NOTES.
i. The Invocation of the Holy Trinity in the 1st Section is very full, and should be compared with the Invocation which is used in Section ii. as a preface to the Lord's Prayer.
The words, Good Lord, are spoken to Jesus: as we may easily infer from the words, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood; and from, By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation, By thine Agony and bloody Sweat &c. Son of God, O Lamb of God, O Christ.
ii. The Lesser Litany is to be repeated, verse by verse, by the congregation; copying, in this respect, the setting of the Invocation at the beginning of Section i. The beginning of the Section being thus marked, the end of it is marked by the Gloria Patri.
iii. We shall show that these eight verses are probably intended for Antiphonal singing.
iii. and iv. The Sarum Litany had here 10 couplets of versicles and seven collects. Of these seven collects we may mention, O God, whose nature and property &c., the Prayer for Clergy and People, and the 2nd Evening Collect, O God, from whom &c.
The substitution of the two sections, as they now stand, may be quoted as an example of the improvements which were effected in the Revision period.
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iv. The 4th Section includes various prayers of the Amen form. The first of these may be known as the Collect of Complete Confidence. It is made up of two older prayers, and the couplet which precedes it expresses each of those two older prayers in a brief sentence. Thus the couplet anticipates the Collect. [See also p. 128.]
The other prayers of this Section usually have equivalents in the first Section. The repetition is made because of some urgency due to the circumstances of the time. Thus, we have prayed for the Clergy already, but in Ember Weeks we add, in the 4th Section, a Collect for the Candidates for Ordination. Or again, we have prayed for sick people, but at this point we may add a Collect for the time of any common Plague or Sickness. Similarly, we have prayed for the preservation of the fruits of the Earth, but may add a prayer here for Rain, or Fair weather, or for cheapness and plenty.