The Eucharist in East and West

By F. Gavin

      The words in the Apostles’ Creed – “I believe in the Communion of Saints” – may mean three separate things.  (1) The conception which most immediately springs to mind is of the Fellowship of Holy Persons.  But as the word translated “Saints” is in Latin and Greek either neuter or masculine, it might also equally well mean (2) the sharing of things which by being offered become holy, and (3) participation in Holy Things.  The words are patient of all three meanings, and each several meaning describes an essential note in the long life of the Eucharist in the Church.  Fundamental is, of course, the thought of the Holy Fellowship – the “true Israel,” the Mystical Body of Christ.  Within its life go on two kinds of sacrifice – one in which the believers offer up what they would of those things God’s bounty has supplied, and dedicating them, give them to be shared by the needy.  But in connection with the Eucharist, they receive by giving: what is offered for the actual Eucharistic Service – the elements of bread and wine – becomes means for Holy Communion.  They participate in the life once offered by our Lord on Calvary, who by offering make possible this Communion with Him and with one another.

      In the pages that follow an attempt will be made to describe and interpret the Eucharistic life of the Church. Beginning with the evidence of the New Testament we shall pass on to consider the beginnings of Liturgies and give special study to the basic rite of Christendom—that found in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. [I am assuming the validity of the conclusions of E. Schwartz, Über die pseudoapostolischen Kirchenordnungen (Strasburg, 1910), and of Dom John Connolly, The So-Called Egyptian Church Order and Derived Documents (Cambridge, 1916), despite the arguments urged against their views by R. Lorentz, De egyptische Kerkordening en Hippolytus van Rom (Haarlem, 1929).]  Thence diverge the two chief types of Liturgies, the Eastern and the Western.  We shall consider the ideas and practices concerning the Eucharist, both in the Liturgies and their history and in the Church writers who exercised great influence.  We shall then attempt to understand the significance and meaning of the great historical rites of Christendom.  In so doing we shall be mindful of the Liturgy and Worship of the Anglican Communion, and in particular we shall note the antecedents of three groups of noteworthy phrases: (1) “We entirely desire thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that ... we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.  And here we offer and present unto thee ourselves, our souls and bodies.”  (2) “Very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people.”  (3) “We humbly beseech thee mercifully to accept our alms and oblations, and to receive these our prayers.”  Here are the offering of the Fellowship of believers, the “alms and oblations,” the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” given Godwards by the “members incorporate in the mystical Body” of Christ, and the receiving of His Blessed Body and Blood.

1.  Eucharistic Origins.

      The New Testament comes to us as a portion of the collected religious literature of a Fellowship which claimed to be the True Israel, the “Israel of God”.  It cannot be interpreted apart from the group’s life, behaviour and thought.  We are not dependent on the documents alone for evidence showing a continuing corporation, developing from, and maintaining that it represented – in spirit, conviction and action – the unbroken social thing called the Church.  This corporation is the Society in which the scriptures of the New Testament took their rise.  This Society and its usages constitute the larger context of the written word of the New Testament.  The best commentary on the latter is its practices and customs, its different views and developing convictions.

      In the following brief sketch of the New Testament material we shall depart from the usual practice of dealing only with the analysis of the specially relevant texts.  Whatever the Lord’s Supper was or meant to the Corinthian Christians, whatever our Lord did and meant on the eve of His Passion, whatever was signified by the “breaking of the bread” – these all are intimately related to the larger life of the Fellowship.  From that Fellowship’s behaviour and belief, its usages and convictions, its actions and reflections, we can fill out and interpret the specifically Eucharistic texts.  What follows immediately has to do with (1) the Institution, (2) Reflections upon the Eucharist, (3) the Narratives of the Miraculous Feedings, and (4) Aspects of the Life of the Society of Believers in Jesus.

      (1) The Accounts of the Institution are four, of which the first in point of time of writing is that of St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 11:17–30.  The occasion of his discussing it was the actual concrete problem of practice in the Corinthian Church.  The first point of offence was a breach in the unity of life in the Brotherhood (vv. 18–21).  Secondly, the Eucharistic Service was connected with a Common Meal, following the example he adduces of the Lord’s own action (v. 25).  The close relationship between a religious observance and the social and economic needs (vv. 21–22) is significant: there is not only the sin against the Brotherhood, but also the further one of sacrilege (vv. 27–29), and these are intimately related.  The results of the latter have been grievous (v. 30).  The conclusion is: “when you come together to eat, wait for one another.  If any be hungry, let him eat at home lest you come together for condemnation” (vv. 33–34).  The Eucharist is obviously combined with what few of us would deem to be a Church “Service”; for it must have been something like a congregational supper.  Yet, despite its corporate character, the individuals had, or took, a considerable degree of personal initiative.

      We deal then with two things: (a) the Congregational Supper, at which the poor and hungry should have been succoured, closely bound up with what we term (b) the Eucharist – a commemoration of the Last Supper, involving a memorial of that event, a “showing forth of the Lord’s death till he come” (v. 26), a wrong – or undiscriminating – participation in which has brought grave consequences: some have become weak, others ill, and several have actually died (v. 30).  Further light is thrown on the Eucharist proper in the preceding chapter (10:14–22), and this gains more illumination from 10:1–4.  A very brief summary of the statement and inferences shows us: (1) St. Paul thought of an Old Testament baptism and feeding of “the Fathers” (10:1–2) corresponding to Christian Baptism and Eucharist.  (2) In the Old Covenant there was also “Spirit-infused food ... and drink” (10:4), and the source was the same –  Christ (v. 4).  (3) The Eucharistic Cup and Bread were “fellowship,” or “participation” or “communion” with the Body and Blood of Christ (v. 16).  (4) The Bread is one, as the Body is one – though Bread and the Body are composed alike of many several parts: the oneness is created by “sharing” or “participation” (v. 17).  (5) The Eucharist is compared to the Jewish (v. 18) and heathen (vv. 19–20) sacrifices.  The sacrificer or “those who eat of the sacrifice are participants in God” (v. 18) in the former case, and with demons in the latter (v. 20).  There can be no cross-relations between Christians and heathen (v. 21).  Sharing in the power of deity seems to be one end of sacrifice, obtained by eating of what is there offered.  (6) By definite implication the Eucharist is properly reckoned a sacrifice, whether from the Jewish or pagan use of the term.

      (b) The Marcan account is now given, with the Pauline in parallel (common material is italicized):

      The Marcan account, the most primitive that we possess, consists of three parts, a saying over the bread, a saying over the wine, and an unmistakably eschatological reference (in v. 25).  In it, as well as in St. Paul, “bless” and “give thanks” (which are later to become separable and distinctly different things, see below where Eulogia and Eucharist are distinguished) are of the same import.  The Marcan account describes the Meal of a Jewish Fellowship, of which our Lord was the head, in the course of which He took bread, recited the customary blessing over it: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, Ruler of the Universe, the One who causeth bread to spring forth from the earth,” brake and gave it, and then said: “Take, this is my Body.”  So also He “gave thanks” over the cup: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, Ruler of the Universe, he who createth the fruit of the vine.”  The Marcan account records no instruction to drink of it, but merely the fact that they did.  The words following parallel those over the Broken Bread, and recall Exod. 24:8 (cf. Heb. 9:20) and Jer. 31:31.  Here is explicit the assertion, at least in symbol, of our Lord’s self-oblation for His own – the overt and self-conscious act of dedication to sacrifice, of self-immolation and self-surrender to it, the clear statement that it was a vicarious sacrifice.  The blood-shedding initiated a New Covenant, of which those partaking were the first members: a new Fellowship was constituted by that act.  The third section – with a reminiscence of the Jewish Blessing of the Cup – has a specifically forward look, to the Messianic Banquet where the triumphant Christ would hold fellowship with His own.  There is no trace of this in St. Paul’s account, where the act of “showing forth his death till he come” is in no wise correlative to participation in the Messianic Banquet.

      (c) St. Matthew’s account (26:26–29) seems modeled upon that of St. Mark: the differences are chiefly lexical; the only additions or changes are: the injunction “Drink ye all of it” (v. 27); in v. 28 “(my Blood) poured out for many for (the) remission of sins”; v. 29 reads “from now I shall not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in the Kingdom of my Father.”  Yet there is good reason to believe that it represents a Church tradition emanating from a different locality.  (That it is already a “Church tradition” is clear from the balanced, well-articulated structure, probably developed into this form from liturgical usage.)  There are differences in ideas, but the fundamental sequence is the same as in St. Mark; the Messianic Banquet is, however, linked closely to those present; “with you ... in my Father’s Kingdom” may represent also a further theological development.

      (d) The Lucan account (22:15–20) offers extremely difficult textual problems, which cannot be discussed here.  One fact emerges, however, that of the divergent texts that have come down to us, one might seem to have only the Eucharistic bread, with which reading may be compared other Lucan passages – e.g. 24:30, 35; Acts 2:42, 46; Acts 20:11, etc., if indeed the omission of the cup in them is significant.  Was there a local tradition of this sort current in one community, in which the usage – represented later by some gnostics (cf. Clem. Hom., 14, 1; Actus Vercellenses St. Petri, 5; Acts of John, l06–110; Acts of Thomas, 27, 29, 49–50, 133, 158, etc.) – was given up in the light of overwhelming and convergent traditions of the other type?

      In the Lucan account the eschatological reference – bound up with the anticipated Passover – is like the Marcan-Matthaean, and is reinforced by the words over the cup in vv. 17–18.  Here, in the shorter text, as given in the margin of the Revised Version, do not appear any suggestions that the cup is our Lord’s Blood: the idea of the Messianic Banquet is paramount, and is apart from all reference to the New Covenant or to sacrifice.  It is, however, to a resultant text, the tenor of which represents a conflation of all the ideas associated with the Eucharist – Jewish practice, New Covenant, Sacrifice, Messianic Banquet – that the canonization of the Church attaches, and not to one variant among the different readings, the explanation of which eludes our grasp.

      (2) Turning our attention to other passages in the New Testament which have to do with the Eucharist, we find the most important in the discourse in St. John 6 in the Synagogue at Capernaum.  It is difficult, if not almost impossible, to sever this section from its inevitably Eucharistic associations and meanings.  The two miracles – unique in Johannine composition – which introduce it serve as texts.  They are: (1) the increase of the quantity of natural food, by miraculous means, to satisfy the needs of thousands, and (2) the immediate Presence of Christ with power.  The application follows: “I am the Bread of Life” (v. 48).  “Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and died.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, if any one eat he shall not die.  I am the Living Bread” (vv. 48–51).  “The bread that I shall give is my flesh which I shall give in behalf of the life of the world” (v. 51).  “My flesh is truly food and my blood truly drink.  He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him” (vv. 55–56).  Such words are not mere metaphor or figures.  The point of the mystery is in v. 63: “The Spirit is that which makes alive; the flesh is valueless.  The words I spake to you are Spirit and Life.”  We meet here with identically the same idea as in St. Paul in 1 Cor. 10:3, 4: the “Spirit-infused food and drink”.  One explanation of the Johannine passage calls attention to the absence of the account of the Institution of the Eucharist in the Passion Narrative where we should expect it, and suggests that the author, knowing the Eucharist as the Observance of the Fellowship, yet being unwilling to ascribe the same origin to it as the Synoptists, attaches the institution to an anticipation of the Heavenly Messianic Banquet, which is the true meaning of the Miraculous Feedings in the Gospels.  Yet two difficulties offer themselves: (1) the Eucharistic theology is indistinguishable in essence from that of St. Paul, and (2) the use of “flesh” and “blood,” “bread from heaven” and the like securely binds the Eucharist to the whole cycle of sacrifice ideas.  The Passion and the Death of the Cross alone render these terms intelligible, however prominent be the notes of the Messianic Banquet and the Spirit-infused food in the Fourth Gospel.

      (3) In the passage just discussed we have one account of a Miraculous Feeding.  There are also two groups of Miraculous Feeding stories in the Synoptics: (a) of the Five Thousand (St. Mark 6:38–44; St. Matt. 14:17–21; St. Luke 9:13–17) and (b) of the Four Thousand (St. Mark 8:1–10; St. Matt. 15:32–39).  Two comments may be made upon these, of which the first passage (St. Mark 6:38–44) may be taken as typical: the extraordinarily Jewish ring to the whole passage, for which detailed Rabbinic parallels can easily be found; the equally extraordinarily Eucharistic ring – e.g. “Taking ... bread ... he gave thanks ... brake ... gave to the disciples to distribute” (v. 41).  The purpose of these miracles was to succour the physical needs of people, and to cause them to share in common food with Jesus.  Human sympathy, compassion, and awareness of the need prompted the exercise of power.  At the same time these common meals were distinctly and emphatically religious in tone throughout: an obscure individual offers his little, it is surrendered to our Lord, who blesses God for it, breaks, distributes, and gives orders that nothing be lost.  By the act represented in the Miraculous Feedings, our Lord as host gathers into the circle of His guests more than the group which always companied with Him.

      (4) A fourth group of texts from the New Testament illustrate the life of the group of Jesus’ followers who later, gathered together in His Name and by His Power, proclaimed the Good News and added members to their Fellowship by including them in the compass of its benefits.  The group of those about our Lord had a common purse for common needs and the practice of charity (cf. St. Mark 14:3–5, St. Matt. 26:8–9, St. Luke 22:35, St. John 12:6, 13:29).  The injunctions to the disciples show how gifts were the means not only of sustaining them but also of relieving others’ wants.  There must have been a sense of common needs and the satisfying of them, even in the group fellowship of those about our Lord.  In the early chapters of Acts we gain a clear picture of the weighty conviction of the need of sharing all with all (cf. Acts 4:32, 34–37, 5:1–11, 6:1–6, etc.).  The followers of Jesus share not only a common outlook, but increasingly a common life (cf. Acts 11:29–30).  In the picture of the Pauline Church at Corinth we have a society knit together in faith and practice, imposing a discipline and regimen on its members, and in those respects in which we can estimate such characteristics, rapidly acquiring the functions of an omnicompetent social and economic group: excommunication of a grave offender against the moral code (1 Cor. 5:4–6), condemnation of “fornicators ... covetous, extortioners, idolaters,” all in one breath (vv. 10–11 and 6:10); prohibition of the carrying of cases between “brethren” in litigation before heathen judges (6:1–8); support of the Apostle (9:4, 14); the whole theory of the “Body” given in chap. 12, and the like.  In practice, the collection of alms took place on Sunday (16:1–4).  The Pauline injunctions constantly to “give thanks” for whatever is done (Col. 3:17; cf. 1:Cor. 10:30–31, Eph. 5:20, etc.) show us how thoroughly the common life was to be caught up into that of religion, in all its aspects.  For our purposes it is chiefly important to note the behaviour of the Christian believers bound together into a growingly competent body, in which all interests – social, economic, intellectual – were under the vivid illumination of the Christian Gospel.

      A word may be said as to antecedents of the Eucharist in Judaism.  The link which binds the Institution to the practice of the Jewish religion is given by the whole narrative in its broader outlines, and specially by the words “bless,” “brake” (St. Mark 14:22, St. Matt. 26:26); “gave thanks” (St. Mark 14:23, St. Matt. 26:27, 1 Cor. 11:24).  There are two current customs in contemporary Judaism which have been used to interpret the Last Supper in its original setting: the Passover and the Kiddush.  The generally held theory of the chronology of the Passion, and the Pauline assimilation of the cycle of Passover ideas to the Passion (cf. 1 Cor. 5:7–8), have until fairly recently led scholars to find the background of the Last Supper in the Jewish Passover.  Against this view it may be urged: there was no lamb, nor the use of the liturgical narrative of the Passover; it is “bread” (artos), not “unleavened bread” (matsoth; azyme), which is used; and there is but one cup, not the four prescribed by the Jewish ritual.  The Supper could not have been even an adaptation of the Passover.

      The alternative is the custom called the Kiddush: a quasi-religious meal on the Eves of Sabbaths and Feasts.  The essential elements were “blessings” recited over the food and drink – bread and wine.  The “blessings” were given in prescribed formulae, beginning with the unvarying words: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, King of the Universe.”  Each “blessing” must mention God’s Name.  Each contained an ascription in a relative clause.  The idea in each was to bless God for the thing.  No one could eat or drink anything before reciting a blessing over it (Berakhoth 35a), for it was deemed sacrilege and theft to partake of God’s bounty without having blessed Him for it. [In Tosephta Berakhoth vi. 24, the devout Jew is to “eat his bread reciting a blessing both before and after.”]  The act of blessing released the food or drink for human consumption.  The eves of festivals were always marked by such a ceremony; especially on the Eve of Sabbath was the Kiddush to be observed.  Two blessings over the cup were prescribed for the latter, and the Schools of Hillel and Shammai debated which should come first (cf. Berakhoth viii. 1, and Pesahim x. 2).  The Kiddush could not formerly be celebrated save at a meal (Pesahim 101a), but later it was observed in the synagogue, where in the third century travelers were accommodated, and ate, drank, and slept (see Klein, in Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, ix. 142 ff).  The “blessing of the bread” and the “breaking of the bread” seem not to have been solely observed on the Eves of Feasts, but at will in the “religious groups” or “fellowships” (haburoth) of Rabbis and disciples, or clubs of friends.  Usage differed, so that in some circumstances one said Grace for all; at other times, each said his own.  The various blessings over the cup and the blessing over the bread were stereotyped at an early date.  The cup used at the end of the meal was called “the cup of blessing” (as in Midrash to Gen. 21:8), and there is at least one example of a glass cup found bearing the words “receive (a) blessing” (λάβε ευλογίαν).  A group of friends who thus held fellowship was called a haburah, to which word at least one meaning of koinonia in the New Testament corresponds (cf., e.g., in Acts 2:42, where it is closely associated with “the breaking of the bread”). [It is possible also that in 1 Cor. 1:9 and 10:16 (bis) it may mean “the fellowship created by His Son,” ... “His Blood” etc.  All of the Pauline uses of the word at least receive much light from the Jewish background of the term.]  The Kiddush was thus in part the symbol of the fellowship relation.  The host was to be “remembered” by those at table, and in Berakhoth 46a such a prayer for the host is given: “May it be thy will that the host be not put to shame in this world nor confounded in that which is to come.”

      But in any case the circumstances of the Last Supper were unique, so that in its case there were both retrospect and prospect.  The constant fellowship of our Lord with the disciples in social life, worship or companionship at table thus culminated in a quasi-anticipation of the Messianic Banquet.  There is also a quasi-anticipation of the Passover (cf. St. Matt. 26:18–19, St. Luke 22:14–16).  Mr. Loewe has drawn attention to the fact that if the words “Do this unto my memorial” (1 Cor. 11:24, 25; [St. Luke 22:19]) be original, they would have peculiar relevance from the background of Kiddush and the Passover ritual (seder).  The commemorations in both are of the Creation of the World (and the Sabbath rest) and the delivery from Egyptian bondage (and the election of Israel).  Were these words authentic – as St. Paul records them – we have a consistent whole in the Institution.  The background is Jewish, the ideas with which this unparalleled occurrence operates are Jewish – yet the uniqueness and extraordinary quality of the words “This is my Body ... my Blood” are shown in the intimation that a New Order has been initiated in which the memorials of the Creation of all things and of the redemption of the Chosen People are to be relegated to a secondary position: the central place of the sacrifice of our Lord ushers in a New Covenant.  As Lietzmann interprets the meaning: [Messe und Herrenmahl, Bonn, 1926.] “I am the sacrificial victim whose blood is poured out for you – that is, for the believing folk – to seal a new Covenant with God, and whose Body is slain for you.” [P. 221, op. cit.; on p. 225 he calls attention to the meaning of 2 Cor. 3:6, 14 and Gal. 4:24: “in both cases it is clear that the ‘New Covenant’ is in divinely enjoined opposition with the Covenant of Sinai.”]

      We are not in a position clearly to analyze the significance, meaning and usages of the Jewish sacrificial system as they affected early Christianity.  Nor can we say with precision in what respect the idea that alms-giving was a surrogate for sacrifice in the Temple (a widespread belief among Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple) affected Christian practices.  But from what can be restored from intimations here and there, and inferred from a phrase, word or custom, the full connotations of which were gradually to fade, it is highly probable that both the sacrificial cultus on the one hand, and the systematic quasi-religious practice of charity on the other, molded, if they did not largely constitute, the framework as well of early Christian liturgical practice as of ethical conduct and religious behaviour.

      We may summarize the New Testament very briefly, putting to one side the more obvious facts.  The Synoptic Gospels give us not one single tradition, but possibly three, certainly two different traditions, which are again not identical with those of St. Paul and the Johannine literature.  Liturgical practice has had much to do with the form and phraseology of these narratives.  We find the Dominical injunction “Do this” in St. Paul, from whose account it probably found its way into the current text of St. Luke.  The two chief ideas in strict relationship with the Eucharist are those of sacrifice and of the Messianic Banquet.  So far as concerns the former, as Mr. Spens pointed out in Essays Catholic and Critical, it is the Eucharistic Institution which in the Synoptic Gospels uniquely demonstrates the Passion as a self-consciously and deliberately willed sacrifice.  The meaning, point, purpose and intent of Good Friday were given in the Last Supper – and there alone. [Though Mark 10:45, “to give his life a ransom for many, implies a great deal.]  The Messianic Banquet ideas are of a piece with the eschatological teaching, thought and language of our Lord, sustaining their chief presentation in the Fourth Gospel and in the earlier verses of the Lucan narrative.  We may not, however, interpret the Eucharist in isolation from other elements of teaching and practice.  The Miraculous Feedings have an intimate relation to the Eucharist, both in form and in the acts narrated.  In fact, St. John’s Eucharistic chapter uses the Feeding of the Five Thousand as its point of departure.  The life of the Christian Fellowship, in imitation of that of the band of those who “companied with Jesus,” grows in organic quality, subsuming all the activities of its members, as it exercises a control over their thoughts and convictions, under the New Life and Law in Jesus.  If the Eucharist, as Sacrifice and as Communion, represents one, then the Agape or Love Feast (alluded to in Jude 12; 2 Peter 2:13) represents the other type of Christian religious meal in Fellowship.  While the Last Supper uniquely and clearly gave rise to the Eucharist, the Miraculous Feedings, with their clearer suggestion of the anticipated Heavenly Banquet of the Messiah, are the starting point for the Agapes.  The former was both Commemorative Sacrifice – or, at least, the Commemoration of the Sacrifice – and Communion with Him.  The latter had also the note of sacrifice – the surrender of that which was one’s own for dedication by our Lord to common needs.  The mood of Thanksgiving governed both.  There could be “Thanksgiving” for all that our Lord was and did, [See below.  Cf. 1 John 3:16–17, where His Sacrifice and man’s are linked.] of which the outstanding fact was His Sacrifice.  Eucharist and sacrifice were inseparable.

2. The Eucharist in the Church of the Second and Third Centuries.

      The Eucharist was a regular and constituent observance of the primitive Christian fellowship.  Probably, however, the details of its origin were not matters with which the early believer would greatly concern himself: he would do what the Dominical example enjoined, whether that command were by explicit word or by exemplary practice on our Lord’s part.  We have found that by the date of the redaction of the Gospels various traditions were already current, in all likelihood representing different local customs.  The Matthaean account has been rubbed smooth and filled out for use as a liturgical narrative; Mark seems to be the most primitive; the evidence of Luke is much disputed in critical circles, and has been thought to support the possible existence of a Eucharistic observance in which the element was bread, and the cup does not appear.  In the Pauline account, chronologically the earliest, we have the fullest statement of all, based upon some other than the tradition given by Luke.  In St. John we have no account of a Last Supper, but, on the other hand, a full Eucharistic theology, bound up in part with a different cycle of ideas from those of the Covenant Sacrifice group, and concerned with the Messianic Banquet belief.  However, the use of “Flesh and Blood” and of “Spirit” links the Johannine tradition to the Pauline the Spirit as infusing the food of 1 Cor. 10:3, 4, and the “Spirit” in St. John 6:63 belong to the same outlook.

      What did the earliest Eucharists mean to the believers of the primitive Christian Fellowship?  Many meanings were bound up together: the anticipation of the heavenly Messianic Banquet (Johannine); the remembrance of our Lord’s Passion, death and self-immolation; the corporate act of the fellowship in, with and by their Lord’s Presence among them; the continuation of the custom of our Lord’s social intercourse with His followers; receiving by participation His strength, power and life in communion with Him – these and more, severally and together, represented different aspects of the observance of an ordinance varied and enriched in meaning, in different communities of Christians.

      Who conducted the Eucharist in the primitive Church?  For the earliest period we cannot say with precision.  It is clear from 1 Cor. 11:17–21, 33–34, for example, that the disorders in connection with its celebration at Corinth could easily have been ended had there been recognized officials with authority to put a stop to them.  In a document of the late first century, “The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians,” the author draws a sharp distinction between “clergy” and “laity” (xl).  The bishop-presbyters are said “to offer the gifts” (xliv. 4), but the phrase in the Clementine use of the term does not necessarily refer to the Eucharist (cf. xxxv. 12; xxxvi. 1; xli. 1–2; and the quotation of Ps. 5:14, 15 in lii).  From the evidence of a later document, of a still early yet uncertain date, the so-called “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” or Didache, the “prophets” are to offer the Eucharistic Thanks (x. 7).  Early in the second century St. Ignatius’ Epistles contain many references to the place of the Bishop in the Church.  He is the normal celebrant, and only that Eucharist celebrated by him or his delegate is to be accounted valid (or firm; cf. Smyrn., viii. 1).  Approximately forty years later St. Justin Martyr in his First Apology describes the officiant as the “President,” who in all likelihood is the Bishop (lxv. 5).  From this time on the main lines of the tradition indicate the same theory and practice: the Bishop is the normal celebrant (cf. St. Cyprian, Ep. lxiii. 14, c. 250), though he may delegate or commission a priest to act for him as officiant.  Sporadic variants in practice, here and there hinted at, may be survivals of ancient practice not yet become entirely uniform.  In the primitive Church the Eucharist as the act of the Body of Christ, the Church, would naturally be celebrated by its supreme representative, the Bishop, who was the natural and inevitable person to become its leader in the Eucharistic Service.

      1.  In the Didache we have two groups of Eucharistic prayers, and some directions regarding its celebration.  The Didache – or “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” – is an important early document for the reason that it was so often drawn upon by later literature.  It embodies an older Jewish method of instructing converts to Judaism, supplemented by a few Christian additions (i–vi), and gives the order of procedure to be observed by the community in which it arose, probably a local Jewish-Christian Church.  Two views are held regarding its aim: it may be either a “Church Order” – a practical handbook for a Christian community – or a layman’s devotional manual, a kind of “Treasury of Devotion” of the early second century.  In the Didache the term “Eucharist” has become technical and specific.  It is explicitly called a “sacrifice” (xiv. 1), and the term for “ministry” (xv. 1) is that associated with a priestly ministry, probably by double reference to the Old Testament and to the cycle of ideas represented in the Epistle to the Hebrews.  It must be remembered that at this early date in Christian history, and for a considerable time thereafter, the actual words used in the Eucharistic service were still unformulated in a fixed liturgical shape.  The officiant spoke them extempore.  As we noted above, in St. Matthew’s account of the Institution the phraseology shows evident signs of adaptation to liturgical use.  Such a brief narrative of the Institution and the Lord’s Prayer together may well have formed the invariable parts of the primitive Eucharistic rite.

      The sections on Eucharistic prayers in the Didache are built upon the Jewish models, and read as follows:

      ix.  Concerning the Eucharist :

                  Thus give ye thanks, – first, over the cup:

      1. “We thank thee, our Father, for the Holy Vine of David thy servant which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy servant: to thee be glory for ever.” (Cf. Ps. 80:8–19, St. Mark 14:25.)

                  2. At the breaking (of bread):

      “We thank thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy servant: to thee be glory for ever.”

      3. “As this broken (bread), scattered on the mountains, was gathered together and made into one (cf. 1 Cor. 10:17), so let thy Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into thy Kingdom: for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.”

      Let none eat or drink of your Eucharist save those who are baptized in the Lord’s name.  For concerning this the Lord said: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs (St. Matt. 7:6).

      x.  After being filled then do ye give thanks:

      4. “We thank thee, Holy Father, for thy holy Name which thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge, faith and immortality which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy servant: to thee be glory for ever.” (Cf. Jer. 7:12, Ezek. 43:7, 2 Esdr. 6:12, etc.)

      5. “Thou, Lord Omnipotent, hast created all things for thy Name’s sake, and hast given food and drink to (all) men for their enjoyment, that we should give thanks to thee; but upon us hast thou bestowed spiritual food and drink, and eternal life through (Jesus) thy servant.  Above all things we thank thee, that thou art mighty: for thine is the power and the glory for ever: to thee be glory for ever.”

      6. “Be mindful, O Lord, of thy Church to deliver it from all evil, and to perfect it in thy love; and do thou gather it from the four winds, sanctified unto thy Kingdom which thou hast prepared for it:

                  Officiant: May grace come and this world pass away.

                  Congregation: Hosanna to the God of David!

      Officiant: If any be holy, let him come; if he be not, let him repent.  Maran atha!

                  Congregation: Amen.”

                  Allow the prophets to say Eucharistic thanks as they will.

      Each section contains three prayers, each with its doxology, of which the concluding prayer in each section has a fuller form.  To each section is appended a rubric.  There is parallelism of construction, most apparent by a comparison of 3 and 6, which latter passage is the first of a long series of petitions – types common in all Eucharistic liturgies to come.  Behind the form and contents of these prayers lie the Jewish prototypes, and their character is conditioned by this fact: the ideas in the Jewish models are spiritualized and transformed.  For example, note the contrast between the food and drink for the body given by God to all men, and the special Spirit-infused food and drink of the believer (see 5).  “God’s Name – that is, His Power, His Spirit – has taken up its dwelling in the communicants through the heavenly food,” as Lietzmann writes.  In the final dialogue “Grace” undoubtedly is the analogue to the Word, and means our Lord: the expectation of an imminent return is still vivid to this Christian congregation.  Yet the (Pauline) Aramaic words maran atha – have a double significance, (a) in the sense of Rev. 22:20: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus,” and (b) the recognition of the fact of the sacramental Presence in the Eucharist: in a very true sense “the Lord has come.”

      After xiii, where firstlings and other gifts are to be given and the “prophets” as successors of the Old Testament priests (in default of whom the poor) are to receive them, there follows in xiv the following:

      On the Lord’s day of the Lord assemble ye and break bread and celebrate Eucharist, having first confessed your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure.  Anyone who has a dispute with his fellow is not to come until they be reconciled, lest your sacrifice be defiled.  For it is this which was spoken by the Lord: “In every place and time offer a pure sacrifice unto me, for I am a great King, saith the Lord, and my name (is) great among the heathen” (Mal. 1:11).

      The Didache rite is peculiar for giving the cup first, then the bread, as in (1) and (2) (but cf. 1 Cor. 10:16, which has this order), but elsewhere the sequence is “eat ... drink of your Eucharist” (3), “food and drink ... spiritual food and drink” (5).  This may represent different traditions in antecedent and contemporary Jewish practice at the Kiddush, or possibly a conflation of different Christian traditions.  If the prayers represented in ix, x be considered as communicants’ preparation and thanksgiving at Communion, they follow the thought of the Marcan account of the Institution (save for the transposition of the order of the elements) – the bread, the wine, and the reference to the Kingdom (St. Mark 14:22–25, and St. Matt. 26:26–29).  Mark and Matthew both use the verb from which Eucharist is derived of the cup (St. Mark 14:23, St. Matt. 26: 27), as does Didache xiv: “Break bread and celebrate Eucharist.”

      The Eucharistic service of the Didache type can be summarized thus: it was held on Sundays, preceded by some sort of confession of sins, regarded as a sacrifice, the baptized only are to partake, and the celebrants* are prophets (teachers) and also Bishops.  The whole instructions have primarily to do with inducting the newly-baptized into the practices of the Christian religion.  This is clear from the connection with the earlier context.  Eucharistic belief is greatly developed, for by the Eucharistic elements, contrasted with ordinary food and drink, is conveyed to the faithful life, knowledge, faith, immortality – the very personal power of God Himself.  This is achieved through the Spirit-infused food and drink of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4, St. John 6:63).  The Eucharist is essentially social and corporate, the function of the Church, and the occasion of intercession for the Church.

      [*“Concelebration,” it may be explained, is the name given to the custom of clerics of the higher orders – i.e., priests and bishops – acting together at the altar in the performance of the Eucharist Rite.  In the West this ancient practice has largely died out, owing to the custom whereby each priest says his own Mass daily.  The Eastern Church still observes the more primitive custom: the clergy assisting actually all participate at the altar in the various detailed acts of the Eucharist, together say the Canon, and receive the Blessed Sacrament.  In the Roman Ordinal the newly ordained priest “concelebrates” with the Bishop who has ordained him, a token of the conservative quality of this portion of the Roman Use.  Concelebration bore testimony both to the corporate character of the Eucharist and to the common priesthood of the ordained, evincing in the rite a principle notably obscured in modern practice whether Roman or Anglican.]

      Two questions present themselves: (1) In what sense is the Eucharist a sacrifice, when no mention is made of “offering” or “oblation” to God?  (The prayers are emphatically those of thanksgiving, not offering.)  (2) How is the Spirit related to the Eucharist?

      2.  While from St. Ignatius’ Epistles we obtain no description of the Eucharist, the scattered references to it suggest the important place it held in the Church of his day.  To him the Eucharist “is the medicinal specific for immortality, the antidote against our dying, but that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ” (Eph. 20:2).  This phrase recalls the close relationship between reception of the Eucharist and immortality in the Didache, and in all likelihood is a bit of the Antiochene liturgy of the early second century.  It appears later in fixed liturgies of wide distribution – as, for example, in that of Serapion of Egypt: “make all those who partake to receive the specific medicine of life unto the healing of every illness” (Funk, Didascalia, II, 13, § 15); in that of Gaul: “may (the Eucharist) be a medicine to those who receive it” (F. J. Mone, Lateinische und griechische Messen aus dem zweiten bis sechsten Jahrhundert, III. 21), and in a Berlin Papyrus, where “unto a specific medicine for immortality, an antidote of life against all dying but for living in thee through thy beloved servant (child),” etc., is the concluding doxology (quoted by Lietzmann, p. 257, note 2). [Did St. Clement of Alexandria also know it as a liturgical phrase?  Cf. Paed. II. ii. 2: “And this it is to ‘drink the Blood’ of Jesus – to partake of the Lord’s incorruption.”]  The Eucharistic cup is for “union with his Blood” (Phil., 4.).  The Eucharist is itself the “flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, raised up by the Father’s kindness” (Smyrn., vii. 1).  To Ignatius there is no explicit reference to the Messianic Banquet in the Eucharist, but primarily to the offered and sacrificed body and blood of the Saviour, which in the Eucharist avail for the believer’s immortality in our Lord.  The larger context of the Ignatius letters draws heavily upon the hierarchic and sacerdotal terminology (cf. Trall., vii. 2; Rom., 7:3; Phil., 4, etc.).

      3.  From about the middle of the second century we possess our first description of the Eucharist, in the words of St. Justin (m. 163–7) written 150–155 in his First Apology:

      (65) Having ended the prayers we salute one another with a kiss.  There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine-and-water; and he, taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and gives thanks at considerable length for being counted worthy of these things from him.  And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying “Amen”.  (This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to “so be it”.) And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the Eucharistized bread and wine-and-water and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

      (66) And this food is called among us Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing for the remission of sins, and for regeneration, and who is so living as Christ enjoined.  For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the word of God, took both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is Eucharistized by the prayer of the Word from him, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.  For the Apostles, in the memoirs composed by them – which are called “Gospels” – have thus delivered that it had been so enjoined on them: that Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of me; this is my Body”; and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks he said, “This is my Blood”; and imparted it to them alone. ...

      (67) And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things; and the wealthy among us succour the needy and we always keep together.  Over all things which we eat we bless the Creator of all things, through his Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Ghost.

      And on the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits.  Then when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things; then we all rise together and pray, and (as we said before), when we have ceased from our prayer, bread and wine-and-water are offered, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability, and the people assent “Amen” and there is a distribution to each and a participation of the Eucharistized things, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.

      (And they who are well-to-do and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours both orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, and, in a word, takes care of all in need.  But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly.)

      Elsewhere St. Justin carefully distinguishes Christian from pagan sacrifices: “Worshipping as we do the Maker of this Universe and declaring, as we have been taught, that he has no need of streams of blood, and libations, and incense, him we praise to the utmost of our power by the word of prayer and thanksgiving over all things which we offer; as we have been taught that the only honour that is worthy of him is not to consume by fire that which had been brought into being by him for our sustenance, but to use it for ourselves and the needy, and with gratitude to him to offer thanks by word of mouth, to bring solemnities and hymns, for our creation, for the means of all wellbeing, for the various qualities of different things, and for the changes of the seasons” (I Apol., 13).

      In these accounts of the Eucharist we have a twofold use of “offer” and “oblation” – one, with reference to the gifts brought and dedicated by Christians to be given to the necessitous brethren, and the other with direct reference to the Eucharist itself.  Thanksgiving, or Eucharist in the broad sense, was connected with both “offerings,” but in its special technical sense applied particularly and peculiarly to what we mean by the word.  In his Dialogue with Trypho Justin finds in the “offering of fine flour” (cf. Lev. 2:1ff.; 14:10) a “type of the bread of the Eucharist, the celebration of which our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed, in remembrance of the suffering he endured for all those who are purified in soul from all iniquity, and in order that at the same time we might give God thanks for having created the world, with all things that are in it, for the sake of man, and for delivering us from the evil in which we were, and for overthrowing utterly the principalities and powers, by him who suffered according to his Will.”  (Then follows the quotation of Mal. 1:10–12.)  “He then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to him, i.e. the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of the Eucharist” (c. 41).

      We are then in a position to define more closely two meanings of the words “sacrifice,” “oblation,” “offering” and their verbs: one in which “gifts are offered to God, not to be consumed with fire but rather in a common meal or distributed to the poor brethren.”  The other has definitely a special allocation to the Eucharist in gifts of bread and wine are “offered,” and become the body and blood of Christ.

      Behind St. Justin’s description we can detect a liturgical usage which is rapidly assuming a fixed form, at least so far as concerns its sequence of ideas.  The described rite has the following features:

      What is meant by the words “sacrifice,” “oblation,” “offering”?  To the ancient world the essence of religion was sacrifice.  Men came before God with an offering and oblation.  They drew near to the Deity’s presence with a gift, which was presented, dedicated and surrendered to Him.  In our age it is difficult to restore this sense, taken for granted and everywhere assumed, in which “worship” was understood.  “Sacrifice” has for most of us become metaphorical and figurative only.  In our study of the Old Testament the parts least read and digested are what appear to us dull, irrelevant and incomprehensible – the legislation, for example, given in the Book of Leviticus.  But for any fair picture of the early times of Christianity it is necessary for us to bring back into consciousness a vivid awareness of the enormous range and ubiquitous touch of the ideas connected with sacrifice.

      The Christians were the “true Israel,” the “Israel of God,” [Gal. 6:16, Phil. 3:3, Rom. 2:29, 3:29–30, 9:6 ff.] so they appropriated as their own history the whole of the Old Testament.  “Barnabas” could write, with what might seem effrontery, that Jews had no right to the Old Testament, but that its relevance, meaning and custody were for Christians only.  Two ideas appear in this connection: the fulfillment in Christ and His Mystical Body of all that had been prophesied, or by type prefigured, and in consequence the abrogation of the divinely-devised methods, revealed to man, as to the ways in which he was to approach God.  But the New Covenant continued the Old.  All that had prevailed in the Old was related as type to the antitype – the New.  Sacrificial notions, methods and the like were then not irrelevant, but supremely significant – though the ways and usages in the concrete had passed, the principles remained.  Consequently, writers like the author of Hebrews, and many outside the New Testament in the first two centuries, were greatly preoccupied with all matters concerning sacrifice, oblation, offering.  Furthermore, these same ideas and their associations were common coinage in the realm of men’s religious conceptions in the ancient world.  Had Christianity been a religion without sacrifice, it would have been unintelligible.  Using the language and ideas universal to men, it could employ sacrificial terminology, everywhere common and current, as a kind of Old Testament of the Gentiles.

      But of what kinds were the “sacrifices” of early Christianity? [Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. 7, vi. 32, 34.]  Obviously there is the association of the word with the instincts and operations of subjective piety and devotion: “a humble spirit, a broken and contrite heart.”  There is the “sacrifice of praise,” or “of thanksgiving” – the acts of praising God in word, of taking part in public worship – in the sense these phrases usually have for us.  But this does not exhaust the meaning of the phrase, which had a more deeply sacrificial content to them than we are nowadays aware of.  As we have seen, the Eucharistic types of the New Testament broadly considered are two, that of the Covenant – blood-shedding – and that of the Messianic Banquet.  These ideas often intermingle, for even in the Johannine tradition “flesh” and “blood” connote sacrifice and are unintelligible without some reference to it.  Similarly, the eschatological reference of the Marcan-Matthaean Narrative of the Institution relates the Covenant-blood-shedding type to the eschatological Messianic Kingdom.  In both there is food and drink, in the reception of which Christ is with His own.  In any such festival or commemorative meal, social and corporate in essence, the sacrificial note is not lacking.  The viands were brought and offered by some of those who were to partake of them.  This act is thought of as a “sacrifice” or “oblation,” whether at a congregational or private Religious Supper or at the Eucharist.  Every act of every Christian had a Godward reference; so in an inevitable and natural fashion, food and drink, provided by God’s bounty, were offered to God before being consumed.  This is, in one conspicuous form of the conception, ultimately derived from the notion of “blessing” in Judaism: to appropriate, without offering to God and blessing Him for it, what God’s goodness gives His children, is theft and sacrilege.

      So the “offering” of all things that were needed for man’s sustenance became invariably the practical operation of the Apostolic precepts: “Whatsoever ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,” follows after: “If I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give thanks?” (1 Cor. 10:30, 31); “giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20); “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Col. 3:17).  Constant praise and thanksgiving in and from the believer’s heart were truly sacrifice; offering and oblation of the good things needed for man’s physical life were also “sacrifice”.

      4.  Our best early illustration of this type of Christian “oblation” or “sacrifice” can be found in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus.  The text to which his name is ascribed is very likely a compilation, and in part a composition, by St. Hippolytus.  There is no doubt that the text represented in this document is very primitive and was deemed of peculiar – if not unique – authority by the early Church.

      In it we have extremely interesting evidence of two kinds – one, directly bearing on the Eucharist (see under A below), and the other (see B below), having to do with sacrifices, oblations, etc. in connection either with semi-sacred meals (Agapes) or with other offerings of various sorts.  The indubitably Eucharistic references are as follows:— [In what follows – particularly in respect of the Eucharistic Canon – it must be noted that Hippolytus would not prescribe precisely these words.  “It is not ... necessary for him to recite the same words ... but according to his own ability” (as in St. Justin Martyr, I Apol., 67), “so each one is to give thanks.”  On the text (Latin lacking) see Connolly, pp. 179–80, 64–66.  The unique position, however, of these very words suggests that they were either anterior to St. Hippolytus’ time and were already hallowed by usage, or that they speedily gained an extraordinary position for themselves (if they were his authorship) almost unparalleled in Christian antiquity.]

      A. (I) The Eucharistic Canon (from the Service of Consecration of a Bishop).

      Bishop:     The Lord be with you.

      Congregation: And with thy spirit.

      Bishop:     Lift up your hearts.

      Congregation: We have them to the Lord.

      Bishop:     Let us give thanks unto the Lord.

      Congregation: It is meet and right.

      (1) We give thanks unto thee, O God, through thy beloved Son (servant) Jesus Christ, whom in the last times thou didst send unto us to be Saviour, Redeemer and messenger of thy will; [Dr. Brightman points out that this is a reference to Isaiah 9:6: “messenger of (his) counsel”.] who is thine inseparable Word through whom thou hast made all things, and who was well-pleasing unto thee. [Or: “whom thou hast been pleased to send.”]  Him didst thou send from heaven into the womb of the Virgin, and being borne in her womb was incarnate and shown to be thy Son, born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin.  He in fulfillment of thy will and preparing for thee an holy people stretched forth his hands when he was suffering that he might deliver from suffering those who believed in thee.

      (2) Who when he was being given over to his willing suffering that he might dissolve death, break the chains of the devil, tread hell underfoot, illuminate the righteous, set a bound (to death) and manifest forth the Resurrection, having taken bread, gave thanks unto thee and said: Take, eat: this is my body which is broken for you.  Likewise also the cup, saying: This is my blood which is poured out for you.  When ye do this ye make my memorial.

      (3) Being mindful then of his death and Resurrection we offer to thee the bread and the cup, giving thanks unto thee that thou hast deemed us worthy to stand before thee and act as priest unto thee.

      (4) And we beseech thee to send thy Holy Spirit upon the sacrifice of thy (holy) Church,

      (5) Which do thou in uniting it [Original text doubtless corrupt.] give to all the saints who partake for fulfillment of the Holy Spirit unto the strengthening of faith in truth, that we may praise and glorify thee

      (6) Through thy Son (servant) Jesus Christ, through whom unto thee be glory and honour, – to the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit in thy Holy Church, now and for evermore.  Amen.

      This Canon of Consecration is of pre-eminent importance for all later Christian liturgies, so it may be useful to discuss it somewhat in detail.  As a whole, it is to be noted (a) that this is what we are accustomed to call the “Preface” – only there is no Sanctus!  (b) The whole prayer, which steps off from the thought of the third sentence of the dialogue, is governed by the thought of Thanksgiving.  The word occurs thrice, at the opening, at the Narrative of the Institution, and the Memorial – in each case with different significance.  The verb “to give thanks” (eucharistein) has become by this time a peculiarly Christian – or Jewish-Christian – term.  Compare the following rubric from the First Communion of the Newly Baptized.  “Then let the oblation be offered by the deacons to the Bishop and let him Eucharistize the bread into the antitype of the Body of Christ; the mixed cup as the likeness of the blood shed for all who believed in Him.” (c) The prayer may for convenience be divided into the following parts, as numbered in the text above:

      (1) Thanksgiving and praise for the Incarnation.

      (2) Narrative of the Institution.

      (3) Memorial and Oblation.

      (4) Invocation.

      (5) Intercession.

      (6) Concluding doxology.

(d) The content of section (1) is a rehearsal of the work of the Incarnate Lord as the “beloved Son (or ‘servant’)” of the Father – an archaism which suggests the ancient character of the prayer – who was both Saviour and Revealer of God’s will.  This will had as its primary purpose the acquisition of a Holy People, and the thought of the Church is thus fundamental, the Divine Society called out of the world constituted of believers in Him, which is to “make this memorial” continually, as possessing a true priesthood acceptable to God (3), offering the sacrifice well-pleasing to Him (4), and being filled with the Spirit, showing forth faith so as to praise and glorify God properly.  No mention is made of the Old Covenant or the Former People, but the whole thought of the prayer has to do with the Pauline “true Israel,” “the Israel of God,” the Christian Fellowship.  (2) His Incarnate Work culminated in the Passion, and Death of the Cross, which was voluntary and free, and had a sixfold purpose: the dissolution of death itself, the breaking of the devil’s hold on man, the conquest of hell, the illumination of the righteous, the delimitation of the province of death, and the manifestation of the Resurrection.  The iterated emphasis on freely-willed obedience is significant: it is God’s Will which is paramount and supreme, yet in one Man a unique example has been given to all men of the free acceptance and fulfillment of that Will.  The climax of His Incarnate work is in the Institution of the Eucharist, with its commemoration of the Body broken and the Blood shed, in sacrifice for men, and its injunction to “make the memorial”.  (3) This now the Church does, “having in memory His Death and Resurrection” (the summary of the first and last of the purposes enumerated in (2)), (a) offering, and (b) giving thanks for God’s condescension in deigning to give man a priesthood acceptable to Him (again the note of obedience to God’s Will).  (4) The Invocation of the Holy Spirit, and Intercession (5) is a prayer that God send His Holy Spirit upon the oblation of the Holy Church, “gathering it together into one, to give to all saints who receive for fulfillment of the Holy Spirit unto the strengthening of faith, in truth,” that the Church may praise and glorify God, etc.  The content of this prayer is a petition for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the offered elements, with a view to the union of the believers into one (is this a reminiscence of the liturgy reflected in the Didache?) and their reception of the Holy Spirit through Communion, for strengthening of their faith that the Church may adequately praise and glorify God.  The exact meaning behind this Epiklesis is not to be stated with precision.  It may, as Lietzmann urges, rest upon the idea of sacrifice in which the power of the Deity was conceived to come down into the offerings laid on the altar; in which case, he argues, “all of the thoughts here apparent devolve from the conception of sacrifice and have no possible origin in the Words of Institution.”  But what meaning have the Words of Institution except in terms of sacrifice?  The Invocation may also mean that the Holy Spirit, the Divine Agent effecting the Incarnation, once more is to indwell material substance, as in the Conception of our Lord of the Virgin, which view finds a certain plausibility in relation to the sequence of the prayer as a whole: while the entire prayer is addressed to God the Father, (1), (2) and (3) have to do with the Second Person, so it is meet that (4) would have reference to the Holy Spirit.  Certain Pauline passages (e.g. 1 Cor. 12:3, Rom. 8:15) are relevant.  In fact, Lietzmann finds the chief features – the unfolding of the story of the Incarnation (1) (2) in terse statements (cf. Phil. 2:5–11, 1 Tim. 3:16; and also 1 Peter 3:18–22) and the cluster of sacrificial ideas (3) (4) – to be both derived from St. Paul’s thought (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16–21, 11:23–31).  (6) The doxology is characteristically Hippolytan in that it binds the Church into close juxtaposition with the Trinity.  Connolly finds “two features” in the “doxologies which are certainly early and genuine.”  They are: “through thy child (servant?) Jesus” and “in the Holy Church”.  There are four occurrences in the doxologies and one at the Communion of the newly baptized (in the Latin fragments), and one in the doxology to the Bishop’s Consecration Prayer.  Did this early use derive from Eph. 3:21?  The interpretation of the whole of the Liturgy by the thought that the Church is a Divine Society, in intimate relation to the Godhead itself, is of great significance for every aspect of the Eucharistic rite.

      (II)  Other important Eucharistic references of the Apostolic Tradition are:

      ... Grant unto this thy servant whom thou halt chosen for the episcopate, to feed thy holy flock, and to exercise the High-priesthood before thee, without blame to serve thee night and day, unceasingly to propitiate thy countenance and to offer the gifts of thy Holy Church; (endued) with the high priestly spirit to have power to forgive sins according to thy command, confer orders according to thy precept, and to loose every bond according to the authority thou didst give unto the Apostles, and to be well-pleasing unto thee in meekness and cleanness of heart, offering to thee the “odour of a sweet savour,” through thy Child (servant?) Jesus Christ, through whom to thee be glory and might and honour, to the Father and Son with the Holy Spirit in thy Holy Church, now and for ever and ever.  Amen.

                  (Excerpt from the Bishop’s consecration prayer.)

      Here the whole conception of the Episcopate is controlled by the Old Testament, and supplemented by the New.  It is frankly and unreservedly of the type called “sacerdotal,” and in this respect is in no sense out of harmony with the rest of the Church Order.  “Offering the gifts of thy Holy Church,” “the odour of a sweet savour,” and the like, have connotations of an indubitably priestly quality difficult for us to reproduce.

      (III) Mention has already been made of the curious use of Eucharistize in a rubric at the First Communion of the newly baptized (see under A (I) above).

      (IV) Some minor scattered references have relevance to Eucharistic doctrine and practice: the baptized is to bring nothing into the baptismal water other than “the vessel which each will bring for the Eucharist.”  Each believer apparently received the Eucharist daily at home, for the Christians are exhorted in these words: “Let all the faithful when they wake up and have arisen, before they betake themselves to their work, pray to God.  Let each of the faithful also, before he taste aught else, take care to receive the Eucharist.  Let him take care lest an unbeliever taste of the Eucharist, or lest a mouse or other animal eat of it, or lest any of it fall and perish.  It is the Body of Christ to be eaten by the Faithful and not to be despised.”

      The implications of this Eucharistic teaching are clear.  Whether the bread and wine become the antitypes of the Body and Blood of Christ (or are simply His “Body and Blood”) by virtue of the Spirit’s coming down on them (as seems to be the inference from the text of the Canon) or by virtue of the Eucharistic prayer (“then the Bishop Eucharistizes them into the antitype,” etc.) is of importance for future liturgical development, but for our purpose is significant for the theological conviction explicitly embodied.  The Eucharist is not only the culmination and centre of the cult, but the daily sustenance of the individual in his intimate and personal religious life.

      B. Closely connected with the Eucharist are a number of other usages and practices:

      (I)  The offering “of firstfruits by lay folk who present them to the Bishop, who will offer, bless and name him who offered” in the words: “We give thanks to thee, O God, and offer thee these firstfruits which thou hast given us to enjoy.”  There is a list of the fruits and comestibles which may be so “blessed,” and of flowers (lilies and roses only) that can be “offered”.  Among the foodstuffs are oil, cheese and olives.  Immediately after the Canon of Consecration given above occurs this rubric: “Whoever offers oil, let him (sc. the bishop) give thanks in like manner as for the oblation of bread and wine (not, however, in the same words, but with the same purport): ‘That thou, O God, in sanctifying this, grant to those who use it,’” etc.  The general rule regarding such offerings is: “in all things which are received” (a possible mistake of the Latin from the Greek: “offered”) “let them give thanks to God receiving it to his glory” (cf. Eph. 5:20, Col. 3:17).

      (II)  The customs connected with Christian meals.  For one small section we possess an interesting Greek fragment: “A Bishop may not fast save when all the people do, for whenever one wishes to offer he may not refuse him.  He who breaks the bread must partake.”  This is very ancient, derived immediately from Jewish practice, and suggests that simple eating and drinking, on the part of individuals outside of public services, was bound up with religious observance.  This appears most clearly in connection with the Agape – or “Lord’s Supper” – customs, which are of several kinds.  The Latin text shows us a Congregational Supper in a private house, at which the guests are to “remember” the host, behave seemly, and are either to consume the food in the host’s presence or to take it home (which are separate and distinct customs).  “Each is to hasten to receive the Eulogia” from the cleric; while catechumens each “offer” their own cup and receive “exorcised” bread (not “blessed” bread = the Eulogia), they may not recline with the believers.  No layman can “make Eulogia,” which meant to “give thanks” over the “offered” bread.  The Eulogia is sharply distinct from the Eucharist, and also from the exorcised bread of the unbaptized catechumen.  The Ethiopic text tells us about a true Supper of the Congregation at which lamps are brought in.  The service begins with the salutation “The Lord be with you,’ etc., but the Bishop “shall not say: ‘Lift up your heart,’ because that shall be said at the oblation.”  The prayer of the Deacon at the Lamp-lighting begins with “We give thee thanks, O God ... because Thou hast enlightened us by the revealing of the incorruptible light.”  The Deacon “holds the mingled cup of the Presphora,” to be “offered by the Bishop,” who also blesses bread, and both are distributed.  “As they are eating their supper, those who are believers shall take a little bread from the hand of the Bishop before they partake of their own bread, for it is Eulogia and not Eucharist as the Body of our Lord.”

      In the Apostolic Tradition we have our fullest account both of the Eucharist and of the religious meals (the Agape, “Love Feast”) of the early Church.  The dominant thought is that of Thanksgiving, and both alike are interpenetrated with the constant iteration of the terms “sacrifice,” “oblation,” “offering”.  The words are used in two connections: with the meals of the Christians, and with the Eucharist proper.  “Eulogia” is the blessed bread of the former, and “Eucharist” of the latter.  For both a cleric is needed.  The Eucharistic Thanksgiving is the model for all prayers of thanksgiving and all dedications of things offered.  It is emphatically of the “sacerdotal” type, so far as the function of the celebrant is concerned.  As to structure, it reviews in summary outline the chief points of God’s creative, redemptive and sanctifying activity with relation to men.  It is the story of salvation, culminating in an oblation of that which becomes the Body and Blood of Christ.  But “sacrifice,” “oblation,” “offerings” also refer to what we would term saying grace at meals, and to the acts of dedicating firstfruits, foods and drink, oil and flowers, to God, which are then to be used by the Faithful.  Two meanings of sacrifice, then, are current in the Apostolic Tradition.  The Eucharistic rite is, however, distinctly the rehearsal of the drama of redemption, rising to its climax in the Memorial of the Institution and the Invocation of the Holy Spirit – in other words, the Consecration of the Eucharist.

      Securely rooted in Christian antiquity and maintaining throughout the whole scope of the history of Christian thinking are two chief conceptions and estimates of our Lord.  They may be symbolized by the two verbs be and do.  To the first category belong all those views of His Person and work which assert that He was both Revealer and Revelation: it was His character which in its self-manifestation is the essence of His Revelation.  What He was – Light, Truth, etc.; what He showed forth – illumination, revelation, teaching; what errors He corrected, and fullness of verity He made known, since He was the Truth – all these ideas link together in this aspect of Christian conviction.  The other view fastens upon what He did rather than what He was.  It deals with His achievements, with the innovatory, the injected power given to men, the personal force which itself altered human history, the new might that entered humanity in the Incarnation, the victory wrought on the Cross – with all its ineffable consequences in heaven and on earth.  Revelation and Redemption, Light and Life, Truth and Power – these pairs of words relate and contrast the two groups of conceptions. Epiphany on the one hand, and Death and Resurrection on the other, might offer themselves as symbols of the two categories.

      It may be suggestive – or possibly unjustifiably imaginative – to trace in the two types of Eucharistic Liturgies the dominance of these conceptions.  Essentially the Eastern Liturgy loved to dwell upon the Mystery Revealed – the Incarnation as Revelation, Epiphany, Manifestation – from our Lord’s Birth, till his Death and Resurrection, with special reference to the Holy Spirit, the Illuminator and Agent of Revelation.  The Western Liturgy, on the contrary, in its fundamental features lays stress upon the achievement of the Sacrifice on the Cross, and the “showing forth” of that work “till He come”.  Here then we have two different but not necessarily contrasting evaluations of our Lord’s Person and work, enshrined in the Liturgies of East and West.  If the primitive quality of the Eastern Liturgy was Mystery-Revealed, that of the West was Sacrifice-Commemorated.  These distinct impressions are stamped into the fiber of the two types as well of Christological theory as of Eucharistic Liturgy.  If the East emphasizes the culmination of the great drama of Redemption in the Resurrection, the West was more preoccupied with the Sacrifice of the Cross: Easter and Good Friday answer to the spirit of the two Liturgies.  Even further, the former sees the Mystery of Redemption as God-directed, and culminates in the blinding fact: “God raised Him from the dead.”  The West concentrates on the fact “He offered Himself for us.”

      Yet we find a practically even balance kept between these two groups of complementary ideas in the Hippolytan Canon from which both Eastern and Western Liturgies sprang:

      “... who fulfilling thy will and acquiring for thee an Holy People, stretched forth his hands when he was suffering, that he might deliver from suffering those who believed in thee, who when he was being given over, to a freely willed Passion, that he might dissolve death and break the devil’s chains and tread hell underfoot and illuminate the righteous and fix a bound (for death) and show forth the Resurrection (taking bread, etc.).”

      Both ideas are here present in germ: that of the Mystery-manifested, and of the Sacrifice-achieved.  As in other respects, so in this, the Hippolytan Liturgy would seem to be the point of departure for subsequent Eucharistic development.  If both ideas of the Eucharistic Consecration and Consummation, the one Eastern (“send thy Holy Spirit upon the oblation of thy Holy Church”) and the other Western (“Let the Bishop Eucharistize the bread into the antitype of the Body of Christ”), seem to derive from Hippolytus, the larger terms of all later liturgical development are also set by it.

      5.  From St. Irenaeus we gain confirmation of the association of sacrifices and oblations with the Eucharist.  The two are intimately related, though distinct and different.  Chapter xvii of Book IV of his treatise Against Heresies contains a discussion of the Levitical sacrifices, which God “did not appoint for his own sake or as requiring such service.”  They were for the sake of man, from whom God demands contrition, obedience and reform.  He quotes groups of the Old Testament prophetic indictments of sacrifices, of which Isaiah 58:6 ff. is peculiarly significant: “Loose every band of wickedness ... deal thy bread to the hungry willingly; ... if thou hast seen the naked, cover him and do not despise those of thy own seed.”  From all these it is evident that God did not seek sacrifices and holocausts from them, but faith, and obedience, and righteousness, because of their salvation. ... As God said by Hosea: ‘I desire mercy rather than sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings’ (6:6)” (§ 4).

      “Again, giving directions to the disciples to offer to God the first-fruits of his own created things – not as if he stood in need of them, but that they might be themselves neither unfruitful nor ungrateful – he took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks and said, ‘This is my Body.’  And the cup likewise, which is part of that creation to which we belong, he confessed to be his blood, and taught the new oblation of the New Covenant; which the Church, receiving from the Apostles, offers throughout all the world to God, who gives us the means of subsistence, the firstfruits of his own gifts in the New Testament, concerning which beforehand Malachi, among the Twelve Prophets, thus spoke beforehand” (here follows the familiar quotation of Mal. 1:10, 11) – “indicating in the plainest manner by these words that the Former People shall indeed cease to make offerings to God, but that in every place sacrifice shall be offered to him, and that a pure one” (4:17, 5).  “The oblation of the Church, therefore, which the Lord gave instructions to be offered throughout the world, is accounted with God a pure sacrifice, and is acceptable with him, not that he stands in need of a sacrifice from us, but that he who offers is himself glorified in what he offers if his gift be accepted” (iv. 18. 1; here he quotes St. Matt. 5:23, 24).  “We are bound, therefore, to offer to God the firstfruits of his creation, as Moses also says: ‘Thou shalt not appear in the presence of the Lord empty (Deut. 16:16)’ (ibid.)  “Now the class of oblations in general has not been set aside; for there were both oblations there (among the Jews), and there are oblations here (among the Christians).  Sacrifices there were among the People: sacrifices there are, too, in the Church: but the species has alone been changed, since oblation is now made not by slaves but by free men.  The Jews had the tithes of their goods consecrated to him, but those who have received liberty set aside all their possessions for the Lord’s purposes, bestowing joyfully and freely not the less valuable portions of their property” (iv. 18. 2).  “Now the Church alone offers the pure Oblation to the Creator, offering to him, with the giving of thanks, the things from his Creation” (ibid. § 4).  Then turning his attention to the vain offerings of heretics he says: “Our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion.  For we offer to him his own, proclaiming consistently the fellowship, confessing the union of flesh and Spirit.  For as the bread which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist ... so our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity” (ibid. § 5).  In summary, he says: “Now we make offering to him, not as though he stood in need of it, but rendering thanks for his gift, and thus sanctifying what has been created.  For even as God does not need our possessions, so do we need to offer something to God; as Solomon says, ‘He that hath pity on the poor, lendeth unto the Lord’ (Prov. 19:17).  For God, who stands in need of nothing, takes our good works to himself for this purpose, that he may grant us a recompense of his own good things” (here follows St. Matt. 25:34, etc.) ... “It is therefore his will that we too should offer a gift at the altar, frequently and without intermission” (ibid. § 6).

      At the risk of being prolix these passages have been quoted to show how in Irenaeus the two types of “sacrifice” are clearly put forward: here we have the usage of “sacrifices” – firstfruits, food, drink, etc. – made by the believers and offered as oblations at the altar, destined for the poor and needy; we have also the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which is not only the climax, focus and unique moment of offering by man to God, but is also much more: the Eucharist “consisting of two realities, an earthly and a heavenly,” is the “body of the Lord and his Blood” by which the flesh is nourished (iv. 18. 5).  “Receiving the Invocation of God it is no longer common bread,” while there is no suggestion that such a change is effected at the other type of Oblation.  Right motive and proper subjective attitude are vastly important, in both cases (cf. iv. 18, §§ 3, 4).  The sanctions for the two types are to be found in God’s will for man, for man’s own good.  For the former we have implicit deductions from both Law and Prophets of the Old Testament: the Levitical precepts are as true in principle as ever they were, but the species has changed; and the Prophetical emphasis is perennially valid.  For the latter type we have the explicit Dominical injunction.

      Law and Prophets are of abiding import, for God is the author of both.  Founded in the need of man to give expression to his gratitude, oblations and offerings are overt acts whereby he recognizes and acknowledges his indebtedness to God.  Only such sacrifices are not fruitless or purposeless: God has no need of them, but man has – in a twofold sense, as giver and as recipient.  The culmination of this type of oblation is the Eucharist, as dramatic thanksgiving for sustenance and offering to God of that which God has given.  There is now the interaction of the second cycle of ideas: as bread and wine are for nourishment of the body, so after invocation of God’s Spirit their oblation becomes the means both of forgiveness of sins and of eternal life.  Of the act of offering gifts at the Eucharist Wetter writes: [Op. cit., p. 102.] “Every Sunday when the congregation assembled for its celebration, this offering took place as introduction to the Eucharistic meal. ...  The rich could give more; the poor, less.  The former could exert their power to care for the needs of the whole congregation and thus elicit their gratitude.  The latter could scarcely give at every celebration, but were fed at the expense of their fellow members. ... The Christian Offering satisfied all cravings and demands that had been bound up with the old sacrifices, but without denying to the hungry masses their needed sustenance.  On the contrary, the needy were sated at the Christian feasts, and it seems to me highly likely that it was for this reason that the new religion gained such headway among the masses during the time of the Emperors.  It is no wonder then that sacrifice came to take so preeminent a place in Christian worship, that it was lavishly embodied in liturgy, and more and more came to be enriched by prayers, hymns and the like.”

3.  Sources of Early Eucharistic Practice and Belief.

      By the end of the second century the whole course of the future development of the Eucharist was set in the various Eucharistic customs that had arisen and gained sanction.  Having reviewed the chief sources that remain we may at this point stop to consider what strands went into the making of the complex whole which was the liturgical use of the Church of the year 200.  That this is a turning point in the history of the Eucharist is clear from the fact, noted by Lietzmann, that the Eucharistic rite set down in the Hippolytan Apostolic Tradition is “the model of all Liturgies known to us from its day until now.  The Antiochene Liturgy of the fourth century is based upon it, of which we have a normative formulation in the eighth (and second) book of the Apostolic Constitutions.  From the Antiochene form evolved the Byzantine Liturgy, in the two redactions – the earlier (that of St. Basil) and the later (that of St. Chrysostom). ... From the same Antiochene root grew the normative Liturgy of St. James (Jerusalem) ... which in turn furnished the standard for most of the Syrian Liturgies. ... Even the so-called Nestorian Liturgy has undoubted affiliations with the Antiochene type. ... A careful investigation and testing of the primitive text of the Roman Canon shows that the old Hippolytan text was its foundation also.” [Messe und Herrenmahl, pp. 261–62.]  Peculiar significance therefore attaches to the Eucharist of the second century, of which the chief representative, accredited and standardized by the Church, was that of the Hippolytan type.

      The chief sources for the Eucharistic rite and customs were three: the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; the needs of piety and religion, pragmatic and traditional; and the exigencies of the economic and social situation of the Fellowship, the corporate brotherhood of believers which constituted the Mystical Body of Christ.  For the Eucharistic theology of this earlier period we have as the chief contributing factors, four: the biblical idea of God and of man’s relations to Him; the nascent Christology and its growing development; the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; the conception of the Church.

      Let us consider more closely the correlation of the factors which produced the Eucharistic rite and customs of the period.  The Old Testament exercised a profound influence, both the Law and the Prophets.  Our Lord was the fulfillment of both, but “fulfillment” did not mean abrogation of principle, though it might well mean the rise of new practice.  The principles of the objective overt “sacrifice” still prevailed.  To God were still due the firstfruits, tithes, offerings to the Levites, and the like, in the transformed character which these injunctions of the Old sustained in the New Covenant.  “Sacrifice” and “oblation,” whether corporate or private, had not passed away, though they had changed their form.  Ethically, the message of Old Testament Revelation was preserved as of permanent validity, though ethical sanction had been necessarily raised to a new level by virtue of the Incarnation.  The emphasis of the Prophets on the close bond between religion – as sacrifice, worship – and ethics, as moral righteousness in the relation between man and man, was strongly reiterated, and became the practical criterion by which to insist on rightness of life, conduct and motive.  Revelation, as the whole process, beginning with Creation and carried through the vicissitudes of God’s dealing with the Former Chosen People up to His final election of a New Chosen People in His Incarnate Son, is the pregnant source for one of the two great liturgical types which resulted in the time subsequent to the year 200: the Eucharistic rite as primarily the “Mystery”.  From the New Testament derived the Dominical sanction for the Eucharist properly so called, and the whole interpretation whereby Christians understood and expounded the “Scriptures,” for to the earliest Christian this meant what we call the Old Testament.

      Religion and piety swayed men’s lives, and corporate as well as private worship was shot through with the spirit of thanksgiving – the never-ceasing note of the early Christian devotional life.  The one word “Eucharist” fitly described the mood and quality of Christian devotion.  Not only for its foundations, but also for a further step – long after the break with Judaism – in the development of its worship, the Christian Church levied on Jewish practice.  Psalms, hymns, prayers, intercessions, instructions and Bible reading – all these, constituting the substance of the gradually developing liturgical framework of worship, received their chief significance and culminated in the Eucharist itself.  Pauline phrases such as thanksgiving and praise had undoubtedly more specific Eucharistic association for the early Christian than they have for us.  Christian worship was primarily objective: men came together to give and to offer something to God, in connection with which God gave something to them.  The Eucharist, whether as the great moment of the cult, or as the chief Food of the individual, constituted the essential thing in the regimen of Christian living and conduct, as well as the empowering motive of action.  About the Eucharist, in short, clustered all expression of prayer and praise, of intercession and petition, of thanksgiving and dependence; at the Eucharistic service the Gospel was expounded, Christian ideals of belief and conduct were explained, exhortation and instruction given.

      This was not all.  The economic and social needs of the day were pressing.  Men dwelt in a time and world of uncertainty.  Psychologically, one may trace the mood of insecurity and its attendant fears throughout the literature of the period.  While gnostic “mysteries” claimed to deliver their adherents from both their fears and their overwhelming sense of insecurity, Christians had a new way of coping with the same need.  Poverty and economic ills, social maladjustments and moral enervation in the face of a hopeless future – these constituted the objective elements which determined the state of mind of the unprivileged classes, the somber background of darkness on which was silhouetted in sharp light the luminous joyousness of the fellowship of believing brethren in Christ.  Succouring the needy, assisting the distressed, caring for the helpless and wronged were not thought of as by-products of Christianity.  This type of social activity was of the very stuff not only of the Church’s actions but of the Church’s worship.  “Gifts,” “offerings,” and “oblations” were carried to the very altar itself.  Men were not to give tithes of their goods – their all, little or much, belonged to God, and to God’s redeemed children.  Opportunity and ability meant privilege and duty.  “From all according to their abilities, to each according to his need” would not unfitly describe the behaviour of the Brotherhood.

      “Sacrifice” has therefore a new meaning and an intensely practical aim. God stands in no need of what we can give, but man has grievous need of what God gives, whether directly or indirectly.  So the oblations of the faithful were no mere alms, benevolences or charity: they were the very stuff of religious worship.  The Bible gave precept and example, inculcated this in theory and practice – and the Fellowship made of the social need and economic pressure the very means whereby to translate its Eucharistic spirit into terms which no one could fail to comprehend.  Sacrifices were not pointless destruction and immolation of things of value, but dedication to practical use for the needy children of that which the less needy gave first to Him and then to them.  In fact, it is often difficult, as we have seen, to disentangle the Love-Feast or Agape from the Eucharist, in practice.  In the Corinthian Church they came together.  The Eucharist was instituted at a meal.  It is difficult to be sure when early writers use the verb to love whether they mean (a) the disposition of goodwill and mind and heart, (b) religious eating and drinking together, the poor at the expense of the rich, or (c) the sacrament of the Eucharist!

      When we attempt to analyze the Eucharistic theology of this early period of the Church the problem is by no means easy.  There is, first of all, the wealth of different traditions, the diversity of observances.  There is also the question as to the sources of the theological ideas involved.  Certain facts are, however, abundantly clear: all worship was God-centered.  All Eucharistic prayers – true to their ultimately Jewish origins – were directly to God, as Father and as Creator.  As Creator He is thanked for His bounty to men, and is offered His own gifts: man gives to God of what God has given to man.  He is all-righteous and all-loving, compassionate and forgiving, and also just and true.  Men are created by Him and belong to Him.  Yet, of their own act, by sin they have forfeited His love and merited His wrath.  But the Love which created also redeems men.  Sin had to be dealt with by one whose power was greater than man’s, as His Love was immeasurably greater.  So He sent His Son, born of woman, conceived by the Holy Ghost, who took on Himself our nature, lived a perfect human life of obedience, and in full, free and voluntary obedience to the Father’s will lay down His life on the Cross, having first said over Bread and Wine the words: “This is my Body ... my Blood.”  Him the Father raised from the dead, and exalted into heaven, whence He sent His Spirit down to quicken and sanctify the mystical Brotherhood of those who believe, and believing belong to His Body by the initiation of Baptism.  The Mystical Body of Christ contains and evinces His Power and Presence through the indwelling Spirit – in the whole and in each member.  As He offered Himself on earth as man, so His Body offers itself: as He obeyed the Father and gave Him thanks, so it obeys and gives Him thanks.

      So when Justin writes, “we continually remind each other of these things,” he is suggesting one great aspect of the Eucharistic service, in which as a whole the grand panorama of God’s dealing with man is unfolded, culminating in the climax and crisis of the Incarnation, Epiphany, Passion, Death and Resurrection.  When he continues: “the wealthy ... succour the needy; ... over all things which we eat we bless the Creator,” “him we praise ... by prayer and thanksgiving over all which we eat,” he indicates a second aspect of the Eucharist.  When he writes (in connection with Mal. 1:10–12), “those Gentiles who in every place offer sacrifice to him, i.e. the Bread of the Eucharist and the Cup of the Eucharist,” he suggests the third aspect of the Eucharist, the sacrifice in which the Eucharistized bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, as the antitypes of these His Incarnate manifestations.  The Eucharist is the “mystery,” or dramatic representation, or symbol, and it is “sacrifice” in two senses.

      The doctrines of the Holy Spirit and of the Church were both constituent and essential factors in the theology assumed by the early Church in its Eucharist.  The Holy Spirit it was who “spake by the Prophets,” who was the Revealer and the Guide of the whole scheme of Creation, Redemption, Sanctification.  He moved on the waters of chaotic creation; He was the Agent of the Incarnation; He was the omnipresent soul of the Church and its members individually.  It is not clear how the Holy Spirit came to be related to the Eucharist.  Was it because the Lord was conceived of Him by the Virgin Mary that it was inevitable that the Spirit’s agency in the Eucharist came to be so significant?  Or was it because the Spirit’s Presence was the vital and outstanding fact of Christian experience in the early Church?  Certainly it is natural to suppose that the Spirit should be closely related to the Eucharist in its aspect as the Drama of Redemption; it is equally natural to associate His Presence with the acceptance of the offerings and oblations – as well as the source of the inspiration moving men to offer; but it is not clear how His Presence is related to the act of Eucharistizing the Bread and Wine, save as He be thought of in connection with the Incarnation and Mission of our Lord.  Above all, as the Hippolytan doxology phrases it, the idea of the Church had no subsidiary place in Eucharistic theology: “To thee be glory and honour, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in thy Holy Church.’ So in the tradition’ of the summary creed at Baptism to the candidate: I believe in one God the Father Almighty, and in his only Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and one Baptism, in the Holy Church.  Amen.”  The Eucharist is implicitly the act of the body of Christ.  Its clergy and officiants were ministers of the Body, representatives of the priesthood of all its members.  The Church offered.  It is not as if the clergy offered on behalf of the members of the Church, as it were, detached from them.  The offerings were made by some of the members for all.

      So far, in estimating the sources of practice and of belief alike, little mention has been made of Communion in setting down the characteristic elements of the Eucharist.  This may appear to be an unjustifiable omission, but is justified by our evidence.  The early Christians were wont to communicate at every opportunity when the liturgy was celebrated.  On other days they received at home.  They were so little given to the outlook which we of the modern world easily acquire of religion as directed primarily to us, as man-centered, that there is little preoccupation with the fruits of the Eucharist.  The Real Presence is, of course, assumed throughout: Christ in the Eucharist meets and feeds His own.  We have abundant evidence of a lively appreciation and awareness of the Gift given by God, in the earliest rite we possess – that of the Didache.  It is Ignatius who quotes a possibly liturgical phrase, the Eucharist as “the medicine specific for immortality, the antidote that we should not die,” etc.  Here is the eschatological reference of the Eucharist: non-dying is itself a gift of God through the Eucharist; but the early Christians seem to have been singularly little concerned with what this aspect of the Eucharist – as Holy Communion – meant.  Again, we need to remember the difference in outlook between them and us: they were infinitely more concerned about God than about themselves, far more preoccupied about doing His Will than given to speculating how much they received, in the Eucharist.  The mood of gratitude and thanksgiving was, as we have seen, everywhere apparent, but not as primarily personal or as individual.  Both as regards a God-centered piety, and as regards a wide, catholic, corporate and social awareness, their sensitivenesses were utterly other than those of our modern world.  It is mankind, and particularly the redeemed among men as a whole, for whom each Christian with all others of the Body spoke in expressing (in the symbolic drama of revelation and manifestation, in the sacrifices of oblation, in the Offering which becomes the Body and Blood of Christ) the Thanksgiving of all men to God the Creator and Father.  Communion, in short, was not the moment of the early Eucharist: it was a corollary, an inevitable consequence of God’s Will for man.

      Communion received its meaning from sacrifice, with which it was inextricably connected.  Christianity was a religion essentially of sacrifice.  Christian worship was essentially sacrificial.  All sacrifice was Eucharistic.  The Eucharist was the culmination of all sacrifice.

4.  The Development of Eucharistic Theology and Rites.

      To understand the course of the development of the Eucharist it is necessary to turn our attention not only to the rites in which it was celebrated, but also to the ideas and terms used of it.  “The application to the Eucharist of antitype as a substantive is first met with ... in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus.” [Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum, Oxford, 1929, p. li.]  The original of the passage, of which we possess the Latin, [In Hauler, Didascaliae apostolorum fragmenta veronensia latina, Leipzig, 1900, p. 112; for another instance, p. 118 end.  See under II. 4, A (i), above.] gives example “and likeness” as equivalents.  As we have seen, the relationship between these Elements and the actual Body of Christ – under the natural conditions of His Incarnation and its present state of ascended glory – was not thought out by St. Hippolytus.  The Reserved Element “is the Body of Christ which is to be eaten by the Faithful and not to be despised.”  This same term appears in the cycle of related documents, as, e.g., in Didascalia Apostolorum vi. 22 (Connolly’s edition, pp. 252–3), in the Apostolic Constitution (v. 14, § 7; vii. 25, § 4) and the Liturgy of St. Basil (cf. Brightman, Lits. E. and W., p. 329). The word “likeness” appears in Serapion’s Liturgy: “We have offered this Bread, the likeness of the Body of the Only-Begotten.  This bread is the likeness of his holy Body, for the Lord Jesus Christ in the night in which he was betrayed (etc.).”  “Wherefore we making the likeness of his death have offered unto thee bread.”  It also appears in the Mozarabic Liturgies (Migne, P. L. 85: 1269, 790).  Lietzmann equates “likeness” with “antitype” or “symbol,” as meaning “copy” or “picture,” [Op. cit., p. 190.] coming nearly to mean counterpart.  It is not the bread and wine themselves, but what happens to them, which makes them the “likeness” of His death this may be the case in two senses – in the offering of them for dedication, or in the change they sustain whereby they become Body and Blood.

      For the early West, Tertullian, a contemporary of St. Hippolytus, was of great importance. “The belief of the Church of his day with reference to the Eucharist is thoroughly realistic.  This is as clear from the terminology in general as from preaching and actual practice in particular, as it is from the way in which the Eucharistic Oblation is spoken of.  Tertullian is himself convinced of the Real Presence of the Flesh and Blood of Jesus.  Yet he thinks of the bread and wine as essentially unchanged, that they are in contrast to the mode of our Lord’s manifestation in history, and that the Eucharist is more a power of salvation than a saving Person.” [K. Adam, Die Eucharistielehre des hl. Augustin (Paderborn, 1908), p. 24.  The summary following is much indebted to this brilliant Essay.]  The “figure of his Body” as he used the term is to be understood with reference to his polemic against Marcionite dualism.  Tertullian approached the incidental discussion of the Eucharist primarily from the personal and subjective point of view.  While he coined much of the terminology with regard to the Eucharist – figure, represent, sacrament, and the like – he never set himself either to explore their full significance or to relate them to a wider context.

      In the second great African, St. Cyprian, who regarded Tertullian as his master, the latter’s thought constituted his point of departure.  While Tertullian thought of the Eucharist in terms of gracious power conveyed (this view is that called “dynamic”), Cyprian approaches it in terms of personal relationship.  The Tertullianic terminology is sharpened: Tertullian’s terms, “figure,” “memorial,” have as their correlative in Cyprian’s use, “the likeness of the sacrifice”; similarly for Tertullian’s “represent (the Blood of Christ)” Cyprian uses “show”; for Tertullian’s “calling the bread his Body” Cyprian has “he said that the wine was his Blood.”  The Eucharistic Elements are the visible forms, or the manifestation of the invisible power of the grace of Christ, and Cyprian identified them with the Body and Blood.  He attached much importance to the notion of priesthood in the Church; the “priest exercises the place of Christ,” and so the Eucharist is the self-Oblation of Christ, “a true and full sacrifice”.

      In the Eastern Fathers of the fourth century, who were so deeply engaged in the Christological controversies of the Conciliar Period, Eucharistic theology was controlled by the development of the doctrine of our Lord, with which it displayed a parallel, if somewhat later, growth.  To St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen, the reception of the Eucharist Elements meant immediate participation in the Spirit of God.  The affirmation of the Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood is realistic and direct, yet these are still conceived as essentially typical, concrete moments of the emergence into time of the unchanging and eternal Spirit.  To St. Hilary of Poitiers, the Eucharistic caro (Flesh) is the physical medium of union with the Eternal Nature of the Word of God, the necessary link which establishes and sustains the connection.  In the most illustrious exponent of the School of Antioch, John Chrysostom, the Eucharistic Flesh is the very body of the Christ, identical with the body He bore on earth at Bethlehem and Calvary, and therefore is not means (as it seemed to be to others of the Eastern Fathers), but the end of the act of Communion.

      The most important of the Western Fathers succeeded to his brilliant predecessors of the African tradition, yet in immeasurable ways went beyond all whom he followed – Augustine of Hippo.  No other Christian since the days of St. Paul so profoundly affected the West.  He inherited much, and of his inherited riches he transmitted some and transformed other elements.  His Eucharistic teaching is of so varied a quality that he is appealed to as the father both of Protestant and Catholic Eucharistic beliefs.  For him the Eucharist was not so much “an act as a mystical action, a process more than a prayer.”  Following Tertullian and St. Cyprian he believed in the objective Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, which was the offering, the heart of Christian worship.  When he thinks of the Eucharist there are two phases of his ideas. In the former, the Elements are figurae – the means of manifestation of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, in contrast to the latter themselves.  The actual essence of the Eucharist is the Spirit of which the Eucharistic “Body” is its vehicle; as means it is transitory and ephemeral (as compared with the Eternity of the Spirit); yet while mediating the presence of the Spirit, it is much more than a mere symbol.  Only in the second phase of his thought and teaching (in his controversy with the Pelagian heretics), after becoming acquainted with St. John Chrysostom, Augustine “broke the bonds of Platonism, and ascribed to the Eucharistic Flesh an independent objective value apart from the res sacramenti, the Spirit.” [Cf. Adam, op. cit., p. 163.]  In general, St. Augustine’s interests were subjective, both ethical and religious; his thoughts about the Eucharist are always as related to men.  While his earlier views might be called symbolic, his later ideas belong to the metabolic category.  To the earlier Augustine the symbolism of the Eucharist might be described as both didactic and effective (for at one time he thought that it was the faith of the recipient which gave the value to the Elements); and to the later, who had become a realist and metabolist, the Flesh itself brings life.  The “symbol” becomes what it represents, sustaining in itself a genuine and essential change.

      Two contemporaries, one Eastern and the other Western, slightly earlier than the great African Father, share similar views of the Eucharistic Mystery – St. Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394) and St. Ambrose of Milan (d. 397).  The former is outspokenly a realist and metabolist.  “The bread sanctified by the Word of God we believed to be transmuted (or transmade, μεταποιεισθαι.) into the Body of God the Word.”

      “So man by a sort of union with that which is of immortality becomes a sharer in incorruption.  These things are achieved by the power of the Blessing to that end, transelementing the nature of the things which appear” (Oratio catechetica, 37).  St. Ambrose writing On the Faith to Gratian says: “And whenever we receive the Sacrament(s) which are transfigured through the mystery of holy prayer into flesh and blood, we show forth the Lord’s death.” [iv. 10. 124.]  “We have seen the High Priest coming to us, we have seen and heard him offering his Blood for us.  We follow as we are able, we priests in offering the sacrifice for the people.  Though we be weak in merit, yet are we ennobled by virtue of the sacrifice (we offer), for, although Christ is not seen to be offered, yet he is himself offered on earth when the Body of Christ is offered.  Nay, he is shown forth among us as himself offering, whose word makes holy the sacrifice which is offered.” [Enarrationes in xii Psalmos davidicos, 38.]  “Let us be assured that this is not what nature formed, but what the Blessing consecrated, for the latter has a far greater effect than the former, for nature itself is changed by the Benediction.” [De Mysteriis (?), ix. 50.]  It is the very words of Christ which effect the consecration: “his word makes this sacrament.”  “Before it is consecrated, it is bread. When the words of Christ shall have been added, it is the Body of Christ. ... Therefore behold in how varied a fashion the word of Christ is potent to convert all things.” [De Sacramentis, iv. 5. 23.  (“Ambrosian,” if not by St. Ambrose.)]  In these two Fathers of the late fourth century we have witnesses for East and West alike that the bread and wine are conceived to be transformed, transelemented, transmuted, into the Body and Blood of Christ through the prayer of the priest.

      The Liturgies of the fourth century are practically normative for all subsequent Church usage, for one of the great turning points in the Church’s history took place when the attitude of the Emperor changed towards Christianity.  With the adoption of Christianity by the State there were wrought gradually great changes in the worship of the Church.  The picture of Church life as revealed by a third-century book like the Didascalia is little like that of a century later.  The author of the Didascalia could compare and contrast the Old with the New Dispensation: “Instead of the sacrifices which then were, offer ye new prayers and petitions and Giving of Thanks.” [Connolly’s edition, pp. 86–87.]  The two-foldedness of the Sacrifice is rapidly disappearing in the fourth century.  The Agape is secularized, and ultimately detached from the Eucharist entirely. [Cf. St. Cyprian in Ep. lxiii. 16.]  The permission which in the Hippolytan rite allowed deacons to bless the cup and bread at the Agape is by the 25th Canon of Laodicea not to be extended to subdeacons.  Soon afterwards freedom of choice in offering is denied to the folk at large: only bread and wine and flowers can be offered at the altar.  Probably economic and social changes had made unnecessary the place which the almost universal practice of offering “as a sacrifice” food and drink for the sustenance of the poor and needy had previously occupied in Christian life.  Traces, however, remain in later Liturgies, enough to show how widespread had been the custom.  Another canon of Laodicea (No. 28) forbids the “Celebration of so-called Agapes on Sundays or in the Church, and eating in the House of God.”  One primitive element has disappeared from the worship of the Church, and with its passing there was great loss: the active share of the layman in the combined act of worship – the Eucharist as offering of food and drink, and the Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Christ – could ill be spared; the degradation of social life and fellowship from its former quasi-religious level to one which might become purely secular; the growing lack of sensitiveness to the needs of the poor on the part of well-to-do people who constituted so great a number of the enlarged Church of post-persecution days; the growing evil of infrequent Communion cooperating with the disposition more and more to hand over to the clergy all active worship and to encourage passive attendance and constitute inactive presence the role of the layman – all these had their share in building up the classic Liturgies of the fourth century.

      Other factors are equally important.  Heresy made necessary a more rigorous liturgical formalism and precision.  In the Codex ecclesiae Africanae, Canon 103, “on the prayers recited at the altar,” reads: “It was decided that such prayers, prefaces, commendations, laying on of hands as should be approved in Synod should be in use by all, and that others contrary to the faith should not be substituted, but only those said which should have been gathered by the more wise.”  Liturgical freedom had still a large area of manoeuvre, though the process of uniformity had begun.  Heresy necessitated theological statement.  No more important principle regarding Eucharistic development can be asserted than that Eucharistic doctrine kept pace with Christological theory.  Finally, it is to be observed that a certain sterilization set in among schismatic and separated churches.  Their “orthodoxy” – or what they claimed as such – usually meant unchangingness, for most of these communions justified their schism as a protest against the innovations, novelties and developments of the Great Church. So we often find archaic usages in the Liturgies of the Separated Churches which vanished from those of the larger whole.

      When Christianity became popular the observance of religion became tepid.  Worldliness came in, for conviction and earnest adherence to the principles of Christianity were not the only motives for membership in the Church.  Wealth followed imperial patronage, and the Church’s fabrics, libraries, and institutions were enriched by endowments and the resources of lavish expenditure.  Magnificence and splendour characterized public worship, and the fine art of cultivating the sense of awe and drama evinced itself in Liturgy.

      The basic Liturgy is that which we know as associated with the name of Hippolytus.  East and West are alike in debt to it.  Enlarged and interpolated it forms the core of the Antiochene Liturgy of the 8th Book of the Apostolic Constitutions.  Significant changes have, however, taken place.  The summary of the details which we can put together from the study given above of the second-century Liturgy constitutes the outline of the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions.  Yet much had been added from Jewish practice.  What we are accustomed to call the Preface is really the Ante-Sanctus.  This is in the Apostolic Constitutions Liturgy a recital of God’s dealings with men in the Old Covenant, culminating in the Sanctus – all this came from Judaism.  Then follows the enlarged Hippolytan Canon, with some changes.  After the Memorial or Anamnesis comes the Invocation or Epiklesis.  In the Apostolic Constitutions viii God is asked “to send his Holy Spirit upon this Oblation ... and to show (?) [sic] this bread (to be) the Body of thy Christ and the Cup his Blood.”  This had been preceded by a prayer to God to “look favourably upon these gifts,” embodying, like other prayers, in all likelihood a bit of the Jewish Temple Liturgy.  From a Liturgy of this type is derived the Liturgy of St. Basil, and that ascribed to St. John Chrysostom.  In each case the significant prayer given above based upon Hippolytus has been subjected to further change: St. Basil has “that the All-holy Spirit come upon us and upon these gifts lying here, and bless, hallow and show this bread to be verily the Precious Body of our Lord.”  In St. Chrysostom: “Send thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts ... and make this bread the precious Body of thy Christ, changing it by thy Holy Spirit.”  These several changes reflect theological development, with which the Liturgy slowly came to accommodate itself.  In this instance the several stages are marked by distinguishable views of the Eucharistic Presence: Hippolytus is apparently dynamic; Apostolic Constitutions viii sees in the Eucharist primarily a Mystery revealed; St. Basil’s Liturgy intensifies and develops this conception; St. Chrysostom’s Liturgy is frankly and outspokenly metabolist.

      Similarly in the West the Liturgy has had a history more complex and varied than in the East.  If theological reflection finds ultimately its embodiment in the formulated Liturgy, the Liturgy itself is a monument of theological conviction.  Guardini has described the Liturgy as “prayed truth”.  In the West the two great influences on the Liturgy were that directly or indirectly due to St. Ambrose, “the chief authority on the Eucharist doctrines of the Early Middle Ages,” and that of Augustinian ideas – more sporadic and intermittent, but not without signal if often negative effect.  Western Liturgies of the early period fall into three groups, the Gallican, Mozarabic and Roman.  In none of them appears great evidence of theological reflection, for “the sacraments did not occupy the central place in the field of theological interest” in this early period.  Yet the Gallican and Mozarabic Liturgies stand apart from the old Roman as being dominated by implicit and occasionally explicit Ambrosian thought.  St. Ambrose, as we have seen, employed the word “figure” (of the Body) for the Eucharistic Elements.  The term has a long history: it may mean “means of manifestation” (as in Tertullian); in St. Ambrose it refers to the outward and external element in contrast to the inner and spiritual Element (the “verity”), and from the standpoint of the sacramental subject it is “likeness” – a term to be found in Hippolytus.  The Gallican Liturgy is instinct with a strongly realistic quality, and emphasized a “change” in the elements (terms like “change,” “convert” and the like, from St. Ambrose) plus the distinctive and specific “transform”.  The “change in the Offered Elements into the Body and Blood of Christ is nowhere else so unequivocally expressed.”  In the Mozarabic Liturgy the “transforming” is explicitly effected by the inpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the added term “transfigure” (Ambrosian) is employed.  The Bread is the “figure” of the Body, and is to the Body as container to content.  Both of these Liturgies betray a wider ancestry and closer connection with those of the East than does the primitive Roman Liturgy. [See J. Geiselmann, Die Eucharistielehre der Vorscholastik, Paderborn, 1926, pp. 1–33.]

      The Roman Liturgy originally possessed no trace of what in the other Western and all Eastern forms has been named the “Eucharistic Mystery” – the unfolding and recital of the great drama of God and Man, in its several phases of Creation, Redemption Sanctification.  On the contrary, it was singularly rich in the emphasis on the Eucharistic Offering – the oblations of the people, dedicated to God, for the good of His children and the benefit of the givers’ souls and bodies.  Theologically it is strongly symbolic: the “gift” (munus) becomes sacrament, as in St. Augustine: “element becomes sacrament.” [Cf. G. P. Wetter, Altchristliche Liturgien, II, Gottingen, 1922, p. 30; Geiselmann, p. 34.]  Correlative terms to those given for the other Western Liturgies are “sanctify,” “consecrate,” “bless”.  “Dynamic symbolism” describes its general theological quality.

      But the complex history of the Roman Liturgy makes it difficult to trace with the same definiteness that we can use of the Oriental Liturgies the exact course of its development.  For the Liturgy took final form in the East much earlier than it did in the West.  Liturgical variation was much freer in the West, and “free liturgical composition prevailed in the West up into the Merovingian period. ... The ideal seemed at times to be to supply for each Sunday and Feast day its own Liturgy.  This effort, while not entirely suppressed, confined itself in Rome to the formulation of an unvarying fixed kernel of prayers of which the core was the consecration.  But exactly when this Canon of the Mass was stabilized we do not know.  Its present form dates from the sixth century. ... Careful examination of the text shows that its basis was the ancient Hippolytan Liturgy” (Lietzmann, p. 262).  In the Carolingian period the two groups of Western Liturgies – Ambrosian, Mozarabic and Gallican, and the Roman –influenced each other.  Ambrosian ideas came over into the Roman, while Roman usages and prayers were injected into the Gallican.  “The Roman Liturgy curbed the metabolism of the old Gallican Liturgies.”  In the writers of the Carolingian period Augustinian ideas began to affect Eucharistic theology.  In such men as Augustine of Hippo and the Venerable Bede there could be new combinations of practice and teaching.  “In Bede we have the first example of cooperation between the realism of his Liturgy and the tendency towards dynamic spiritualism of St. Augustine.”  In another Englishman, Alcuin – whose theology was frankly metabolist – not only does “transform” come into the Roman Liturgy, but the phrase “consecrate into the substance of the Body” appears.  The line of the development in the Roman Liturgy may be shown by the following:

“consecrate into the sacrament of the Body” (Bede);

                                                                  Body” (Angoulême Sacramentary);

                                                                  substance of the Body” (Alcuin);

= change substance (so Amaalar of Metz, 850). [Cf. Geiselmann, op. cit., pp. 35–60.]

      The mixed Roman-Carolingian Liturgy in its conflated form was to become normative in the West.  Theories as to the Consecration included the curious type called “consecration by contact” or immixture, to which the prayer after the Fraction in the Roman Rite is an interesting testimony.  More Gallican material came to be taken up into the Roman Rite, and a parallel conflation of ideas took place – “metabolism and Augustinian dynamism together controlled the theological thinking of the Carolingian era.”  This new combination really gave the victory to the Ambrosian realism and metabolism.  Phrases of early origin were susceptible of the new meaning: “may the sacraments achieve in us that which they contain, so that what we now bear in likeness we may lay hold of in truth” had in its earliest use a different sense from that it received when the conversion theology had been injected to interpret it.  So dominant had this outlook become that in the mediaeval controversies about the Eucharist, the transubstantiation theory could be thought to have been original and its opponents (who followed in the main the earlier views of St. Augustine and the theology of the primitive Roman Liturgy) denounced as heretics by the affirmation of the dogma of transubstantiation.

      It is perhaps not necessary to point out that, despite the theology of the Early Roman Liturgy, the entire absence of the element of the Eucharistic Mystery and the sole importance of the ideas connected with Eucharistic Offering made easy the transformation of the rite into a purely Eucharistic sacrificial type.  All that had to do with the offering of the elements could be retained, to serve as a prelude to the Sacrifice – that of the Body and Blood of Christ, into which bread and wine were transmuted and changed.  Bread and wine are no longer “offered” in the old sense.  The Offering is of Christ’s Body and Blood to the Father.

      Liturgical development is not only the result of theological advance, reflecting controversies and their solution, but is sensitive as well to the general facts of Church history.  In the East the Christian Emperors took order for all questions within their domain.  In his legislation (Nov. 137:6, of March 26, 565) Justinian ruled that the Eucharist must be audibly celebrated.  The pomp and circumstance befitting the Emperor must be exceeded in the worship of the Lord of Emperors.  So elaboration and accretions to the Eastern Liturgies went on apace.  Incense had begun to be used in the fourth century.  Special vestments, evolved from the better quality of secular clothing, had become established.  Here is the description of the Eastern Liturgies of the sixth century, given by Dr. Kidd:

      “Three types of Liturgy were in use in the Eastern part of the Empire of Justinian. The Alexandrian prevailed in Egypt and Abyssinia, and is contained in the texts known as the St. Mark, The Coptic St. Cyril, and The Twelve Apostles.  Its outstanding features are that the Great Intercession is made in the course of the Preface; and that the cue from which the celebrant proceeds with the Thanksgiving, after the congregation has broken in with the Sanctus, is given by its word ‘full’.  The West-Syrian rite prevailed in Antioch, Jerusalem and Cyprus, and is now contained in the texts of the Greek and the Syriac St. James.  Here the distinctive features are that the Great Intercession occurs between the Invocation and the Lord’s Prayer; and that the cue for the resumption of the Thanksgiving by the celebrant, after the Sanctus, is given by the word ‘Holy’ in that hymn.  A third type of Liturgy is derived from that of Syria or Antioch, and is known as the Byzantine Rite.  It is found in the exarchates of Pontus, Asia, Thrace and Illyricum. ... It is now represented in the three orthodox Liturgies of St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and the Presanctified. ...

      “As celebrated in the sixth century, the Byzantine Liturgy enshrined an imposing worship.  Outside the church sat the beggars, asking for alms as the faithful entered.  Inside appeared the ambo or pulpit, in the nave, from which the lessons were read, the anthems sung, and the sermon preached; the altar supported on columns, and surmounted by a canopy or ciborium; and behind it, facing west, the Bishop’s throne surrounded by the synthronos or seats of the Presbyters, who could thus readily celebrate with the Bishop.  The sanctuary, with its altar and synthronos, was separated from the nave by a light screen and veil: which afterwards developed into a solid ‘iconostasis’ pierced only by the ‘holy doors’.

      “The service began with the Mass of the Catechumens.  It was introduced, not by the long preparation of the elements in the Prothesis which developed later, but by the Little Entrance, at which – to the music of the Trisagion [“Holy God, Holy (and) Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.”  It dates from the first half of the fifth century, is found in the Galilean Rite of the West before and after the Gospel, and in the Roman Rite in the Reproaches of Good Friday and the Preces of Prime.] – the Deacons carried in the Gospels attended by incense.  Next, after the mutual salutation of celebrant and people, came the three lessons, all from the ambo: the Prophecy, or lesson from the Old Testament, and the Epistle – both recited by a Reader; and the Gospel –  by a Deacon, all standing.  After it, the salutation again and a homily.  Then the Catechumens and others were dismissed, and the doors closed, before the Mass of the Faithful could begin.  It opened with the Deacon’s Litany and the Prayer of the Faithful: during which the Elements were being prepared in the Prothesis.  Then, after celebrant and people had saluted each other, they were brought in at the Great Entrance, while the anthem ‘King of Glory’ was sung, and, after 574, the Cherubic Hymn.  Another salutation and the Kiss of Peace was succeeded by the Offertory; and this by the Creed introduced at Constantinople, 511, by the Patriarch Timothy; and then the Diptychs of the dead and of the living were recited by the Deacon.  Now opened the culminating portion of the service in the Anaphora, or offering of the great sacrifice. ... The Anaphora begins with the Grace, the Sursum Corda, Preface or preliminary recitation of Thanksgiving by the celebrant, who was interrupted by the Sanctus of the people.  Then he resumed with the recitation of the Institution, the Anamnesis in remembrance of Good Friday, Easter and Ascension, the Epiclesis or Invocation of the Holy Spirit, reminiscent of Pentecost, followed by the Great Intercession, Salutation and Lord’s Prayer.  Thus the consecration was complete, and the sacrifice pleaded.  The preparation of the Elements for distribution came next by the Fraction and the Elevation of Holy Things for Holy People.  Communion was then given into the hand of the communicant.  And the service ended with a thanksgiving: while, if any of the consecrated elements remained, they had to be consumed by the children present.” [B. J. Kidd, The Churches of Eastern Christendom, pp. 70–72.]

      For the seventh century we can trace the development of the Byzantine Liturgy from the Trullan Canons and the Mystagogia of St. Maximus the Confessor (662).  The framework is unchanged from that of the early St. Basil and St. Chrysostom.  Joints of meat for the clergy, grapes, milk and honey can no longer be offered. [Trullan Canons, Nos. 99, 28, 57.]  At the end of the service a hymn of Sergius (d. 638) was added in 624.  No “love feasts” are to be held in churches. [Ibid., c. 74.]  Since that time the most noteworthy changes have been the transfer of the Preparation of the Elements from the middle to the beginning of the Liturgy, and this has become an ornate and elaborate sequence of prayers, dialogue and symbolic acts; the iconostasis or solid screen, behind which the Liturgy is largely transacted; the elaboration of the text and ritual, by a steady increment of variable parts.  Substantially the Liturgy of the East is that of Justinian’s days, which in turn is that of St. Basil’s revision of the Antiochene Liturgy similar to that of the 8th Book of the Apostolic Constitutions.

      Parallel developments of the Liturgy were taking place in the West.  The primitive Roman rite represented what we possess in the Hippolytan Liturgy.  “The Hippolytan text as it lies before us is the unabbreviated ancient Roman formula,” according to Lietzmann. [Messe und Herrenmahl, p. 167.]  Duchesne, in his Origins of Christian Worship, the late Dr. Fortescue in his book on The Roman Mass, and the late H. E. Bishop in Liturgia Historica, have studied the questions, which are far from being conclusively solved, regarding the Roman rite’s earlier history.  For descriptions of the rite in St. Gregory’s day, the reader can be referred to these books.  In East and West alike frequent Communion had become exceptional.  The idea of the Eucharist as the impetratory Sacrifice of our Lord’s Body and Blood, for the living and dead, has become overwhelmingly predominant.  By the early Middle Ages there had arisen in the West the “low” Mass – one said by a priest with a server or other person acting for the people, as congregation, to answer the responses.  Church architecture changes: chantry chapels are built, where private masses on “foundations” can be offered with special remembrance of the people for whom they are “offered”.  The ancient usages of the Liturgy as the service of all the people, in which all had both an active and essential part, have been gradually altered – whether by abrogation, transformation or sterilization – in keeping with a growing policy of regimented uniformity under the pressure of the Roman See.  The language is symbolic of the worship.  The dead tongue suggests the mystery which invests the rite, so much of which is transacted secretly or in a whisper.  At the 4th Lateran Council of 1215 transubstantiation was defined as a dogma, yearly confession and Easter Communion were made of universal obligation, and the beginnings of the cultus of the Blessed Sacrament connected with elevation and exposition appear about that date.  Before this time East and West had been sharply sundered into antagonism and opposition, which passed from disputes to disdain, from that measure of felt likeness which maintained some mutual understanding, through assertion and exaggeration of differences, into ignorance of each other.

      The Eastern Liturgies underwent few modifications.  Nothing corresponding to a Low Mass has ever made its appearance in the East, except in the churches in communion with the Pope of Rome.  The language used is always professedly vernacular, but in an archaic form little in touch with actual living speech since the Middle Ages.  The whole preparation of the Elements – earlier a part of the Offertory in the center of the Eucharistic rite – was shifted to the beginning of the service, and has become elaborated and developed to an amazing degree.  Save for the introduction of the Creed in the East (early sixth century, followed a few centuries later by its incorporation into the Western Masses for Feasts) and the addition of hymns and proses, the Eastern Liturgies have remained practically unchanged in the course of centuries.  The Orthodox Church has always maintained the popular and public character of its worship.  No small boy in a preparatory school can fail to understand what is going on in church.  The dominant note of mystery is always sustained; yet the Eucharist is not only the Mystery – the representation of the whole drama of God-manward action – but also Sacrifice, the “Unbloody” Oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ to the Father.  The pragmatic West is inclined to lop off from the rite what is not relevant to the worshipping community.  The conservative East is disposed to add to what is inherited.  Both Liturgies have changed.  In one sense both are alike conservative.  In the West the Roman Liturgy has become less distinctively “Roman,” absorbing, transmitting and undergoing transformation in the process of taking over, non-Roman elements, and so has conserved – within the limits of a selective instinct rather less than Catholic in the large sense – much of the whole tradition of the West.  It is the repository of what was deemed valuable to convey to further generations of the Faithful.

      In the East this same conservative instinct means the rigid preservation of all that has been, plus some innovatory elements reluctantly admitted.  The changes in the Western Liturgy are chiefly omissions and abbreviations in the interests of practical exigency.  Those of the East are like the successive rings the years bring to the growth of a tree: even the “Liturgy of the Catechumens” has been preserved in Eastern use, though it has for the space of nearly fourteen centuries lost all practical relevance.

      What does the Eucharist mean today to the worshipper?  As the centre of all worship, the signal and significant corporate act of the Body of Christ, as the means of thanksgiving and intercession, as the service at which preeminently the Word of God in Scripture is heard and expounded, its meaning is of so diversified and rich a character that its analysis becomes extremely difficult.  Let us compare, first of all, the two types – roughly of Rome and Constantinople – in a general fashion and contrast them.  The structure of the Latin Eucharistic rite of the West is admirably dramatic.  It is constituted of parts related to a whole, and sweeps, in a sequence of related ideas, to a climax: instruction, offering, intercession, thanksgiving, all leading to the crisis of the Consecration and Communion.  So soon as is feasible the service comes to its end after the dénouement has been achieved.  It is not so in the East.  One steps off, as it were, into a realm of timelessness, or rather one is lifted up into a level of experience different from that of this world.  Dramatic crises follow one upon the other – that of the Offertory and the preparation of the Elements, the litanies with their respective terminations of praise, the Little Entrance, and the climax of the Gospel, the Great Entrance with the Eucharistic gifts as yet unconsecrated, the half-veiled, half-revealed mystery of the transactions of the priest behind the screen, the Sursum Corda, Sanctus; and then the actual moment of the Invocation of the Holy Spirit finds the worshipper rapt in the sense of awe, mystery, revelation – so caught up out of this that he is unaware of a conscious entrance into that world.  The Eucharist of the West takes place in the openness of the seen altar where every act – though not all the words –is perceived.  The East shrouds the service with a veil of mystery.  The West is thoroughly aware of the sacrifice – the Passion and Death of the Saviour.  The East cannot withhold the note of triumphant joy, in all seasons of the year, at the astounding fact of the Resurrection.  If to the West the Incarnation means so largely the life of suffering, to the East it means the lifting up of all in Christ’s Mystical Body in union with His Resurrection.  In the West the Eucharist can be used individually, intimately, privately.  In the East the whole emphasis is everywhere corporate: the angels and saints, particularly the Mother of God, the living and the departed, are at each point within the conscious realm of the believer’s cognizance.

      With the Reformation in the West came a new and fresh assertion of the place of the individual in the Body.  While within Protestantism this principle often operated in the direction of too great individualism, within the Latin Church it was not entirely without the same effect.  Since the sixteenth century, as to a large extent before, the Roman Catholic has been able to “hear” or “assist at” Mass in various ways.  He can use the opportunity to meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary, to pray in his own words, to follow the service itself in his private prayers, or to occupy himself with other private or corporate acts of devotion.  None of these, in practice, needs to be articulated with the ideas, acts and transactions of priest and server, or celebrant ministers and choir, in the sanctuary.  The worshipper can share in the fruits of that in which he may not have to cooperate save in will, and possibly in posture.  Communion may also be a private matter, entirely dissociated from the act of corporate worship of the Eucharist.  “Assisting at Mass” can be done frequently without any necessary reference to Communion, for the two great elements of the Eucharist – sacrifice and sacrament – are sundered in practice though not in theory.  But the worshipper brings his needs, his problems, his requests and his gratitude to God to be presented as by acts of faith and adoration he unites himself in spirit and intention with what is going on at the altar.

      In recent years there has been a movement within Roman Catholicism to recover what has been to a large degree lost in practice: the sense of corporateness, the intelligent participation in the Liturgy, and the attuning of the worshippers, severally and as a whole, with the sequence and progress of the social act of the Eucharistic Liturgy.  To this end an active cooperation on the part of the people has in many churches on the Continent been encouraged.  Instead of the responses being made by the server or ministers, they are recited together by the congregation – in the vernacular if they do not know enough Latin to reply in that tongue.  The private devotions of the people are being systematically aligned with the substance of the cycles of praise, instruction, petition, and the like of the rite itself – as well the fixed parts as the varying ‘propers’ for the different Masses.  Cheap manuals and adequate and attractive translations with pertinent points for brief meditation and regular training of the young in their use, constitute the popular, while theological essays and studies, reconsiderations of neglected aspects of latent belief, constitute the more fundamental, aspects of the process of progressive reclamation.

      The Eucharist is after all the offering by His Mystical Body of the sacramental Body of Christ.  The Body offers the Body.  So in Catholic tradition there is grave need constantly to reaffirm the “priesthood of all believers,” and to recover for the laity that which is their right.  So many factors have gone into the situation within modern Roman Catholicism – the use of a dead language for the Liturgy, the continually increasing allocation of functions and office to the priesthood, in its narrower sense, and the abiding consequences of the Reformation, with their ineffaceable marks upon the spirit, mind and operation of the Latin Church – that the program set by the leaders of the Liturgical Movement might seem to daunt all but the most valiant souls.  To those who have recovered afresh a new realization of worship, the Mass has come to mean more than ever it did before.  No longer an act in which participation by the worshipper is confined to a passive consent in will and mind, the Mass becomes the corporate function of the whole Body of Christ – eternal realities meeting in time, claiming the whole of man’s powers and activities, the graciousness of out-flowing love of God meeting the grateful cooperation of man’s love for Him, in the sublime act of ineffable potency – the Eucharist.  Alive in memory, understanding and will – yet in all these functions of his spiritual being in tune with those immediately about him; cooperating with voice and posture, one with the great throng of those about the Lamb, united with all others everywhere engaged in the great act of worship – the worshipper shares as he gives, participates as he offers, at his most active he receives abundantly, together with all his fellows, from the great outpouring of the sacrificed Life now risen in its fullness to new levels.

      To the Eastern Orthodox the Eucharist is the preeminent occasion of worship.  As a child he learned the responses, the rhythm of the melodies, the words of the variable chants, the code of behaviour, the associations of significant acts, gestures, words and inner spirit.  He needs no book from which to follow the Liturgy.  Its rich variation of occasional parts appropriate to the different feasts of the year is extraordinarily familiar.  At every point in the Liturgy he is intelligently cooperating and aware of what is going on.  He shares not only in will, but in understanding and, as often as not, in act: the choir normally leads, but has no prerogative to usurp, the singing.  It is all in a language he knows – not that of everyday speech, but so nearly vernacular that common schooling and habituation suffice amply to make its words fully intelligible.  He hears Epistle and Gospel sung – slowly, impressively, not infrequently, gloriously: it is God’s word in man’s speech, proclaimed with superb adjuncts of memorial, gesture and voice.  From his baptism until he reached “years of discretion” his mother brought him to frequent Communion.  But as he grew older, reception of the Sacrament involved much more: careful self-examination, a fortnight’s preparation of soul and body, confession.  So the adult does not communicate frequently.  The Eucharistic Liturgy is public, social and corporate.  The worshippers are in intimate relation to mystery: they pray, sing and stand so close to that which elicits awe that mystical union with God in the whole family of the Holy Saints is readily achieved.  Each event of the worshipper’s life is associated with the Eucharist: significant days of civil or political importance; the Great Feasts of the Church year, and its four fasting periods; personal and individual events – his name-day, anniversaries of his family, and the like.  The Eastern Liturgy in practice is perhaps unique for the rare combination and balance of opposites: intimacy and awe; the individual and the social; intelligibility and mystery; the supernatural and the natural; the life of this world and that of Heaven.  As one unit in the great succession, one worshipper of the untold millions, one person in the present world caught up into the life of Heaven, the Eastern Christian feels always the corporate Mystery of Redemption, Death and Resurrection, and of union of time and eternity, human and divine, in the ineffable consummation – the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

      Toward the latter part of the eleventh century – not a generation after the Conquest – there had arisen in England what was destined to persist up to the Reformation as the most important variant of the Roman Use.  The “Use of Sarum” – with its different arrangements of the Sunday and Feastday ‘Proper’ or variable portions, its different ordering of Sundays (after Trinity and not after Pentecost), and its smaller differences in detail – was ascribed to St. Osmund of Salisbury (d. 1099), the nephew of William the Conqueror and Bishop of the new See founded by the consolidation of Ramsbury and Sherborne.  The Sarum Use (the word Sarum being the Latin for Salisbury) in the centuries preceding the Reformation was the most outstanding of five several Uses, of which Hereford, Bangor, York, and Lincoln constituted the others.  Even St. Paul’s, London – possibly the whole of the pre-Reformation Diocese of London – had its own Use down to the eve of Agincourt, the time when both Church (as is shown by the publication of Lyndwood’s Provinciale) and State (in the later struggles of the Hundred Years’ War) were passing through severe struggles.  The Uses’ here mentioned – Salisbury, Hereford, York, Bangor, Lincoln, and London – were all variations of the general Western Rite, so far as concerned the Eucharist; but each, notably that of Sarum, maintained a homogeneous and consistent scheme for the whole prayer and devotional rule as well.  The popularity of the Sarum Rite for the Eucharist as well as the Office, if not for the ritual acts connected with its celebration, is shown by the numerous reprints it had in the half-century preceding the Reformation, at which time the desire for uniformity swept away this diversity of custom.  The Reformation position can be best judged from the section Concerning the Service of the Church: “Whereas there hath been great diversity in saying and singing in Churches within this Realm; some following Salisbury Use, some Hereford Use, and some the Use of Bangor, some of York, some of Lincoln; now from henceforth all the whole Realm shall have but one Use” (see J. H. Blunt, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, 1899, p. 102).

The History of The Book Of Common Prayer Down to 1662

By F. E. Brightman and K. D. Mackenzie

I – Mediaeval Service Books

      The original title of what for short we call “The Book of Common Prayer” or “The Prayer Book” was “THE booke of the common prayer and administration of the Sacramentes and other rites and ceremonies of the Churche: after the vse of the Churche of England.” [In 1552 “the” before  “common,” and “of the Churche,” were omitted.  The first of these has not been replaced; the second was restored in 1661.]  Thus the contents of the book are threefold: (1) “the common prayer,” what in the Preface is named the “common prayers in the Churche, commonly called diuine seruice,” or, in the first Act of Uniformity, common prayer commonly called the seruice of the Church,” i.e. the choir office of the canonical hours, here reduced to two, Mattins and Evensong; and together with this may be included “The Litany and Suffrages,” which from the first was called “the common prayer of procession”; (2) the “administration of the sacramentes” – Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Matrimony, and the Unction of the Sick – all except Ordination, for which as yet no new provision was made; and (3) “other rites and ceremonies of the Churche,” viz. the Churching of Women, the Visitation of the Sick, Burial of the Dead, and the penitential office for Ash Wednesday.

      There are two points especially to be noted in this title.

      1. “THE booke.”  It is true that since the Psalms and Lessons of the Divine Service were not included, another book was needed, viz. the Bible; and since Ordination was not provided for, a third book was necessary.  But hitherto there had been no single book so comprehensive as the new one.  During the later Middle Ages the rites of the Church had been contained in five books: the Breviary, the Missal, the Manual, the Pontifical, and the Processional.  The Breviary, otherwise called Portiforium or Portuis, provided the whole service of the eight canonical hours for every day of the year, together with the service of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Dead.  The Missal or Mass Book contained the Ordo and the Canon of the Mass, i.e. the framework and unchanging formulae, and the “Prayer of Consecration”; the Temporale – the variable formulae for the year from Advent till the last Sunday after Pentecost, or, in England, Trinity, together with the immovable feasts from Christmas to Epiphany, and also the characteristic ceremonies of Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the eves of Easter and Pentecost; and the Sanctorale, the variables of Saints’ days and other immovable feasts.  The Manual, otherwise called Ritual or Agenda or Sacerdotal, was the parish priest’s book, containing the administration of Baptism, the Solemnization of Matrimony, the Visitation of the Sick and Dying – in which last were included Penance, Communion, and Extreme Unction – the Offices of the Dead, and various benedictions.  The Pontifical provided for all the ministrations in which the bishop was celebrant, like Confirmation, Ordination, clothing of monks and nuns, consecration and benediction of persons and places and things.  The Processional supplied the anthems, etc. sung in procession on Sundays and festivals and some other days, and the Rogations of April 25 and the three days before the Ascension.  These books contained the text of the rites and at first had little or nothing in the way of directions or rubrics.  These were supplied by such books as the “Consuetudinary” and the “Ordinal”.  In the Consuetudinary were codified the customs of the church to which it belonged, among them the ceremonial rules and the part to be taken by the several ministers or groups of ministers in the execution of Divine Service and Mass and incidental rites associated with these.  The Ordinal, or, as it was called in England in its latest form in the fifteenth century, the “Directorium” or “Pie” (pica), described how the parts of the service were to be fitted together, and in particular how things were to be adjusted when, in the thirty-five different situations due to the variation in the date of Easter, a movable and an immovable feast “occurred” or “concurred,” i.e. fell on the same day or on two successive days, resulting in “the number and hardness of the rules of the Pie” referred to in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer.  In the end the Consuetudinary was broken up and its directions inserted in Breviary and Missal at the points to which they applied, and the Pie was also divided into sections which were intercalated at convenient points.

      But this system of books began to displace in part an older system only in the eleventh century.  Whereas in the newer system each of the books contained a whole office or series of offices as celebrated under all circumstances, in the older system the several books contained only those parts of the several offices which appertained to a single minister or group of like ministers.  Thus the Sacramentary provided the prayers of the priest, whether presbyter or bishop, for all the sacraments and for the other rites.  The Lectionary or “Comes,” containing the Epistles and Lessons of the Mass, was the subdeacon’s book, the Gospel or “Textus” the deacon’s, the Cantatorium or Gradual (Grail) supplied the text and music of the parts of the Mass sung by the choir.  For the Divine Service were required the Psalter, containing the Psalms and Canticles; the Antiphonary and the Responsorial, containing the antiphons and responds; the Lesson books for use at Mattins, viz. the Bibliotheca or Bible for the scriptural lessons, the Legenda Sanctorum for the lives of the saints, and the Homiliary containing the lessons from the writings of the Fathers: and the bond between all these books was the Ordo, which supplied the place of rubrics.

      It is unnecessary for the present purpose to do more than mention some other books of later origin and lesser importance, like the Hymnary, the Sequential, the Troper, the Collectar, or the Benedictional.

      Apart from the Bible and the Psalter, the most important of these books, and the most comprehensive, was the Sacramentary, and something must be said of its history.  The most convenient date at which to begin is the last quarter of the eighth century, when there was and had long been great variety of liturgical usage in the Frankish kingdom, some churches using the old.  Gallican rite in various local texts, some a form of the Roman rite, and others a mixture of the two.  Charlemagne, being anxious to put an end to this diversity and to secure the uniform observance of the Roman rite, applied to the pope, Hadrian I, for an authentic copy of the Roman Sacramentary.  It might seem that Hadrian was not greatly interested in Charlemagne’s project, since the copy he sent was a very inadequate one, containing as it did only the masses of the “stations”, i.e. of the days on which the pope celebrated solemnly for the whole City in one or other of the basilicas, and a few other masses, Ordinations, and a number of occasional prayers. [In H. A. Wilson, The Gregorian Sacramentary, H.B.S., 1915, pp. 1–143.]  Consequently it made no provision for the Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany, for those after Epiphany and after the octave of Easter, and for those between the octave of Pentecost and Advent.  Though this book is described in its title and in Hadrian’s covering letter as “The Book of the Sacraments published by St. Gregory the Great,” it is now commonly called the “Sacramentary of Hadrian” (Hadrianum), not only because, so far as it goes, it has been brought up to date by the addition of post-Gregorian masses – like those for Thursdays in Lent, for the Nativity and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and for the feast of St. Gregory himself, – but also by reason of its very incompleteness.  For a complete Sacramentary from which Hadrian’s, apart from its post-Gregorian elements, is only an extract has now been recognized in a MS. at Padua copied from an exemplar written before the year 682. [Printed in K. Mohlberg, Die älteste erreichbare Gestalt des Liber Sacramentorum der römischen Kirche (Cod. Pad. D.) 47, fol. 11γ—100γ.  Münster in Westf., 1927.]  The Hadrianum was obviously insufficient for the purposes of the Frankish or of any church; and consequently a supplement was compiled and added to it – the work, it is generally supposed, of Alcuin – supplying its deficiencies. [Wilson, op. cit., pp. 145 ff.  A different supplement is found in the 9th cent. “Sacramentary of St. Thierry” (Leroquais, Les Sacramentaires et les Missels manuscrits des bibliothèques publics de France, Paris, 1924, p. 23).]  To this supplement the compiler prefixed a preface, explaining what he had done and the purpose of his work.  After a while this preface was omitted by the copyists, and later the supplement was broken up and its items inserted at their appropriate places in the Hadrianum.  This composite but unified book is what is commonly known as the “Gregorian Sacramentary” (Gregorianum), [E.g. Ménard’s D. Gregorii Liber Sacramentorum, Paris, 1642.] and for the most part is the source of the essential prayers of the later Missals, Pontificals, and Rituals.

      But at the moment when the Hadrianum was received in Frankland there was already known, and in use there, another and older type of Roman Sacramentary, which came to be called the “Gelasian” (Gelasianum), being rightly or wrongly supposed to be the work of the pope Gelasius I (492–496).  This book, which is known from only a single MS. of the first half of the eighth century, [H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary, Oxford, 1894, pp. 1–315.] is a Roman book which has been modified, on the one hand by the elimination of nearly everything of merely local Roman interest, and on the other by certain Gallican insertions; while it is also so far Gregorianized that its canon of the Mass is in the Gregorian form.  Certain names in the Kalendar seem to indicate that it reached Gaul, not directly from Rome, but by way of South Italy, where perhaps the deromanizing modifications had already been made. [W. H. Frere, Studies in Early Roman Liturgy (Alcuin Club Collections), Oxford, 1930, pp. 42 ff.]

      Another type of Sacramentary is mainly a combination of the Gelasian and the Gregorian. [Analyzed in Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary, pp. 357 ff.]  This type, not being purely Gregorian, was reckoned as Gelasian, and today it is commonly known as “Gelasian of the eighth century”; but it is better called “Mixed,” not only because it is rather a Gregorian book modified by Gelasian insertions and substitutions than a Gregorianized Gelasian, but also because it contains an appreciable amount of matter derived from a source or sources other than either Gelasian or Gregorian.  The Sunday masses of the Frankish supplement, not represented in the Hadrianum, are apparently derived from the mixed Sacramentary, since, while they generally reproduce the masses of the older and complete Gregorianum, on twelve of the Sundays after Pentecost they adopt the non-Gregorian elements of the corresponding masses of the mixed Sacramentary.

      Lastly, there is the collection of purely Roman material, made apparently in the sixth century, contained in a MS. of the early seventh century belonging to the Chapter Library of Verona, and known as the “Leonine” (Leonianum), [In C. L. Feltoe, Sacramentarium Leonianum, Cambridge, 1896.] a name given to it by its first editor, who conjectured that it was the work of the pope St. Leo the Great (440–461).  It is not strictly a Sacramentary, but rather a somewhat carelessly arranged accumulation of material out of which a Sacramentary might be compiled.  The MS. has unfortunately lost twenty-four leaves at the beginning, and what remains of it covers the year only from April 22 to Dec. 28.  Besides an immense number of Saints’-day masses, fifteen masses, which are perhaps intended for unoccupied Sundays, and a large number of masses for various occasions and intentions, it provides only for Ascension, Pentecost, the summer, autumn and winter Embertides and Christmas; it contains also the prayers of Ordination and the Veiling of Virgins.  A large proportion of this material reappears .in the later Sacramentaries and service books, and through them some eight Leonine prayers passed into the Book of Common Prayer. [Collects of St. Jo. Ev., Easter iii., Trinity v., ix., xiii., xiv., xxiv., and Ord. of Priests, “Almighty God, giver of all good things.”  Among the “Additions” to the Book of Common Prayer “proposed in 1928” the Collect of the 2nd Sunday after Christmas is a feeble paraphrase of a Leonine Collect (Feltoe p. 159), and the last but one of the Occasional Prayers (not the work of the revisers) is a fine abbreviation of another (ib., p. 126).]

      The new system of books was formed by combining and arranging in due order what belonged to each day of the week and the year in Psalter, Lesson books, Antiphonary and Responsorial, and adding the collect of the day from the Sacramentary, to form the Breviary; by dividing out from the Sacramentary all that pertained to the Mass, and similarly combining the prayers of each day with the corresponding parts of the Gradual, the Lectionary, and the Gospel, to form the Missal; while those parts of the Sacramentary which concerned the bishop alone went to form the Pontifical; and the rest belonged to the Ritual.  The Processional was a later book, not older perhaps than the latter part of the thirteenth century, and was compiled by selection out of the Antiphonary and the Responsorial; and sometimes it was not a separate book but was included in the Manual, [Lyndwood, Provinciale, iii. 27, “Vt parochiani,” note f.] as it is now in the Roman Ritual; and sometimes again the cues of its items were inserted in the Missal before the Mass of the day to which each of them belonged. [E.g. in J. W. Legg, The Sarum Missal, Oxford, 1916.]  This new system was no doubt primarily intended for the convenience of clerics celebrating the Low Mass, and reciting the Breviary in private, and ministering in large areas; and the Sacramentary ceased to be reproduced after the beginning of the thirteenth century.  But otherwise, for Solemn Mass and Divine Service in choir, the old books continued to be copied and to be in use, and after the middle of the fifteenth century they were printed; so that they are enumerated in mediaeval lists of things which parishioners are required to provide; [Procter and Frere, New History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 43.] and in England, when in 1549 the old ritual books were required to be called in and destroyed, the list of them includes, not only Missals, Breviaries, Manuals, Processionals and Ordinals, but also Antiphoners, Grayles, Legends; [See below [Edward VI].] but not Pontificals, since, as we shall see, they were still required.

      2.  “after the vse of the Churche of England.”  Hitherto there had been no such Use.  As in the rest of Western Europe, so in England, there had been several Uses.  The Preface of “The Book of the Common Prayer” mentions five varieties of Divine Service – those of Salisbury, Hereford, Bangor, York, Lincoln – and this list was not exhaustive.  Theoretically each church was supposed to follow the use of the metropolitan church of its province; [Gratian, Decretum, I, xii. 13; Lyndwood, Provinciale, ii. 3. e.] but this was only theory, and in practice each diocese and at least the greater churches within the diocese might have their own Use, so that by the middle of the sixteenth century there were something like 200 Missals, which it had been thought worth while to print with the names of the dioceses or provinces to which they appertained, and it is probable that these did not fully represent the extent of the existing diversity.  These “Uses” were not different rites or liturgical types, but only implied differences of detail, whether of word or action, in the observance of the Roman rite.  In all the structure and the text were approximately the same; but here and there at any point different formula, or formula differently placed, might occur.  In Breviaries, e.g., while the distribution of the Psalter was everywhere the same, there was considerable variety in the non-scriptural lessons of Mattins and a characteristic difference between Missals is found in the selection of the private prayers of the celebrant, added after the ninth century, in the sacristy, at the foot of the altar, and at the Offertory and the Communion. [For differences of Use in the thirteenth cent. see Durandus, Rationale, passim; for varieties in the Missals, J. W. Legg, Missale Westmonasteriense, iii. (H.B.S., 1897).]  If England was exceptional, it was in the wide adoption of the Use of Sarum.  This use was organized and codified in a Consuetudinary and an Ordinal early in the thirteenth century by, or at the instance of, Richard le Poer, dean and afterwards bishop, who transferred his seat from Old Sarum to New Sarum and began the building of the present cathedral church of Salisbury.  In the middle of the fourteenth century the books were revised in consequence of changes in the dignity of some feasts and the adoption of new ones, and this revision resulted in what was called the “New Use of Sarum”. [Frere, Use of Sarum, ii. p. x.]  But from the first the Use had affected other dioceses, and in course of time it was so widely adopted, in whole or in part, that in 1457 it could be said that the Ordinal of Salisbury was used by almost all the churches of England, Wales, and Ireland, and of many other places as well. [The Bull of Calixtus III in A. R. Malden, The Canonisation of St. Osmund, Salisb., 1901, p. 223; Lyndwood, Provinciale, ii. 3. e.]  This wide acceptance is illustrated by the large number of editions of the Sarum books which were printed, as contrasted with the fewness of those of the York and Hereford books; while the Bangor and Lincoln Uses were never printed. [For statistics of Sarum and York editions see Wordsworth and Littlehales, Old Service Books of the English Church, p. 13.  Only one edition each of the Hereford Breviary and Missal was issued.]  By reason probably of the suppression of the monasteries and the secularization of the monastic cathedral chapters and the consequent cessation of the public use of the Monastic Breviary, in 1543 the Convocation of Canterbury imposed the Sarum Breviary on the whole province. [Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 861.]

      The sort of uniformity then demanded by Acts of Uniformity, or even by the less rigid requirements of the Bull Quo primum of Pius IV in 1570, was unknown to the Middle Ages.  At the same time it is obvious that, unless he were very familiar with the books, no one passing from the area of one Use to that of another would be conscious of anything unexpected in what he heard in church, while he might well notice differences in what he saw, just as today a stranger in Lyons can scarcely fail to notice much that is unfamiliar in the local ceremonial which still survives.

Bibliography

Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chrétien, 5th ed., Paris (1925), ch. V (Eng. trans., Christian Worship, London, S. P. C. K., 1919).

Wordsworth and Littlehales, The Old Service Books of the English Church, London (1904).

Swete, Church Services and Service-books before the Reformation (revised by Maclean), London, S. P. C.K . (1930).

Frere, The Use of Sarum, Cambridge (1898, 190 x).

Wordsworth, “Sarum Use” in Ollard and Crosse, Dictionary of English Church History, London (1912).

Maskell, W., Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (3 vols. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1882).

II – Liturgical Reform on the Continent

      1.  In the sixteenth century there was widespread dissatisfaction with the liturgical books and desire for the reform of them.

      a. One form of this dissatisfaction can be dismissed in a few words.  Leo X and the humanists of the Roman Court affected to be offended by the “barbarism,” as they called it, of the Latinity of the Church, and it was proposed to recast the books in the language of the Augustan age.  The metrical hymns of the Breviary were so rewritten and were published in 1525 with a letter of Clement VII approving them and permitting their use.  As literary compositions they were excellent, and many of them were irreproachable; but the pagan allusions and phrasing of others made them intolerable.  The design went no further; and nothing is heard of it after the sack of the City in 1527. [P. Batiffol, Histoire du Bréviaire Romain, ch. v.]

      b. A much more serious, widespread, and effectual dissatisfaction was felt with the matter of the books.  Synod after synod up to the time of that of Trent, which secured the revised Breviary of 1568 and the Missal of 1570, asked for reform of the books and especially of the Breviary, and several bishops issued revised Breviaries for their own dioceses. [J. W. Legg, “Some local forms of Divine Service ... in the sixteenth century” in Transactions of St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society, vol. v.]  Two schemes of reform had the papal approval.  Of one of these – the attempt of Carafa, bishop of Chieti, and General of the Theatine Order, afterwards Pope Paul IV, to revise the Breviary and the Missal for his Order – little is known; [See Batiffol, op. cit., pp. 231 ff.] and nothing came of it, unless it influenced the revision of Pius V.  Much more important was the outcome of Clement VII’s commission to Francisco de Quiñones, General of the Franciscans, Cardinal of S. Croce, viz. the Breviarium Romanum nuper reformatum, [J. W. Legg, Breviarium Romanum a Francisco Cardinali Quignonio editum, Cambridge, 1888.] published in 1535 with a letter addressed to Clement’s successor, Paul III, and a letter of Paul himself allowing seculars to use it on obtaining a license from the Holy See.  In the preface, after defining what he conceives to be the original purpose of the Divine Office, Quiñones sets out the grounds of the current dissatisfaction with the Breviary: that the Scriptural lessons have been so much shortened that a book of the Bible is scarcely begun before it is done with; that practically only a few of the Psalms are recited, the rest being crowded out by the continual repetition of the festal Psalms; the illiterate and ill-chosen legends of the saints, wanting at once in authority and seriousness; and the difficulty of the complicated rules for adjusting the service to the varying date of Easter, so that it takes as long to find what is to be said as to say it when found.  Other grounds for criticism are indicated by the measures he has taken for reform, which he goes on to describe.  The result is that all antiphons, chapters, responds, preces, many of the hymns, and other things “which impede the reading of the Sacred Scripture” are suppressed; the Psalter is so distributed that the whole of it is to be recited, without repetition except of Venite, every week, three Psalms being assigned to each office, and one of the Old Testament canticles serving as the third Psalm at Lauds. Mattins, preceded by Pater noster, the Confiteor, and Absolution, is always of one nocturn only, with three lessons from Old Testament and New Testament read in course.  Only Passion, Holy and Easter weeks have proper second lessons, and festivals proper third lessons, which on Christmas and Easter day are derived from patristic homilies, on Saints’ days from the lives of the Saints.  Te Deum is used daily except in Advent and Lent, when Miserere takes its place; Quicunque vult is confined to Sundays, the Apostles’ Creed being substituted on weekdays.  The supplementary Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary is abolished, but on all unoccupied Saturdays the whole Service is of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the reconstructed Office of the Dead is confined to Nov. 2, and the Penitential Psalms and the Litany are said only on Ash Wednesday and Fridays in Lent.

      The new Breviary was immediately criticized sharply, and consequently a revised edition appeared a year later [J. W. Legg, The Second Recension of the Quignon Breviary, H.B.S., London, 1908, 1912.] in which the chief changes were that an antiphon is restored to each group of Psalms, or of Psalms and canticles; the third lesson at Mattins on Sundays and on all days in Advent and Lent is taken from a patristic homily; and Mattins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead are to be said on certain Fridays in Lent, and responds are restored to its Mattins.

      This Breviary was widely used by seculars and by some regulars, and in some churches in Spain it was used in choir, while it influenced some of the new diocesan breviaries already mentioned.  More than a hundred editions appeared in the next thirty years; but it was formally abolished by Pius V in the Bull Quod a nobis in 1568, and with the issue of his new breviary in the same year it ceased to have any use or significance, until apparently it suggested some of the new features of the Breviary of Pius X in 1912.

      2.  The continental Reformation gave rise to a variety of service books.

      Before noticing any of these, it will be well, for reasons that will appear further on, to recall a feature of mediaeval and later usage which from the ninth century onwards was developed on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, viz. the vernacular office attached to the sermon in the High Mass of Sundays and festivals, and called the “Prone” (pronaus).  This consisted of all or some of these items: bidding of intercessions for living and dead, the several biddings being followed by at least a silent Pater noster, and a collect said aloud by the preacher; a general confession and absolution; the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue, each with exposition and admonition; and notification of the feasts and fasts of the ensuing week, banns of marriage and ordination, and so on.  All was left as far as possible to the free improvisation of the preacher; but after a while models were suggested by individual writers and local forms tended to be more or less stereotyped, like those to be found in diocesan Rituals of France and Germany from the sixteenth century onwards. [See Migne, Rituel des Rituels, i. cols. 1–590.]  In England perhaps the Confession and Absolution never formed part of the Prone.  The intercession – the “Bidding of the Bedes” or “Bidding Prayer” – has been the most conspicuous and constant feature, though now it survives only in the old Universities and sporadically elsewhere.  As on the Continent, so here, the teaching of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer to the people, for which the Prone was the opportunity, has been repeatedly enforced from the Council of Cloveshoe (747) onwards; while Peckham’s constitution Ignorantia sacerdotum (1281) required also the inculcation of the Decalogue along with other things included in the continental Prones. [Wilkins, Concilia, ii, p. 54.]  The notifications have been so habitual that in 1549 it was unnecessary to direct them and they are only alluded to in the direction that banns of marriage “must be asked in the service time ... after the accustomed manner,” i.e., as was made explicit in 1661, before the sermon in the mass. [See further, Brightman, The English Rite, App. i.]

      There are four types of ritual produced by the continental Reformation, proceeding respectively from Wittenberg, Strassburg and Geneva, Zürich, and Cologne.  In all of these it may be said at the outset, and once for all, “every thing,” in Luther’s words, “that signifies oblation” is “repudiated,” as well as all prayer for the dead.

      a. For Wittenberg Luther issued a series of “booklets” from 1523 onwards.  In 1523 he published an Order of Baptism (Taufbüchlein), [Kleine Texte, Liturgische Texte IV, “Martin Luthers Von Ordnung Gottesdiensts, Taufbüchlein, Formula Missae et Communionis,” Bonn, 1909.] which is practically only a German version of the Latin Order, with one prayer (Deus patrum) entirely recast, except for the final clauses.  Three years later the Order was revised, the exorcisms being reduced to one, and the incidental ceremonies – salt, spittle, unction, the white garment, and the torch – being omitted.  In 1523 there appeared also the Formula Missae et Communionis, [Kleine Texte, Liturgische Texte IV, Bonn, 1909.] prescribing a reformed Latin Mass, in which the traditional form is retained as far as the Creed and the sermon, after which the offertory is reduced to the setting forth of the bread and the cup (which Luther “inclines” to use unmixed) without prayers: Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda, etc., and the first half of the Preface are followed by the Institution sung by the celebrant, and the Sanctus and Benedictus, with the elevation; Pater noster with its prelude; Pax Domini; communion in both kinds accompanied by Agnus Dei and the Communio; and lastly Quod ore sumpsimus and a benediction, either in the traditional form or in that of Num. 6:24–26.  For Divine Service, the Day Hours remain, with lessons and exposition in German.  In 1526 Luther issued Mass and Order of Divine Service in German (Deudsche Messe und ordnung Gottis diensts). [Ibid., V.]  Here metrical hymns are substituted for Introit, Gradual, and Agnus Dei; Gloria in excelsis is omitted; the Apostles’ takes the place of the Nicene Creed; after the sermon follows the intercession, or a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, belonging to the Prone, with an exhortation to communicants in place of Confession and Absolution; then, Sursum corda and Preface being omitted, the recital of the Institution from 1 Cor. 11, the Lord’s Prayer, communion and final thanksgiving.  For Divine Service, while Vespers, with a sermon after Magnificat, is retained on Sundays and festivals, in the morning the service consists of Psalms, a sermon on the Epistle, an anthem, Te Deum or Benedictus, the Lord’s Prayer and a Collect; while on weekdays there is a similar service in a mixture of Latin and German, morning and evening, intended chiefly for schoolboys.  In 1529, in view of the Turkish peril, Luther issued a Litany, first in Latin, afterwards in German; being the Roman Litany modified by the omission of the invocations of the saints and of twelve of the petitions, the addition of twenty-five new petitions, and a new series of Collects, of which the first is that of the Mass Pro tribulatione cordis, later adopted as the first collect of the English Litany.  Luther’s Litany is an admirable work, which need not fear comparison with what it was intended to displace.  What has been said is enough to indicate the character of Luther’s rites and it is needless to describe the Solemnization of Matrimony (Traubüchlein) of 1534 and the Ordination rite (Formula ordinandorum ministrorum verbi) of about 1537.  But the two Catechisms, the “Greater” and the “Short,” of 1529, [Wace and Buchheim, Luther’s Primary Works, pp. 1 ff.] in the form of instruction by means of question and answer on the four topics, the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments (Baptism and the Eucharist), with instruction on private confession, are to be noted, because they seem to have suggested the form taken by subsequent catechisms and manuals of popular instruction, like Calvin’s Catechism (1535), the Encheiridion of Cologne (1538), the “Bishops’ Book” and the “King’s Book” (1537 and 1543), and the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566).

      Luther’s ritual measures were intended at the outset for Wittenberg alone; but by the visitation of 1527, promoted by the Duke John Frederick, they were extended to the whole of Ernestine Saxony.  The other Protestant princes also undertook the ecclesiastical reorganization of their territories by means of visitations, the results of which were embodied in Church Orders (Kirchenordnungen) defining the doctrine, discipline and ritual of the several areas.  In general Luther’s rites were adopted; but some Orders were more conservative; some followed the Formula Missae, others the German Mass; very generally a large didactic and hortatory element was introduced; provision was made for ministrations not provided for by Luther – Confirmation by prayer and imposition of hands after instruction; Visitation of the Sick, and their Communion, generally after consecration in the sick chamber; and the Burial of the Dead, in which a new feature was the use of “In the midst of life” (Media vita), in Luther’s metrical version; and the service to be used when none intend to communicate, which is sometimes the Mass as far as the sermon, followed by the Litany.

      b. At Strassburg the Mass was first celebrated in German in Holy Week, 1524, after the following order: [F. Hubert, Die Strassburger liturgischen Ordnungen, Göttingen, 1900, pp. 57ff.] Confession with 1 Tim. 1:15, St. Mark 9:24 as an absolution; Introit, Kyrie, Gloria in excelsis, Epistle, Alleluia, Gospel, Sermon, and Nicene Creed; the setting forth of the elements, without prayer, but with an admonition to self-oblation (Rom. 12:1) suggested by Orate fratres; Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda, etc., Preface, Sanctus and Benedictus; a Canon consisting of intercession followed by commemoration of redemption and prayer for its fruits, Qui pridie and elevation of the chalice, and thanksgiving for forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Eucharist; the Lord’s Prayer with a Libera nos; Agnus Dei; Communion preceded by Domine Jesu Christe Fili Dei and followed by a hymn and Quod ore sumpsimus and the Blessing.  So far the traditional structure and much of the contents of the Mass in a German version are followed with considerable closeness; but almost immediately alteration began, and before the end of the year Bucer and his fellow divines describe [Ibid., p. lxix.] the service as consisting of Confession and Absolution, Psalm or Hymn, a short Prayer, Epistle with exposition, Decalogue or other song, Gospel, Sermon, Creed, Intercession with prayer for grace and commemoration of the Passion (no doubt, as in the subsequent service books, concluding with the Lord’s Prayer), Exhortation, the Institution (no longer in the form of Qui pridie addressed to God, but in that of a lesson from the Gospels or 1 Cor. 11 addressed to the people), Communion, Hymn or Psalm, short Prayer and Blessing.  Further, within a few years the Epistle has vanished, and a Psalm or Hymn may take the place of the Creed. [F. Hubert, Die Strassburger liturgischen Ordnungen, Göttingen, 1900, p. 97.]

      On his expulsion from Geneva in 1538 Calvin became chaplain of the French Reformed congregation in Strassburg, and adopted the local reformed rite with some modifications: (1) he divided the Decalogue in two, substituting 1–4 for the first Psalm, and keeping only 5–10 after the Prayer; (2) since he was only allowed to celebrate the Lord’s Supper once a month, he placed the Lord’s Prayer (in paraphrase) immediately after the intercessory paragraph of the German, and added the rest of this prayer after the Lord’s Prayer only when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated; (3) he placed the Creed or alternative Psalm, not after the Sermon, but after the paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, and then on Sundays, when the Lord’s Supper was not celebrated, finished the service with a Psalm and Blessing.  The order thus becomes: Confession and Absolution, Decalogue 1–4, Prayer, Decalogue 5–10, Prayer, Lesson and Sermon, Intercession [and further Prayer], Lord’s Prayer, Creed or Psalm, [Exhortation followed by reading of the Institution, Communion, and Thanksgiving], Psalm, and Blessing – the bracketed items being omitted when there was no celebration of the Lord’s Supper. [P. Brully, La manyere de faire prières aux églises francoyses, 1542.]

      When Calvin was recalled to Geneva in 1541 he found in use there a rite compiled by Farel and published at Neufchatel in 1533 – La maniere et fasson quon tient ... a la sainte cene, etc. [J. G. Baum, Première Liturgie des églises reformées de France, Strassburg, 1859.]  Here the ordinary service is a Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, Lesson, and Sermon, followed by the Decalogue, Confession and Absolution, Creed, Intercession, and Dismissal – obviously only the Sermon with its text and Prone.  At the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, a long exhortation is followed by Confession, Lord’s Prayer, and Creed; a second exhortation and the recital of the Institution; an instruction, warning and invitation; Communion; a final exhortation to thanksgiving, and a Blessing.  Calvin set these forms aside and substituted his own Strassburg service, modified by the omission of the Absolution (at the desire of the Genevese, but against his own wish), the substitution of a Psalm for Decalogue 1–4, and the omission of Decalogue 5–10 and of the alternative to the Creed; [B. J. Kidd, Documents of the Continental Reformation, p. 615.] and this became the type of Calvinistic usage everywhere.  It will be noticed that, although derived ultimately from the Mass, Calvin’s Strassburg service, apart from what belongs only to the Lord’s Supper, consists essentially of the items of the Prone – Confession and Absolution, Decalogue, Intercession, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Creed; and the same is true of the Genevan scheme except that the Decalogue has disappeared.

      c. At Zurich in 1523 Zwingli proposed a reform of the Mass. [In the De canone missae epicheiresis: see J. Smend, Die evangelischen deutschen Messen, Göttingen, 1896, p. 202.]  He would have the Epistle and Gospel read in German, Sequences suppressed and the music generally restrained, and the Offertory omitted: he supplies a new Canon in Renaissance Latin, [Ibid., p. 192.] with the Pater noster within it and the recital of the Institution after it, followed by an Invitation and the Communion, a Thanksgiving, Nunc dimittis and Blessing.  But this was only provisional, going only as far as the Council was as yet prepared to go.  The characteristic and permanent German rite appeared in Action oder Bruch des Nachtmals of 1525, [A. L. Richter, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, Weimar, 1846, i. p. 136; Kidd, Documents, p. 444.] in which, after a sermon and the preparation of a table set below the choir and furnished with a cloth and unleavened bread on wooden platters and wine in wooden cups, the Pastor makes the invocation, In the Name, etc., and recites a Collect while the congregation kneels.  A minister reads the Epistle (1 Cor. 11:20–29), and Gloria in excelsis is recited antiphonally by the ministers, the deacon reads the Gospel (St. John 6:47–63) and the ministers recite the Apostles’ Creed, again antiphonally.  The Pastor then invites the congregation “to the worthy celebration of the Supper,” and the Lord’s Prayer is said kneeling.  The Pastor prays that all may obediently and in faith give thanks for the benefit of redemption and live as becomes the children of God and thereby instruct the unbelieving, and then recites the record of the Institution from 1 Cor. 11.  The ministers, after themselves communicating, carry round the sacrament to the sitting congregation, each of whom breaks off a particle of the bread and gives a part of it to his neighbour and then partakes of the cup; and meanwhile St. John 13 ff. is read.  When all have communicated, they kneel and Ps. 113 is said antiphonally by the ministers: the Pastor makes a final exhortation, says a short thanksgiving and dismisses the congregation.  This rite is only to be used four times a year.  At other times, the service once more is only the Sermon with its Prone – Bidding Prayer, Lord’s Prayer before the Sermon, Commemoration of those departed in the preceding week, and Confession and Absolution; while it is further required that with the Sermon the people shall be instructed in the Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. [Richter, i. pp. 136, 171.  J. C. Werndly, Liturgia Tigurina or the Book of Common Prayers, London, 1693, is a translation of the whole Zurich rite of that date.]

      d. The Diet of Regensburg in 1541 required the prelates of the Empire to promote within their several jurisdictions a Christian ordering and reformation for the better administration of ecclesiastical affairs, and Hermann von Wied, archbishop-elector of Cologne, who had by this time taken the side of the Reformation, interpreting the decree in his own sense, invited Martin Bucer from Strassburg, and Philip Melanchthon from Wittenberg, with other divines, to effect the reformation of his diocese.  The outcome of their proposals was a Church Order, which was accepted by the lay estates of the Landtag at Bonn in 1543 and published under the title Einfaltigs bedencken warauff ein Christliche ... Reformation ... anzurichten seye, corrected and improved in a new edition in 1544, and with further changes issued in Latin in 1545 as Simplex ac pia deliberatio, etc. [Richter, ii. p. 30.  An English translation was published in 1547, and in a new ed. in 1548 with the title A Simple and Religious Consultatio, etc.]  Its ritual, which was the work of Bucer, is for the most part a combination of formula derived partly from various Lutheran Orders and partly from Strassburg, either directly or through the Order of Cassel (1539), which was either Bucer’s work or largely influenced by him.  It is marked throughout by the copiousness of its didactic and hortatory features.  By way of illustration, Baptism, Confirmation and the Lord’s Supper may be noticed.  (1) The Order of Baptism is in two parts, used respectively on two successive days.  On the first day, after a long exhortation, expanded from the Saxon and Brandenburg Orders, the renunciations and confession of faith are made in answer to a long catechism, and are followed by a further exhortation, signing with the cross, an exorcism and two of Luther’s prayers, and the Gospel (St. Mark 10:13–16), with a short exposition, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, a Psalm and a concluding Collect.  On the next day, after the Creed in the Mass, there follow an Epistle and a Gospel, and a long intercessory prayer (Cassel), the Baptism, another prayer from Luther’s Order and a hymn.  (2) Before Confirmation by prayer and the imposition of hands, the candidates are examined in a long catechism expanded from that of Cassel; the people are bidden to pray for them and their prayers are summed up in a long Collect (Cassel); and after the Confirmation a hymn follows.  (3) The Mass begins with the Strassburg Confession, one or other of the five “comfortable words” from the later edition of the Strassburg Mass, and a new Absolution; after which the traditional order is followed from the Introit to the Sermon, Alleluia and the Sequence being alternatives, and followed by a German hymn; after the Sermon follows the Strassburg Intercession; during the Creed, alms are collected; Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda, etc. introduce a fixed Preface, reminiscent of Eastern forms, and Sanctus and Benedictus are sung in Latin and German, followed by the Institution in the Lutheran form, the Lord’s Prayer, and Pax Domini; Agnus Dei and hymns accompany the Communion, which is followed by a Thanksgiving, either that of Brandenburg-Nürnberg or that of Luther’s German Mass, and the Aaronic Blessing.

      Hermann’s projected reformation came to nothing.  The chapter of Cologne protested and published a detailed criticism of the Order in Christliche and katholische Gegenberichtung, which also appeared in Latin as Antididagma seu christianae et catholicae religionis ... propugnatio; and little use was made of the Order.  Herrmann himself was suspended and forced to resign (1547).

Bibliography

Batiffol, Histoire du Bréviaire Romain, 3rd ed., Paris (1911), Eng. trans., London (1912).

Y. Brilioth, Eucharistic Faith and Practice, Evangelical and Catholic, London, S.P.C.K. (1930).

III – The Reign Of Henry VIII

      In the reign of Henry VIII, while no large measures of liturgical reconstruction were undertaken, some changes were effected, and some proposals and experiments were made which produced no practical result for the present.

      1.  Hitherto, as we have seen, [Previous section on the Continent.] the Bidding of the Bedes had not been a fixed formula, but churches had their own customary forms or the preacher improvised at his pleasure.  But in 1534, by way of advertising his new title and enforcing the recognition of it, Henry “tuned the pulpits” by dictating a fixed form for general use, in which the King is named, no longer after the spiritualty as head of the temporalty, but before the spiritualty as “being immediately next under God the only supreme head of this catholick church of England” or, in a revised form issued in 1536, “supreme head immediately under God of the spiritualty and temporalty of the same church.” [Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 783, 808.]

      2.  It was widely felt in this period that the traditional ceremonies were not understood, or were misunderstood, by the people.  The Council of Cologne in 1536, for example, enacted that the people should be instructed in the meaning of the ceremonies, and the Encheiridion, [See above.] issued by its authority to assist the clergy in their teaching, included expositions of the ceremonies incidental to the administration of the sacraments; and the Rituale Romanum of 1584 required the priest at the administration of the sacraments to expound the ceremonies as well as “the virtue, use and utility” of the sacraments themselves.  So in England, the 9th of the Ten Articles [Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, pp. 15 f.] of 1536 deals with rites and ceremonies and explains holy water, holy bread, the lights of Candlemas, the ashes of Ash Wednesday, etc., which are not to be cast away but to be continued, to put us in remembrance of the spiritual things they signify, while none of them has power to remit sin. [Cf. Chaucer, Parson’s Tale, 385 ff.]  This article is repeated in the exposition of the 4th Commandment in the Institution of a Christian man (“The Bishops’ Book”) of 1537. [Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, p. 147.]  In the following year, Henry, embarrassed by his political and ecclesiastical difficulties, was negotiating an alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany, and envoys were sent to England to attempt to reach a doctrinal agreement on the basis of the Augsburg Confession.  Such agreement as could be reached was formulated in the Thirteen Articles, [Cranmer, Miscellaneous Writings (Parker Soc. 1846), pp. 472 ff.] two of which (v and xi) are concerned with rites and ceremonies, and lay down the principles which should govern all “traditions” and observances of human institution – “stated feasts, fasts, prayers and the like” – which are as necessary to the order of the Church as laws are to that of the State, but need not be the same everywhere: they are not in themselves worship, but only expressions of “the fear of God, faith, love, and obedience,” which are the true worship; and if they do not conduce to true worship, or are contrary to the Word of God, or involve sin, or obscure the glory and benefits of Christ, they ought to be abolished.  It is all obvious .enough; the difficulty lies in the practical application of it, and over the application their conference broke down.  The Germans demanded the abolition of private masses and the restoration of the chalice to the people.  To this the King and the majority of the bishops would not consent and negotiations came to an end.  The articles were not printed, and their only importance is that they contributed to the Articles of Religion, and among them to the 34th “Of the Traditions of the Church,” and to the discourse “Of Ceremonies” in the Book of Common Prayer.  In 1540 two commissions of bishops were appointed, one to deal with doctrine, the other with ceremonies. [Dixon, Hist. of Ch. of Engl., ii. p. 233.]  The work of the first issued in A necessary doctrine and erudition of any Christian man (“The King’s Book”), 1543, an emended edition of the “Bishops’ Book,” and here the same treatment of ceremonies is repeated under the 4th Commandment. [Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, p. 310.  Also, with introduction by T. A. Lacey, The King’s Book (S.P.C.K. 1932).]  The work of the other commission is probably represented by the Ceremonies to be used in the Church, commonly called the “Rationale,” [C. S. Cobb, The Rationale of Ceremonial, Alcuin Club Collections, xviii, 1910.] which was not published at the time and led to no result.  Here again most of the 9th of the Ten Articles is reproduced, but the scope is enlarged to cover the traditional ceremonies generally, which, “all abuses and superstitions taken away,” are “with all reverent obedience to be observed”.  The document treats especially of Baptism – and here it is largely dependent on the Encheiridion of Cologne – and of the Mass, and only cursorily of some other rites.

      3.  In February 1542–3 the Convocation of Canterbury ordered that on “every Sunday and holy day throughout the year the curate of every parish church, after the Te Deum and Magnificat, should openly read to the people one chapter of the New Testament in English without exposition, and when the New Testament was read over, then to begin the Old.” [Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 863.]  This had been made possible by the issue of an authorized version of the Bible. [Ibid., pp. 770, 776.]  In 1534 the Convocation of Canterbury had petitioned the King for an authorized English translation; but nothing had been done, when in 1537 a version appeared purporting to be the work of “Thomas Matthew,” but in fact compiled by John Rogers from Tyndal’s and Coverdale’s versions of the Old Testament, and Tyndal’s of the New. Cranmer recognized this as the best translation hitherto made and urged Thomas Cromwell to obtain the royal license for its use. [Cranmer, Miscell. Writings, p. 344.]  This was granted, but Coverdale was commissioned to revise the translation, and his revision appeared as The Byble in Englyshe in 1539, and is known as the “Great Bible,” or, in later editions, to which Cranmer added a preface, as “Cranmer’s Bible”.  [A. W. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, ch. i.]  This became, and in respect of the Psalter and of some incidental quotations remains, the liturgical text of the Holy Scriptures.

      4.  In 1544 Henry was at war with both Scotland and France.  Accordingly, as was usual in such emergencies, he required processions to be made throughout the realm.  In a letter to Cranmer on June 18 [Cranmer, Miscell. Writings, p. 494 (of course written by Cranmer himself).] he recalls “the miserable state of all Christendom,” “plagued” as it is “with most cruel wars,” the remedy for which exceeds human power; recourse must be had, therefore, to the only source of help.  Hence he is resolved to have general processions in every parish and church; but since hitherto the people, partly for lack of instruction, partly because they do not understand the prayers, have come very slackly to processions, he has “set forth certain godly prayers and suffrages in our native English tongue” (the work, of course, of Cranmer himself), and sends them along with the letter to the Archbishop.  These “godly prayers” had already been twice printed in May under the title An exhortation unto prayer ... to be read to the people afore processyons.  Also a Letanie with the suffrages to be said or song in the tyme of the said processyons.  In the composition of the “Litany and Suffrages” Cranmer used the Sarum Processional, Luther’s Litany, and the Orthodox Greek Liturgy.  Of the Litany the invocations – those of the saints being reduced to three, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Angels, and of the Saints generally without individual names – and the deprecations are from the Sarum Litany with incidental additions, some of them from Luther; of the petitions only five are of Sarum, ten are in whole or in part from Luther, one and a part of a second from the Greek, and the rest are original, except the last (for repentance, etc.), which is from some other Latin source.  Of the Suffrages, the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect (from the Mass Pro tribulatione cordis, translated immediately from Luther) are no doubt to be said before the rood; the Anthem (Ps. 44:26, 1, 26, Gloria – the first anthem of the Sarum Rogation) and the verses “in time of war” (also from the Sarum Rogation) , to be sung during the entry into the choir; and finally, four of the Rogation prayers, the collect of Rogation Monday, and the so-called “Prayer of Chrysostome” from the Greek, to be said at the east end of the choir.  The whole is a superb work and a magnificent opening of the career of English as a liturgical language.  At the same time, while the massing of several petitions in a single verse is admirable from a literary point of view, from the practical and devotional point of view, if the Litany is not sung slowly, the rapid transition from one petition to another makes an unduly severe demand on the alertness of the attention.  The King’s letter had required that the supplication be “not for a month or two observed and after slenderly considered,” but that the people be so instructed and exhorted that they will gladly frequent it.  But apparently after a year the observance had become slack once more; for in August 1545 a new mandate was issued requiring that “the said processions be kept continually on the accustomed days” – that is, on Wednesdays and Fridays. [Crammer, Miscell. Writings, p. 495.]

      5.  Meanwhile Henry and Cranmer were projecting a complete English Processional.  On October 7, 1544, Cranmer writes to the King that “according to your highness commandment” he has translated certain processions to be used upon festival days: in some of the Latin processions he has altered divers words, some he has lengthened or shortened, some he has omitted, and for others he has substituted what he thinks better matter for the purpose; the result he refers to Henry’s judgment and correction and asks that he will have some solemn and devout music made for it, like that of the Litany, not “full of notes but, as near as may be, for every syllable a note,” as in Venite, the Canticles, Psalms and Versicles, Gloria in excelsis, etc.  The music of Salve festa dies he thinks “sober and distinct enough,” and he has attempted a verse translation to fit the music “for a proof, to see how English would do in song”; but since his verses lack “grace and facility” he would have the King “cause some other to make them again ... in more pleasant English and phrase.” [Cranmer, Miscell. Writings, p. 412.]  But here the matter ended and nothing more is heard for the present of an English Processional: on the contrary, about a year later a royal injunction required that processions in English, i.e. the Litany and Suffrages, should be sung in every parish church throughout England on every Sunday and festival, and none other, [Wriothesley’s Chronicle (Camden Soc.), i. p. 161.] and thus the Processional was set aside.  But the design was not quite wholly abandoned; for among “Certayne notes” at the end of the Book of 1549 is one to the effect that on Christmas, Easter, and Ascension days, Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday, instead of the Litany “mayebe vsed any parte of holye scripture hereafter to be certaynly limited and appoynted,” which, had the intention ever been carried out, would evidently have been in the shape of anthems proper to each day, like those of the procession before the Mattins of Easter Day.

      6.  Two projects of Henry’s last year, 1546, also came to nothing.  (a) The King was “moved” by Cranmer and other bishops to inhibit the wake and all-night bell-ringing of All Hallows’ Eve, the covering of images in Lent, and kneeling to the rood on Palm Sunday.  Henry consented and Cranmer drafted for the royal signature identical letters to himself and the Archbishop of York, inhibiting these observances, and also the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday. [Cranmer, Miscell. Writings, pp. 415 ff.]  But meanwhile Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, who was at the Imperial Court negotiating an alliance between Charles V, Francis I, and Henry, wrote that if any further innovations were made the negotiations would break down.  Whereupon Henry was “now otherwise resolved” and did not sign the letters.  (b) In the next reign Cranmer related to his secretary how that, after a banquet at Hampton Court, Henry, leaning on his own arm and that of the ambassador of the French King, to Cranmer’s astonishment, disclosed that the subject of his negotiations with the Frenchman was the common resolve of himself and Francis within six months not only utterly to “extirp the bishop of Rome and his usurped power out of both their realms,” but also “to change the Mass into a Communion,” and to induce the Emperor to do the same or else to break with him; and Henry “willed” the Archbishop “to pen a form thereof to be sent to the French King to consider of”; [Cranmer, Miscell. Writings, p. 415, note 5.] but the death of both princes forestalled the execution of a design which would have put an end to private masses, and so anticipated the rule of 1549 and the aspiration of the Council of Trent, [Session xxii. 6.] that there should be communicants at every mass.

      7.  In February 1541–2 Cranmer in Convocation had raised the question of correcting and emending the portuaries and missals, [Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 86.] and a year later he announced that it was the King’s will that all mass-books, antiphoners and portuises be newly examined and castigated from all mention of the pope’s name, all apocryphas and superstitious formula, and the names of all saints not mentioned in Scripture and other authentical doctors, and almost in the words of Quiñones, “the services should be made out of the Scriptures and other authentic doctors.” [Ibid., p. 863.]  A committee of two bishops and six of the Lower House of Convocation was appointed to deal with the matter – with no apparent result.  But in the course of the next five years, two schemes of a reformed Breviary were drawn up and are contained in a MS. for the most part in the handwriting of Ralph Morice, Cranmer’s secretary, with corrections and additions in Cranmer’s own hand.  The earlier of the two schemes, probably written between 1543 and 1547, includes all the Hours from Mattins to Compline, wholly in Latin.  The matter is derived almost entirely from the Sarum Breviary, but the structure is that of the second edition of Quiñones, with these exceptions: it retains the preces (i.e. Pater noster with versicles and responses) at Prime, None, and Compline, on certain days has a 4th Lesson at Mattins, omits all memoriae at Lauds and Vespers, the Penitential Psalms and the Office of the Dead.  Lauds and Vespers have a Lesson in place of the capitulum and all Lessons are from Holy Scripture, the commemorations of the saints, except on the three days after Christmas, being confined to the reading of their histories in place of the Martyrology after Prime. [J. W. Legg, Cranmer’s Liturgical Projects, H.B.S., London, 1915, pp. 115–53.]  In the later scheme, which may be later than the death of Henry VIII, in order to avoid unnecessary repetition and because in practice the eight offices were already recited in two groups, so that “we are accustomed to come together for prayer only twice a day,” the Divine Service is reduced to Mattins and Evensong.  A Prefatio is largely a paraphrase of that of Quiñones, and a canon prescribes a monthly in place of a weekly recitation of the Psalter, and the reading of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse once a year, and of the rest of the New Testament thrice.  Both offices begin with the Lord’s Prayer aloud in English, followed by Domine labia at Mattins and Deus in adiutorium at Evensong, with Gloria Patri and Alleluia, or Laus tibi from Septuagesima to Easter: then, at Mattins, hymn, three Psalms, Lord’s Prayer in English, three Lessons, and Te Deum; and on Sundays, great festivals and saints’ days, a fourth Lesson and Benedictus: (Venite is not said daily, but only in the ordinary course of the Psalter): at Evensong hymn, three Psalms, Lord’s Prayer in English, two Lessons, and Magnificat; and both offices end with the Collect of the day and Benedicamus with its response.  All Lessons are to be in English and to be read from the pulpit. [J. W. Legg, Cranmer’s Liturgical Projects, H.B.S., London, 1915, pp. 3–22.]

      Thus a long step has been taken in anticipation of the Book of 1549, in which the Preface and the rules for the recitation of the Psalter and the reading of Holy Scripture are translated from Cranmer’s second scheme, while the preces are those of the first scheme, derived, not from the Breviary, but from the shorter form found in the Bidding of the Bedes for the living, with Da pacem from Lauds of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Cor novum from Prime.

IV – The Reign of Edward VI

      Henry VIII died and Edward VI succeeded on Jan. 28, 1546–7.  With a king a precocious boy brought up in the “new learning” and hailed by Cranmer at his coronation as a “second Josiah,” “to see God truly worshipped,” [Cranmer, Misc. Writings, p. 127.] and with Somerset as Protector, already recognized as “well disposed to pious doctrine,” [Original Letters, p. 256.] and a Council of whom the majority were either disciples of the new learning or without definite convictions, [A. F. Pollard, England under Protector Somerset, p. 21.] Cranmer and the reform party were free to promote the changes they desired with the consent and cooperation of the Government; and accordingly new measures soon followed.

      In July appeared Certain Sermons or Homilies, appoynted by the Kynges Maiestie to be declared and redde, by all Parsones, Vicars, or Curates, every Sōday in their Churches, where thei haue cures, i.e. the “First Book of Homilies,” consisting of twelve sermons, four of them by Cranmer, the rest by various authors.  Such a publication had been proposed in Convocation, with Henry’s approval, in 1542, and some at least of the homilies had been written and presented to the Upper House of Convocation; but Henry had changed his mind, and once more nothing had happened for the present.

      In August was issued a series of royal Injunctions [Cardwell, Documentary Annals, i. pp. 4 ff.] and a general visitation of the kingdom was planned, to be carried out by visitors armed with articles of inquiry, who were also to distribute the Injunctions and the Book of Homilies.  Of these Injunctions, the 22nd requires that the Epistle and Gospel be read in English at the high mass and repeats the direction of 1543, that on Sundays and other holy days an English Lesson be read after Te Deum and Magnificat; by the 29th, under the plea that strife has arisen “by reason of fond courtesy and challenging of places in procession,” and in order that the people “may the more quietly hear that which is said or sung,” it is ordered that the Litany be recited before the high mass no longer in procession, but by priests and choir kneeling in the midst of the church; the 33rd requires that one of the Homilies be used every Sunday; the 37th orders that Prime and Hours, i.e. all the Hours but Mattins, Lauds, and Vespers, be omitted when there is a sermon; and the whole concludes with “The form of bidding the common prayers,” i.e. the Bidding of the Bedes, a modification of that of 1536, which had already appeared in 1540 or later in the preceding reign.

      These measures were taken by the Council without reference to Parliament or Convocation, which did not meet till November.  In Parliament two Bills were then introduced, the one providing for the restraint and punishment of revilers of the Sacrament of the Altar, the other for communion of the people in both kinds.  In the course of their passage through the Upper House the two Bills were combined into one, which was passed by the Lords on Dec. 10, ten bishops voting for it and five against, while eleven were absent; and it was finally passed by the Commons on Dec. 17.  Meanwhile on Nov. 25 the Lower House of Convocation had somewhat informally given its assent to communion in both kinds. [Gee and Hardy, Documents, p. 322; Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, pp. 74 f; Wilson, The Order of the Communion, pp. vii. ff.]

      After the prorogation of Parliament on Dec. 24 the Council resumed its arbitrary proceedings.

      In the 5th of the Homilies Cranmer had denounced holy bread, holy water, palms, candles, etc., as “papisticall superstitions and abuses”; and now, in Jan. 1547–8, the Council prohibited the use of candles, ashes, and palms at Candlemas, on Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday, the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, holy bread, and holy water. [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. pp. 35, 38.]

      In March appeared The Order of the Communion, [H. A. Wilson, The Order of the Communion, 1548, H.B.S., London, 1908.] being a form in English for communicating the people in both kinds, to be used in the Latin Mass after the priest’s communion, put forth, according to the royal proclamation prefixed to the book, in order to avoid “any vnsemely and vngodly diuersitie” in carrying out the provisions of the statute.  A letter of the Council to the bishops, requiring them to enforce the use of the Order, says that it was “agreed upon” “after long conference together” by “sundry of his majesty’s most grave and well learned prelates and other learned men in the Scripture.” [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. p. 61.]  Who these were is unknown, but no doubt Cranmer had a chief hand in the compilation; and the tenor of the Act of 1547 and certain coincidences of language between it and the Order suggest that the book was in some sort of existence before the Bill was drafted.  The Order consists of an exhortation, notifying on what day communion would be given, with instruction how to prepare for it, to be recited at least one day before the communion; an exhortation, warning, and invitation at the time of communion; a General Confession, about half of which is derived from that of Hermann von Wied’s Cologne Order, but avoids all that is characteristic of it; the general Absolution of the Breviary and the Missal, with the opening clauses of Hermann’s Absolution prefixed; four “Comfortable Words” (Zech. 1. 13), being St. Matt. 11:28 and three of Hermann’s alternative verses, themselves derived from the later editions of the Strassburg rite; the prayer “We do not presume,” every clause of which is a quotation, though the combination is original; the traditional words of administration, with “which was geuen for the” and “which was shed for the” inserted; and a blessing expanded from Phil. 4:7.  There is no suggestion in the Order that communion shall be given at every mass, even on Sundays and other holy days; but soon after it came into use there were already churches in which it was used at all masses; [Wilson, pp. xx, 29.] in which, in other words, private masses were no longer said.

      At the end of 1547 or the beginning of the next year questions on the Mass were circulated among the bishops, the ninth of which asked “whether in the Mass it were convenient to use such speech as the people may understand”; and the answers were almost all of them in the negative, and Cranmer himself only assents with the reservation “except in certain secret mysteries, whereof I doubt.” [Cranmer, Misc. Writings, p. 151.]  As early as April 1547 Compline had been sung in English in the King’s chapel; and in the Mass at the opening of Parliament in November Gloria in excelsis, Credo, and Agnus Dei were in English.  So, as we have seen, was the Order of the Communion, and by May 1548 vernacular Mattins, Mass, and Evensong were in use at St. Paul’s and other London churches. [Gasquet and Bishop, op. cit., p. 58; Wriothesley, Chron., i. p. 187, ii. p. 2.]  Of the text of these services nothing is known except from some manuscript choir books; and possibly a translation of the canon of the Mass made by Coverdale was intended for a practical purpose, or at any rate was so used. [Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 1563, vol. vi, pp. 362 ff. (ed. 1870); reprinted in The Anglican Missal (1921).]  As a result of these innovations, which the Government attempted to check, but apparently without success, [See the proclamation of Feb. 6, 1548; Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. p. 34, and the letter to preachers, May 13, ibid., p. 51.] “divers and sundry forms and fashions have been used in the Cathedral and Parish Churches of England and Wales, as well concerning the Mattens, or Morning Prayer, and the Evensong, as also concerning the holy Communion, commonly called the Masse, with divers and sundry Rites and Ceremonies concerning the same, and in the administration of other Sacraments in the Church.  And as the doers and executors of the said Rites and Ceremonies, in other form than of late years they have been used, were pleased therewith; so other not using the same Rites and Ceremonies, were thereby greatly offended.” [Act of Uniformity, 1549; Gee and Hardy, Documents, p. 358.  Cf. Orig. Lett., p 470.]

      In the proclamation prefixed to the Order of the Communion Edward is made to exhort his “loving subiectes” “with suche obedience and conformitie to receaue thys oure ordinaunce, and most godly direction, that we may be encouraged from time to tyme, further to trauell for the reformation and setting furthe of suche godly orders, as maye bee moste to godes glory, the edifiying of our subiectes, and for the aduauncemente of true religion.  Whiche thing, wee (by the healpe of God) mooste earnestly entend to bring to effecte”; and a rubric requires the Order to be used “without the variying of any other Rite or Ceremony in the Masse (until, other order shalbe prouided).”  The design so far disclosed issued a year later in the “First Book of Edward VI.”  Of the history of the compilation of the Book little is known.  According to a proclamation of Sept. 23, 1548, the King is “minding to see very shortly one uniform order throughout the realm,” “for which cause at this time certain bishops and notable learned men, by his highness’ commandment are congregate.”  [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. p. 59.]  This company, generally referred to as “the Windsor Commission,” according to the most probable account, consisted of Cranmer with six bishops and six divines, “some favouring the old, some the new learning,” [Cranmer, Misc. Writings, p. 450.] who were assembled at Chertsey Abbey before Sept. 9 and removed to Windsor about Sept. 22. [The best discussion of this matter is that of W. Page, “The first Book of Common Prayer and the Windsor Commission” in Church Quarterly Review, xcviii, April 1924.]  It is not to be supposed that the “commissioners” were the authors of the Book, but rather that it had already been drafted by Cranmer, with whatever assistance, and in fact had possibly provided the “Mass, Mattins, and Evensong and all divine service” already in use in the King’s chapel; which had been adopted in Oxford at Christ Church, and had been (June 4) urged by Somerset on Magdalen College; of which also Somerset on Sept. 4 had sent a copy to Cambridge and required it to be used in the University. [Wilson, The Order of the Communion, p. xx: Magdalen College, p. 88.]  The business of the company must have been rather to discuss, criticize, or emend.  The result was submitted to a meeting of bishops in October or November and there assented to. [Gasquet and Bishop, pp. 177 f.]  The Bill embodying the Book was read in the House of Lords on Dec. 14, and on the 15th began a four-days’ debate on the Mass and the Book, [For the report of this debate see ibid., pp. 397 ff.] in the course of which it emerged that at the meeting just mentioned some bishops had rather acquiesced in the book than positively approved of it, and this only on the understanding that “many things that are wanted in” it “should be treated of afterwards”; while one bishop asserted that in one respect the Book had been altered after it had been assented to. [Ibid., pp. 163 ff., 404 f.]  On Dec. 19 it was read in the Lower House and on Jan. 7 the Bill of Uniformity appeared in the Lords, where it was passed at the third reading on Jan. 15, ten of the bishops present voting for it, and eight, with three temporal peers, against it, while of the four bishops who voted by proxy, two were certainly in favour of the Bill, one against it, and it remains doubtful which way the fourth voted.  The Bill had been finally passed by both Houses by Jan. 21, and received the royal assent on March 14, 1548–9.  This First Act of Uniformity (2 & 3 Ed. VI c. 1) [Gee and Hardy, Documents, p. 358.] required that the Book should come into exclusive use at latest on Whitsunday, June 9, and imposed severe penalties on those of the clergy who failed to use it.  The official records of Convocation for this period were incomplete, and what there was of them perished in the great fire of 1666; but other evidence, if it is to be trusted, suggests that in some form or other the Book received the assent of Convocation. [See Procter and Frere, pp. 50 ff.; Dixon, iii. pp. 5 ff.; Gasquet and Bishop, ch. x.  Procter and Frere’s conclusion is that “the Prayer Book was held to have the assent of the bishops by their votes in the House of Lords, and was further submitted to the Lower Houses of Convocation, and won the assent of the clergy generally through their representatives there.”  Dixon, however, sums up: “Even if the first Prayer Book had been submitted to the Convocation of Canterbury ... it would still have lacked the consent of the northern province.  But it may be concluded that the first Book was not submitted to either Convocation.”  Gasquet and Bishop also conclude: “There can remain very little doubt that the Book was never submitted to Convocation at all.”]

      The contents and sources of THE booke of the common prayer and administracion of the Sacramentes and other rites and ceremonies of the Churche: after the vse of the Churche of England may be described summarily as follows.

      (1) The Preface is mostly translated from that of Cranmer’s second Breviary scheme, which itself reproduces a large part of that of Quiñones.  Except, therefore, for the last paragraph referring to the solution of doubts which may arise concerning the understanding and execution of the “thynges conteygned in this booke,” the Preface is concerned only with the Divine Service, the recitation of which in a note following is made obligatory only on ecclesiastics who “serue the congregacion.”  The orders how the Psalms and how the rest of Holy Scripture is appointed to be read are also translated from Cranmer’s second scheme.  The Calendar, with the tables of Psalms and Lessons, follows.  The Calendar contains no commemorations except those of the New Testament saints and All Saints, for which proper service is provided in the Book.  The table of Lessons follows the civil, not the ecclesiastical, year, Genesis, St. Matthew, and Romans all beginning on Jan. 2.  The Divine Service of Mattins and Evensong is a simplification of Cranmer’s second scheme.  Both offices are constructed on the same plan, except that Mattins has Venite before the Psalms of the day.  Both open with the Lord’s Prayer said by the officiant, no longer silently, but aloud, and the traditional introduction: then Psalms, Lesson, Canticle, Lesson, Canticle, Preces and three Collects. Mattins represents the old Mattins, Lauds, and Prime, deriving Venite and Te Deum from Mattins, Benedictus and the Collect of the day from Lauds, the Creed Quicunque vult (on six great festivals) from Prime, Preces from Lauds and Prime, the second Collect from Lauds of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the third Collect from Prime: Evensong is derived from Vespers and Compline, taking Magnificat and the Collect of the Day from Vespers, Nunc Dimittis, the Creed, and the third Collect from Compline, Preces from Vespers, and the second Collect from Vespers of the Blessed Virgin.

      (2) The second section concerns “The Supper of the Lorde, and the holy Communion, commonly called the Masse.”  It begins with the Introits, Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, to which are added references for the proper Psalms and Lessons of those days to which any are assigned.  The Introits are now whole Psalms, appropriate ones being chosen for festivals and for Ash Wednesday, the first two Sundays in Lent, Good Friday, and Easter Even, and, for the Sundays not included among these, short Psalms in the order of their occurrence in the Psalter.  The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels of the Temporale are for the most part those of the Sarum Missal, only nine of the Collects being new, while of the Epistles and Gospels, some are lengthened or shortened, and a few Epistles and two Gospels are changed.  Before the Mass of Easter Day is set the procession before Mattins from the Processional, but little changed.  In the Sanctorale fourteen of the Collects are new, replacing Collects which are generally rather jejune and monotonous petitions for the help of the merits and intercessions of the saints.  The structure of the Mass – at which the priest is to wear a plain alb with a vestment (chasuble, stole, and maniple) [For this interpretation of “vestment” see Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica, ed. 2, pp. 72–75.  But some authorities hold that the rubric enjoins the Lutheran practice of wearing the chasuble without stole or maniple.] or cope, and the other ministers albs and tunacles – remains unchanged; but of the private prayers of the ministers, all that remain are the Lord’s Prayer and Collect to be said during the singing of the Introit, while those at the Offertory, at the Communion, and at the end disappear, along with the Gradual and Alleluia or Tract and all allusion to incense or hand-washing.  The Sermon, which in England in recent centuries commonly followed the Offertorium, now follows the Creed, and, if in it the people have not been exhorted “to the worthy receyuing of the holy sacrament,” is itself followed by the exhortation from the Order of the Communion.  While the “Sentences,” which no longer, like the old Offertoria, relate to the day or season, but to almsgiving, are being sung, the people offer alms in a chest placed in the choir, and those intending to communicate remain in the choir.  The priest takes so much as is required of bread, in the form of unleavened wafers thicker than heretofore and without print, and wine mixed with water, and sets them on the altar, laying the bread on the corporal or the paten.  Then after “The Lord be with you,” “Lift up your hearts,” etc., follows the Preface, for which five propers are provided, those of Christmas and Pentecost new compositions, the language of which largely comes from the Necessary Doctrine.  The structure of the Canon is unaltered, except that one prayer is differently placed.  Te igitur and Memento are represented by the more detailed prayer “for the whole state of Christes churche,” in which some suggestions are adopted from Hermann’s prayer after the Sermon “for all estates of men and necessities of the Church”: Communicantes by the commemoration of the saints, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; after which follows the prayer for the dead, being Memento etiam removed from its former place and combined with the conclusion of the collect of the Mass “Of the Five Wounds”.  Hanc igitur is replaced by a commemoration of our Lord’s one oblation of Himself and His institution of the Eucharist as a “perpetual memory” of it.  For the beginning of Quam oblationem is substituted, in accord with a well-known interpretation of the paragraph, an invocation “with thy holy spirite and worde vouchsafe to † blesse and † sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne,” while the end of the paragraph is retained in the form “that they maye be” (not “become”) “vnto vs the bodye and bloud of thy moste derely beloued sonne.”  Qui pridie quam pateretur becomes “Who in the same nyghte that he was betrayed” (1 Cor. 11:23), and all the non-scriptural additions to the record of the Institution are removed, and elevation is forbidden.  The following paragraph corresponds to Vnde et memores and Supra quae: “Wherefore, O Lorde and heauenly father, accordyng to the Institution of thy derely beloued sonne, our sauioure Iesu Christe, we thy humble seruantes doe celebrate, and make here before thy diuine Maiestie, with these thy holy giftes, the memoriall whiche thy sonne hath willed vs to make: hauing in remembraunce his blessed passion, mightie resurrection, and glorious ascencion, renderynge vnto thee moste heartye thankes, for the innumerable benefites procured vnto vs by the same, entyerely desyringe,” continuing as in the present Book down to “benefites of his passion”.  One current interpretation of Supplices te understood “these things” (haec) to mean the mystical body on earth, and the prayer to ask that it may be united to the body on high.  The corresponding paragraph of the English is, therefore, the self-oblation of the Church, “oure selfe, oure soules, and bodyes” (Rom. 12:1), ending like the Latin, that “whosoeuer shalbee partakers of this holy Communion, maye woorthely receiue the most precious body and bloude of thy sonne Iesus Christe: and bee fulfilled with thy grace and heauenly benediction,” with the addition “and made one bodye with thy sonne Iesu Christ, that he maye dwell in them, and they in hym.”  Nobis quoque peccatoribus is replaced by the familiar “And although we be vnworthy” down to “duetie and seruice,” after which is inserted another current interpretation of Supplices te which makes “these things” to be the prayers of the Church: “and commaunde these our prayers and supplicacions, by the ministerye of thy holy Angels, to be brought vp into thy holy Tabernacle before the syght of thy diuine maiestie”; and, with the Latin, the canon ends with the clause “not waying our merites, but pardoning our offences,” and the doxology.  The Communion then begins with the Lord’s Prayer, preceded by a somewhat shortened prologue, and still said by the priest alone, except for the last clause, which as before is a response of the people.  There is no Libera nos.  Fraction and Commixture are omitted; but one of the final rubrics requires that each wafer shall be divided into at least two parts.  “The Peace of the Lord” is followed by a new feature, a sort of invitation compiled from 1 Cor. 5:7, 8; Heb. 10:10, 1 Pet. 2:24, and S. John 1:29.  Then comes the Order of the Communion from “You that do truely” down to the administration of the chalice, with little change except in the opening lines of the Absolution, which now take the shape they have retained ever since.  During the Communion the Agnus Dei is sung; and after the communion is sung or said one of a series of verses from the New Testament, “called the post-Communion”.  Since wafers had come into use, and consequently the Fraction, which the Agnus was originally intended to cover, took no appreciable time, the Agnus was sung during the priest’s communion, and in the absence of other communicants, the Communio, the proper anthem meant to be sung during the communion of the people, followed the priest’s communion, and therefore already by the thirteenth century was often called “postcommunio”. [Durandus, Rationale, iv. 56: cf. St. Thomas Aq., Summa III. lxxxiii. 4 c., “cantus post communionem”.  Gasquet and Bishop’s (p. 214) “This is a change of name” is therefore uncalled for; nor is it true that “This prayer [Postcommunio] is discarded in the new service,” except that it is fixed instead of being variable.]  The English “post-Communion,” therefore, corresponds to the old Communio.  This finished, there follows the Post-communion proper, no longer a collect varying with the day, but a fixed prayer of thanksgiving, which has remained as the last prayer in subsequent revisions of the Order of Holy Communion.  The whole Mass concludes with a Blessing, a combination of that of the Order of the Communion with a current traditional form.  Though the final benediction was in use on the Continent by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, [Bernold of Constance, Micrologus, 21; Durandus, Rationale, iv. 59.] and became a constant feature of the German Church Orders of the sixteenth century, it had not been common in England, though according to the Rationale it was “sometimes” given. [Ed. Cobb, p. 28, where see the editor’s note.]  After the blessing are a number of rubrics: allowing the omission of Gloria in excelsis, Creed, Homily, and Exhortation on weekdays and at celebrations for the sick: requiring that on Wednesdays and Fridays the Litany shall be used, and that on these days and other days when the people are accustomed to come to church, if there are no communicants, the priest shall vest in alb or surplice and cope, and say all of the Mass up to the Offertory, adding one or two of eight collects here provided, and the blessing; requiring some to communicate with the priest at every mass; regulating the character of the bread, and arranging that each of the households of the parish in turn shall at the Offertory every Sunday offer the cost of the bread and wine and send one of its members or a substitute to communicate, in order that the priest may not be prevented from celebrating; requiring everyone to resort to his parish church for divine service and then to communicate once a year at least and “receive all other sacraments and rites” appointed in the Book, on pain of excommunication or such other punishment as the ecclesiastical judge shall inflict; and lastly directing that the people receive the Sacrament of Christ’s body in their mouths, not in their hands.

      The Litany, which in some impressions is printed, not here, but after the Commination, is so far altered from that of 1544 that the invocations of the saints and three of the final prayers are omitted. It is only expressly directed to be used on Wednesdays and Fridays, but in “Certayne notes” at the end of the Book its use is implied on Sundays and Festivals.

      “The Administracion of Publyke Baptism” consists of the “Order for making a catechumen and the Rite of Baptising” of the Manual.  The former is greatly simplified.  The first three prayers, and the exorcism of the salt and its administration, are omitted, and the office begins, as it still does, with a short bidding, partly taken from the Albertine-Saxon Order of 1540, followed by Luther’s recast of the prayer Deus patrum which retains only the final clauses of the original.  The signing with the cross on brow and breast is accompanied by a formula combining suggestions from Hermann, the Encheiridion of Cologne, and the Rationale.  The exorcisms are reduced to one, composed of clauses collected from the several Latin exorcisms, and only one of the accompanying prayers, “Almighty and immortal God,” is retained.  The Gospel is not, as hitherto in England, from St. Mat. 19, but from St. Mark 10, adopted through the Hermann or the Albertine-Saxon Order and Luther from mediaeval German use.  “Effeta” and the touch with spittle (St. Mark 7:31 f.) are omitted.  Though it is not noticed in the Latin Manual, it appears from the Rationale that in practice the priest at this point exhorted those present to pray for the infant before the recitation of the Pater noster, etc.; accordingly, there follows the address, “Frendes you hear in this Gospell,” largely translated in part from the Albertine-Saxon Order, in part from the Latin of Hermann, and ending with the invitation to say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, which follow, with the thanksgiving and prayer, “Almightie and euerlasting God, heauenly father,’ an original composition in Hermann.  The signing of the right hand is omitted, and the priest immediately leads the catechumen into the church, reciting as he goes a new formula.  The “Rite of Baptising” opens with the admonition “Welbeloued frendes, ye haue brought,” translated from the Albertine-Saxon Order, as a prelude to the renunciations and the Confession of Faith; after which the Sarum Order is followed closely, with only the following changes.  The renunciation of the “pomps” of the devil is expanded into that of “the vayne pompe and glorye of the worlde” from the Encheiridion of Cologne, and all its “couetous desyres” from Hermann, and the third renunciation of the flesh is quite original.  The unction with oil is omitted.  The second paragraph of the Creed is recited, interrogatively, not in the abbreviated form of the Latin, but completely.  The traditional permission to use aspersion instead of immersion is added. [Durandus, Rationale, VI. lxxxiii. 12; Lyndwood, Provinciale, iii. 24, note c.]  The “whyte vesture, commonly called the Chrysome,” is put on before instead of after the unction with chrism; and the delivery of the torch is omitted.  The charge to the godparents and the following rubric cover the same ground as those of the Sarum Manual, but are fuller in their directions for the education of the child, and here a few lines are borrowed from Hermann.  The order “Of them that be baptised in private houses in tyme of necessitie” sets out at length what is only prescribed in general terms in the Sarum Manual; but whereas the Manual directs that, if the child survives, all that has been omitted shall be supplied, the English Office, fitly it might seem, omits the whole of the admission of the catechumen except the Gospel with the following address, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed; and then proceeds immediately to the renunciations and confession of faith, and the clothing with the chrysom, omits the unction, and finishes with Hermann’s “Almightie and euerlasting God, heauenly father,” which had been omitted after the recitation of the Creed.  All that precedes the Gospel –the direction to curates to warn their people not to baptize their children at home “without great cause and necessitie,” and to instruct them in such case to say the Lord’s Prayer and then to baptize with the right formula, and not to doubt the sufficiency of their action; and, when the child is brought to church, to inquire into the circumstance of such baptism, and if they are found satisfactory, formally to certify its validity – is translated from the Albertine-Saxon Order.  The rubric at the end of the Office is from the same source; but whereas, if the evidence of the witnesses leaves room for doubt as to what was said and done, the German rubric requires the child to be baptized absolutely, the English, in accord with traditional practice, prescribes the use of the conditional formula.  The “Blessing of the Font” which in the Manual is placed immediately before the “Rite of Baptising,” follows here in the new Book, to be used before any baptism after the water has been changed; and this is to be done once a month at least.  Except the first half of the final collect, which comes from the Roman consecration, the whole of the text is translated or paraphrased from the Mozarabic or old Spanish Liturgy, which had been printed for the use of those churches of Spain which still observed the ancient rite, by Cardinal Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, in 1500. [Migne, P.L., lxxxv. cols. 464 ff.]  “Confirmation wherin is conteined a Cathechisme for children” opens with a note to the effect that it is thought good that none hereafter shall be confirmed unless they can say the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the ten Commandments in English, and can answer the questions of the Catechism following: and this for three reasons.  First (in language largely borrowed from Hermann), that they being of age to have learned what was promised for them in Baptism, they may themselves openly before the Church ratify the promises and undertake to fulfill them.  Secondly, since confirmation is conferred that they may receive strength and defense against temptation, it is meet that it be conferred when children are of age that they begin to be in danger of falling into the temptations of the flesh, the world, and the devil.  And thirdly, because it is “agreable to the vsage of the churche in tymes past, wherby it was ordayned that confirmacion shoulde be ministered to them that were of perfecte age,” that they might be able openly to profess their faith and promise obedience.  This, of course, is a mistake, but a mistake which, if; as it seems, it arose from a misunderstanding of “ut ieiuni ad confirmationem veniant perfectae etatis,” quoted by the canonists from a Council of Orleans, [Burchard, Collect. can., iv. 60; Ivo, Decretum, i. 254; Gratian, Decretum, III. v. 6.] had already been made 250 years before in the Rationale of Durandus, with which no doubt the compilers of the Book were familiar. [Rationale, VI. lxxxiv. 8.]  The Catechism is exceptional in omitting any treatment of the Sacraments, and in leaving so much, through its extreme conciseness, to be developed by the catechist.  When it is most fully developed, in the exposition of the Commandments, nearly every word comes from the Necessary Doctrine.  In “Confirmacion” the only changes of any importance are that the sacrament is conferred by imposition of the hand and signing on the brow without unction, that the relative formulae are modified in consequence, and that part of Hermann’s Confirmation prayer is substituted for the collect Deus qui apostolis.  Rubrics are added requiring that curates shall catechize before evensong on some Sunday or holy day at least once in six weeks; that parents and school teachers shall send their children, servants, and apprentices to be catechized; and that on notice of confirmation being given by the bishop, curates shall bring or send in writing the names of the children who can say the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Commandments, and signify how many of them can say the Catechism; and a final rubric directs that none shall be admitted to communion until they are confirmed. [The corresponding Sarum rubric and Peckham’s constitution Confirmationis (Lyndwood, i. 6) make exception of those who are in the article of death or have been reasonably hindered from receiving Confirmation.]

      “The Forme of Solemnization of Matrimonie” is that of Sarum with the following alterations.  Into the opening address to the people is interpolated a passage on the institution and dignity of marriage and the three causes of its institution, which, though it only repeats the ordinary mediaeval treatment of the subject, [See Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale, “De luxuria” and “Remedia c. luxuriam”.] is perhaps derived immediately from the Encheiridion of Cologne (f. 200); while the clauses concerning the temper in which marriage should be taken in hand are from Tobit 6:17 and Hermann.  The challenge to the parties, “I require and charge you,” for which the Sarum rubric only gives a general direction, is mostly that of the York Manual.  The ring, which is now to be placed on the left hand, not the right, is not blessed, but the two blessings of it are combined in a single prayer for the parties, said after the imposition of the ring.  Then follows, what was new in England, “Those whome God hath joyned,” etc., and the declaration of the accomplished marriage, “Forasmuche as N. and N.,” etc., derived through Hermann from Luther.  The former of these occurred in some continental Rituals, and it is likely that it was in the Ritual which Luther used, as it was in that of Cologne. [See Encheiridion, f. 212.]  The short blessing, Ps. 68:28–30, preces, and collect, following the imposition of the ring, are omitted, and the Espousals, which have been “made,” not as heretofore at the door, but in the body of the church, end as heretofore with the blessing “God the father bless you †” etc.  For the procession into the choir, Ps. 67 is provided as an alternative to Ps. 128; the first two collects following the preces are combined into one, “O God of Abraham,” and the rest omitted; and the Nuptial Benediction, i.e. the two prayers “O merciful lorde” and “O God whiche by thy mightie power,” follows here and not after the Lord’s Prayer and the Fraction in the Mass; and there is no allusion to the venerable ceremony of the pallium, held over the bridegroom and the bride.  The first of these prayers is a combination of the substantial part of its original Latin, with the final clauses of that of the second; and the second itself is so far changed that it relates both to the man and the woman, and not, as hitherto, to the woman alone.  The final blessing is one of the collects omitted, as already noted, after the preces at the beginning of the Nuptials.  The Mass follows, apparently that of the day, not as hitherto that of the Holy Trinity, and a sermon is to be preached after the Gospel on “thoffice of man and wyfe” “according to holy scripture”; failing which a series of selections from the Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter is supplied to serve as a homily.

      In “The Order for the visitation of the sicke, and the Communion of the same,” whereas the Sarum rubric directs that the priest and his ministers shall recite the seven penitential Psalms, with the antiphon, “Remember not, Lord,” etc. on the way to the sick person’s house, the English provides that only the last of the penitentials, Ps. 143, with the antiphon, shall be used in the sick room. [The York Manual has Ps. 51 in the same place.]  The Sarum preces follow, with two of the collects.  The exhortation with the following rubrics, which still remain unaltered, except by the adjustment of the quotations from Heb. 12:6–10 to the text of the A.V., reproduce the topics of the Sarum exhortation – Patience, Faith, Charity, and (omitting Hope) Repentance.  But the first few lines of the Latin are expanded into a discourse of some length on the reasons for suffering patiently, in which some use is made of the Homily “On the fear of death” and of Hermann’s chapter “Of the cross and afflictions”; the curiously incomplete paraphrase of the Creed is replaced by the interrogative baptismal creed; the topic of Charity, including alms, restitution, and forgiveness, and, what is a new item, the duty of making a will and declaring debts for “the quietnesse of his executours” – this and the requirement of “a speciall confession” if the sick have any grave matter on his conscience, are treated of, no longer in the form of a prescribed exhortation, but in rubrical directions.  The Absolution, which is also to be used in all private confessions, opens, like that of the Order of the Communion, with the first clauses of Hermann’s form, and proceeds with the more essential clauses of the Sarum absolution, followed by one of the Sarum prayers, “O most mercifull God,” the ancient absolution at the time of death, already found in the Gelasian Sacramentary and the Frankish supplement; [Gelas. Sacr., i. 39 (Wilson, p. 66); Gregorian Sacr. (Wilson, p. 208).] and Ps. 71 with the antiphon “O Saviour of the world” with which the Sarum Office of extreme unction opens; and a new and stately benediction.  Unction is to be administered if the sick person desire it; but the form is drastically simplified.  In place of seven applications of the oil with the sign of the cross to as many parts of the body, each accompanied by a Psalm and a formula, there is now to be a single application, still crosswise, either on brow or breast, with a single longer formula, partly compiled of fragments from the opening prayer and the closing benediction and prayer, and the first of the Psalms (13) of the Latin.

      The preliminary rubrics of “The Communion of the sicke” reproduce in substance and sometimes in wording those of the Lutheran Order of Electoral Brandenburg (1540).  They remain practically unchanged in the present Book of Common Prayer, except that after the words “to communicate with him” a paragraph has been omitted directing that, if, on the day on which the sick desires to communicate, there is a celebration in church, the priest shall reserve so much of both kinds “as shall serue the sicke person, and so many as shall Communicate with him (if there be any),” and as soon as is convenient after the celebration shall go, and, after saying the Confession, the Absolution and the Comfortable words, shall communicate first the people present and then the sick person, and conclude with the thanksgiving.  The order of “The Celebration of the holy Communion for the sicke” at home is: Ps. 117 for Introit, the Kyries, each once “without any more repeticion”; the Sarum memorial Collect “for a sick person very near to death”; Heb. 12:5 for Epistle, and St. John 5:24 for Gospel; “The Lord be with you” and “Lifte up your hearts, etc., Vnto the ende of the Cannon.”  Further rubrics direct that the priest and the people present shall communicate before the sick; that the sick shall always desire some of his household or his neighbours to communicate with him, so modifying Hermann’s direction that both relatives and neighbours assist and communicate; and that if there are several sick persons to be communicated on the same day, the priest shall reserve at the first celebration and so communicate the rest.  The rubric concerning the sufficiency of spiritual communion for those who are prevented by any just impediment from receiving the sacrament does not suggest that “lack of Company to receive with him” is such an impediment.

      The obsequies of the Sarum Manual, including the “Commendation of Souls,” the “Service (Vespers, Mattins, and Lauds) of the Dead,” the Mass, and the “Burial of the Dead,” form an immensely long process, covering every moment and every movement from the house of the departed to the grave, and involving, along with much else, the recitation of something like fifty Psalms, and preces, i.e., Kyrieleison, etc., Pater noster, versicles, and a Collect, seven times repeated.  With admirable insight into the essential structure of the whole, the compilers of the Book of 1549 produced an office of great simplicity, sufficient, and of reasonable length, consisting of the Procession, the Burial, an Office of the Dead, and the Mass.  (1) The Office begins at the “Churche style,” the lychgate, and three anthems are provided for the procession to the church or the grave, the first (St. John 11:25 f.) being the antiphon to Benedictus in the Lauds of the Dead, the second (Job 19:25 ff.) the first responsory of the Mattins.  (2) At the grave while the body is being prepared for burial – and, as appears from the next rubric, is being laid in the grave – are said or sung “Manne that is borne,” being the opening of the 5th Lesson, Job 14:1–6, of the Mattins of the Dead; and “In the midst of life”.  This use of Media vita, hitherto the antiphon to Nunc dimittis in the Sarum Compline of the third and fourth weeks in Lent, is borrowed from the Lutheran Church Orders, in several of which and in Hermann it or Luther’s metrical version of it, “Mitten wir im leben sein,” is sung at or on the way to the grave.  The priest then begins the filling in of the grave by casting earth on the body, while saying the Sarum commendation and adding “in sure and certayne hope,” etc., and Phil. 3:21.  Meanwhile the grave is being filled in, and the anthem “I heard a voice” (Apoc. 14:13, the antiphon to Magnificat in the Vespers of the Dead) is added, evidently to allow time for the filling-in to be finished.  Two prayers follow – one of commendation, the other of thanksgiving, with petitions for the happy resurrection both of the dead and of ourselves – which seem to be original.  (3) The Office of the Dead, to be used either before or after the burial, consists of three Psalms: 116 (in the Latin Psalter 114 and 115, from the Vespers of the Dead and the Commendation of Souls respectively), 139 (from the Commendation), and 146 (from Vespers); a Lesson, 1 Cor. 15:20–58, of which Hermann suggests 20–28 or 50–58, as a Lesson at the grave; “Lord, have mercy,” etc., “Our Father,” and versicles and responses, from the Sarum “Burial of the Dead,” and a collect combining clauses from three of the prayers of the “Burial of the Dead” with the conclusion of the collect of the Mass “Of the Five Wounds”.  (4) “For the celebration of the holy communion when there is a Burial of the Dead” the Introit is Ps. 42, the Collect is a new one, of the same character as the two Collects following the burial; the Epistle, that of the Sarum Mass when the body is present, 1 Thess. 4:13–18, and the Gospel that of the Mass for the dead on Tuesdays, St. John 6:37–40.

      “The Ordre of the purificacion of weomen,” apart from the curiously ungrammatical invitation at the opening, is translated from the Sarum Order, omitting the second Psalm (128).  The aspersion with holy water is, of course, wanting; and since the Office is to be said, not before the church door, but “nygh vnto the quier doore,” the priest does not lead the woman into the church with the formula “Enter into the temple of God,” etc.

      The direction that the woman shall return the chrysom comes from the charge to the godparents at baptism; the “other offerings” are only “accustomed” and are not mentioned in the Manual; and the suggestion that the woman communicate “if there be a communion” is new.

      What is headed “The first daie of Lente commonly called Ashwednisdaye” is the penitential office of Ash Wednesday in the Sarum Missal.  The long discourse, including the commination, which in form is quite new, takes the place of the sermon there provided for; the seven penitential Psalms are reduced to one, Miserere, and the office proceeds unaltered down to the end of the first Collect.  The second Collect is woven together out of extracts from the following prayers; and the Anthem, “Turne thou vs,” is compiled from Jer. 31:18, Joel 2:12, 17; Hab. 3:2, and the first antiphon sung during the distribution of the ashes.

      The dissertation “Of Ceremonies Why some be abolished and some retayned,” which as we have seen [Ps. 146] owes something to the “Thirteen Articles” of 1538, follows here: and the Book ends with “Certayne notes for the more playne explicacion and decent ministracion of thinges, conteyned in thys book,” three of them regulating the vestments of the clergy elsewhere than at the altar and of bishops in all ministrations; another leaving the use or disuse of “kneeling, crossing, holding vp of handes, knocking vpon the Brest, and other gestures” to the prompting of “euery mans deuocyon”; and another allowing the use of any passage of Holy Scripture “hereafter to be certaynly limited and appoynted” instead of the Litany on five great feasts. [See above, section on Henry VIII.]

      The Book was issued early in March and was due to come into use three weeks after it was received and at latest on Whitsunday, June 9.  In the choir of St. Paul’s and in several other churches in London and elsewhere [Wriothesley’s Chron., ii. p. 8.] it was adopted at once, at the beginning of Lent; and if there was any justification for Somerset’s assertion, made in a letter to Reginald Pole on June 5, that “a form and rite of service” has been “published and divulged to as great a quiet as ever was in England and as gladly received of all parts,” [Pocock, Troubles connected with the Prayer Book of 1549, p. x.] it must have been widely adopted in the intervening three months.  At the same time it may be suspected that it was received by many rather as an installment of further changes to come than as a final settlement.  On the other hand, three weeks after Pentecost a royal letter to Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, complains that the Book “remaineth in many places of this our realm either not known at all, or not used, or at least, if it be used, very seldom, and that in such light and irreverent sort, as the people in many places either have heard nothing, or if they hear, they neither understand, nor have that spiritual delectation in the same, that to good Christians appertaineth.”  The blame is laid on the bishops, and Bonner is commanded to see to it that in his own diocese “the curates do their duties more often and in more reverend sort and the people be” induced by the advice and example of the bishop and his officers “to come with oftener and more devotion” to Common Prayer and Communion. [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. pp. 67 f.]  It was soon reported that some of the clergy were continuing to use the customary incidental ceremonies and gestures at the altar and elsewhere.  A new visitation was therefore projected and articles were drawn up revoking some of the Injunctions of 1547, among the rest that which sanctioned the two altar lights, and forbidding any to “counterfeit the popish Mass” by observing such ceremonies – some of which were only customary and unrecognized by the Missals, while others of them were expressly allowed by the Book itself – and inhibiting the celebration of more than one mass on other days than Christmas and Easter. [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. pp. 63 ff.]  Meanwhile, although the Book was used in the choir of St. Paul’s, in the chapels votive masses, like those of the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary, had been continued under the style of “the Apostles’ communion” and “our Lady’s communion,” and Bonner had been ordered by a royal letter to put them down. [Ibid., pp. 65 f.]  From a later letter it appears that the bishop himself “seldom or never” celebrated at St. Paul’s on festivals, as had been his custom, and he is required to resume his custom; [Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. Pratt, v. p. 729.] and on Sunday, Aug. 18, he “dyd the offes at Powlles both at the processyon and the comunione dyscretly and sadly.” [Grey Friars’ Chronicle, p. 62.]  Stephen Gardiner of Winchester had been in the Tower since 1547 and did not see the Book till it was brought to him in the middle of 1550 and his consent to it demanded, when he replied that “having deliberately seen” it, “although I would not have made it so my self, yet I find such things in it as satisfieth my Conscience, and therefore I will both execute it my self, and also see other my Parishioners to do it.” [Edward VI’s Journal, June 14, 1550.]  So much for those who accepted the Book either willingly or with reluctance, making the best they could of it.  On the other hand, there were those who received it with denunciation and resistance.  On the one side Hooper, Somerset’s chaplain, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, flatly refused to “communicate with the church in the administration of the supper” ... “if it be not corrected.” [Original Letters, p. 79.]  On the other hand, the rebellions of 1549, which were only put down by Somerset’s foreign mercenaries, if at bottom agrarian, were partly occasioned by the situation created by the new Book.  This is specially true of the rising in Devon and Cornwall, the first program of which demanded the restoration of the old rites and an indiscriminate return to the conditions of the latter years of Henry VIII. [Dixon, iii. pp. 56 ff.]

      When at the end of the year Somerset fell and went to the Tower, it was expected in some quarters that a return to the old rites would follow, “as though the setting forth of the said Book [of Common Prayer] had been the only act of the said duke.”  [Hooper, Orig. Letters, xxxvi.  In modern English, “of the said duke alone”.]  Consequently an order was issued on Christmas Day for the bringing in, defacement and abolition of the old ritual books, “the keping wherof shold be a let to the usage of the said Boke of Commenne Prayers,”  [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. pp. 73 ff.] and this was afterwards confirmed by an Act of Parliament (3 & 4 Ed. VI. c. 10): [Gibson, Cod. Jur. Eccl. Angl., xi. 1. p. 264.  Ed. 1761.] and further, complaint is made that “dyvers frowarde and obstinate persons do refuse to pay towards the fyndinge of bredde and wyne for the holy communion, according to the order prescribed in the saide boke”: it is required that they be admonished and that if they refuse compliance they be punished by suspension, excommunication and other censures of the Church.

      It has already been mentioned that the Pontificals are omitted from the list of books to be destroyed, partly perhaps because they were not the property of churches but of individual bishops, but certainly also because they were still needed for the rites of Ordination which were not provided for in the new Book.  This omission was now to be supplied.  An Act of Parliament (3 & 4 Ed. VI. c. 12) [Gibson, iv. 2, p. 100.] was passed on Jan. 31, 1549–50, which empowered the King to appoint six bishops and six others to prepare “a form and manner of making and consecrating of Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and other ministers of the Church.”  Since the work of the commission was done in a week, it is obvious that the new rites had already been compiled, no doubt again by Cranmer; and they were published in March.

      In the new rites the clause “and other ministers of the Church” is ignored, and the ordinations are confined to those of bishops, priests and deacons.  For these the structure of the traditional forms is preserved with considerable simplification.  In the old Roman rite, after the proclamation of their election, before the gospel of the Mass the Archdeacon presented those to be ordained deacon and presbyter, and when the Pope had called for the prayers of the people, the Litany was recited, followed by a collect.  Then the ordinations were conferred by a solemn prayer and the imposition of hands, the ordained were clothed in their characteristic vestments, and one of the new deacons sang the Gospel.  In the consecration of bishops the procedure was the same, except that they were vested in dalmatic, chasuble and shoes before being presented.  The Gallican procedure was essentially the same; but in addition, during the prayer and imposition of hands on a bishop two bishops held the Book of the Gospels open on his head, and after the ordination the hands of bishops and presbyters were anointed.  In the course of the Middle Ages the rites became complicated: the Roman and Gallican forms were conflated, so that the essential Gallican prayer followed the Roman, and the imposition of the Gospels and the unction were adopted generally.  The “tradition of the instruments,” which formerly belonged only to the Gallican ordination of the minor orders, was extended to presbyters and deacons.  Thus presbyters received the paten and chalice, deacons the Gospels; subdeacons, deacons and priests were clothed by the bishop in their characteristic vestments, each delivered with a verbal formula, and bishops were invested with staff, ring and miter.  Further, the imposition of hands on deacons and priests became detached from the prayer, and a second imposition with Accipe spiritum sanctum (St. John xx. 22) was added in the case of priests.  Veni creator was also inserted at some point in the ordination of bishops and priests.

      The principal differences between the old rite and the new are as follows: (1) Hitherto priests and deacons had been ordained in the course of the Mass of the Ember Vigil, which had no reference to ordinations: now there is provided a proper Introit for priests and bishops, a Collect for deacons and priests, and an Epistle and a Gospel for all three.  (2) Hitherto only bishops had been scrutinized in a series of questions: now such scrutiny is extended to priests and deacons.  (3) The long exhortation addressed to candidates for the priesthood seems to be a new feature in England.  (Such exhortations are not unknown, however, elsewhere: e.g. in the Pontificale secundum usum ecclesie Romanae, Venice, 1520, ff. 22–25, there are admonitions before ordination for all orders up to deacon, and for the priesthood there is one before ordination and another at the end of the Mass; and a second series is added for use after each ordination.)  (4) In the Pontificals the imposition of hands on deacons and priests is detached from the ordination prayer, and in the case of priests is repeated with Accipe spiritum sanctum: in the new rite, for deacons the imposition remains in the same relative position with a new imperative formula, Take thou authority, etc., and the prayer is, unhappily, transferred to the end of the Mass; for priests, the imposition of hands with “Receive the Holy Ghost,”’ etc., follows immediately the prayer, which is a new composition.  A consequence of the complication of the mediaeval rite had been uncertainty as to what was the essential form and matter of ordination, and it is obvious that the compilers of the English rite followed one of the several views, viz. that the essential form for the priesthood was Accipe spiritum sanctum.  Indeed, they so exclusively concentrated the action on this that the Prayer is rather for the Church in general than for the ordinands in particular.  The diaconate is also conferred by an imperative formula.  (5) Unctions and vestings and the delivery of miter and ring to the bishop are omitted, and priests receive neither wine nor paten, only the chalice with the bread and the Bible.

      A large contribution to the new English rite was made by the De ordinatione legitima ministrorum ecclesiae of Martin Butzer (Bucer)  [Scripta Anglicana, pp. 238 ff.] of Strassburg.  Driven out by the enforcement of the Interim of Augsburg (1548), he came to England and was the guest of Cranmer in the spring and summer of 1549, and no doubt wrote his work at Cranmer’s desire in view of the contemplated English forms of Ordination.  The work supplies a single form for what Bucer calls “the three orders of presbyters,” only suggesting that the procedure be more “lengthy and weighty” in the ordination of bishops than of priests, and of priests than of deacons.  Bucer’s order suggested the Introits, Epistles and Gospels of the ordination of priests and of bishops, three of the questions in the scrutiny of deacons, and three in that of bishops, the allocution to priests and the Prayer of their ordination; but unfortunately the English order omits the impressive clause praying for the gift to them of the Holy Ghost, and also the first half of the Prayer for the consecration of bishops.

      It is probable that the Book of 1549 was never satisfactory to Cranmer; that he regarded it as a temporary compromise, and only waited for further innovations.  In these years “Reformed” opinions, originating in Switzerland and Southern Germany, were being diffused in England.  There was an influx of continental refugees from the pressure which culminated in the Interim of 1548.  From Strassburg Peter Martyr was welcomed in 1548 and Bucer in 1549, and both were made Regius Professors of Divinity, the one in Oxford, the other in Cambridge.  There came also Valérand Pullain, a successor of Calvin in the pastorate of the French Reformed community in Strassburg, along with his congregation, and John Laski from Emden in Friesland with his congregation.  Englishmen who had been living abroad returned, Coverdale from the Rhenish Palatinate, Hooper from Zurich, and both these were made bishops.  The relaxation of the censorship made possible a flood of books and pamphlets written in England, most of them treating of the Eucharist and the Mass, and most of them scurrilous, besides the importation of foreign “reformed” works.  Besides Hermann’s Consultation, three other Service books were published in England: Pullain’s Liturgia Sacra, 1551, the rite of the French congregation of Strassburg, derived by Calvin with some little modification from the contemporary German rite of Strassburg; Laski’s Forma et ratio tota ecclesiastici Ministerij, in some respects at least derived from Guilbert Farel’s La manière et fasson, 1533, in use at Geneva before Calvin’s final settlement there in 1541; and The form of common prayer used in the churches of Geneva, 1550, being a translation by W. Huycke of Calvin’s Genevan rite, La forme des prières et chantz ecclésiastiques, 1542.  Further, the leading bishops of the old learning, Bonner of London, Gardiner of Winchester, Day of Chichester, Heath of Worcester, Tunstall of Durham, were being deprived by the Council.

      As early as 1548, Ferrar, bishop of St. Davids, two months after his consecration by the bishops of the “Windsor Commission” at Chertsey, preached at Paul’s Cross “not in hys abbet of a byshoppe, but lyke a prest, and he spake agayne all maner of thynges of the churche and the sacrament of the auter, and vestmentts, coppes, alterres, with alle other thynges.” [Grey Friars’ Chronicle of London, p. 57.] ... In the Lent of 1550 Hooper, preaching before the King, expressed his no doubt representative criticisms of the Book of 1549: he would have the magistrate “shut up the partition called the chancel,” and “turn the altars into tables”; “the memory of the dead” should be left out; “sitting” at communion “were best”; the priest “should give the bread, and not thrust it into the receiver’s mouth: for the breaking of the bread hath a great mystery in it of the passion of Christ ... therefore let the minister break the round bread” (as he is in fact directed to do in the Book): in Baptism whatever is added to “pure water,” “oil, salt, cross, lights, and such other,” should be “abolished”: in the Ordinal he “wonders” at the “oath by saints,” at the requirement that the candidates wear albs; and asks “where and of whom and when they have learned that he that is called to the ministry of God’s word should hold the bread and chalice in one hand and the book in the other.” [Early Writings of John Hooper, Parker Society, pp. 440, 479, 488, 491, 533ff.  Cf. Orig. Letters, i. p. 51.]  In the summer Ridley was carrying things with a high hand, and in spite of the Book ordered the destruction of altars throughout the diocese of London.  In this he was supported by Northumberland and the Council, who then proceeded to order the same throughout the kingdom.  In this year too Bucer was invited to express his judgment on the Book of Common Prayer, and in response he wrote his Censura super libro sacrorum, seu ordinationis Ecclesiae atque ministerii ecclesiastici in regno Angliae, [Scripta Anglicana, Basel, 1577, pp. 456 ff.] which he presented to Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely, on Jan. 5, 1551.  The Censura is a review of the whole Book, and while this expresses a keen appreciation of its merits as a whole, it criticizes it in detail.  It appears from this that revision has been already in some sort begun, since he implores that some alterations which appear in the Book of 1552 shall not be made.  Some of the criticisms are merely prosaic and of no importance.  For the rest: Bucer would further limit the number of holy days; he deprecates the position of the officiant at Divine Service “ in the quire”: as to the Mass, it s to be noticed that he makes no criticism of the structure of it in general, nor of the canon in particular; but he would abolish the vestments and the gestures allowed by “Certayne notes” at the end of the Book; he would have the Confession and “We do not presume” said by the people with or after the priest; he would eliminate the idea of consecration and consequently also the direction that only “so much bread and wine” should be set forth at the Offertory “as shall suffice for” the communicants, the invocation of the Holy Spirit and Word, the sign of the cross and the taking of the paten and chalice into the priest’s hands; he deprecates the exclusive use of wafer bread, the delivery of the Sacrament into the mouth of the communicant, the presence of non-communicants at the Mass, the use of two Masses at Christmas and Easter, [His dislike of this provision is based on the fact that it implies that there will be more communicants on these days than on others, whereas properly all should communicate every Sunday.] and of the “half-mass” when none have signified their intention to communicate, and the permission for a household whose turn it is to “offer” for the charges of the Communion and to provide a communicant to send a substitute to offer and communicate in its stead.  In Baptism he would not have the rite begun at the church door, and would eliminate the exorcism, the benediction of the font, the unction and the chrysom; he would have the catechism enlarged and more frequent catechizing, and would impose new conditions for admission to Confirmation; he desires the abolition of the unction of the sick and prayers for the departed at their burial, the substitution of maledictions against violators of the decalogue for the existing series in the Commination, and its use four times a year; he would have more strict inquiries concerning candidates for ordination.  For many of the passages which he dislikes he suggests a new text.  Peter Martyr also wrote a criticism on the basis of an inadequate Latin version of the Book, but on learning more of it from the Censura he adopted Bucer’s criticisms, but added a further objection to communicating the sick in the reserved sacrament without a repetition of “the words” (of Institution) in the sick person’s presence; [Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, App. lxi.] and also he made a further report to Cranmer which is no longer extant.

      In a letter to Bucer dated Jan. 10, 1550–1, Peter Martyr expresses his satisfaction that both of them had had an opportunity of admonishing the bishops and relates that he had been told by Cranmer that at a meeting of the bishops it had been decided that many changes should be made, and further he is cheered by hearing from Cheke that if the bishops will not make the desirable changes the King will do it himself! [Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, App. lxi.] Nothing is known of this process of revision except that the King caused the “ordre of commō seruice, entituled, The boke of common prayer, to be faythfully & godly perused, explaned, & made fully perfect” [Act of Uniformity, 5 & 6 Edw. VI. cap. i.] by “a great many bishops and others of the best learned within this realm appointed” (of course by Northumberland and the Council) “for that purpose,” and that Cranmer, Ridley and Peter Martyr were among them. [Cranmer’s Letter of Oct. 7, 5552: Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book, p. 225.]  It is true that the Dean of Gloucester has contended [Ibid., pp. 40 ff.] that the well-known letter of Guest’s, [Ibid., pp. 215 ff.] commonly supposed to refer to the revision of 1559, really belongs to that of 1551.  If this is so, then it follows that some important person or persons were anxious to restore some ceremonies that had vanished and to retain some things which it was proposed to abolish: also that at some stage the draft book required that those not intending to communicate should be dismissed [Bucer notes (Censura, 27) that in 1550 some priests “dismissed” the non-communicants after the sermon.] before the Creed, and either was silent as to kneeling at Communion or explicitly allowed either standing or kneeling (not sitting) according “to every man’s choice”.

      Parliament met on Jan. 23, 1551–2. [{At this point Dr. Brightman’s work was interrupted by his death on March 35, 1932.  What follows is by the Rev. K. D. Mackenzie, who also corrected the proofs of Dr. Brightman’s MS. – ED.}]

      Convocation also met on the following day.  Heylin states that he can find no record of their proceedings, but it is thought by Procter and Frere [P. 286.] that the debates which he assigns to the meeting of the previous year belong in truth to the assembly of 1552.  These debates, however, were only concerned with questions of the Calendar and of the words of administration of the Communion, and in any case it is certain that the Lower House never gave any sanction to the liturgical changes which were now enacted. [Dixon, iv. p. 73.]

      Parliament, however, made little difficulty about passing the statute which made the new Book part of the law of the land.  Aldrich and Thirlby voted against it, as they had done against the former Book: but the natural leaders of opposition, Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day, Tunstall, were all in prison, and the Second Act of Uniformity had passed through both Houses by April 14. [Gee and Hardy, Documents, No. lxxi.]

      It describes the Book of 1549 as “ a verye Godlye ordre ... agreable to the woorde of God and the Primatiue Churche, verye coumfortable to all good people,” but complains that “a greate noumbre of people in diverse parts of this Realme ... doe wilfully, and damnablye before almightie God, absteyn and refuse to come to theyr parishe Churches.”  If this can be assumed to be honest and coherent, it would seem that the recusants referred to are rather the “reformed” extremists than those of the old learning, since almost all the alterations made in the Second Book are entirely in the “reformed” direction.  But if the main motive of the Book was to reconcile extremists in one direction, it certainly appears that there was also a deliberate motive of making impossible the position of conservatives like Gardiner.  The very things which seemed to him to make the First Book tolerable are made to disappear in the Second.  Such are the statement that “the whole body of our sauioure Jesu Christe” is received in each fragment of the Sacrament; the close association of intercession for the Church with the actual memorial of Christ’s death; and the prayer that the bread and wine maye be vnto vs the bodye and bloud” of Christ.

      The spirit of the new Book is indicated by a significant change of title.  While the First Book was styled the “booke of the common prayer and administracion of the Sacramentes, and other rites and ceremonies of the Churche: after the use of the Churche of England,” the Second drops the allusion to “the Churche” and claims no more than to regulate such administration “in the Churche of England.”

      For the rest, the effect of the revision may be summarized as follows: – The recitation of the Divine Service is now made obligatory on all priests and deacons (preaching and study being no longer an excuse).  The titles of the offices are changed to “Morning” and “Evening Prayer”.  They are to be recited no longer necessarily in choir, but where they may best be heard.  The Introduction to these services appears for the first time.  The Alleluia and procession at Easter are omitted, the latter reappearing in the form of a substitute for Venite.  Psalms alternative to the Gospel canticles are inserted.  “The Lorde be wyth you,” and “Let vs praye” appear in a novel place before “Lord, haue mercy,” instead of before the Collect.

      The Communion Service has a new title, “The Order for the administracion of the Lordes Supper or holye Communion”; and the word “Masse” disappears.  “Table” is substituted for “Altar”; and it is to stand “in the bodye of the Churche, or in the chauncell”.  The celebrant (still called “the Priest”) is to stand “at the north-syde”.  The Introit, “Glory be to thee,” before the Gospel, Osanna, Benedictus, “the peace of the Lorde,” “Christ our Pascal lābe,” Agnus Dei and the post-communion sentences are omitted.  Nothing is now to be sung except the Epistle, the Gospel, the Creed, and the Gloria in excelsis.  The ninefold “Lord, haue mercie” is expanded and appears as a series of responses after each of the Ten Commandments, which are now to be rehearsed before the Collects.  Gloria in excelsis is transferred to the end of the service.  Unleavened wafers are no longer required.  A new exhortation is added containing a rebuke to those who assist without communicating, which is described as being an even greater fault than that of being altogether absent.  But by far the most serious change, and one which entirely altered the whole tone of the rite, was the breaking up of the canon in such a way as to obscure its character as one continuous act of memorial, springing from the Preface and Sanctus and culminating with the Lord’s Prayer and Communion.  The Prayer for the Church, somewhat altered by the omission of all mention both of the saints and the rest of the departed, is now brought to a position immediately after the almsgiving (which is all that is left of the ancient offertory): [All mention of the preparation of the gifts is omitted.  Nothing is said about the adding of water to the chalice because nothing is said about the contents of the chalice at all.  If any alteration was intended, a direction for it might be expected among the final rubrics, where an alteration in the character of the bread is actually commanded.] then follow the Exhortations with Confession, Absolution and Comfortable Words: the connection between the Preface and the Consecration is obliterated by the insertion of “We doe not presume” between the Sanctus and the Prayer of Consecration: Communion now is to come immediately after Consecration, and the latter part of the canon (reduced by the omission of the anamnesis, of the petitions no longer appropriate after Communion, and of the final petition for the acceptance of our prayers “by the ministerye of the holy angels”) is postponed till after the Communion, where it now appears, strangely, as an alternative to the thanksgiving.  The Lord’s Prayer also is to be said after, instead of before, Communion.  In the actual Prayer of Consecration the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the crossings and manual acts, are all removed.  The words of administration of both kinds, now described as “the bread” and “the cuppe,” are entirely altered, the second part of the words as they stand in the 1661 Book being substituted for the first, which had been the 1549 formula and was almost a direct inheritance from the Sarum rite.  The species of bread is now delivered into the hand, no longer into the mouth, and communion is required of the laity three times, instead of once, in the year.  The first Mass of Christmas and the second of Easter are omitted.  Daily Mass seems to be no longer expected, even in Cathedrals; though the rubric governing the use of the Proper Prefaces no doubt implies the possibility of a Communion on days for which no special Epistle and Gospel is provided.  Whereas in the 1549 Book the first half of the service was to be said on Wednesdays and Fridays (if there were none to communicate with the priest), now the same regulation is transferred to holy days.

      In baptism the rite is no longer begun at the church door, so that the distinction between the making of a catechumen and the actual Baptism disappears: the Exorcism, the recitation of Pater and Creed, the Benediction of the water, the chrysom, and the unction are all abolished; the signing with the cross is postponed till after Baptism; [There were numerous crossings in the Sarum rite.  Of these the 1549 rite retained the first only, which belonged to the admission of the candidate to the status of a catechumen.  The post-baptismal crossing in the Sarum rite was accompanied with chrismation, as though it were a kind of anticipation of Confirmation; but the 1552 Book, omitting the chrismation, associated the crossing with the novel idea of receiving the child “into the congregacion of Christes flocke”.] and, apart from exhortations, the service ends with the Lord’s Prayer and a thanksgiving.  The minister is instructed to command that the children be brought to Confirmation as soon as they are sufficiently instructed.  In Confirmation the sign of the cross, which in 1549 accompanied the imposition of hands, is omitted, and a prayer is substituted for “I signe thee with the signe of the crosse, and lay my hand vpon thee.”  At the Burial of the Dead no part of the service is now to be said in church (although, apparently, if there are singing clerks the body may be conducted by them and the priest unto, but not into, the church): the Office of the Dead (see (3), p. 166) is now to be said at the grave, but without the psalms and preces.  All prayers for the dead disappear; so also does the Mass, except indeed that “The Collect” remains, but without any indication of the use to be made of it.  “The Purificacion of Women” becomes “The Thankes geving of Women after Childe Birth, commonly called The Churchynge of Women.”  The order for the return of the chrysom naturally disappears.  The title “A commination” now appears for the first time as the description of the Ash Wednesday service of 1549, but the service is now to be used “dyuers tymes in the yere”.  “Certayne notes” disappear, their place being taken by the rubric, now printed before Morning Prayer, forbidding the use of Alb, Vestment or Cope.  In the Ordinations, the vestments and the tradition of the chalice to priests and of the staff to bishops are suppressed, and in the consecration of bishops the Bible is to be “delivered” to the new bishop, and no longer laid upon his neck.  The form of the oaths is changed to avoid invoking the help of the saints and of the Gospel. [The earlier form of the oath was one of the stumbling-blocks which made Hooper scruple to accept episcopal consecration (Original Letters, p. 81).  Micronius states that at his second appearance before the Council on July 20, 1550, in consequence of Hooper’s arguments the young King struck out the incriminated words with his own hand (ibid., p. 566 f.).]  Signing with the cross, except after Baptism, and The Lord be with you, except in Morning and Evening Prayer, and Confirmation, are eliminated.

      It will be seen that many of these alterations are the result of Bucer’s criticisms, or at least in harmony with them.  But of the outstanding features of the new Book, the dislocation of the canon and the new words of administration, the one had no foundation in the Censura and the other was definitely deprecated, and about one-third of Bucer’s criticisms are ignored.

      The penitential introduction to Morning and Evening Prayer may have been suggested by a somewhat similar arrangement in Pullain’s Liturgia sacra or Laski’s Forma et ratio.

      The use of the Decalogue in the Mass has a longer and more interesting history.  There was a traditional class of hymns with Kyrieleison as a refrain.  Following such a tradition Luther made the Ten Commandments into a metrical paraphrase (Dys synd die heylgen zehn gebet) with the refrain Kyrioleys after each, and Coverdale translated it into English.  There was thus a suggestion already near at hand for a means of retaining the traditional Kyrie while neutralizing the apparent vanity of its repetitions.  But there was also, as we have seen, a tradition, especially in England, connecting the Decalogue with Mass, not indeed as part of the rite, but as one element of the vernacular and informal office called the Prone.  The German Lutheran Kirchenordnungen and the French and Swiss Reformed services all look as though they were suggested by this office.  It was therefore not unnatural that they should include the Decalogue, nor that Cranmer, under the double influence of English tradition and the contemporary practice of highly respected foreign reformers, should have hit upon the idea of combining the Decalogue with Kyrieleison as a regular portion of the new rite. [See Brightman, The English Rite, pp. clv. ff.]

      As we have seen, the new Book had no ecclesiastical authority.  But in the form in which it was finally published it had not even the authority of Parliament.  It was discovered through the violent propaganda of John Knox that the direction to kneel for the reception of Communion was in fact an innovation!  The Book of 1549 had made no mention of posture, though, of course, kneeling was taken for granted.  The extreme party among the reformers made an uproar, and at Berwick-on-Tweed at Knox’s behest the practice of sitting was actually introduced. [Original Letters, p. 591.] The Council, under the pretext of having discovered printer’s errors, suspended the publication of the Book (Sept. 27, 1552) and directed Cranmer to reconsider the question.  Cranmer (Oct. 7) expressed himself as ready to obey the Royal command in the matter, but protested vigorously against the alteration of what had been settled by Parliament with the King’s assent, and argued against the contention of Knox and his associates. [State Papers of Edw. VI: Domestic XV: No. 15.]  Time was pressing; and the upshot was that on Oct. 27, five days before the Book was to come into use, Goodrich, bishop of Ely and Lord Chancellor, was ordered by the Council “to have joined unto the Book of Common Prayer lately set forth a certain declaration signed by the King’s Majesty’ touching the kneeling at the receiving of the Communion.” [Dixon, iii. p. 483.]  This is the so-called “Black rubric,” which declared that by the requirement to kneel “it is not mente ... that any adoracion is doone, or oughte to bee doone, eyther vnto the Sacramentall bread or wyne, there bodelye receyued, or vnto anye reall and essenciall presence there beeyng of Chrystes naturall fleshe and bloude.”

V – The Reign of Mary

      Edward VI died on July 6, 1553.  He was buried by Cranmer with the English rite on Aug. 8, while at the same time Gardiner celebrated a Requiem Mass of the Latin rite in the presence of the Queen and the Council.  For a few months the two rites subsisted side by side, until Dec. 20, when by Mary’s first Act of Repeal (passed in the autumn) such divine service and administration of the sacraments as were most commonly used “in the last year” of Henry VIII were to be restored.  The effect of this was to revert in all things to the traditional order, except that the Dedication festival of all churches would be kept on the first Sunday in October, an English lesson would be read at Mattins and Evensong on Sundays and holydays, and the English Litany would remain in use.  On March 4, 1553–4, the Processional was restored and the English Litany therefore abolished by implication.

      For the history of the continuation of the English rite we must cross the Channel to Frankfort, where was assembled the largest body of English refugees.  The authorities were willing to permit the English congregation to share a church with the French Protestants provided they would change their rite so as to bring it into closer conformity with the French service.  On this understanding John Knox undertook the pastoral charge of the congregation, and proceeded to conduct services which seem to have had strangely little resemblance to anything in the Book of Common Prayer.  The rite consisted of a new form of confession, a metrical psalm, a prayer for the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the sermon, a “generall praier,” the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, another metrical psalm, and a blessing.  Such a service proved too much for many even of the refugees; and a period of controversy ensued.  In the course of it Knox and others sent off to the great Calvin a satirical account of the “huge volume of ceremonies,” as the 1552 Book appeared to be in the eyes of the English extremists, “to elicit,” as Procter and Frere say, “the expression of his disapproval”. [See A Brieff discours off the troubles begonne at Franckford ... M.D. LXXV.  Reprinted 1846.  Pp. 44 ff. (ed. 1907).]  His patronizing reply describing the Anglican customs as tolerabiles ineptiae must have disappointed the objectors; [Ibid., p. 51.  To Knox himself such things as “crossing in baptism, kneeling at the Lord’s Table, mummulling and singing of the Litany” were “diabolical inventions”.  Letter to Anna Lock.  Calendar of State Papers: Foreign: Eliz., 504.] and in spite of the magistrates siding with Knox and ordering the English congregation to conform to the French Order, the Prayer Book party proved the stronger and the extremists and their followers retired to the more congenial atmosphere of Reformed Switzerland.

VI – The Reign of Elizabeth

      Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on Nov. 17, 1558.  The liturgical situation was a tangled one.  The normal religious authority, Convocation, was strongly conservative.  Yet it is safe to say that the general body of the Church was far more anxious for reform than ever before.  The Queen herself had every reason to fear Papalism, but it is almost impossible to discover her real convictions in matters of doctrine.  Whatever these may have been her policy is clear.  It was that of uniting as many as possible of her subjects in liturgical worship, of suppressing the expression of religious opinion, and of claiming to the utmost that supremacy in matters ecclesiastical which had been so freely exercised during the last three reigns.  It is this policy of the Queen which explains the history of the Prayer Book during this reign.  At first she held her hand.  Then she decided to ignore Convocation.  Having once secured the restoration of the 1552 Prayer Book (with certain modifications), she supervised the administration of it by the bishops in such a way as to leave no room for revolutionary Puritanism to develop.

      For the first six months of the new reign all preaching was forbidden by the royal Proclamation of Dec. 27.  The Latin rite remained in possession, except that the Epistle and Gospel, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed might be said in English, and the English Litany used.  The Litany was to be in the form used in the Queen’s chapel, which was practically identical with that of 1552.  The only differences of any importance were the curious prefixing of the Confession from the Communion Service with the pronouns in the singular, the omission of the suffrage against “the tyranny of the Byshop of Rome and all hys detestable enormities,” and the restoration of one of the final collects of the form of 1549.  The Litany had been reissued in the late reign in almost the same form and was therefore actually a legal formulary, apart from any use of prerogative.  The Latin Mass continued to be said even in the Queen’s chapel.  But on Christmas Day the Queen had sent a message to Bishop Oglethorpe, requiring him to refrain from the Elevation.  The bishop refused, and the Queen left the chapel after the Gospel.  At the Coronation on Jan. 15 the Mass seems to have been sung by the Dean of the Chapel Royal because of the refusal of the bishops to accept the Queen’s directions in this matter. [So Procter and Frere, referring to State Papers; Spanish, I. 6.]

      About Christmas time a certain State paper was prepared, described in one of the two manuscripts in which it survives as “the Device for the alteration of religion”. [Printed in Gee, op. cit., pp. 195 ff.]  It is there suggested that a group of divines (Bill, Parker, May, Cox, Whitehead, Grindal and Pilkington) should meet and draw up “a plat or book” for this purpose.  If Guest’s letter [See above.  Printed in Gee, pp. 215 ff.] does refer, as Strype [Strype, Annals, I. 83.] who discovered it supposes, to the suggestions of this body, it looks as though they must have had before them a proposal to restore the Book of 1549, for the greater part of his justification of “the order taken in the new service” reads like a criticism of that Book: indeed he actually mentions “the first book”. [As MacColl points out (The Royal Commission and the Ornaments Rubric, p. 260), this is strong evidence against the theory that he is referring to the discussions of 1552; for there was then no second Book in existence, which makes the expression “first book” meaningless.]  The suggestions which Guest defends go even further in the Puritan direction than the Book of 1552: crosses and images are condemned; none but the communicants may say the Creed; it is lawful to receive Communion either standing or kneeling.  Who then can have been responsible for suggesting the restoration of the Book of 1549?  Certainly none of the commissioners of 1559 (if that be not too formal a designation of the group named in the “Device”).  They were all on the Protestant side.  Could it have been the Queen herself?  Dr. Gee says No: she “was the consistent friend of those who upheld the Book of 1552 during all the months through which it was under discussion.”  But, as MacColl points out, [MacColl, op. cit., pp. 244 ff.  See also chapters i, vi, vii.] according to Sandys she was in favour of the conspicuous use of the crucifix, and very nearly deposed him from his see owing to the incautious vehemence of his language in opposition to it.  So also, in spite of the 1552 rubric, she deliberately issued an injunction for wafer bread. [See below.]  In the following January she also insisted on “candles” in her own chapel, and “the golden vestments of the Papacy”. [Zürich Letters, i. 63.]  It is not, therefore, intrinsically improbable that she may have urged the restoration of the 1549 rite.  If, however, as Dr. Gee maintains, the letter, which bears no date, really refers to the revision of 1552, we have no evidence that this commission ever met at all.  All that can be said is that the “Device” recommends the appointment of a group of divines specified by name, and that we have evidence that most of them were in London in February.  Apart from Guest’s letter we should suppose, both from their known opinions and from the subsequent course of events, that they would be likely to recommend the restoration of the Book of 1552. [Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book, pp. 1–78.]

      On Feb. 15 a “Bill for Order of Service and Ministers in the Church” was presented to Parliament, and another Bill for a Prayer Book on the following day, but both were either withdrawn or postponed. [Ibid., pp. 79, 80, citing for this and subsequent transactions the Journals of the Lords and Commons, “supplemented by d’Ewes, who wrote about 1620 and had access to some particulars which ... cannot now be traced.”]

      In March an attempt was made to annex a Bill for the reestablishment of the 1552 Book to the former of Elizabeth’s Supremacy Bills (containing, it was said, [Ibid., p. 100.] the title “Supreme Head”), but this seems to have been defeated in the House of Lords, which was just induced to assent to the Supremacy but refused the Prayer Book.  About the same time Convocation began to bestir itself; and on the passing of the Supremacy Act (March 22) it drew up an articulus cleri under five headings, affirming the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist, the authority of the Pope, and the reservation, jure Divino, to ecclesiastics “of handling and defining concerning the things belonging to faith, sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical.” [Strype, Annals, i. 56.]  Easter Day fell on March 26, and on March 22 the Queen (relying apparently on the new Act) [But Gee points out that it had not yet received her own formal Royal assent.] issued a Proclamation authorizing the reception of Communion in both kinds. [Dyson’s Proclamations, f. 5; printed by Gee, op. cit., p. 255.]

      On April 18 a new Uniformity Bill was introduced into the Commons.  It was passed in three days by them, but met with a stormy reception in the House of Lords.  Nine bishops voted against it, and the remainder absented themselves.  It was finally passed by a majority of three.  The Act did not profess to introduce a new book.  It simply restored the Book “authorized by Parliament in the ... fifth and sixth year of the reign of King Edward the sixth, with one alteration or addition of certein lessons to be used on every Sunday in the year, and the form of the Letany altered, and corrected, and two sentences only added in the delivery of the sacrament to the communicants.”  The Act further provided that “such ornaments of the church, and of the Ministers thereof; shall be retained, and be in vse, as was in this church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the sixth, vntil other order shall be therein taken, by authority of the Queens Maiesty, with the advice of her Commissioners appointed and authorised vnder the great seal of England, for causes ecclesiasticall or of the Metropolitane of this Realm”; and empowered the Queen, if needful, “by the like advice” “to ordain and publish such further Ceremonies or Rites, as may be most for the advancement of Gods glory, the edifying of his Church, and the due reverence of Christs holy Mysteries and Sacraments.” [1 Eliz. c. 2.  See The English Rite, pp. 9 ff.]

      The Book was accordingly issued with proper First Lessons for all Sundays; the suffrage against the Pope was omitted; and the words of administration from the Book of 1549 were prefixed to those of 1552.  Further, the 1552 rubric as to vesture is altered in conformity with the provision of the Act: proper Lessons are provided for holy days as well as Sundays: the Litany resembles that used in the Royal Chapel rather than that of 1552; [Strangely enough it reverts to the precedent of 1544 and 1552 in having no Amen to the first Collect.  The Confession is also omitted.] the Declaration on kneeling is omitted (quite properly, in view of its origin).  The Ordinal was printed as a separate volume.

      In the summer the Queen issued a series of fifty-five Injunctions, [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. pp. 178 ff.; Gee and Hardy, Documents, lxxviii, pp: 147 ff.] about half of which are a repetition of those issued in 1547. [See above.]  Among the new ones are (a) an exception to the prohibition of processions, permitting “the perambulation of the circuits of parishes” at Rogationtide, and providing a rite for it; [“The curate ... at certain convenient places shall admonish the people to give thanks to God ... with the saying of the 103rd Psalm.  At which time also the same minister shall inculcate these or such sentences: ‘Cursed be he, which translateth the bounds and doles of his neighbour.’”  Doc. Ann., i. pp. 187 f.] (b) the requirement of plainsong in all parts of the service if it were sung, but with a permission to use, before or after Mattins and Evensong, “a hymn or such like song” in figured music, so long as the meaning of the words be not obscured; (c) the requirement of wafer-bread “somewhat bigger in compass” than the traditional “singing cakes”.

      Such, on paper, was the “Elizabethan Settlement”.  But the extreme reforming party, and especially the returned exiles, would have none of it, so far as the ceremonial regulations were concerned.  The bishops were left with the practical question of how much they could actually insist on with any prospect of being obeyed.  The vestments were the principal difficulty, and in 1560 they drew up, chiefly it would seem for their own guidance in the administration of their dioceses, certain Interpretations and further considerations, [Strype, Annals, I. i. ch. xvii.] as an appendix to the Injunctions, allowing a compromise on this point.  All that they would actually require was the use of the cope at “the ministration of the Lord’s Supper, and the surplice at other ministrations.”  The Rogationtide procession was now to include Ps. 104 and the Litany, together with a homily by Parker as the stational sermon.

      In the same year, upon the petition of the Universities, the Book of Common Prayer was published, with considerable variations, in Latin. [See further below, “Second Book of Edward”.]  The Latin book was also needed, apparently, for the Irish Church, for the priests in that country did not understand English, and there was no Irish printing press. [See Stat. 2, Eliz. c. 2 (Ir.), quoted by Procter and Frere, p. 108.]

      On Jan. 22, 1560–1 the Queen, as empowered by the Act of 1559, directed Parker and others, as ecclesiastical commissioners, to reform the Table of Lessons, and to issue a new Calendar embodying their amendments.  As a result a few changes were actually made in the lectionary, and the appearance of the Calendar was greatly altered by the insertion of fifty-nine additional black-letter feasts (in addition to the four which had been added in 1552), as well as O Sapientia and the vigils.

      Meanwhile the difficulties about ceremonial proved to have been by no means settled.  In 1562 six articles were submitted to the Lower House of Convocation to abolish all feasts except Sundays and the feasts of our Lord, organs, the cross in Baptism, compulsory kneeling at Communion, all vestments except the surplice, and the facing of the minister away from the people.  They were thrown out by a majority of one vote. [Cardwell, Conf., p. 117.]  The liturgical situation was one of utter confusion.  An anonymous document dated Feb. 14, 1564–5, said to be Grindal’s summary of the state of affairs in his own diocese of London, asserts: “Some say the service and prayers in the chancel, others in the body of the church: some say the same in a seat made in the church, some in the pulpit with their faces to the people; some keep precisely to the order of the book, others intermeddle psalms in metre; some say in a surplice, others without a surplice.”  The furniture and position of “the Table” show a like variety.  “Administration of the Communion is done ... by some with unleavened bread, some with leavened; some receive kneeling, others standing, others sitting; some sign with the sign of the cross, others not.” [British Museum, Lansdowne MSS., 8, f. 16.  Quoted by Gee.]  It was to remedy such state of affairs that the Queen, some three weeks before the date of this document, had written an urgent letter to the bishops demanding that they should enforce uniformity.  They obediently drew up a series of Articles; but apparently they were not to the Queen’s mind, and she refused to sanction them.  Finally, they were issued as a provincial order by Parker on his own authority as Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury, under the title, Aduertisments partly for due order in the publique administration of common prayers and vsinge the holy Sacramentes, and partly for the apparell of all persons ecclesiasticall, by venue of the Queenes majesties letters, commaunding the same, the xxv. day of January.  These advertisements mark a further stage of compromise.  It is now only required that “in the ministration of the Holy Communion in collegiate and cathedral churches, the principal minister shall use a cope with gospeller and epistoler agreeably.”  In other churches the minister “shall wear a comely surplice”.  The Rogation rite is still to be used, as ordered in the Interpretations. [Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. pp. 287 ff.]  Officially, the Book of Common Prayer has no further history during the rest of Elizabeth’s reign.  Three attempts were made in Parliament to change the character of the Book on the lines of the Articles of 1562, [See above.] but all were suppressed by the authority of the Crown.  Later in the reign opposition took the form of mere ignoring of the directions of the Book and occasionally of publishing private and unofficial editions in which Mattins, Evensong, and Priest are changed for words less obnoxious to Puritan eyes. [See Procter and Frere, pp. 111 ff., 133 ff.]

      In 1568, at the instance of Parker, a new translation of the Bible was made, the Bishops’ Bible ‘; and the Convocation of Canterbury enacted a canon in 1571 ordering all churchwardens to obtain a copy for their churches. [Cardwell, Synodalia, i. p. 123.]  Henceforward the new version was used for the lessons at Divine Service, but not for the other liturgical texts.

VII – The Reign of James 1

      On his way to England in April 1603, James I received a petition, commonly known as the Millenary Petition from the fact that it professed to proceed from “more than a thousand” of his “subjects and ministers”.  In it they acquainted the King, amongst other grievances, with the “burden of human rites and ceremonies” which oppressed them.  Their petition, so far as it regarded the Church service, was as follows: – “that the cross in Baptism, interrogatories ministered to infants, confirmation, as superfluous, may be taken away: baptism not to be ministered by women, and so explained: the cap and surplice not urged: that examination may go before the Communion: that it be ministered with a sermon: that divers terms of ‘priests’ and ‘absolution’ and some other used, with the ring in marriage, and other such like in the Book, may be corrected: the longsomeness of service abridged: Church songs and music moderated to better edification: that the Lord’s Day be not profaned: the rest upon Holy Days not so strictly urged: that there may be an uniformity of doctrine prescribed: no popish opinion to be any more taught or defended: no ministers charged to teach their people to bow at the name of Jesus: that the canonical Scripture only be read in the Church.” [Gee and Hardy, Documents, lxxxviii, pp. 508 ff.]  James consented to a conference to be held in his presence between representatives of the aggrieved and of those responsible for the order of the Church.

      The conference was held at Hampton Court on Jan. 14, 16, and 18, 1603–4.  On the first day the King addressed the Council with certain bishops and other members of the clergy, and a discussion took place on “Absolution,” Confirmation, and the private administration of Baptism by lay persons.  As to the last, it was agreed that Baptism in private houses should be allowed, but that lay persons should not administer it.  On the second day the King met the Puritans, and the discussion centered round the Prayer Book ceremonial.  It was agreed that there should be a uniform translation of the Bible, and one form of Catechism throughout the realm; and that the Apocrypha should continue to be read, but not as Scripture.  On the third day the ecclesiastics returned and presented to the King the results of their deliberations on the previous day.  They had agreed that the rubric should provide an alternative description of the absolution – “or remission of sins,” and that a lawful minister should be present at private Baptism.  The King directed that it should be prescribed that such Baptism should be administered by “the curate or lawful minister present.”  Then the Puritans were called in and the meager results of the conference announced to them.  They promised obedience to the King’s declared will. [Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 138 ff.]

      The King, under the authority conferred on the Crown by the Act of Uniformity of 1559, directed his commissioners “to take some care and payns” as to “certeyne thinges” which “require some declaration and enlargement by way of explanation.”  They drew up the proposed amendments and submitted them to the King, who returned them on Feb. 9 with his approval, and ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury to have the Book reprinted in the amended text, and take order that the Book be procured and observed in every parish church. [Cardwell, Synodalia, i. pp. 210, 292.]  On March 5 he issued a proclamation enforcing the use of it.  It was printed on March 25.

      The following are the more important changes.  The title of the absolution in Divine Service is expanded, as had been resolved: the title of Confirmation is also enlarged to explain that it is the laying on of hands upon the baptized (this was to satisfy the King himself; the Puritans had wished for the abolition of Confirmation): in private Baptism a “lawful minister” is insisted on: the final section of the Catechism is added (Cosin asserts that this was written by Overall, but internal evidence seems to prove that the author was Overall’s predecessor as Dean of St. Paul’s, Alexander Nowell); a suffrage and a prayer for the Queen and the Royal Family are added to the Litany, and six occasional thanksgivings are added to the Occasional Prayers.

      All these changes were implicitly authorized by Convocation in the canon of 1604 requiring churchwardens to procure copies of the new Book.

      Mention must be made of a literary event of the reign of James I, which was destined to influence the later history of the Prayer Book.

      One of the complaints of the Puritans at the Hampton Court Conference related to the imperfection of the translations taken from the Great Bible which still appeared in the text of the Book, viz. in the Psalter, Epistles, Gospels, “Sentences” before Divine Service, “Comfortable Words,” and the processional anthems at the Burial of the Dead.  (The Lessons, as we have seen, [See  above.] were read from the Bishops’ Bible.)  The King very willingly ordered a new translation to be made, and the result was the “Authorized Version” of 1611.

      This reign also saw the beginning of the ill-starred attempts to provide a revised Prayer Book for Scotland.  In spite of the restoration of a real Episcopate in 1610, the only Book in use in the Scottish Church until 1617 was Knox’s Book of Common Order.  In that year the King introduced the English Book into the royal chapel at Holyrood, and also demanded the general restoration of kneeling at Communion, private Baptism and Communion, four holy-days, corresponding to Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Whitsunday, and an episcopal blessing of children.  The demands were unpopular with the clergy, but were pushed through the General Assembly and the Parliament. [Procter and Frere, p. 144.]

      The Assembly had already (in 1616) accepted the King’s desire that a new Prayer Book should be compiled and, after a first attempt which does not concern our present purpose, a draft was submitted to the King by the Archbishop of St. Andrews in 1619.  It was in form a Puritanized edition of the English Book, and it is noteworthy that it contained, as the English Book did not, rubrics ordering the manual acts at the Consecration. [Hall, Religuiae Liturgicae, Vol. I, p. xix.]  This Book was never printed or published, but in the following year an Ordinal was adopted and printed, founded on the English Ordinal, but ignoring the diaconate. [Reprinted in the Miscellany of the Wodrow Society, Edinburgh, 1844, pp. 597 ff.]

VIII – The Reign of Charles I

      No authoritative change took place during this reign in the text of the Prayer Book, so far as the English Church was concerned; yet it is a period of some importance to the history of the Book.

      In Scotland the attempt to insist on liturgical worship by royal command was continued to its disastrous end.  The King in 1629 instructed Laud to communicate with the Scottish bishops in the matter.  Maxwell, Bishop of Ross, their representative, produced the Book of 1619.  Laud, as was natural, disapproved.  He recommended the English Book, and brought the King to his own opinion in the matter.  The Scottish bishops, however, were anxious to have a book of their own, and finally Charles instructed a committee of them to prepare a book, “as near as can be” to the English model, and submit it to the criticism of Laud, Juxon and Wren.  The new book was for the most part the work of Maxwell and Wedderburn of Dunblane, but Laud was now willing to cooperate to the best of his power.  The result was surprising.  The very bishops who had suggested the bare and Puritanical order of 1619 and declined the Book of 1559 now produced a solemn and dignified rite, remarkably similar to the Book of 1549.  Their first attempt indeed was rejected by Laud and his colleagues, and Laud himself took the next step by sending to Scotland “certain notes to be considered of”.  The final form of the Book was not reached until 1636, and in 1637 The booke of Common Prayer, and Administration Of The Sacraments.  And other parts of divine Service for the use of the Church of Scotland was published. [Procter and Frere, pp. 146 ff.]

      Its chief characteristics as contrasted with the Book of 1559 are the following.  The Authorized Version is adopted throughout, even for the Psalms; the use of the Apocrypha is reduced to a minimum; the prayers for the King, the Royal Family and the clergy, the prayer of St. Chrysostom and the grace are to be used at Divine Service whenever the Litany is not appointed to be said; a prayer for Embertides, adapted from the Ordinal, is provided; Easter Even is given a proper Collect; the Collect for the King precedes the Collect of the day at the Eucharist; at the offertory the priest is directed to present the alms and place the oblations upon the Holy Table; in the prayer for the Church, the commemoration of the saints and the special clause commending to the Divine goodness the “congregation here assembled in thy name to celebrate the commemoration” of the death of Christ are restored, approximately, as in 1549; in the prayer of consecration the priest is directed to take the Patten into his hands, and to lay his hand upon the vessel or vessels containing the wine; the Invocation of the Holy Spirit is reinserted; immediately after the consecration follows the prayer of oblation, with the anamnesis of 1549 and the clause from the same rite praying for a worthy communion, and then the Lord’s Prayer with the introduction As our Saviour Christ, etc.; the prayer We do not presume appears once more in its natural place immediately before Communion; the words of administration are those of 1549, followed by Amen; the Commination is ordered to be used on Ash Wednesday.  The Book itself contains no Ordinal.  An Ordinal is said to have been published in 1636, but no copy of it is known to exist. [Procter and Frere, p. 150.]

      In spite of its excellence the Book was a complete failure.  An attempt was made to impose it by Royal authority; but the attempt merely produced rioting, and the Book never came into general use.

      The work of Laud and his collaborators, however, was not completely wasted.  Not only did a few important rubrics find their way into the next revision, but the 1549 type of liturgy was rescued from oblivion and had its effect not only on the present Scottish rite, but also on those of the American Church and of the Church of the Province of South Africa.

      A notable ceremonial change was also made under Laud’s influence in England.  The rubric of 1552 (still printed in our present Book) had allowed the Holy Table at the time of Communion to stand either in the body of the church or in the chancel.  Elizabeth, by the authority given to her by the Act of Uniformity, directed that when not in use it should stand in the place of the former high altar, and at Communion time should be set within the chancel.  By Laud’s directions, however, it was no longer to be moved for the service, but to remain permanently at the East end of the church “altarwise”. [Hutton, William Laud, pp. 16, 73–78.  Lambeth Judgment, pp. 19 ff.]  Consequently, the rubric ordering the priest to stand “at the North side of the Table” became difficult, if not impossible, to obey. [See Lambeth Judgment, p. 44.  Dr. Dearmer, however, maintains that the retention of “North side” at subsequent revisions was deliberate, and that the phrase was then intended to signify the sinistrum cornu.  He points out that at Low Mass before the Reformation, if the priest vested at the altar (which had not yet become an episcopal privilege), this was precisely the place at which (facing East, of course) he would say the Lord’s Prayer and the preliminary Collect.  The Parson’s Handbook (ed. 1907), p. 355 ff.]  It appears from the answer of the bishops to the Puritans at the Savoy Conference that at that date at all events their intention was to adopt the Eastward position.  “When” the minister “speaks to” the people, they said, it is ... convenient that he turn to them.  When he speaks for them to God, it is fit that they should all turn another way.” [Cardwell, Conferences, p. 353.]  But it seems probable that under Laud the celebrant faced South except for the actual consecration.  Thus Andrewes in a note inserted in his own Prayer Book speaks of the Ministers “the one at the one end, the other at the other, representing the two Cherubims at the Mercy seat.” [Notes on the Book of Common Prayer, Andrewes’ Minor Works, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. 150.]

      On Jan. 3, 1644–5, the Long Parliament proscribed the Book of Common Prayer, and ordered in its stead the use of the Directory, a manual of the same type as the Scottish Book of Common Order. [Hall, Reliquiae Liturgicae, Vol. III.  Procter and Frere, pp. 158 ff.]  On Nov. 13 the King issued a proclamation enjoining the Book of Common Prayer and inhibiting the Directory; but during the troubled years, as is well known, the Prayer Book could only be used by stealth. Some of the clergy contrived to make such alterations in their rite as would not expose them to judicial penalties and yet would not altogether destroy the character of the worship of the Church. [See Sanderson, Nine Cases of Conscience: Occasionally determined.]  Jeremy Taylor actually composed a new rite from Catholic sources so as to maintain the traditional liturgical tone while avoiding the words of the penalized Book. [W. Jacobson, Fragmentary Illustrations of the History of the Book of Common Prayer.]

IX – The Restoration of Charles II

      In the Declaration of Breda, dated April 14, 1660, the King declared “a liberty to tender consciences,” and undertook to consent to an Act of Parliament devised to secure it. [Gee and Hardy, Documents, cxiv.]  On May 4 a deputation of Puritans was received by him at the Hague, and in various private audiences urged him to refrain from the use of the Book of Common Prayer in his private chapel, and to instruct his chaplains not to wear the surplice. [Clarendon, History, xvi. 234.]  Meanwhile the Book had actually been restored in England in some places, and on May 10 the Church service was read before the House of Lords. [Whitelocke, Memorials, p. 703.]  On the King’s return an agitation was promoted to gain complete relief for the Puritan grievances.  “Divers pamphlets were published against the Book of Common-prayer, the old objections mustred up, with the addition of some new ones.” [Preface to B.C.P., 1661.]  The King ordered the Puritans to submit their complaints in writing.  The result was an address in which they accepted the lawfulness of a liturgy, provided that it be “agreeable to the Word of God ... neither too tedious in the whole, nor composed of too short prayers, unmeet repetitions or responsals; not to be dissonant from the liturgies of other reformed churches; nor too rigorously imposed”; provided also that the minister be allowed to use his own gifts for prayer.  They asked, however, that either a new form might be drawn up, or that the old form should be revised and issued with “an addition or insertion of some other varying forms in Scripture phrase to be used at the minister’s choice.”  In particular they urged the abolition of compulsory kneeling at Communion and observance of holy days of merely human institution, and the abolition of the surplice, the cross in Baptism and bowing at the name of Jesus.  They also asked for the disuse of “erecting altars, bowing towards them, and such like.” [Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 252, 277 ff.]

      The nine surviving bishops made a very moderate reply, considering the temper of the times.  In regard to the request for a liturgy like that of other reformed churches, however, they remark that “the nearer both their forms and ours come to the liturgy of the ancient Greek and Latin Churches, the less are they liable to the objections of the common enemy.” They would insist on strict conformity, and point out that in practice full liberty is given for the exercise of individual gifts of prayer “before and after sermon.”  They offer no objection, however, to a revision.  They desire the continuance of compulsory kneeling at Communion and of the observance of holy days, but are prepared to leave to the decision of the King the question of compulsion in respect of surplice, cross and bow. [Documents relating to the Act of Uniformity, 1662, No. VII.  Procter and Frere, pp. 163 ff.]

      On Oct. 25 the King issued a Declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs, undertaking to appoint a commission consisting of “learned divines of both persuasions” to revise the Book of Common Prayer, and provide alternative forms to be used at the minister’s discretion.  Meanwhile the Puritan clergy were to be dispensed from using such parts of the Book as they took exception to. [Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 286 ff.]  Accordingly, on March 25, 1661, he issued Letters Patent appointing twelve bishops and twelve Puritan divines (with nine assessors on each side to fill up such gaps as might be caused by occasional absentees) and authorizing them to meet during the next four months to “advise upon and review” the Book of Common Prayer, to compare it with the most ancient liturgies, to consider objections raised against it, and finally to make such alterations as they should agree to be “needful or expedient,” “avoiding, as much as may be, all unnecessary alterations.” [Ibid., 298 ff.  Gee and Hardy, Documents, cxv. pp. 588 ff.]

      The Conference met at the Savoy on April 15.  Sheldon, on behalf of the bishops, asked for the complaints and the proposals of the Puritans to be submitted in writing.  On May 4 a committee of the Puritans presented their Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer.  They asked amongst other things that the materials of the liturgy might “consist of nothing doubtful or questioned among pious, learned, and orthodox persons”; that as the first reformers varied as little as possible “from the Romish forms before in use,” so the present liturgy should be so composed as to “attract all those who in the substantials of the Protestant religion are of the same persuasions with ourselves”; that alternation between minister and people should be omitted, “the holy Scriptures ... intimating the people’s part in public prayer to be only with silence and reverence to attend thereunto, and to declare their consent in the close by saying, Amen”; that the Litany be changed into one solemn prayer; that no countenance be given to observance of the Lenten fast; that the observance of Saints’ days and their vigils be given up; that the exercise of the gift of prayer should not be excluded from any part of public worship, and that part of the liturgy might be omitted at the discretion of the minister; that the Authorized Version be used; that “Minister,” and “Lord’s day” be substituted for “Priest” or “Curate,” and “Sunday”; that nothing should be called an “Epistle” unless it were actually taken from an Epistle; that no phrase should be used implying that all within the communion of the Church were in a state of grace, “(which, had ecclesiastical discipline been ... executed ... might be better supposed)”; that one long prayer should be substituted for many short Collects; that the surplice, the cross in Baptism, and kneeling at Communion should be abolished; that longer notice should be given of intention to communicate; that the confession before Communion should be made by the minister alone.  They complained that the manner of consecrating was not explicit and that no direction was given for the Fraction; they asked for the re-insertion of the “Black Rubric,” and for the placing of the Font in a conspicuous position; they objected to the Baptism of children whose parents were unbelievers, unbaptized, excommunicate or notorious sinners, and to the statement in the Catechism of 1604 that children performed Repentance and Faith by their sureties; they objected also to the statement that baptized children have all things necessary to their salvation; they asked that the form of Absolution in the Visitation of the Sick should be precatory. [Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 303 ff.]

      A few days later Baxter produced “the Savoy Liturgy,” [P. Hall, Reliquiae Liturgicae, Vol. IV.] a compromise between the Anglican and Genevan types.  No notice was taken of this; but the bishops, in reply [Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 335 ff.] to the Exceptions, professed themselves ready to make seventeen concessions, of which the following are the most important: the Epistles and Gospels to follow the Authorized Version; “For the Epistle” to be used as a heading when the Lesson is not from an Epistle; the Psalms to be corrected from the Great Bible; communicants to give notice “at least some time the day before”; the confession before Communion to be recited by one of the ministers, the people saying it after him (hitherto the rubric had allowed it to be said by one of the communicants or by the priest, and had directed that he should say it alone in the name of the communicants); the manual acts to be used at the Consecration; the position of the font to be referred to the Ordinary, if it stood where the people could not hear; in the Catechism, “Yes, they do perform them” to be changed to “Because they promise them both”; the rubric stating that baptized children “have all things necessary for their salvation” to be amended; “or be ready and desirous to be confirmed” to be added to the rubric after Confirmation; in Matrimony, “I thee honour” to be substituted for “I thee worship”; in the Burial of the Dead, “sure and certain” to be omitted before “hope of the resurrection”.

      Convocation had met on May 8.  Two joint committees of the two Houses were appointed to draw up forms of service for May 29 and Jan. 30, and another joint committee to compile an order for the Baptism of Adults.  This last was completed and received the approval of Convocation before the adjournment. [Cardwell, Synodalia, pp. 340 ff.]

      Meanwhile the Commons had already passed an Act of Uniformity annexing to it the Book of 1604, and continued impatiently to urge the Lords to greater expedition.

      During the autumn the bishops, or some of them, were occupied in drawing up a draft for a revised Book, and the result of their labours is preserved in the “Durham Book,” which is a printed copy of the Book of 1604 with numerous amendments written by the hands of Cosin and Sancroft.  These include fourteen out of the seventeen of the bishops’ concessions at the Savoy, and eight others which were not granted there.

      Parliament met again on Nov. 20, and Convocation on the next day.  A committee of bishops was appointed to revise the Common Prayer, but it is obvious that they had anticipated the appointment, for the “first part” of the Book had already been revised and examined in the Upper House by Nov. 23, the “second part” by Nov. 27; and the Psalms and the Ordinal were dealt with on Nov. 28 and 29.  During the next fortnight the new Preface, the Calendar, the Prayers to be used at Sea and the General Thanksgiving were successively agreed upon.  After discussion in the Lower House and the consideration by the Upper House of amendments suggested by the Lower, the whole revision was completed by Dec. 18, and subscribed on Dec. 20.

      On Feb. 25, 1661–2, after a debate on the subject in the Privy Council, the King sent the new Book to the House of Lords, recommending that it be annexed to the delayed Uniformity Bill.  This was done, and the Bill, with the Book, received the royal assent on May 19.  The Book was to come into use before the following St. Bartholomew’s Day.  Printed copies of the Act and of the Book, duly attested and sealed, were by the provisions of the Act to be procured by the Chapters of every cathedral and collegiate church; copies were also to be delivered to each of the Courts at Westminster and to the Tower of London.

      According to the new Preface the objects of the revision were: (1) “the better direction of them that are to officiate”; (2) elucidation, by (a) removal of archaisms, (b) explanation of what was ambiguous or “liable to misconstruction,” and (c) “a more perfect rendering” of Holy Scripture; and (3) the provision of certain “convenient” additions.

      Following this scheme, we may describe the chief alterations as follows :

      (1) The rubrics are throughout more explicit, and in particular there are directions for the placing of the alms and also, “when there is a Communion,” of the bread and wine upon the Holy Table, for a second consecration when necessary, for the veiling of “what remaineth of the consecrated Elements,” and for the reverent consumption of it (“if any remain”) by the priest and other communicants “immediately after the blessing”. [On the question of Reservation see below, The 1661 Prayer Book.]

      The Collect for the ensuing day is to be said at the First Evensong, and a memorial of the season throughout Advent and Lent.

      Quicunque vult is now for the first time ordered to be substituted for the Apostles’ Creed.  This is an authorization of a custom which seems to have sprung up spontaneously. [Wren, Particular Orders, vi.  Cardwell, Doc. Ann., ii. p. 202.]

      (2) (a) In addition to obvious linguistic modernizing, we may notice the explanations now attached to the titles of Sundays and Festivals.

      (b) The distinction between the orders of priest and bishop is now clearly mentioned at the moment of Ordination by the insertion of the words “for the Office, and work of a priest (or bishop), in the Church of God, now committed vnto thee by the imposition of our hands.”  So also the promise that no lesson shall be inaccurately described as “the Epistle” is redeemed.

      (c) All Scriptures are now from the Authorized Version except the Psalter, the Offertory Sentences, and the “Comfortable Words”.  In the manuscript “Book Annexed” to the Act of Uniformity it is clear that the Psalter has been collated with the Great Bible, as the bishops promised, and also some of the Epistles and Gospels, and an indication is given wherever any words do not represent anything in the Hebrew or the Greek.  These indications do not, however, appear in the Sealed Books or any other printed copies.

      (3) The principal additions are as follows. The final prayers of the Jacobean Litany now added to Mattins and Evensong; new occasional prayers and thanksgivings; a new Collect for the Third Sunday in Advent; a Proper for a Sixth Sunday after Epiphany; a Collect (altered from the Scottish Book of 1637) for Easter Even; a Lesson For the Epistle ‘ on Candlemas Day; a commemoration of the departed in the Prayer for the Church Militant’ (deliberately refusing any distinction between the saints and other departed servants of God); a benediction of the water of Baptism (omitted since 1549); an Order for the Baptism of Adults; a renewal of vows at Confirmation; two alternative psalms at the Burial of the Dead; Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea; a new and alternative version of Veni creator.

      Other alterations which do not seem to fit into the scheme of the Preface are as follows.  The addition of descriptions to the names in the Calendar; the addition of the doxology to the Lord’s Prayer on certain occasions; the breaking up of the Gloria into versicle and response at the beginning of Mattins and Evensong and at the Litany; [In Mattins and in the Commination the word Answer is inserted before As it was in the beginning.  Presumably this is an indication that the revisers intended to continue the traditional custom of singing the Gloria in two parts antiphonally at the end of a psalm.] the addition of Amen to the collects, which has had the effect in most cases of eliminating the traditional full ending “who liveth and reigneth,” etc.  The “Black Rubric” from the Prayer Book of 1552 is again inserted, but in a far less objectionable form.  In its older form it had declared “that it is not mente ... that any adoracion is doone, or oughte to bee doone ... unto any reall and essenciall presence there beeying of Chrystes naturall fleshe and bloude.”  The new form substitutes “any Corporal Presence of Christ’s Naturall Flesh and Blood.” [It is possible that the “Black Rubric” was, as on the previous occasion, inserted by the Privy Council.  But if so, there can be no doubt that the insertion was afterwards authorized by Convocation, or by those who had a right to act in its name.  Nothing is more remarkable than the scrupulous regard shown by the Houses of Parliament for the exclusive right of the spiritualty to make even verbal amendments in the text of the Book.]  There is a rubric justifying the use of the cross in Baptism.

      The Passions on Palm Sunday and Good Friday are now cut in half by the assignment of the first chapter as a lesson at Mattins, and the story of the Burial is omitted on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  A further change is made in the rubric regulating the order of service on days when there is no Communion.  In 1549 “table prayers” had been assigned to Wednesdays and Fridays, in the absence of communicants.  In 1552 holy days had been substituted.  From 1661 the rubric has read thus: “Upon the Sundaies, and other Holy dayes (if there be no Communion) shall be said ...”  It had evidently been found that the statutory number of communicants did not send in their names every Sunday; but this is the first rubrical recognition of the possibility of the liturgy not being completed on a Sunday.

      The “State Services” are not strictly a part of the Prayer Book, but the direction to print them appears at the end of the Book Annexed.  A special service for the day of the Sovereign’s accession had been used ever since the reign of Elizabeth, and is recognized by Canon II of 1640.  A new form was put out by James II. [It is obvious that no such service would be required during the reign of Charles II, inasmuch as Jan. 30, the day of his de jure accession, was otherwise provided for.]  It was revised and greatly improved in 1901.  The service for Nov. 5 was revised as soon as Convocation had finished with the Prayer Book and, together with those for Jan. 30 and May 29, was sanctioned by Convocation and put forth under the authority of the Crown in 1662. [Procter and Frere, pp. 645 ff.]

      Thus at last the Church of England was provided with a Service book initiated and authorized by Convocation. [Yet, strangely, not imposed by Canon, but only by Act of Parliament.]  The revision; moreover, in spite of the speed with which it was accomplished, was astonishingly thorough.  It would be difficult to point to any oversights.  On the other hand, it is equally difficult to feel any great enthusiasm for the resultant English rite.  The Caroline divines were fond of invoking liturgical precedents, but their knowledge of ancient liturgies was very imperfect, and they do not seem to have had much appreciation of liturgical form.  In the Holy Communion service no suggestion seems to have been made for the reassembling of the scattered members of the anaphora.  The march of the liturgy is interrupted, as it has been since 1552, by the insertion of We do not presume between the giving of thanks and the act of consecration; the ceremonial Fraction, now ordered for the first time in the reformed rite, [The Fraction ordered in the 1549 Book was a breaking of each particle before communicating the people.] seems to be misplaced, so that “breaking” comes before “blessing”; the strange arrangement is retained by which the latter part of the Canon, delayed until after Communion, is made alternative to a thanksgiving; and the anamnesis of the saving acts of Christ, the most primitive of all liturgical features, is still missing.  The end of the service is still overloaded by the transference to this point of the Gloria in excelsis, as though a further climax were possible after the act of Communion.  No attempt has been made to reduce the long and wearisome exhortations which disfigure both the liturgy and the Baptismal rite.  The mind of the Anglican Communion has been permanently confused by the prefixing of a renewal of vows to Confirmation and by the conversion of a rubric into a turgid exhortation which speaks of “confirming” the baptismal promises.  Finally, the service for the Burial of the Dead has no recognizable liturgical form at all.  Yet all the time the revisers had ready to hand two most admirable rites, those of 1549 and 1637, a judicious blending of which would have enabled them to avoid the blemishes here reviewed. [Attention may be drawn to the fact that in the Book of 1637 the Prayer for the Church stands in the same place as in those of 1559 and 1661.  Thus the extreme length of the combined Canon and Intercessions of 1549 and of the present Scottish rite is avoided.]

Bibliography

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