The Book of Common Prayer 
 our Common Heritage. 
 
 GEORGE B. SPALDING, D. D., LL. D. 
 
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 PRINCETON. N.J. 
 
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 BX 5945 .S63 1899 
 Spalding, George B. 1835- 
 
 1914. 
 The Book of common prayer, 
 
 our common heritage 
 
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER 
 OUR COMMON HERITAGE. 
 
 / 
 
 GEORGE B. SPALDING, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 ^ Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, 
 
 SYRACUSE, N. Y. 
 
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER OUR COMMON 
 
 HERITAGE. 
 
 The Book of Common Prayer fills a very large space in the 
 service of the Episcopal church. In it the creed, the polity, and 
 the worship of that great church find their expression, and very 
 life. Even as such the history of the Book is worthy of any 
 scholar's thorough search, of every Christian's understanding and 
 of the admiration of all lovers of best literature. We may not be 
 able to say with Froude the historian: "The beautiful roll of its 
 language mingles with the memories of childhood ; it is the guide 
 of our dawning thought, and accompanies us through each stage 
 of life with its chaste ceremonials from the font to the edge of the 
 grave." But as scholars we all can say with him: "Next to the 
 Bible, there are few things which have affected the character of 
 the modern English more deeply than the Liturgy." 
 
 But the Book has a much broader claim than even this suggests. 
 The Prayer Book is a history of Christianity. In it is to be found 
 the faith of the church, its song, worship, struggles, earthly fail- 
 ures, its heavenly aspirations and attainments. The Book is the 
 product of every Christian age, and Christian people,, Reformers '' 
 and Puritans, Presbyterians and Lutherans, as well as Romanists 
 and Churchmen, have built into the massive structure corner 
 stones and towering columns, and have bound its walls and towers 
 with mortar mixed with the tears and blood of a common mar- 
 tyrdom. As such the Prayer Book challenges the profoundest 
 interest of all Christians. 
 
 I have before me a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. 
 What is it historically ? This is the question that I would answer. 
 As we carefully and reverently turn its pages we notice how 
 very much of the Book is taken from the Service-Book or Bre- 
 viary or Missal, of what we call the Roman church. In the two 
 books, that used today in the Catholic church and that used in the 
 Episcopal church, we find far more sameness than difference ; just 
 as, but not to an equal degree, we find a likeness between our 
 authorized Protestant Bible and the Douay, the Romish Bible. 
 
 When Christianity was set up among our forefathers in ancient 
 Britain, worshipers of the sun-god and the serpent's egg, some r^ 
 parts of the service found alike in the church book of both the 
 Roman and the English worship of today, were recited by these 
 
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Christian missionaries in the ears of these awe-struck idolators. 
 Many of the psalms, hymns and canticles were sung, some of 
 them at midnight, some at early morning, and again at evening 
 twilight, in the first osier-built churches, the same psalms and 
 hymns and canticles which are now repeated day by day or week 
 by week under the groined roofs of Roman and Episcopal 
 cathedrals or in the humble churches. And when the British race 
 and Christianity were trodden out under the feet of Saxon heathen, 
 the new religion found shelter for its faith and for its followers 
 in the wild districts of Wales and Cornwall and among the Scot- 
 tish Hebrides and in Ireland, still singing its one unbroken psalm 
 and canticle, and uttering its unending prayer. 
 
 It was the dream of Pope Gregory to reconquer the British 
 Islands for the cross. When in almost the last year of the sixth 
 century Augustine and his group of robed priests and choristers 
 landed in England the stately ritual of the ancient church was 
 observed, the Kyrie Eleison, the Te Deum and the Gloria were 
 sung, and the Apostles' and Nicene creeds were repeated, and the 
 prayers of Gelasius and Chrysostom and the Litany were recited, 
 in much of the same majestic words and utterance as we may 
 hear them today. 
 
 As the centuries rolled on, bringing with them in God's own 
 slow but sure way the great revolutions in kingdoms and the 
 greater reformations in the church, the ancient order of worship 
 with all the alterations and additions which had been made in it 
 remained as yet untouched by the reforming spirit. Luther with 
 his re-discovery of the Hebrew prophet's doctrine of the life of 
 faith, shattered the walls of the vast fabric of the Roman church. 
 Learning in universities and schools and household studies, and 
 rude, plain preaching by road-side and in market places, and, 
 mightier than all, the Word of God translated into the mother 
 tongue of the people, and now for the first time working in their 
 souls; these like celestial lights were exposing to the people's 
 gaze the festering corruptions, the vast usurpations, and the all- 
 crushing tyrannies of the ecclesiastical power which was over 
 them, and all around them, and even in them. 
 
 The king of England, Henry the VIII, chafing under the des- 
 potism of the Pope, as a rival of his own despotism, longing too 
 for largest liberty for his lust, touched too, no doubt with a noble 
 national spirit, severed throne and kingdom and church from all 
 allegiance to the Pope at Rome. And yet despite all these forces 
 
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of revolution without, and the even more powerful forces of evo- 
 lution from within, the ancient ritual of service, both that of the 
 primitive and pure faith and practice of the church, and the accre- 
 tions of corruption and superstition and falsity which had been 
 gathered through centuries remained really unchanged. The old 
 Prayer Book continued to be used under the reign of this first 
 Protestant king. In the chamber of his last sickness the Mass 
 was daily said; at his funeral Mary the Mother of God and all the 
 saints were duly invoked, and the hand that in the engraved title- 
 page of the translated Bible is shown as delivering the free Word 
 of God to his lords, signed a will by which six hundred pounds 
 annually were to be given to priests to say mass for his soul 
 every day, and for four abiits, each year, whatever these 
 last may be. Doubtless this first of Protestant sovereigns and 
 "Defender of the Faith" needed these last. This was four and a 
 half centuries ago. 
 
 And now came on the stage one of those phenomenal person- 
 ages which the ever wakeful providence of God fashions, whose 
 career however brief was so potent in character as to change all 
 the successive acts in the mighty drama that followed. On the 
 death of Henry VIII, Edward, his son by the best loved of his 
 many wives, Jane Seymour, became Edward VI, King of Eng- 
 land. He was a mere boy in age, of only nine years, but his 
 learning was marvelous, and his piety deep, and most serious, and 
 his will to give free scope to the reformed religion throughout 
 every part of the church and kingdom was all dominant. His n^ 
 reign was short, only for six years, but in it, this really first 
 Protestant king wrought a revolution in spiritual affairs and re- 
 constructed, or perhaps more truly constructed the church of 
 England. 
 
 One of the very first acts of this Christian prince, was to strike 
 from the Church Book the whole service of the Mass. The 
 Eucharist became at once a communion instead of a sacrifice and 
 for the first time the sacrament in both kinds was presented to the 
 people. 
 
 This first Book of Common Prayer was followed by a second 
 in the short reign of this illustrious Christian king, in which the / 
 spirit of the Reformation found fuller sway. The first book, that 
 of 1549, shows the separation that had taken place from the Rom- 
 ish phase of Christianity, and the second book, that of 1552, shows 
 the separation that had taken place from the Lutheran phase 
 
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Both were for the establishment of the doctrine of the Eucharist 
 as a communion and not a sacrifice. 
 
 The new Book of Common Prayer as we compare it with the 
 Roman Breviary and Missal which had been in use for so many cen- 
 turies, and which were in use even in the English church under Henry 
 VIII, the new book of Edward's reign (I refer to the Prayer Book 
 of 1552), and of every subsequent reign since, and here in 
 America, to-day, what is this "Book of Common Prayer" ? where 
 are its sources ? My first answer is : In the ancient church 
 what we may call in distinction from the Romish church, the 
 primitive church. The English Prayer Book was not a new book, 
 but a revision of the old book. It was an excision of the cor- 
 ruptions, and superstitions, and mummeries and idolatries which 
 through the mediaeval period had been gathered into the 
 old book of worship, its form and rites and prayers. So looking 
 at this Prayer Book we find it in the main, made up of the 
 Te Deum of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Hilary, one or all of 
 them ; the creeds of Rufinus and Athanasius, the Gloria in 
 Excelsis of the Eastern church, the Gloria Patri of the Western, the 
 prayers and collects of Gelasius, of Chrysostom, of Gregory 
 and Leo, the Litany, the Vinite,the Magnificat, the Kyrie Eleison, 
 all and more of like kind which were in use in the church of Christ, 
 before the year 600, when as yet faith was simple and clear-eyed, 
 and love was deep and fervid, and Christian life was pure and all- 
 convincing. 
 
 But this Prayer Book of Edward is not only a retainment of the 
 primitive forms and an elimination of the mediaeval, it is also an 
 addition, an altogether new expression of worship. There are 
 Introductions, and Exhortations, and Confessions and Thanks- 
 giving and Absolution, the distinctive products of the great Ref- 
 ormation. Whence came these ? These form a very great part of 
 all that is really new in the Book of Common Prayer. Doubtless 
 Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the English 
 church, had much to do both by his sympathy with the Reforma- 
 tion and his superb literary taste, in moulding the new book into 
 its ampler proportions and its most beautiful expressions. But 
 no greater mistake can be committed than to suppose that the 
 distinctive parts of the English Prayer Book are to be attributed 
 to Cranmer or to any other or others in the English church. Dr. 
 Cardwell, an Episcopal authority, in his work on the *' Two Books 
 of Common Prayer," states that " the new liturgy was greatly 
 
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indebted, wherever it deviated from the ancient breviaries to the 
 progress already made on the continent in the reformation of 
 worship," and this author also calls attention to the intimate cor- 
 respondence upon the subject of the reformed liturgy between the 
 great leaders in the English church, and the reformers of Zurich. 
 Cranmer invited and welcomed to England, John a. Lasco, Pol- 
 lanus, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Fagius and others. Martyr took up 
 his residence at Lambert, the palace of the archbishop and 
 became King's professor of Theology at Oxford. Pollanus was 
 Calvin's successor at Strasburg and brought with him to England 
 a liturgy which he used for his own congregation, that by special 
 invitation was wont to gather in the great cathedral at Glaston- 
 bury. What part this follower of Calvin contributed to the Eng- 
 lish Prayer Book will shortly be stated. The distinguished Pole, 
 a. Lasco, another disciple of Calvin, was placed over the foreign 
 congregation of refugees in London. He had his liturgy. He 
 was intimately associated with the Primate, was his guest and his 
 adviser in the whole work of the English Reformation. And 
 there was Bucer, one of the most learned men, of whom the 
 Papal Legate Contarini said : " Martin Bucer, by reason of the 
 wide extent of his learning, could single-handed have been a 
 match for all our Roman Catholic doctors." He sought security 
 by acceptance of Cranmer's invitation, in England and soon was 
 named by the young king as Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. 
 Of him, Dr. Dowden, the present bishop of Edinburgh, says : 
 " There can be no question as to the influence Bucer exerted upon 
 the construction of the first Prayer Book." Melancthon and 
 Calvin were in close touch with all these workers at this new 
 liturgy, both foreign and English. Heylin, a church historian, 
 affirms, and it is repeated by Collier, that " the alterations made 
 in these and other portions of the liturgy were owing to the 
 remonstrances of Calvin, and the active co-operation of Martyr 
 and Bucer." It is a curious statement made by a high church- 
 man. Rev. Peter Hall, in his Fragmenta Liturqica. He says : 
 "It appears that our English reformers intended to make the three 
 or four first centuries the only pattern for themselves : and pur- 
 posed to reform all the corrupt doctrines and practices of the 
 Romish church, to make them agreeable to the practice of those 
 first ages. But, alas ! how soon were their pious and orthodox 
 labors marred by the interference of Calvin, Bucer and other 
 foreign Presbyterians." John a. Lasco in his dedication of his 
 
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book, published in 1555, gives an account of his call by King 
 Edward VI. to England. He says that "the king wished him to 
 freely regulate all things in his (a. Lasco's) churches wholly 
 according to apostolic doctrine and practice without any regard to 
 the rites of the country (England), that by this means the Eng- 
 lish churches also might be excited to embrace the apostolical 
 doctrine and practice." Again, a. Lasco says: " The care of our 
 church was committed to us chiefly with this view, that in the 
 administration thereof, we should follow the rule of the divine 
 word and apostolical observance rather than any rites of other 
 churches. In fine we were admonished both by the king himself, 
 and his chief nobility, to use this great liberality granted us in 
 our ministry, rightly and faithfully, not to please men but for the 
 glory of God, by promoting the reformation of his worship." 
 
 I will now particularize the greater features of the Prayer Book, 
 so far as they are Protestant in origin. Beginning with the very 
 beginning, Proctor, a vicar in the church of England, says : "The 
 truth respecting the very appropriate opening of our service 
 seems to be that the hint was taken from two books of service 
 used by congregations of refugees in England, which were pub- 
 lished about this time ; the one being the version of Calvin's 
 liturgy as translated by Pollanus, and the other that used by the 
 Walloons under John a. Lasco." The idea of such a penitential 
 introduction was due to Calvin. Archbishop Lawrence says in 
 his Bampton lectures: "In 1552, when the liturgy was revised 
 and republished, not only the Introduction but the Exhortation, 
 the Confession and the Absolution were in some degree taken 
 from Calvin's liturgy, but not from Calvin's own translation, but 
 from that by Pollanus which was printed in England at the very 
 period when the Prayer Book was under revision." Without 
 doubt the liturgical form of the Absolution was largely shaped 
 by that found in the liturgy of a. Lasco. And what have we left? 
 I mean in that part of the Book of Common Prayer which is in 
 use in the ordinary Lord's day service of the Episcopal church? 
 What is there left? A great American scholar, who has passed 
 into the Episcopal church, in a work to which he had given 
 immense research and an eminently just and catholic spirit 
 declares that in all this part of the Prayer Book " there is but a 
 single prayer that can be traced to a distinctively Episcopal ori- 
 gin ; and for the obvious reason, partly, that that service was 
 framed before the assertion of Prelacy against Presbytery, and 
 
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also that its Protestant additions and emendations are almost 
 exclusively from Calvinistic sources." I refer to Dr. Charles W. 
 Shields of Princeton. This last year in the series of volumes 
 known as the Oxford Library of Practical Theology, edited by 
 Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, canon of St. Paul's, and Rev. F. E. 
 Brightman, librarian of the Pusey House, Oxford, — in this series 
 there had just been published the " History of the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer," by the Rev. Leighton Pullon, lecturer at St. John's 
 Oriel and Queen's College. I find in it full confirmation of all 
 that I have presented from other church writers concerning the 
 large foreign sources which have created the Prayer Book. This 
 author going further shows that most of the opening address of 
 the marriage service, and the joining of the hands of the bride 
 and bridegroom, and the declaration : 'Those whom God hath 
 joined together let no man put asunder,' are taken from a Luth- 
 eran ritual." It is to the German, Hermann, the words : "Foras- 
 much as N. and M. have consented together," &c., are to be 
 attributed. In the Baptismal service, much of the first address 
 and the striking prayer and the choice of the gospel of St. Mark, 
 and much of the brief exhortation, and those beautiful words : 
 " Doubt ye not therefore, but earnestly believe that He will 
 embrace him with the arms of his mercy, that He will give him 
 unto the blessing of eternal life, and make him a partaker of his 
 everlasting life," and the prayer immediately following almost 
 word for word, is owing to Luther. Some of the finest passages 
 in the majestic burial service are traceable to the same source. 
 This author calls us to notice " that under the Long parliament a 
 Presbyterian form of prayer had been issued for the use of the 
 navy, and this, he says, probably suggested the use of special 
 forms of prayer for those at sea, when the church and king were 
 restored." 
 
 A few days ago I received a copy of Bishop Dowden's book, 
 published in 1899. The title of it is " The Workmanship of the Pray- 
 er Book. In it I find these words, "The church knows no parties. 
 It is something to remember that the Prayer Book owes one of its 
 chief est treasures, the chastened ardor of the General Thanksgiving 
 to the pen and the heart of the Puritan, Edward Reynolds." Dr. 
 Reynolds was one of the most illustrious of the great Presbyter- 
 ian divines who made up the Westminster Assembly. It was the 
 pen of this distinguished Presbyterian that helped to shape those 
 sentences in our Confession in respect to predestination and pre- 
 
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terition. Whatever we may say or even think of these fearful 
 words, who among us will refuse to accompany me, with a pure 
 heart and with bowed heads unto the throne of the heavenly grace 
 as I repeat the great Presbyterian prayer, "the chief est treasure 
 in the Prayer Book" : Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we, 
 thine unworthy servants, do give thee most humble and hearty 
 thanks for all Thy goodness and loving kindness to us, and to all 
 men. We bless Thee for our creation, preservation, and all the 
 blessings of this life ; but above all, for Thine inestimable love in 
 the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ : for the 
 means of grace and for the hope of glory. And we beseech Thee, 
 give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be 
 unfeignedly thankful, and that we may show forth Thy praise, not 
 only with our lips, but in our lives ; by giving up ourselves to 
 Thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and right- 
 eousness all our days, through Jesus Christ our Lord ; to whom 
 with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, world 
 without end. — Amen. 
 
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