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1 Tim. ii 1, 2. Prov. xi. 14.

xxix. 2.

Deut. xvi. 18. 20. 1 Chron. xiii.

1.3.

1 Cor. x. 31. Neh. ii. 20. Prov. xx. 18. xiv. 34. Zech. viii. 16, 17. 19. Ps. cxxii. 6, 7. Isa xi. 8. Ps. cxliv. 12-15. Phil. iv. 6. 19. Rom. ix. 5.

¶ A Prayer for the High Court of Parliament, to be read during their Session.

OST gracious God, we humbly M

MOST

beseech thee, as for this Kingdom in general, so especially for the High Court of Parliament, under our most religious and gracious Queen at this time assembled: That thou wouldest be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations to the advancement of thy glory, the good of thy Church, the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign, and her "Kingdoms" in Dominions; that all things may be

all Sealed Books.

so ordered and settled by their endeavours upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety may be established among us for all generations. These and all other necessaries for them, for us, and thy whole Church we humbly beg in the Name and mediation of Jesus Christ our most blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

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The proper times for the use of this prayer are seasons of penitence. All days in Lent, Fridays, the Rogation Days, and the days of Ember Weeks, are obviously occasions when it comes in with a marked appropriateness; its use "after any of the former" clearly supposing that "the former" collects are accompanied by fasting and humiliation.

It may also be pointed out as a most suitable prayer for use by Clergy and Laity alike after any confession of sins in private prayer; or in praying with sick persons, in cases when an authoritative absolution is not to be used.

§ The Prayer for the Parliament.

There is every reason to think that this prayer, so consonant with the constitutional principles of modern times, was composed by Archbishop Laud, when Bishop of St. David's. The earliest form in which it is known is that above given, from a Fast-day Service printed in 1625'. It also appears in at least two Forms of Prayer which were issued by Laud after he became Archbishop of Canterbury, and during the rule of that "Long" Parliament

1 "A Forme of Common Prayer to be read every Wednesday during the present visitation. Set forth by His Majestie's Authority. Reprinted at London by Bonham Norton and John Bill, Printers to the King's most excellent Majestic. Anno 1625."

OST gracious God, we humbly beseech thee, as for this Kingdom in general, so especially for the High Court of Parliament, under our most religious and gracious King at this time assembled: That thou wouldest be pleased to bless and direct all their consultations to the preservation of thy glory, the good of thy Church, the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign, and his Kingdoms. Look, O Lord, upon the humility and devotion with which they are come into thy courts. And they are come into thy house in assured confidence upon the merits and mercies of Christ our blessed Saviour, that thou wilt not deny them the grace and favour which they beg of thee. Therefore, O Lord, bless them with all that wisdom, which thou knowest necessary to make the maturity of his Majesty's and their counsels, the happiness and blessing of this commonwealth. These and all other necessaries for them, for us, and thy whole Church, we humbly beg in the Name and mediation of Christ Jesus our most blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Form of Prayer

for the fast days

in 1625, 1643,

1644, and 1648,

by the influence of which he and the king suffered. It does not appear in a folio copy of "Prayers for the Parliament," which is bound up at the beginning of Bishop Cosin's Durham Prayer Book, but it was inserted in a Fast-day Service for the 12th of June, 1661, and afterwards in its present place. The word "Dominions" was substituted for "Kingdoms" by an Order in Council of January 1st, 1801. As, however, the ancient style of our kings was "Rex Angliæ, Dominus Hiberniæ," this seems to have been a constitutional mistake, as well as a questionable interference with the Prayer Book; but probably "dominions" was supposed to be the more comprehensive word, and one more suitable than "kingdoms" to an empire so extended and of so mixed a character as that of the English Sovereigns.

The phrase "High Court of Parliament" in this prayer includes the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation; which, together, are the three estates of the realm (by representation) assembled under the Sovereign. The petition referring to "the advancement of God's glory, and the good of His Church," has a special reference to Convocation, which was no doubt evident enough at the time the prayer was composed, when Convocation was the primary assembly for the consideration of all religious questions having a national bearing.

This prayer may have been intended only for use before the several Houses of Parliament, when it was inserted here in 1661. Yet the remarks made on the Ember Collect apply to it in no small degree; and the general prayers of the Church may be expected to bring down a blessing upon the deliberations of the Parliament, in a higher degree than the local prayers daily used in each House.

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*This to be said when any desire the Prayers of the Congregation.

be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those, who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [* especially those for whom our prayers are desired,] that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them, according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we corruption of the beg for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.

Ps. xciv. 19.

Isa. xli. 3.

Phil. iv. 19.

Rom. v. 3. John xvi. 24.

xxxiv. 19.

old genitive "Christes."

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It may be mentioned that the expression "most great, learned, and religious king," is contained in James the First's Act for a Thanksgiving on the Fifth of November.

§ Prayer for all Conditions of Men.

This prayer was composed by Dr. Peter Gunning, afterwards Bishop, successively, of Chichester and Ely, and one of the chief instruments, under God, in the restoration of the Prayer Book to national use in 1662. It has usually been supposed to be a condensed form of a longer prayer, in which he had endeavoured to satisfy the objections of the Puritans against the collect form of the Five Prayers, by amalgamating the substance of them into one. The first idea of it seems, however, to be taken from the nine ancient collects for Good Friday, of which we only retain three. Dr. Bisse states that when Gunning was Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, he would not allow this prayer to be used at Evensong, declaring that he had composed it only for Morning use, as a substitute for the Litany. And certainly, if it had been intended for constant use, it is strange that it was not placed before the Prayer of St. Chrysostom in Morning and Evening Prayer, but among the "Prayers for Several Occasions." The original intention must certainly have been to confine this general supplication to occasional use; and the meaning of “to be used" is probably identical with "that may be used." There are circumstances under which it may be desirable to shorten the Service, and if the omission of this prayer can thus be considered as permissible, it will offer one means of doing so.

The prayer is cast in the mould of that for the Church in the Communion Service. Bishop Cosin altered the preface of that prayer to, "Let us pray for the good estate of Christ's Catholick Church," and the title of the prayer in the Rubric at the end of the Communion Service was altered by him in the same way. The title was often so printed in the last century, and had ap peared in the same form in a book of Hours printed in 1531. [See notes in Communion Service, pp. 175. 197.]

The tone and the language of the prayer very successfully imitate those of the ancient collects, and the condensation of its petitions shows how thoroughly and spiritually the author of it entered into the worth of that ancient mode of prayer, as distinguished from the verbose meditations which were substituted for it in the Occasional Services of James I. The petition, "That

hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving kindness to us, and to all men ; [* particularly to those who desire now to offer up their praises and thanks

*This to be

said when any that

all who profess and call themselves Christians, may be led into the way of truth," was evidently framed with reference to the Puritan Nonconformists, who had sprung up in such large numbers during the great Rebellion; but it is equally applicable as a prayer of charity for Dissenters at all times; and no words could be more gentle or loving than these, when connected with the petitions for unity, peace, and righteousness which follow. The concluding petitions have an analogy with the Memorie Communes of the Salisbury Use, "Pro quacunque tribulatione," and "Pro infirmo." In another Memoria, that "Pro amico" which comes between these two, the name of the person prayed for was mentioned, which may have suggested the parenthetical reference to individuals in this prayer 1.

There was, beside these Common Memorials, a Daily Prayer for the Sick in the Service at Prime, as follows:Omnipotens sempiterne Deus: Almighty and everlasting salus æterna credentium, exaudi God, the eternal salvation of nos pro famulis tuis pro quibus them that believe, hear us on misericordiæ tuæ imploramus behalf of those thy servants for auxilium; ut reddita sibi sani- whom we beseech the help of tate, gratiarum tibi in ecclesia thy mercy; that health being tua referant actiones. Per restored unto them, they may Christum. Amen. [Gelas.] render thanks to thee in thy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is a very excellent practice, when any are known to be dying, to commend them to the prayers of the Church (by name or otherwise) before the Prayer for all Conditions of Men is said. It is equally applicable to cases of mental or bodily distress, as well as to its more familiar use in the case of sick persons; and the afflictions or distresses of "mind, body, or estate," which are so tersely but comprehensively named, show clearly that the special clause of intercession was not by any means intended to be limited to sickness.

THE OCCASIONAL THANKSGIVINGS. These were all placed as they now stand in 1661; but they were, with two exceptions, printed at the end of the Litany (by

1 Bishop Cosin provided a short service to be used in this place for any persons desiring the prayers of the Church. See the note at the end of the Visitation Office, p. 263.

K

have been

prayed for desire to re

turn praise.

Ps. cvii. 21, 22.

cxxxix. 14. Rev. iv. 10, 11.

Ps. lxxi. 6. ciii.

2-5.

John iii. 16.
Rev. i. 5, 6.

Acts ii. 41, 42.

1 Pet. i. 3, 4.

1 Sam. xii. 24.

Ps. xi. 5. ix. 1.
Matt. xii. 34, 35.
v. 16.
Rom. xii. 1.
Luke i. 74, 75.
Jude 26, 27.
Rom. xvi. 27.
al. may shew
forth, as in
Irish MS.

mercy, and will always declare thy
loving kindness from generation to
generation; through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.

givings for thy late mercies vouchsafed | glorify thy holy Name for this thy
We bless thee for our
unto them.]
creation, preservation, and all the
blessings of this life; but above all,
for thine inestimable love in the re-
demption of the world by our Lord
Jesus Christ; for the means of grace,

Col. i. 3-5. 26, 27. and for the hope of glory. And, we
beseech thee, give us that due sense of
all thy mercies, that our hearts may
be unfeignedly thankful, and that we
shew forth thy praise, not only with
our lips, but in our lives; by giving
up our selves to thy service, and by
walking before thee in holiness and
righteousness all our days; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with
thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour
and glory, world without end. Amen.

Ps. lxv. 1. 9-13.
Hosea vi. 3.

Ps. cxlvii. 8, 9.

civ. 13-15.

Ps. lxviii. 9.

Joel ii. 23, 24. 26.
Isa, xii. 1.

Gen. xxxii. 10.

lxxii. 19.

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TFor Rain.

GOD our heavenly Father, who by thy gracious providence dost cause the former and the latter rain to descend upon the earth, that it may Ps. cxlv. 9-11. bring forth fruit for the use of man; We give thee humble thanks that it hath pleased thee, in our great necessity, to send us at the last a joyful rain upon thine inheritance, and to refresh it when it was dry, to the great comfort of us thy unworthy servants, and to the glory of thy holy Name; through thy mercies in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Royal authority only), after the Hampton Court Conference in 1606. The particular circumstances under which this liberty was taken with the Prayer Book by James I. are mentioned in the Historical Introduction. It is unnecessary to add any thing | further here than that the Occasional Thanksgivings are now as entirely a part of the Prayer Book sanctioned by the Church as any other prayers.

§ The General Thanksgiving.

This was composed or compiled by Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich, for the revision of 1661. The first portion of it appears to be borrowed from the following opening of a Thanksgiving composed by Queen Elizabeth after one of her progresses, and which is printed (from a copy in the State Paper Office) in the

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For Plenty.

1

Ps. cxvi. 5. cii.
17. lxvi. 18-
20. cvii. 35-
38.
Deut. viii. 10.

XXXV, 10. Thess. v. 18.

lxvii. 5, 6. lxxxv. 12.

MOST merciful Father, who of Jer. xxix. 11-14 thy gracious goodness hast heard the devout prayers of thy Church, and turned our dearth and scarcity into cheapness and plenty; We give thee humble thanks for this thy special bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving kindness unto us, that our land may yield us her fruits of increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For peace and deliverance from our enemies. ALMIGHTY God, who art a strong tower of defence unto thy servants against the face of their enemies; We yield thee praise and thanksgiving for our deliverance from those great and apparent dangers wherewith we were compassed: We acknowledge it thy goodness that we were not delivered over as a prey unto them; beseeching thee still to continue such thy mercies towards us, that all the world may know that thou art our Saviour and mighty Deliverer; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ¶ For restoring publick peace at home. ETERNAL God, our heavenly Father, who alone makest men to be of one mind in a house, and stillest the outrage of a violent unruly people; We bless thy holy Name, that it hath pleased thee to appease the seditious tumults which have been lately raised up amongst

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"Liturgies of Queen Elizabeth" of the Parker Society, p. 667, "I render unto Thee, O Merciful and Heavenly Father, most humble and hearty thanks for Thy manifold mercies so abundantly bestowed upon me, as well for my creation, preservation, regeneration, and all other Thy benefits and great mercies exhibited in Christ Jesus..." But it is possible that there is some older prayer, as yet unnoticed, which was the original of both Queen Elizabeth's and Bishop Reynolds'.

The remarks which have been made respecting the special clause in the "Prayer for all Conditions of Men," apply also to the special clause in the General Thanksgiving.

§ For restoring publick peace at home.

This is to be found in the margin of Cosin's Durham Prayer Book,

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in his handwriting; and is, no doubt, of his composition. There are two changes made in the course of writing it, with the evident object of moulding it in as charitable a form as possible. "Madness of a raging and unreasonable people" was one of the original phrases; and, "grant that we may henceforth live in peace and unity," was another; and both are altered in Cosin's own writing. This Thanksgiving offers another illustration of the restrained and temperate spirit in which the restoration of the Prayer Book and its revision were undertaken by men who

thy mercies in the midst of thy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

TOr this.

Ps. xcv. 8. Lam. iii. 22.

lxxix. 8.

2 Chron. vii. 13,14.

Ps. xxx. 2. 11, 12.
Neh. ix. 5.
Ps. Ixix. 30.

Ps. exviii. 15.

Isa.xxxviii. 18,19.

Luke i. 46, 47. Heb. xiii. 15. Gen. xvii. 1.

James v.6.
Rom. xiii. 12, 13.

John iii. 19-21.

E humbly acknowledge before Deut. xxviii. 15. thee, O most merciful Father, Prov. xxviii. 14. that all the punishments which are Ps. cxlv. 9. threatened in thy law might justly 1 Kings xxi. 29. have fallen upon us, by reason of our manifold transgressions and hardness of heart; Yet seeing it hath pleased thee of thy tender mercy, upon our weak and unworthy humiliation, to assuage the contagious sickness wherewith we lately have been sore afflicted, Maxxi. 5. and to restore the voice of joy and Matt. XXV.3 health into our dwellings; We offer Rev. i. 8. xix. 16. unto thy Divine Majesty the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, lauding and magnifying thy glorious Name for such thy preservation and providence over us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

2 Cor. vi. 2.

xxv. 31, 32. 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17.

had suffered so much from the "outrage of a violent and unruly people," as Cosin and his coadjutors had suffered for many years.

Except the General Thanksgiving, none of these Occasional Thanksgivings are well adapted to the necessities of present times; and the introduction of several new "Memoriæ Communes" would be a good work of revision, provided they were worded in language whose suitableness and dignity made them fit to be placed beside more ancient parts of the Prayer Book.

AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE

COLLECTS, EPISTLES, AND GOSPELS.

THE Liturgy consists of a fixed and unvarying portion, and of a portion which varies at least once a week; the fixed part is printed by itself in a later division of the Prayer Book, and the variable part is that included under the title of "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, to be used throughout the year," and now coming under notice.

In the early ages of the Church, the Office of the Holy Communion was contained in several separate volumes, one for the Epistles, called the Comes, Lectionarius, or Epistolarium; another for the Gospels, called the Evangelistarium; a third for the Anthems, called the Antiphonarius, or Gradual; and a fourth for the fixed part of the Service and the Collects, which went by the name of the Liber Sacramentorum, or Sacramentary. These four separate volumes were eventually united into one, under the name of the Missal; and the two portions of the Prayer Book in which the varying and unvarying parts of the Communion Service are contained, constitute, in fact, the Missal of the Church of England, which is almost universally bound in a separate form for use at the Altar.

The modern arrangement of these variable parts of the Liturgy is derived directly from the ancient Missals of the Church of England, of which the principal one was that of Salisbury. Like the rest of the Prayer Book, it has undergone some condensation. Offertory sentences were formerly placed in this part of the Liturgy, but are now collected into the unvarying portion. There was also a short Anthem, or Gradual (with its response), placed after every Epistle, and a Collect called "Postcommunio," but both of these have been discontinued. The Introit, or Officium, was likewise appointed for every celebration of the Holy Communion, and a short Anthem to be sung during the Administration. In the first Prayer Book, the Introits were taken from the Psalms 2, and were all printed before the

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Collect; but Hymns have been generally substituted since their omission. The "Communio" was also fixed in the first Prayer Book, being the Anthem, "O Lamb of God, which takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us;" and for this, a soft and solemn organ voluntary seems to have been afterwards substituted, such as is still to be heard at Durham Cathedral and elsewhere during the Administration.

This arrangement of the variable parts of the Communion Service is, however, much more ancient than the Salisbury Missal. The selection of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays and some of the other Holy Days is attributed to St. Jerome in the fourth century; and most of the Collects come to us originally from the Sacramentaries of St. Leo, Gelasius, and St. Gregory; the last of whom died A.D. 604.

§ Collects.

The Collects which are now used in the Communion Service appear to be the growth of the fifth and sixth centuries, as is stated above; though it is far from being improbable that the Sacramentaries of that date were, to a large extent, compilations of previously existing forms, rather than original compositions of those whose names they bear. These Sacramentaries have the appearance of methodizing and rearranging established customs and formularies; and there is an antecedent improbability in the statement that SS. Leo, Gregory, or any other single individual, invented so large a body of public devotions, and wrought so great a revolution in the habits of the Church, as to bring it suddenly into use. Cardinal Bona [Rer. Liturg., ii. 5; iv.] gives some evidence in support of the supposed Apostolic origin of the form of prayer known by the name of Collect, though he thinks the general tradition of the Christian world a sufficient proof that Gelasius and St. Gregory composed those now in use.

It may be considered an argument against this theory of Apostolic origin, that the Collect is a form of prayer unknown in the Eastern Church, which has always been so conservative with regard to its ancient customs and formularies. But Archdeacon Freeman has shown that there is a distinct likeness between certain kinds of hymns (called "Exaposteilaria ") of the Eastern Church, and the Collects of the Western, by which a common

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