramentary of, 128 ; fixed times for orlination, 156 George, St., 152 Ghostly, 179 Gloria in excelsis, 173 Gloria Patri (the Doxology), 105, 119 Golden Number, 179 Gospel, term explained, 180 Gospels, the ; in the Communion Office, 8; read in two lan- guages, 48 ; some changes, 89 ; to be taken from Autho. rized Version, 113, 117; ar- ranged by St. Jerome, 127 ; for extra Sundays after Trinity, 131 ; read as Second Lessons, 155 ; announcement of, 169; use of, 172 Grace, the, 1 11, 133 Gradual, 34; Gradual Psalms, 39 Gregory, Pope, 28; sacramen- tary of, 128 ; Litany of, 159 Guest, Dr., and Queen Eliza- beth, 81 Gunning, Dr., at Savoy Con- ference, 100, 102 ; composer of Prayer for all sorts and conditions of men, 134 Gunpowder Plot, Office for anniversary of, 1 14 H Hampton Court Conference, 87 Hands, laying on of, in Con- firmation, 107 Harnack, Professor, and the Creed, 139, 147 Hell, or Hades, term explained, 180 Henry VIII., 50; Reformation of Services in reign of, 50 igo Index. Heresies ; influence of, on the Creeds, 142 ; and Athanasian Creed, 148, 149 Heresy, term explained, 180 Hilary of Aries, 147 Holy Cross Day, 156 Holy Ghost, heresy concerning the, 143 Hoods, University, use of, 69 Hosannah, the, in Communion Office, 77 Host, the, 63, 180 Hours, Canonical ; connection with synagogue, 9; with Apostolic custom, II, 12 ; in second and third centuries, II; in Apost. Const., 12; theory of, 13 ; reduced to system, 15 Hours of prayer, 5 I Immersion. See Trine Immer- Immovable feasts, 1 5 1 Introit, 35, 61, 76; omitted in Second Prayer-book, 169 Invocation of Holy Spirit in Consecration, 63, 76, 165 ; removed in Second Prayer- book, 168 Irenreus, St., and the Creed, 139 Irish missionaries, 23 J James I. and the Prayer-book, 86, 87 January 30, Office for, 113, 114 Jerome, St., and the Lectionary, 1 27 ; his version of the Psalms, 121 Jewish Sabbath Morning Prayer, 9 Jews, hours of prayer observed by. 5 John, St., Liturgy of, 163 Jubilate, the, 123 Judaism, connection with Chris- tianity, 5 sq. June, twentieth day of. See Accession K Kindly fruits, 180 King, prayer for the, 1 1 1 Kiss of peace, 169 Kneeling at Communion, 75, 103, 104, 113 L Lammas Day, 180 Latin for ecclesiastical purposes, 31 Laud, Archbishop, in, 134 Lauds, Office of, 16, 59 Leap year, 180 Lectionary. See Lessons Lent, 181 Leo, Sacramentary of Pope, 12S Lessons, the, 2, 8, 50, 57 ; Special for Sundays, 82, 154 ; from the Apocrypha, 89, 1 1 1 ; revised system, 115; present arrangement of, 154 Lindisfarne, 25 Litany, the, 3 ; origin of, 158 ; Index. 101 first in English, 50 ; the Lesser, 61, 159; change'iir, 82, III, M2 ; proposed changes in, by Presbyterians, 105 ; meaning of, 157, 158 ; of St. Mark's Day, 159 ; petitions of, 160 ; saints, etc., invoked in, 161 Little Office, 34, 39 Liturgies, the ancient, 163 ; features common to all, 163 Liturgy, 8 note ; Baxter's, at the Savoy Conference, 102 ; our own, 162 sq. See also Communion Office " Lively members of the same," 181 Lord's Prayer, taught in English, 3S ; repeated in Mattins, etc., 59 ; 104 note ; began Mat- tins, 1 16 ; used as thanksgiv- ing in Mattins, etc., and in Communion Office, 173 Lucy's Day, St., 156 Luke, St., his festival has no vigil, 153 M Macedonius, his heresy and the Creed, 143 Magnificat, the, 123 Manual, 31, 34, 56 Mark, St., Litany of, 159 ; Liturgy of, 163 Marriage Service, 67 ; ring ob- jected to in, 86, 108 ; ring retained in, 90, 108 ; in " Directory," 96 Mary, Queen, and the Prayer- book, 80 Mass, the term, 53 ; for the dead, 68, 170 Mattins, origin of, 13, 19, 56, 58; lengthened in 1661, 111 ; shortening of, allowed, 115 Maundy Thursday, 180 Memorial of the departed, 113 Memorial, the Eucharistic, 128 Metonic Cycle, 178 Metropolitical, 181 Michael, St., 153 Militant, Prayer for the Church, 181. See Church Militant, Prayer for the " Millenary Petition," 85 Mincha, 7 Missal, 31, 34, 56, 60 Monasteries, system of prayer in, 15 Monasticism, origin of, 14 ; Western, 18 Morning Prayer. See Mattins Movable feasts, 151 Musical books, 35 N Nestorian heresy, the, 149 " New Learning," the, 42 New Testament in churches, 50 Nicrea, Council of, 142 Nicene Creed, 142 sq. Nocturns, 15, 16, 181 None or Nones, 13, 15 Nunc Dimittis, 124 O Oblation, the, in Communion office, 112, 113, 164, 165, 167; misplaced, 168 I'j2 Index. Occasional prayers, 3, 133 Octave, 181 Offering, the Eucharistic. See Oblation Offertory sentences from the Apocrypha, 105 Order of the communion, 52 sq. ; words of administration in, 54 Ordinal; old sense, 30, 35, 56 note, 74; 181 Ordinary, the, 1 15, 155 Ordination at the Ember sea- sons, 156 Ordination offices, 2, 74 Orleans, Council of, orders ob- servance of Rogation days, 158 Ornaments Rubric, 83 Osmund of Salisbury, 30, 36 P Tapal influence in connection with English offices, 29, 36, 80, 83 Parish, derivation of term, 182 Parishes in England, 26 Parker, Archbishop, 81, 83 Parliament ; the Long, 92 ; prayer for the, 112, 134 Paschal, 182 Passion, 182 Passover, the, and Christian offices, 8, 10, 24 Patrick, St., 152 Patripassians, heresy of the, 149 Paul, St., legend of his mission to Britain, 20 Pax -bred, 169 Penance. See Repentance Pentecost, 182 Pica, Pie, 35, 57 Pirminius, legend of the Apos- tles' Creed, 139 Placentia, Council of, specifies Ember days, 156 ! Plague, the, 86, 90 ; prayer in time of, 134 Pomp, 182 Pontificale, 35, 56 Poore, Richard, 31 Portiforium, or Portehors, 31, 34 Prayer, extempore, of the Pres- byterian Directory, 94, 96 Prayer for the Royal Family, etc. See Royal Family, etc. Prayer-book, ordered to be de- stroyed, 80, 92 ; growing popu- larity of, 9 1 ; the object of attack at Savoy Conference, 101 Prefaces in Communion Office, 77, 182 Prefaces of Prayer-book, 2 ; the original, 56 Presbyterians, ascendency of, 91 ; explanation of term, 98 ; i interview Charles II., 98 ; ob- jections to Prayer-book, 99 Prevent, 182 Priest, the word, III, 182 Prime, Office of, 17, 59, 138, 148 Primer, meaning of, 39 ; de- scribed, 41 ; Marshall's and Hilsey's, 42 ; the King's, 43 Privy Council, 75, 82 Processional use of Litany, 158 Processicnale, 36 Psalms, the daily recital of, 17 ; weekly recital of, 18 ; the Index. 193 Penitential, 39 ; the Gradual, 39 ; monthly recital of, 58, 118; basis of Mattins and Evensong, 116; Prayer-book version of, 117; our Lord's use of, 117 ; anomalies in our use of, 1 18 ; special, for festi- vals, 118; date and authorship of, 118; sung antiphonally, 119; St. Jerome's Gallican j Version of, 121 ; choice of other special psalms allowed, 155 Psalms, the Hebrew, 2, 8, 117 Purification of Women, Office for, 2 Puritans, rise of, 84; object to Prayer-book, 85 sq. ; then- suggested substitute for the j Prayer-book, 93 Purity, Collect for, 1 72 Q Queen, Prayer for the, 132 " Quick and dead," 182 Quicunque, the, 148 Quinquagesima, 182 R Rain, the prayer for, 133 thanksgiving for, 135 Real Presence, 75, 77, 166 Red-letter days, 152 Reformation of Service-books, 49 Regeneration, baptismal, 106, 107 Repentance presupposed in ab- solution, 109, 172 Reservation of the consecrated elements, 77 Responds, 57 Restoration, Office of Thanks- giving for, no, 113, 114 Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich, at Savoy Conference, 101 ; composer of the General Thanksgiving, 135 Ring in marriage objected to, 86 ; retained, 90, 108 Rochet, 69, 182 Rogation days, 156; appointed by Mamertus, 157 Roman Creed, the old, 139, 140 Roman occupation of Britain, 20 Royal Family, prayer for, 90, m, 132 Royal Supremacy, 47, 81, 87 Rubric, the Black, 75, 82, 113' Rubric concerning ornaments, 83 ; concerning unbaptized children, 107 ; concerning the oblations at communion, 112 ; directing use of certain col- lects, 131 Rubrics, explanation of term, 33 ; in mediaeval office-books, 60 S Sabbath Morning Prayer, 9 Sabellian heresy, the, 149 Sacramentaries, the ancient, 128 , Sacraments, 1 ; explanation of added in Catechism, 89, 107 ; O i 9 4 Index. effect of,must be believed, 106, 109 Sacrifice, the Eucharistic, 1 28, 165. See also Oblation Sacrifices, Jewish, 6, 7 ; Chris- tian, 7 Saints' days, 33, 150; objected to by the Puritans, 97, 99 ; the collects for, 128, 130 Salisbury. See Sarum Salutation, the, 61 Sanctus, the, 173 Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, at Savoy Conference, 101 Sarum, use of, 30, 163 Savoy Conference, 98 sq. ; scope of, defined in terms of the Royal Warrant, 101 Schism, the word in the Litany, 112, 182 ; between East and West, 145 Scotland, Prayer-book for the Church of, 112 Sea, Form of Prayer for use at, "3 Sealed books, the, 1 14 Secular Clergy ; v. Monastic, 14 ; and breviary, 17, 18 Sentences at Mattins, 59 ; at Evensong, 112 Septuagesima, I S3 Service-books before Reforma- tion, 3, 28 sq. Sexagesima, 183 Sext, 13, 15 Shortening of Mattins, etc., al- lowed, 1 15 Sign of the crosr, in consecra- tion of elements, 63, 73, 76 ; in marriage, 67, 78 ; in visi- tation of the sick, 68 ; in baptism, 73, 85, 90, 99, 103, 104 Sisterhoods, 15 Solitaries originate monasticism, H Standard of Anglican worship, the legal, 114 Sunday, the Christian, 16 ; ob- servance of enjoined by Puri- tans, 97 Sunday Letter, 183 Supremacy, the Royal, 47, 81, 87 Surplice, 184 ; use of the, ob- jected to, 69, 98 ; answer to objections regarding, 103, 104 Synagogues, Jewish and Chris- tian, 6 T Te Deum, the, 120, 121, 147 Terce, 13, 15 Tertullian and hours of prayer 11 ; and the Creed, 139 Thanksgiving, the General, 112 , 135 Thanksgivings for special bene- fits, 90, 135 ; for restoring public peace at home, 112 Theodore appointed by Pope, 26 Toledo, third Council of, 145 Tradition, knowledge of sup- posed by the Prayer-book, Transubstantiation, doctrine of, 77, 113, 166, 168 Trine immersion, 24, 29 note, 66,77 Trinity Sunday in English Judex. IDS Church, 130, 153 ; collects for Sundays after to be sup- plied by those for Sundays after Epiphany, 131 Turks, 184 U Unction, extreme, 68 Uniformity, Acts of, 69, 74, 75, 78, So, no Universities and liturgical re- vision, 86 Use, meaning of, 29 V Venite, the, 119 Versicles, the, 125 Vespers, 59 Vestments, 69, 78, 90, 92 Vicar, 184 Vigil, IS ; the vigil of saints' days, 152 ; 'saints' days with- out vigils, 153 Virgin, Hours of the, 39; prayers to the, 50 ; mention of the, 62, 63, 76 Visitation of the Sick, 67, 77 ; in the "Directory," 96; al- terations proposed in 166 1, 108 ; absolution formula in office of, 108 ; private confes- sion in, 170 Vulgar tongue, 184 \V Wealth, the term, 184 Westminster Assembly of Di- vines, 92 Whitby, Conference of, 25 Whitgift, Archbishop, 87 Whit Sunday, 184 Wilfrid, 25 William and Mary, attempt at revision under, 114 THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. A Date Due KM "'MAY 0 1 1 1012 01024 2958 HE