A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer Part 2

Soon after Elizabeth's accession a committee of divines a.s.sembled under her authority for the purpose of again revising the formularies.

The queen was personally a High-Churchwoman, and her own judgment is said to have been favorable to taking the first of Edward's two books as the basis of the revision, but a contrary preference swayed the committee, and the lines followed were those of 1552 and not those of 1549.

The new features distinctive of the Prayer Book of Elizabeth, otherwise known as the Prayer Book of 1559, are not numerous.

A table of Proper Lessons for Sundays was introduced. The old vestments recognized in the earlier part of King Edward's reign were again legalized. The pet.i.tion for deliverance from the tyranny of the Pope was struck out of the Litany, and by a compromise peculiarly English in its character, and, as experience has shown, exceedingly well judged, the two forms of words that had been used in the delivery of the elements in the Holy Communion were welded together into the shape in which we have them still.

Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book continued in use for five-and-forty years. Nothing was more natural than that when she died there should come with the accession of a new dynasty a demand for fresh revision.

King James, who was not afflicted with any want of confidence in his own judgment, invited certain representatives of the disaffected party to meet, under his presidency, the Churchmen in council with a view to the settlement of differences. The Puritans had been gaining in strength during Elizabeth's reign, and they felt that they were now in position to demand a larger measure of liturgical reform than that monarch and her advisers had been willing to concede to them.

King James convened his conference at Hampton Court, near London, and he himself was good enough to preside. Very little came of the debate. The Puritans had demanded the discontinuance of the sign of the cross in Baptism, of bowing at the name of Jesus, of the ring in marriage, and of the rite of confirmation. The words "priest"

and "absolution" they sought to have expunged from the Prayer Book, and they desired that the wearing of the surplice should be made optional.

Almost nothing was conceded to them. The words "or Remission of Sins" were added to the t.i.tle of the Absolution, certain Prayers and Thanksgivings were introduced, and that portion of the Catechism which deals with the Sacraments was for the first time set forth.

And thus the English Prayer Book started out upon its fourth lease of life destined in this form to endure unchanged, though by no means una.s.sailed, for more than half a century.

A stirring half century it was. The Puritan defeat at Hampton Court was redressed at Naseby. With the coming in of the Long Parliament the Book of Common Prayer went out, and to all appearances the triumph of the Commonwealth meant the final extinction of the usage of liturgical worship on English soil. The book, under its various forms, had lasted just a hundred years when he who

Nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene

suffered at Whitehall.

They buried him in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and no single word of the Prayer Book he had loved and for which he had fought was said over his grave.

On January 3, 1645, Parliament repealed the statutes of Edward VI.

and of Elizabeth that had enjoined the use of the Book of Common Prayer, and took order that thereafter only such divine service should be lawful as accorded with what was called the _Directory_, a manual of suggestions with respect to public worship adopted by the Presbyterian party as a subst.i.tute for the ancient liturgy.

With the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 came naturally the restoration of the Prayer Book, and with equal naturalness a revision of it. But of what sort should the revision be, and under whose auspices conducted? This was an anxious question for the advisers, civil and ecclesiastical, of the restored king. Should the second Charles take up the book just as it had fallen from the hands of the first Charles, unchanged in line or letter, or should he seek by judicious alterations and timely concessions to win back for the national Church the good-will and loyalty of those who, eighteen years before, had broken down her hedge? The situation may be described as triangular.

The king's secret and personal sympathies were probably all along with the Roman Church; his official allegiance was plainly due to the Church of England; and yet, at the same time, he owed much to the forbearance of the men who had been dominant under the Commonwealth. The mind of the nation had, indeed, reacted toward monarchy, but not with such an absolute and hardy renunciation of the doctrines of popular sovereignty as to make it safe for the returning king to do precisely as he chose. The glorious Revolution that was destined so soon to follow upon the heels of the gracious Restoration gave evidence, when it came, that there were some things the people of England prized even more highly than an hereditary throne. Misgivings as to the amount there might still be of this sort of electricity in the atmosphere suggested to the king and his counsellors the expediency of holding a conference, at which the leaders on either side might bring forward their strong reasons in favor of this or that method of dealing with the ecclesiastical question in general, and more especially with the vexed problem of worship.

Accordingly, early in the spring of 1661 the King issued a royal warrant summoning to meet at the Savoy Palace in the Strand an equal number of representatives of both parties--namely, one-and-twenty Churchmen and one-and-twenty Presbyterians.

The Episcopal deputation consisted of twelve bishops and nine other divines called coadjutors. The Presbyterians had also their twelve princ.i.p.al men and their nine coadjutors.

Conspicuous among the Episcopalians for weight of learning were Bishops Sanderson, Cosin, and Walton, and Doctors Pearson, Sparrow, and Heylin. Baxter, Reynolds, Calamy, and Lightfoot were the most notable of the Presbyterians.

The conference, which has ever since been known from its place of meeting (an old palace of the Piedmontese Amba.s.sadors) as the Savoy Conference, convened on April 15, 1661. For various reasons, it was evident from the outset that the Churchmen were in a position of great advantage. In the first place, signs and tokens of a renewed confidence in monarchy and of a revived attachment to the reigning House were becoming daily more numerous.

Before he had had a chance to test the strength of the existing political parties and to know how things really stood, Charles had borne himself very discreetly toward the Presbyterians, and had held out hopes to them which, as the event proved, were destined never to be realized. In a declaration put forth in the autumn of 1660, after he had been for some months on English soil, he had even gone so far as to say: "When we were in Holland we were attended by many grave and learned ministers from hence, who were looked upon as the most able and princ.i.p.al a.s.serters of the Presbyterian opinions; with whom we had as much conference as the mult.i.tude of affairs which were then upon us would permit us to have, and to our great satisfaction and comfort found them persons full of affection to us, of zeal for the peace of the Church and State, and neither enemies, as they have been given out to be, to episcopacy or liturgy, but modestly to desire such alterations in either, as without shaking foundations might best allay the present distempers."

By the time the conference met it had become evident, from votes taken in Parliament and otherwise, that the Churchmen could sustain toward their opponents a somewhat stiffer att.i.tude than this without imperilling their cause. Another great advantage enjoyed by the Episcopalians grew out of the fact that they were the party in possession. They had only to profess themselves satisfied with the Prayer Book as it stood, in order to throw the Presbyterians into the position of a.s.sailants, and defense is always easier than attack. Sheldon, the Bishop of London, was not slow to perceive this. At the very first meeting of the conference, he is reported to have said that "as the Non-conformists, and not the bishops, had sought for the conference, nothing could be done till the former had delivered their exceptions in writing, together with the additional forms and alterations which they desired." Upon which Bishop Burnet in his _History of his own Times_ remarks: "Sheldon saw well what the effect would be of putting them to make all their demands at once. The number of them raised a mighty outcry against them, as people that could never be satisfied."

The Presbyterians, however, took up the challenge, set to work at formulating their objections, and appointed Richard Baxter, the most famous of their number, to show what could be done in the way of making a better manual of worship than the Book of Common Prayer.

Baxter, a truly great man and wise in a way, though scarcely in the liturgical way, was guilty of the incredible folly of undertaking to construct a Prayer Book within a fortnight.

Of this liturgy it is probably safe to say that no denomination of Christians, however anti-prelatical or eccentric, would for a moment dream of adopting it, if, indeed, there be a single local congregation anywhere that could be persuaded to employ it. The characteristic of the devotions is lengthiness. The opening sentence of the prayer with which the book begins contains by actual count eighty-three words. It is probable that Baxter by his rash act did more to injure the cause of intelligent and reverential liturgical revision than any ten men have done before or since. In every discussion of the subject he is almost sure to be brought forward as "the awful example."

A doc.u.ment much more to the point than Baxter's Liturgy was the formal catalogue of faults and blemishes alleged against the Prayer Book, which the Puritan members of the conference in due time brought in. This indictment, for it may fairly be called such, since it was drawn up in separate counts, is very interesting reading. Of the "exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer,"

as the Puritans named their list of liturgical grievances, some must strike almost any reader of the present day as trivial and unworthy. Others again there are that draw a sympathetic Amen from many quarters to-day. To an American Episcopalian the catalogue is chiefly interesting as showing how ready and even eager were our colonial ancestors of a hundred years ago to remove out of the way such known rocks of offence as they could. An attentive student of the American Prayer Book cannot fail to be struck with the number of instances in which the text gives evidence of the influence exerted over the minds of our revisers by what had been urged, more than a hundred years before, by the Puritan members of the Savoy Conference. The defeat of 1661 was, in a measure at least, avenged in 1789. It is encouraging to those who cast their bread upon liturgical waters to notice after how many days the return may come.

But the conference, to all outward seeming, was a failure. Baxter's unhappy Prayer Book was its own sufficient refutation, and as for the list of special grievances it was met by the bishops with an "Answer" that was full of hard raps and conceded almost nothing.

A few detached paragraphs may serve to ill.u.s.trate the general tone of this reply. Here, for instance, is the comment of the bishops upon the request of the Puritans to be allowed occasionally to subst.i.tute extemporaneous for liturgical devotions. "The gift or rather spirit of prayer consists in the inward graces of the spirit, not in extempore expressions which any man of natural parts having a voluble tongue and audacity may attain to without any special gift." Nothing very conciliatory in that. To the complaint that the Collects are too short, the bishops reply that they cannot for that reason be accounted faulty, being like those "short but prevalent prayers in Scripture, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.

Lord, increase our faith." The Puritans had objected to the antiphonal element in the Prayer-Book services, and desired to have nothing of a responsive character allowed beyond the single word Amen. "But," rejoin the bishops, "they directly practise the contrary in one of their princ.i.p.al parts of worship, singing of psalms, where the people bear as great a part as the minister. If this way be done in Hopkin's why not in David's Psalms; if in metre, why not in prose; if in a psalm, why not in a litany?" Sharp, but not winning.

The Puritans had objected to the people's kneeling while the Commandments were read on the score that ignorant worshippers might mistake the Decalogue for a form of prayer. With some asperity the bishops reply that "why Christian people should not upon their knees ask their pardon for their life forfeited for the breach of every commandment and pray for grace to keep them for the time to come they must be more than 'ignorant' that can scruple."

The time during which the conference at the Savoy should continue its sessions had been limited to four months. This period expired on July 24, 1661, and the apparently fruitless disputation was at an end. Meanwhile, however, Convocation, the recognized legislature of the Church of England, had begun to sit, and the bishops had undertaken a revision of the Prayer Book after their own mind, and with slight regard to what they had been hearing from their critics at the Savoy. The bulk of their work, which included, it is said, more than six hundred alterations, most of them of a verbal character and of no great importance, was accomplished within the compa.s.s of a single month. It is consoling to those who within our own memory have been charged with indecent haste for seeking to effect a revision of the American Book of Common Prayer within a period of nine years, to find this precedent in ecclesiastical history for their so great rashness.

Since Charles the Second's day there has been no formal revision of the Prayer Book of the Church of England by the Church of England.

Some slight relaxations of liturgical use on Sundays have been made legal by Act of Parliament, but in all important respects the Prayer Book of Victoria is identical with the book set forth by Convocation and sanctioned by Parliament shortly after the collapse of the Savoy Conference. Under no previous lease of life did the book enjoy anything like so long a period of continued existence. Elizabeth's book was the longest lived of all that preceded the Restoration, but that only continued in use five-and-forty years. But the Prayer Book of 1661 has now held its own in England for two centuries and a quarter. When, therefore, we are asked to accept the first Edwardian Book as the only just exponent of the religious mind of England, it is open to us to reply, "Why should we, seeing that the Caroline Book has served as the vehicle of English devotion for a period seventy-five times as long?" The most voluminous of the additions made to the Prayer Book, in 1661, were the Office for the Baptism of Adults and the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea. The wide diffusion, under the Commonwealth, of what were then called Anabaptist opinions, had brought it to pa.s.s that throughout the kingdom there were thousands of men and women who had grown up unbaptized. At the time of the Reformation such a thing as an unchristened Christendom seems not to have been thought possible.

At any rate no provision was made for the contingency. But upon the spread of liberty of religious thought there followed, logically enough, the spread of liberty of religious action, and it was not strange that after a whole generation had spent its life in controversy of the warmest sort over this very point of Baptism, there were found to be in England mult.i.tudes of the unbaptized.

Another reason a.s.signed in the Preface of the English Prayer Book for the addition of this office was that it might be used for the baptizing of "natives in the plantations and other converts." This is the first hint of any awakening of the conscience of the English Church to a sense of duty toward those strangers and foreigners who in the "Greater Britain" of these later days fill so large a place.

The composition of the office, which differs very little, perhaps scarcely enough, from that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is attributed to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop Sanderson, famous among English theologians as an authority on casuistry. He must have found it rather a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had been the creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to omit an acknowledgment of the nation's obligation to that stout-hearted, if non-Episcopal Christian. Other additions of importance made at this revision were the General Thanksgiving, in all probability the work of Reynolds, a conforming Presbyterian divine, the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, the Prayer for Parliament, upon the lines of which our own Prayer for Congress was afterward modelled, and the Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions of Men. In the Litany the words "rebellion" and "schism" were introduced into one of the suffrages, becoming tide-marks of the havoc wrought in Church and State by what the revisers, doubtless, looked back upon as "the flood of the unG.o.dly." The words "Bishops, Priests, and Deacons" were subst.i.tuted for "Bishops, Pastors, and Ministers of the Church." New Collects were appointed for the Third Sunday in Advent and for St. Stephen's Day. Both of these are distinct gains, albeit had the opinion then prevailed that to introduce into the Prayer Book anything from the pen of a living writer is an impiety, we should have gained neither of them.

Another important change made in 1662 was the adoption for the Sentences, Epistles and Gospels of the language of King James's Bible in place of that of earlier versions. This principle was not applied to the Psalter, to the Decalogue, or, in fact, to any of the portions of Scripture contained in the Communion Service.

It is also interesting to note that the Confession in the Holy Communion, which the earlier rubric had directed should be said by one of the congregation, or else by one of the ministers, or by the priest himself, "was now made general and enjoined upon all the worshippers."

Most suggestive of all, however, was the reinsertion at the end of the Communion Service of a certain Declaration about the significance of the act of kneeling at the reception of the elements, which had, as some say, irregularly and without proper authority, found its way into the Second Book of Edward VI., but had been omitted from all subsequent books till now. This Declaration, which from its not being printed in red ink is known to those who dislike it under the name of "the black rubric," was undoubtedly intended to ease the consciences of those who scrupled to kneel at the altar-rail for fear of seeming to countenance that superst.i.tious adoration of the elements known to and stigmatized by the Reformers as "host-worship."

The language of the black rubric as it stood in Edward's Second Book was as follows: "Although no order can be so perfectly devised but it may be of some, either for their ignorance and infirmity, or else of malice and obstinacy, misconstrued, depraved, and interpreted in a wrong part; and yet because brotherly charity willeth that so much as conveniently may be offences should be taken away; therefore we willing to do the same: whereas, it is ordained in the Book of Common Prayer, in the Administration of the Lord's Supper, that the communicants kneeling should receive the Holy Communion, which thing being well meant for a signification of the humble and grateful acknowledging of the benefits of Christ given unto the worthy receiver, and to avoid the profanation and disorder, which about the Holy Communion might else ensue, lest yet the same kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise; we do declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread or wine there bodily received or unto any real and essential presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood. For as concerning the sacramental bread and wine they remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored, for that were idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians: and as concerning the natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ, they are in heaven and not here, for it is against the truth of Christ's true natural body to be in more places than in one at one time."

In restoring this significant Declaration, the revisers of 1662 subst.i.tuted the words "corporal presence" for the words "real and substantial presence," but probably with no intention other than that of making the original meaning more plain. The fact that in the teeth and eyes of the black rubric the practice known as Eucharistical adoration has become widely prevalent in the Church of England, only shows how little dependence can be placed on forms of words to keep even excellent and religious people from doing the things they have a mind to do.

In taking leave of the Caroline revision, it may be permitted to dwell for a moment upon the serious character of the conclusion reached by the ecclesiastical leaders of that day. An opportunity was given them to conciliate dissent. Without going all lengths, without in any measure imperilling the great foundation principles of Anglican religion, they might, it would seem, have won back to the national church thousands of those whom their sternness not only repelled but permanently embittered. But it was the hour of victory with the Churchmen, and "Woe to the conquered" seems to have been their cry. They set their faces as a flint against concession; they pa.s.sed their iron-clad act of uniformity, and now for more than two hundred years religion in Great Britain has been a household divided against itself. Perhaps nothing that the men of the Restoration could have done would have made it otherwise.

Perhaps the familiar question of the cynical Dean of St. Patrick's, "What imports it how large a gate you open, if there be always left a number who place a pride and a merit in refusing to enter?" was a fair question, and fatal to any dream of unity. And yet one may be pardoned for believing that had a little of the oil of brotherly kindness been poured upon those troubled waters we whom the waves still buffet might to-day be sailing a smoother sea.

As stated above, the Convocation of 1662 gave to the Prayer Book of the Church of England the form it has ever since retained. But it must not be supposed that no efforts have been made meanwhile to bring changes to pa.s.s. The books written upon the subject form a literature by themselves.

The one really serious attempt to reconstruct the Liturgy in post-Caroline times was that which grew naturally enough out of the Revolution of 1688. In every previous crisis of political change, the Prayer Book had felt the tremor along with the statute-book.

Church and State, like heart and brain, are sympathetically responsive to one another; revisions of rubrics go naturally along with revisions of codes. It was only what might have been antic.i.p.ated, therefore, that when William and Mary came to the throne a Commission should issue for a new review. If Elizabeth had found it necessary to revise the book, if James had found it necessary, if Charles had found it necessary, why should not the strong hand of William of Orange be laid upon the pages? But this time the rule was destined to find its exception. The work of review was, indeed, undertaken by a Royal Commission, including among its members the great names of Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and Beveridge, but nothing came of their work. Convocation again showed itself unfriendly to anything like concessive measures, and so complete was the obscurity into which the doings of the Commission fell, that even as late as 1849, Cardwell, in the third edition of his _History of Conferences_, speaks as if he knew nothing of the whereabouts of the record. In 1854 the ma.n.u.script minutes of the Commission's proceedings were discovered in the Library of Lambeth Palace, and by order of Parliament printed as a Blue-book. The same doc.u.ment has also been published in a more readable form by Bagster. One rises from the perusal of this Broad Church Prayer Book--for such, perhaps, Tillotson's attempt may not unfairly be called--profoundly thankful that the promoters of it were not suffered to succeed. The Preface to our American Book of Common Prayer refers to this attempted review of 1689 "as a great and good work." But the greatness and the goodness must have lain in the motive, for one fails to discern them either in the matter or in the manner of what was recommended.

Even Macaulay, Whig that he is, fails not to put on record his condemnation of the literary violence which the Prayer Book so narrowly escaped at the hands of the Royal Commission of 1689.

Terseness was not the special excellency of Macaulay's own style, yet even he resented Bishop Patrick's notion that the Collects could be improved by amplification. One of the few really good suggestions made by the Commissioners was that of using the Beat.i.tudes in the Office of the Holy Communion as an alternate for the Decalogue. There are certain festivals of the Christian year when such a subst.i.tution would be most timely and refreshing.

We make a leap now of just a hundred years. From 1689 we pa.s.s to 1789, and find ourselves in the city of Philadelphia, at a convention a.s.sembled for the purpose of framing a const.i.tution and setting forth a liturgy for a body of Christians destined to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. During the interval between the issue of the Declaration of Independence and the Ratification of the Const.i.tution of the United States, the people in this country who had been brought up in the communion of the Church of England found themselves ecclesiastically in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists they had been canonically under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, a somewhat remote diocesan. But with this Episcopal bond broken and no new one formed, they seemed to be in a peculiar sense adrift. It does not fall to me to narrate the steps that led to the final establishment of the episcopacy upon a sure foundation, nor yet to trace the process through which the Church's legislative system came gradually to its completion.

Our interest is a liturgical one, and our subject matter the evolution of the Prayer Book. I say nothing, therefore, of other matters that were debated in the Convention of 1789, but shall propose instead that we confine ourselves to what was said and done about the Prayer Book. In order, however, fully to appreciate the situation we must go back a little. In a half-formal and half-informal fashion there had come into existence, four years before this Convention of 1789 a.s.sembled, an American Liturgy now known by the name of _The Proposed Book_. It had been compiled on the basis of the English Prayer Book by a Committee of three eminent clergymen, Dr. White of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Smith of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Delaware. Precisely what measure of acceptance this book enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually into use, are difficult, perhaps hopeless questions.

What we know for certain is that the public opinion of the greater number of Churchmen rejected it as inadequate and unsatisfactory.

In the Convention of 1789 The Proposed Book does not seem to have been seriously considered in open debate at all, though doubtless there was much talk about it, much controversy over its merits and demerits at Philadelphia dinner-tables and elsewhere while the session was in progress.

The truth is, the changes set forth in _The Proposed Book_ were too sweeping to commend themselves to the sober second-thought of men whose blood still showed the tincture of English conservatism.

Possibly also some old flames of Tory resentment were rekindled, here and there, by the prominence given in the book to a form of public thanksgiving for the Fourth of July. There were Churchmen doubtless at that day who failed duly to appreciate what were called in the t.i.tle of the office, "the inestimable blessings of Religious and Civil Liberty." Others again may have been offended by the treatment measured out to the Psalter, which was portioned into thirty selections of two parts each, with the _Benedicite_ added at the end, to be used, if desired, on the thirty-first day of any month. Another somewhat crude and unliturgical device was the running together without break of the Morning Prayer and the Litany.

I speak of blemishes, but _The Proposed Book_ had its excellences also. Just at present it is the fashion in Anglican circles to heap ridicule and contempt on _The Proposed Book_ out of all proportion to its real demerits. Somehow it is thought to compromise us with the English by showing up our ecclesiastical ancestors in an unfavorable light as unlearned and ignorant men. It is treated as people will sometimes treat an old family portrait of a forebear, who in his day was under a cloud, mismanaged trust funds, or made money in the slave trade. Thus a grave historiographer by way of speaking comfortably on this score, a.s.sures us that the volume "speedily sunk into obscurity," becoming one of the rarest of the books ill.u.s.trative of our ecclesiastical annals.