The Office of the Communion though soon combined with the other Offices, appears at first to have been published by itself, and before any other service;[366] it being important to provide a substitute for the Mass with as little delay as possible. At the end of the same year, however, (1548) the Book of Common Prayer was prepared, and submitted to parliament; and in 1549 it was put forth by authority, and was appointed to supersede every other form. It was drawn up by the same hands,[367] and upon the same principles as the Office of the Communion; and as the Missal had been laid under contribution for the latter so was the Breviary for the former, and the ancient Liturgies for both. In that of Jerusalem, of St. James as it is called, and of which the reader may find the substance in a popular form in the “Devotions of Bishop Andrews,” many of the elements of our own beautiful Liturgy may be discovered; and the volume of matter which our earlier church prayers in general pour forth, as compared with the more jejune productions of later times, may be in a great measure imputed to the liberal use which our Reformers made of the devotions of generations gone by, and to that modesty which was content to learn from the spirits of just men now made perfect how to pray. But besides these more ancient sources, from which so much of our Prayer Book was derived, a Liturgy recently drawn up by Melancthon and Bucer, for the use of the archbishopric of Cologne, supplied many other hints. This, however, was itself no effusion of the moment, but was constructed (as might have been expected from the scholarship of its authors) out of the treasures which they found in the devotional forms of other days. Calvin had, indeed, produced a Liturgy of his own, preferring to be the author rather than the compiler, which he published at Geneva, as the form of that church, in 1545, but to this our Liturgy, as it first stood in 1549, does not bear the slightest resemblance. Whilst, however, the latter was under revision, previous to its republication in 1552, and in the hands of those foreign divines of whom mention has already been made, the substance of Calvin’s work was printed in London by Valerandus Pollanus, his successor at Strasburg, then a refugee in England, with some additions of his own, and this (as was most natural) was not overlooked by men busily engaged in a similar task, and did probably suggest the introductory sentences, Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, which were then for the first time prefixed to our Daily Prayer. Nor is it doubtful that to the appearance of this same work at that particular moment we are indebted for the supplement to the Communion Service of the Ten Commandments, with the Responses, the latter of which, indeed, are very nearly translations from Pollanus. Still the temper of our Reformers is shown even here, and that middle way observed by them, which often constrains them to quit the guidance of these foreign theologians, and speak for themselves. Both in the Confession (and particularly that in the Communion Service) and in the Absolution, which was taken from Pollanus and not from Calvin, who did not adopt any form of the kind, extreme expressions with regard to human depravity to be met with in the originals are studiously suppressed or qualified in the imitations, as if the morbid anatomy of our nature was not the theme on which they delighted to dwell, satisfied with having at least trampled under foot all pretensions of merit on man’s part, and with having vindicated the exclusive claim of our Lord’s cross and passion to the salvation of a race fallen at any rate from a pernicious height.[368]
The time of day at which the offices of the Prayer Book, thus completed, were performed, is not easily determined; and peremptorily as some have asserted that our morning service for Sundays consists of three entire services intended for three several hours of prayer, and extravagantly long, merely owing to this clumsy consolidation of them all, it would not be easy to prove that such division did ever in fact obtain. Two services probably are united: the Morning Prayer strictly so called, being one; the Litany and Communion the other;—but that the two latter again were ever separated seems very doubtful, or, indeed, that the first continued for any great while after the Reformation to be severed from the rest. That such was the case originally there are many reasons for believing. It naturally succeeded to the matins of the Roman Catholic church, as the Litany and Communion did to the High-Mass;[369] and it would, therefore, be very likely that the hours in either case would also correspond. Moreover, in all the early Common Prayer Books, even in the very first, there is a Rubric, which directs such as intend to partake of the Communion “to signify their names to the curate over night, or else in the morning before the beginning of Morning Prayer or immediately after;”[370] a phrase which argues some interval between the two services, such as might suffice for considering the qualifications of the candidates, and for providing elements proportioned to the numbers who would attend. Neither is there wanting some internal evidence of the Morning Prayer being at first said betimes—“O God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day, defend us in the same,” being a phrase scarcely pertinent to any other prayers than orisons.[371] On the contrary, there are reasons still more satisfactory for thinking that the Litany was succeeded by the Communion Service without any pause whatever. In the injunctions of King Edward, put forth in 1547, there is one to this effect, that “immediately before High Mass, the priests, with other of the quire shall kneel in the midst of the church, and sing or say plainly and distinctly the Litany which is set forth in English with the suffrages following.”[372] There is every reason to believe that this was in substance the Litany still in use, for it had already appeared in Henry’s Primer; but however that might be, the union which it exhibits between such Litany whatever it was, and the High Mass, prepares us to suppose that a similar arrangement was likely to ensue with regard to the same or any new Litany and the Communion Service. And that such did ensue is made still more manifest by the injunctions of Queen Elizabeth in the first year of her reign; in one of which the very same clause again occurs word for word, except that for “High Mass” there is actually substituted “the time of communion of the sacrament.”[373] Indeed the Communion Service could scarcely fail of being annexed to the Litany, since it soon came to pass that the former was seldom read throughout, the sacrament ceasing to be administered weekly, as was at first contemplated, and recurring at least in country churches, as at present only five or six times a year.[374] Nor is this all: in the first Common Prayer Book of Edward VI. it was ordered, that “upon Wednesdays and Fridays, though there were none to communicate with the priest, yet, after the Litany ended, the priest should put upon him a plain alb or surplice with a cope, and say all things at the altar appointed to be said at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper until after the offertory.” Whence it is clear, that when there were persons to communicate (which the rubric seems to presume would always be the case on Sundays,) the Litany and Communion service went together; and that when there were none such, still the Litany was immediately followed by the Communion Service as far as to the end of the prayer for the whole state of Christ’s church militant. How long this arrangement continued does not appear; but whether from the difficulty of gathering together a congregation at break of day, discipline being now relaxed, or from whatever other cause, within the first century after the Reformation the Church seems to have lapsed into the present practice, and to have combined its services into one. Bishop Hall in his contemplations makes the incident mentioned in the first Book of Samuel—that “they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow to visit Dagon”—a vehicle for reproof of the lukewarmness of his own times, saying, “The morning is fittest for devotion; then do the Philistines flock to the temple of their god;” and adding, “what a shame it is for us to come late to ours!”[375] as though in his day, and he died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two, there were generally matins no longer. And Herbert, in describing categorically the Sunday duties of his Country Parson, expresses himself to the same effect:—“Having read divine service,” says he, “twice fully, and preached in the morning and catechised in the afternoon, he thinks he hath, in some measure, according to poor and frail man, discharged the public duties of the congregation.”[376]
The length of our church service, therefore, of which we now hear so much, and the repetitions it contains, are evils, if evils they be, which have been practically existing almost from its first formation; which a Hammond, a Sanderson, and a Taylor could tolerate without a complaint but too happy; (as were then their congregations also, for those were not fastidious days,) if they were permitted in their secret assemblies to give utterance to these burning words with which the great Reformers had furnished them; nor scrupulously counting how often they were taught to pour forth the Lord’s Prayer; as they counted not how often they were taught to cry out in the self-same phrase for the Lord to have mercy upon them; as David counted not how often he exclaimed “My son, my son;” or as these critics themselves, it is presumed, would not count their own iterations when they were suing earnestly for their lives. Such are not vain repetitions; and it is to be hoped, that an age so little fitted for the task as this by any theological attainments, will pause before it attempts to improve upon the labours of a Cranmer, who, according to the testimony of one of the ripest scholars of his time, Peter Martyr, nor he, by any means a creature of the archbishop, “had diligently noted with his own hand every one of the fathers; had digested into particular chapters, with a view to the controversies of his day, councils, canons, and popes’ decrees pertaining thereto, with a toil, and diligence, and exactness, which would seem incredible to any but an eye-witness; who both publicly and privately, and by a marvellous strength of learning, quickness of wit, and dexterity of management, had asserted what he held to be true from the thorny and intricate cavils of sophisters;”[377] and who pronounced concerning this very Book of Common Prayer, “that no man could mislike that godly book that had any godliness in him joined with knowledge;”[378]—Moreover that an age, which for a long time, unchastened by any national calamity, has suffered much of that spirit of devotion to escape which animated the holy men of old, who were ever compelled to walk with their lives in their hand, and who were, in fact, called upon at length to lay them down, will not be allowed to communicate its narcotic influence to our Liturgy, and quench in any degree the ashes of the martyrs. In truth, it is impossible to contemplate the projects of our Liturgical Reformers without something of alarm, lest, whilst with the best intentions in the world they “dandle the kid,” they should clumsily kill him nevertheless.
If, however, changes there must be after all—if old things must here, too, pass away, and all things become new—be the conditions those proposed by the sagacious South, and all apprehensions will be hushed. “Let us but have our Liturgy continued to us, as it is, till the persons are born who shall be able to mend it, or make a better; and we desire no greater security against either the altering this, or introducing another.”[379]
Besides providing these various forms of public devotion, our Reformers extended their care to those of the closet and household; and in “The Primer, or Book of Private Prayer, needful to be used of all Christians” (for so its title runs), and of which numerous editions appeared from the dawn of the Reformation under Henry down to the accession of Mary, successively portraying its progress by their improvements upon one another, scriptural petitions are contained suitable to all sorts and conditions of men, and almost to every state of body or mind to which they are liable. Here are graces before meat—addresses to God “both when we wake and when we seek his gift of sleep;”—when we are “very sick,” and when our health is recovered—for such as have an unquiet conscience, or an injured name—for such as are in poverty or affluence—for kings and judges, gentlemen and merchants, lawyers and labourers, parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants—significant all, of the manner in which the Reformers laboured to introduce a religious principle into all the relations and transactions of life whatsoever; to extend its influence over the whole of society, so that like Elisha stretched upon the dead child (to use an illustration of Jeremy Taylor’s), it might give life and animation to every part of the body politic. There is much simplicity and beauty in the following prayers “for Landlords,” and “for Householders,” which are extracted as specimens of a work now but little known, having been overlaid by the extempore effusions of the days of Cromwell, and never having recovered itself, like the Book of Common Prayer, since.—[380]
“FOR LANDLORDS.
“The earth is thine, O Lord, and all that is contained therein, notwithstanding thou hast given the possession thereof to the children of men, to pass over the time of their short pilgrimage in this vale of misery. We heartily pray thee to send thy Holy Spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwelling-places of the earth; that they, remembering themselves to be thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands; nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes; after the manner of covetous worldlings; but so let them out to other, that the inhabitants thereof may be able both to pay the rents, and also honestly to live to nourish their family, and to relieve the poor. Give them grace also to consider that they are but strangers and pilgrims in this world, having here no dwelling-place, but seeking one to come; that they, remembering the short continuance of their life, may be content with that is sufficient, and not join house to house, nor couple land to land, to the impoverishment of others; but so behave themselves in letting out their tenements, lands, and pastures, that after this life they may be received into everlasting dwelling-places through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
“FOR HOUSEHOLDERS.
“To have children and servants is thy blessing, O Lord! but not to order them according to thy word deserveth thy dreadful curse; grant, therefore, that as thou hast blessed me with an household, so I may diligently watch, that nothing may be committed of the same that may offend thy fatherly goodness, and be an occasion of turning thy blessing into a curse; but that so many as thou hast committed to my charge may eschew all vice; embrace all virtue; live in thy fear; call upon thy holy name; learn thy blessed commandments; hear thy holy word; and avoiding idleness, diligently exercise themselves every one in his office, according to their vocation and calling, unto the glory of thy most honourable name.”
Thus far have we accompanied our Reformers in their attempt to raise up a Church of England, and to establish its doctrines. One important work more under this head remained still to be done, and to that we must now advert, the composition of a set of Articles which should speak with authority the opinions of the church, and secure uniformity amongst its teachers. Cranmer had entertained this difficult project in his thoughts long before he executed it; and the spirit in which he buckled himself to the work may be collected from some demonstrations which he had previously made. The natural effect of the Reformation had been to put in motion various conflicting opinions upon matters of faith and practice; every man challenging to himself the right of private judgment, and many, no doubt, abusing it; for any principle, however good, may be misapplied. It was, accordingly, the devout wish of many of the leading Reformers, both on the Continent and in this country, that some general creed should be drawn up by a congress of learned men of all nations, which should bind the whole Protestant church together, and put an end to these mischievous divisions of heart. Melancthon appears especially to have pressed such a scheme upon Cranmer, whom, in his turn, he found nothing loth to pursue it;[381] for he seems to have entered into a correspondence on the subject with some of the leading foreign Protestants; and Calvin’s own letters (for to him he had written amongst others) bear testimony to the comprehensive views of our archbishop upon this great question.[382] It failed, however, as the same correspondence indicates; whether from the troubles at that time prevailing both at home and abroad; whether from the difficulty which must have been anticipated of constructing any single form which should be acceptable to so many parties holding so many opinions; or whether from the intrigues of the Council of Trent, then sitting, which, taking alarm at the projected unanimity of their adversaries, and acting upon the old policy of divide and conquer, despatched their emissaries to the proper quarters, who, feigning themselves zealous for the Reformation, and preaching those extravagant doctrines of the Anabaptists, which all sober-minded men lamented and condemned, scattered apples of discord amongst their enemies, and dissolved them as a body.[383] But, however this might be, the scheme was discovered to be impracticable, and Cranmer then contracted his views, and confined himself to the preparation of Articles for the Church of England only.[384]