more prominent in the words which Augustine addressed to the seven Bishops of the ancient Church of England, when they met in conference at the place afterwards called St. Augustine's Oak. "You act," said he, “in many particulars contrary to our customs, or rather, to the customs of the universal Church, and yet, if you will comply with me in these three points, viz. to keep Easter at the due time; to perform the administration of baptism, by which we are born again to God, according to the custom of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church; and jointly with us to preach the Word of God to the nation of the Angles, we will readily tolerate all your other customs, though contrary to our own." The answer of St. Gregory contained wise and Catholic advice; and to it we owe, under Providence, the continued use of an independent form of Divine Worship in the Church of England from that day to the present. "You, my brother," said Gregory, "are acquainted with the customs of the Roman Church in which you were brought up. But it is my pleasure that if you have found any thing either in the Roman or the Gallican or any other Church which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you carefully make choice of the same; and sedulously teach the Church of the Angles, which is at present new in the Faith, whatsoever you can gather from the several Churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Select, therefore, from each Church those things that are pious, religious, and correct; and when you have made these up into one body, instil this into the minds of the English for their Use." [Greg. Opera, ii. 1151, Bened. ed.; Bede's Eccl. Hist. i. 27.] The Liturgy of the Roman Church spoken of in this reply is represented by the ancient Sacramentary of St. Gregory, to which such frequent references are given in the following pages that of the Gallican Church is also extant', and has been shown (as was mentioned before) to be the Liturgy of the Church of Ephesus. The words "any other Church" might be supposed to refer to an independent English Liturgy, but there is no reference to any in the question to which Gregory is replying, and he evidently knew nothing of England except through Augustine. From other writers it seems that the Liturgy of England before this time had been the same with that of France; but the native clergy always alleged that their distinctive customs were derived from St. John.

:

Being thus advised by St. Gregory, the holy missionary endeavoured to deal as gently as possible with those whose customs of Divine Worship differed from his own; but his prepossessions in favour of the Roman system were very strong, and he used all his influence to get it universally adopted throughout the country.

Uniformity in all details was not, however, attainable. The national feeling of the ancient Church steadily adhered to the ancient rite for many years; while the feeling of the Church founded by St. Augustine was in favour of a rite more closely in agreement with that of Rome. As collision was the first natural consequence of this state of things, so some degree of amalgamation as naturally followed in course of time; that which was local, or national, mingling with that which was foreign in the English devotional system, as it did in the English race itself. Some attempts were made, as in the Council of Cloveshoo [A.D. 747], to enforce the Roman Liturgy upon all the dioceses of the country, but it is certain that the previous devotional customs of the land had an exceedingly tenacious hold upon the lergy and the people, and that no efforts could ever wholly extirpate them'.

The "Use" of Salisbury.

At the time of the Conquest another vigorous attempt was made to secure uniformity of Divine Service throughout the country, and with the most pious intentions. Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, and Chancellor of England, remodelled the Offices of the Church, and left behind him the famous Portiforium or Breviary of Sarum, containing the Daily Services; together with the Sarum Missal, containing the Communion Service; and, probably, the Sarum Manual, containing the Baptismal and other "occasional" Offices. These, and some other Service-books, constituted the "Sarum Use," that is, the Prayer Book of the Diocese of Salisbury. It was first adopted for that diocese in A.D. 1085, and was introduced into other parts of England so generally that it became the principal devotional Rule of the Church of England, and continued so for more than four centuries and a half: "the Church of Salisbury," says a writer of the year 1256, "being conspicuous above all other Churches like the sun in the heavens, diffusing its light every where, and supplying their defects." Other Uses continued to hold their place in the dioceses of Lincoln, Hereford, and Bangor, and through the greater part of the province of York; though in the diocese of Durham the Salisbury system was followed. At St. Paul's Cathedral, and perhaps throughout the

Reformation of

diocese of London, there was an independent Use until A.D. 1414; and probably there were several others in Cathedral Churches, while the Roman system was adopted by most monasteries. The Salisbury Use, that of York, that of Bangor, and that of Hereford, are well known to modern ritualists. They appear to be traceable to a common origin; but they differ in so many respects from the Roman Breviary, and even from the Missal (with which a closer agreement might have been expected), that they clearly derive their common origin from a source independent of the Roman Church. And, whatever quarter they may have been derived from in the first instance, it is equally clear that the forms of Divine Service now known to us under these names represent a system which was naturalized so many ages ago that it has been entitled to the name of an independent English rite for at least a thousand years. There are no means of deciding how far the original Use of Salisbury differed from that which is known to us. The copies remaining belong to a much later period than the Sarum Use. the eleventh century, and there is reason to think that some accretions had gathered around the ancient devotions of the Church of England by that time. The tide of change by which these were to be removed began to set in a few years after the accession of Henry VIII., when a new edition of the Salisbury Portiforium was issued, perhaps under the influence of Cardinal Wolsey, whose efforts towards bringing about a Reformation have been too little recognized. This edition was printed in 1516; and is said by a modern learned Editor, the Rev. C. Seager, to have well deserved the name of a Reformed Breviary from the important changes which had been made in it. There was little variation indeed from the old forms; but there was a distinct initiation of the principles which were afterwards carried out more fully in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549. The rubrics were much simplified; Holy Scripture was directed to be read in order, without omission; and the Lessons were restored to their ancient length, which was about double of what they had been reduced to in some previous editions of the Breviary.

In 1531 this Reformed Edition of the Salisbury Portiforium or Breviary was reprinted; and two years later the Missal was published, reformed on the same principles; in the latter special care being taken to provide an apparatus for enabling the people to find out the places of the Epistles and Gospels. And though no authorized translation of the Bible had yet been allowed by Henry VIII., Cranmer and the other Bishops began to revise Tyndale's translation in 1534, and encouraged the issue of books containing the Epistles and Gospels in English, of which many editions were published between 1538 and the printing of the Prayer Book'. A fresh impulse seems thus to have been given to the use of the old English Prymers, in which a large portion of the Services (including the Litany) was translated into the vulgar tongue, and also a third of the Psalms, and to which in later times the Epistles and Gospels were added. In 1530 also had been published an admirable commentary on some of the daily services (in which the greater part of them is translated into English), under the title of "The Mirroure of our Ladye," which furnishes a strong indication of the endeavours that were being made to render Divine Service intelligible to those who could not read Latin.

In 1510 the Psalter was printed by Grafton in Latin and English [Bodleian Lib., Douce BB. 71], and there seems to have been an earlier edition of a larger size about the year 1534. The Psalter had long been re-arranged, so that the Psalms were said in consecutive order, according to our modern practice, instead of in the ancient but complex order of the Breviary. [See Introd. to Psalter.]

In 1541 another amended, and still further reformed edition of the Salisbury Breviary was published, in the title-page of which it is said to be purged from many errors. By order of Convocation [March 3, 1541-2] this was adopted throughout the whole province of Canterbury, and an uniformity secured which had not existed since the days of Augustine. With this edition an order was also put forth that Lessons should be read in English after the Te Deum and Magnificat. Nor is it an insignificant circumstance that the book was now printed by Whitchurch (from whose press issued the Book of Common Prayer), instead of being printed in Paris as formerly. Another edition appeared in 1544.

The ancient formularies had, however, by change of circumstances, become unsuitable in several respects for the Church of England. They had grown into a form in which they were extremely well adapted (from a ritual point of view) for the use of religious communities, but were far too complex for that of parochial congregations. When monasteries were abolished, it was found that the devotional system of the Church must be condensed if it was to be used by mixed congregations, and by those

1 Portiforium Sarisb., p. vii. Leslie, 1813.

Sce List of Printed Service-books, according to the ancient

uses of the English Church. Compiled by Mr. F. H. Dickinson. Masters. Reprinted from Ecclesiologist of Feb. 1850.

who were not specially set apart for that life of rule and continual worship for which monastic communities were intended. The Breviary services had never been familiar to the people of England, any more than they are to the Continental laity of the present day. They were accretions around some shorter and more primitive form of responsive public service which had been found insufficient for those who formed themselves into special societies for the purpose of carrying on an unceasing round of prayer and praise. But now that the "religious" of the Church were to be so separated no longer, Divine Providence led her to feel the way gradually towards a return to the earlier practice of Christianity; the idea of a popular and mixed congregation superseded that of a special monastic one; and the daily worship being transferred from the Cloister to the Parish Church, its normal form of Common Prayer was revived in the place of the Prayers of a class or the solitary recitation of the Parish Priest. No blame was cast upon the former system for its complexity; but the times were changed, a new order of things was becoming established, and, although the principles of the Church are unchangeable, so entire a remoulding of society entailed of necessity a corresponding adaptation of her devotional practice, both for the honour of God and the good of souls, to the wants that had come to light.

That such was really the object of the steps which were taken towards a Reformed English Breviary or Portiforium is confirmed by the course of events. Something in the nature of a confirmation is also afforded by a comparison of these attempts with others of a similar kind which were made abroad towards obtaining a Reformed Roman Breviary. Some years after the Convocation of the Church of England had issued the 1516 edition of the Salisbury Use, Leo X. gave directions to Zaccharie Ferréri de Vicence, Bishop of Guarda, in Portugal, to prepare a new version of the Breviary Hymns. This was done, and the volume published under the authority of Clement VII. in 1525, with this prominent announcement of a Reformed Breviary on the title-page :-" Breviarium Ecclesiasticum ab eodem Zach. Pont. longe brevius et facilius redditum et ab omni errore purgatum propediem exibit." The promised reform was effected by Cardinal Quignonez, a Spanish Bishop, and was published under the same authority as the Hymnal, in 1535-6. But this Reformed Roman Breviary was intended chiefly, if not entirely, for the use of the clergy and monks in their private recitations; and its introduction in some places for choir and public use eventually led to its suppression in 1568. No provision whatever was made (as there had been in connexion with the English reform) for adapting it to the use of the laity. During the whole forty years of its use there is no trace of any attempt to connect the Breviary of Quignonez with vernacular translations of prayers or scriptures. And, although it was undoubtedly an initiatory step in the same direction as that taken by our own Reformers (who indeed used the Breviary of Quignonez in their subsequent proceedings), yet it was never followed up, nor intended to be followed up; and the object of the Roman reform throws out in stronger light that of the English.

Committee of Convocation Reform of Servicebooks.

The measures already taken by the ecclesiastical authorities of England were plainly for regarded as being of a temporary nature only. No more Service-books were allowed to be printed than were absolutely necessary for the performance of Divine Worship, as it was seen that a much more thorough revision of them must take place. Meanwhile, a Committee of Convocation was appointed, with the sanction of Henry VIII., to consider the nature of the revision that was to be made. This Committee was appointed in 1542, and consisted of the Bishops of Salisbury' and Ely (Shaxton and Goodrich), with six Clergy of the Lower House of Convocation; the object of their appointment being stated to be the examination, correction, and reformation of "all mass-books, antiphoners" [anthem-books]," and portuises," that is portiforia, or breviaries. This Committee continued in existence for a long period, and its last work was the Book of Common Prayer, published in 1549. But for a time its public action was restrained by the "Statute of Six Articles," which, in point of fact, made such labours highly penal'. There is good reason to think that Henry VIII.

1 The Bishops of Salisbury are ex officio Precentors of the Province of Canterbury.

2 The Statute of Six Articles was an Act of Parliament passed under the personal influence of Henry VIII., and against the persevering efforts of the Bishops in the House of Lords, in the year 1539. It made highly penal any denial of either of six short statements which embodied the chief points of doctrine then brought into controversy. It formed the key of the position for the time; and, knowing this, Cranmer and other Bishops maintained the debate for eleven days in the hope of preventing

the bill from passing, he himself arguing against it for three days. The penalties annexed to this Act were, for preaching or writing against the first article, burning (without pardon on recantation); imprisonment for life, with forfeiture, for preaching or writing against any of the others, with death for the second offence. In his reply to the Devonshire rebels, Archbishop Cranmer writes respecting this statute (which they wished to have restored), “If the King's Majesty himself had not come into the parliament house, those laws had never passed."-Strype's Cranmer, ii 515. Ecc. Hist. Soc.

was himself the author of this Statute, and it was certainly passed by his influence. The Bishops had vigorously opposed it in the House of Lords with an eleven days' debate, and their experience showed them that any reformation of the ancient services must be carried on with extreme caution while this law was in operation under so despotic a monarch'. But as soon as Convocation met, after the death of Henry, a resolution was passed, "That the works of the Bishops and others, who by the command of the Convocation have laboured in examining, reforming, and publishing the Divine Service, may be produced, and laid before the examination of this house." This resolution was passed on November 22nd, 1547, and as some of the Clergy complained that it was not safe to do this while the Statute of Six Articles remained in force, Cranmer exerted himself, and successfully, to get it repealed, and so to set the Committee and the Convocation free.

Reform of the

The first efforts of the Committee had been to prune down the complexity and superabundance of the existing Rubrics. This was so great that some pages of the Rubrics. Service-books contained many more words of direction in red letters than of prayers in black. The whole ceremonial of Divine Service was involved in this inquiry, including the ancient and venerable practices of the Church, as well as numberless recent and often superstitious ones. In 1543 they prepared a long Canon on "The Ceremonies to be used in the Church of England, together with an explanation of the meaning and significancy of them3." How far this was published at the time is not clear; but it is highly probable that the investigation which resulted in this document was also the foundation on which the Rubrics of 1549 were constructed.

The reconstructors of our devotional offices acted wisely in reducing the number of Rubrics, and generally moderating the ceremonial system of the Church of England. They said that "the great excess and multitude of them hath so increased in these latter days, that the burthen of them was intolerable," and they spoke with the experience of practical men, who were familiarly acquainted all their lives with that about which they wrote. But one inconvenience has arisen out of the manner in which they did their work, from which later generations have suffered more than they could foresee. They went upon the principle of expressing only the most essential things in the Rubric, and left many others to tradition. As Bishop Cosin states it", "The book does not every where enjoin and pre-cribe every little order, what should be said or done, but takes it for granted that people are acquainted with such common, and things always used already." Many of these usages are referred to in the subsequent pages of this volume, and need not be mentioned now. It is sufficient to say, that some of them dropped out of memory altogether during the persecution of the Church and the suppression of the Establishment under the rule of the Commonwealth; that others, from want of written authority, have become the subject of controversy; and that the ritual tradition to which the Reformers trusted so much when they put forth their condensed form of Rubric, has only been partially recovered even in our own time.

Meanwhile they had also set forth, in 1544, the Litany in English, revised from the old English Litany, which had been in use for a hundred and fifty years or more, and with additions from the Litany of Luther, and that of Archbishop Hermann's Reformed Ritual of Cologne. Though, however, the King consented to this, he seems to have refused to sanction any further labours of the Committee, and they were obliged to proceed with extreme caution during the remainder of his life.

Enlargement of the Committee.

Freedom of action for the Bishops and Clergy of Convocation having been obtained by the repeal of the Statute of Six Articles (or the "Whip with Six Cords," as it was grimly called), they immediately commenced advancing to the practical end of the Revision which had been in view for so many years. On November 30th, 1547, Archbishop Cranmer (now a member of this important Committee) brought before Convocation" a form of a certain ordinance for the receiving of the Body of our Lord under both kinds, viz., of bread and wine." This was adopted,

1 Yet Cranmer made a vigorous effort to persuade the king into authorizing the publication of their revision. On January 24, 1516, he sent Henry a draught of a letter to be addressed to hmself by the king, in which it is referred to, and by which it was intended to put it in force. But the king would not adopt the suggestion. The Archbishop wisely pressed on these proposed reforms in the hope that they would be firmly rooted, if established by so vigorous a hand as that of Henry VIII. It was better," he said to his Secretary in 1547, "to attempt such

and published in March under the title of "The Order of the Communion," being an English addition to the ancient Salisbury Use of the Missal, which was left otherwise untouched. [See Notes on Communion Service.]

The Committee of Revision had now been considerably enlarged, and since it occupies so important a position in respect to the subsequent history of England, it will be well to give their names as they stood in 1547-8, and in 1549.

In what manner the Convocation of the Province of York was represented is not on record; but from the proceedings of 1661 (which would be founded on strict precedent) there can be no doubt that its co-operation was obtained in some way; and the names of the Archbishop of York and his Suffragans are indeed contained in a list of Bishops who were indirectly or directly mixed up with those above recorded.

It is evident there had been a conviction all along that it was necessary to adopt the "vulgar tongue" as the language in which the revised Services of the Church of England were to be used. The English Litany, which had been used by the people for many generations, was authorized for public use in Divine Service in 1544. The Processional (containing other Litanies) was translated in the same year, though never brought into use; and the " Order of Communion" was a step in the same uniform direction of progressive reformation. Much interesting light is thrown on the manner in which this cautious progress was made, by a letter of Archbishop Cranmer to Henry VIII., respecting the English Processional just referred to: its date being Oct. 7, 1544 ' :—

"It may please your Majesty to be advertised, that, according to your Highness' commandment, sent unto me by your Grace's Secretary, Mr. Pagett, I have translated into the English tongue, so well as I could in so short a time, certain processions, to be used upon festival days, if after due correction and amendment of the same, your Highness shall think it so convenient. In which translation, forasmuch as many of the processions, in the Latin, were but barren, as me seemed, and little fruitful, I was constrained to use more than the liberty of a translator: for in some processions I have altered divers words; in some I have added part; in some taken part away; some I have left out whole, either for bycause the matter appeared to me to be little to purpose, or bycause the days be not with us festival days" [having been abrogated in 1537]; "and some processions I have added whole, because I thought I had better matter for the purpose than was the procession in Latin; the judgement whereof I leave wholly unto your Majesty: and after your Highness hath corrected it, if your Grace command some devout and solemn note to be made thereunto (as is to the procession which your Majesty hath already set forth in English), I trust it will much excitate and stir the hearts of all men unto devotion and godliness. But in mine opinion, the song that shall be made thereunto should not be full of notes, but as near as may be for every syllable a note; so that it may be sung distinctly and devoutly, as be the

1 Jenkyns' Cranmer, i. 315.