Rites and Ritual: A Plea for Apostolic Doctrine and Worship

by Philip Freeman

Instances in point are,—1. Of an injunction practically recognised as law, that of Queen Elizabeth, permitting the use of "a hymn or such like song in the beginning or in the end of the Common Prayers;" whereas the Prayer-book recognises no such feature or element. It is on this injunction, and on that alone, that the practice, now universal, is based. Other instances, again, of royal injunctions, constantly acted upon, are those by which the names of the sovereign and royal family, pro re natâ, are inserted and altered; a power given indeed, by implication, in the Prayer-book itself, because necessary by the nature of the case; but not expressly there,[23] and a departure, speaking literally, from the Sealed Book. Such, again, is the use of prayers or thanksgivings enjoined on special occasions by royal authority. These it has so long been customary to accept and use, that no serious question is now made of their legality.

2. An instance of a canon obtaining recognition by common consent, though irreconcilable with the rubric of the Prayer-book, is that of the 58th of 1604, which orders any minister, when "ministering the sacraments," to wear a surplice; whereas the rubric recognises for the Holy Communion far other "Ornaments of the Church, and of the ministers thereof."

3. A case of statute law being allowed to supplement rubrical provision, by adding an alternative, is that which orders Banns of Marriage to be asked after the Second Lesson at Evening Service, if there be no Morning Service. Such too, as the Dean of Westminster lately pointed out in Convocation, was the Act of Toleration; as is also the Act empowering bishops to require a second sermon on Sundays.

4. Judicial decisions, once more, are from time to time unavoidable. By these a certain interpretation is put upon the rubrics of the Prayer-book; and unless protested against, as sometimes they are, in some weighty and well-grounded manner, they are practically embodied in the standing law of the Church.

5. And lastly, apart from any legal prescription whatever, various usages and practices, especially in matters not expressly provided for in the Prayer-book, have obtained so generally, as to be a part of what may be called the "common law" of the Church, though liable to revision by the proper authority. Such is the alternate recitation, in Churches where it obtains, of the psalms, between the Minister and the people. Such too is, in reality, the use of any other mode of saying the Service than that of reciting it on a musical note; for none other was intended by the Church, nor is recognised in the Prayer-book.[24] Such, once more, is the having any sermon beyond the rubrical one.

On the whole, it cannot be gainsaid, that what "this Church and realm hath received," and what her Ministers, therefore, undertake to carry out in their ministrations, is not the Book of Common Prayer, pure and simple, but that Book as their main guide and Magna Charta, yet interpreted and modified here and there, and in some few but not unimportant points, by provisions or considerations external to it. When, therefore, the candidate for Holy Orders, or for admission to a benefice, undertakes, by signing the Thirty-sixth Canon, that "he will use the form in the said Book prescribed in Public Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and none other," it cannot be understood that the directions of that Book are, without note, comment, or addition, his guide in every particular. For he is about, if a candidate for Ordination, to promise solemnly before the Church that he will minister "as this Church and Realm hath received;" a formula, as has been shown, of much wider range than the letter of the Prayer-book. And in like manner, if a candidate for a benefice, he has already, at his Ordination, made that larger undertaking, and cannot be understood to narrow it now by subscribing to the Canon. And if it be asked, Why were the terms of the Thirty-sixth Canon made so stringent originally by the addition of the words "and none other;" or why should these words be retained now? the answer is, that originally, as a matter of historical fact, the Canon was directed against wilful depravers and evaders of the Book and its rules; not against such interpretations, or even variations and additions, as had all along obtained on various grounds, and are in fact unavoidable by the nature of things. "No one," says the late Bishop Blomfield, "who reads the history of those times with attention can doubt that the object of the Legislature, who imposed upon the clergy a subscription to the above Declaration, was the substitution of the Book of Common Prayer" (subject, even then, to Injunctions, Canons, and customs already modifying it here and there) "for the Missal of the Roman Catholics, or the Directory of the Puritans." And the present retention of the wording of the Canon stands on the same grounds. It is necessary that a promise, and that of a stringent kind, should be exacted of the clergy of a Church, or licence would be unbounded. But on the other hand, it is perfectly intelligible, and has the advantage of practicability, that the words should be understood to speak of the Book as modified in the way in which it has all along, by universal consent, been held to be modified. If it be replied that this, too, opens a door to endless licence, I answer, No. The modifications are, for the most part, as definite as the document itself, and are in number few, though they cover, on occasion, a considerable range of actions. The Prayer-book, in short, is not unlike a monarch, nominally absolute, and for the most part really such; but on whom a certain degree of pressure has from time to time been brought to bear, and may be brought to bear again. But its actual status is at any given time fairly ascertainable. It might be well, indeed, that all this occasional legislation should be digested by the only proper authority, viz. the conjoint spiritualty and temporalty of the realm, into one harmonious and duly authorised whole. But for the time being the position of things is sufficiently intelligible.

And now to apply this view of Prayer-book law, so to call it, to the matter which especially engages attention at this moment,—that of the manner of administering the Holy Communion; and first to the vestments of the clergy.

1. Now, if there be any one point in which the English Church is, what she has most untruly been asserted to be in other points, namely, broad and alternative in her provisions, it is this one of the ornaments or dress of her clergy. While, in the matter of doctrine, Heaven forfend that she should have two minds, and give her children their choice which they should embrace—seeing that so would she forfeit the name and being of a "Church" altogether;—certain it is, that, from peculiar causes, she does, in this matter of officiating vestments, give, by her present and already ancient provisions, a choice and an alternative. With her eyes open, and at periods when she was most carefully scanning, for general adoption, those provisions, has she deliberately left on her statute-book (meaning thereby her entire range of rules), and admitted into her practical system, two diverse rules or practices. We may confine our attention for the moment to the period of the latest revision of the Prayer-book in 1662. On that occasion the Fifty-eighth Canon of 1603,—derived from certain "Advertisements" of Elizabeth, and probably supported by the universal custom of the realm,—was allowed to stand unaltered. This Canon provides, as has been above mentioned, that "Every minister, saying the public prayers, or ministering the sacraments, or other rites of the Church, shall wear a decent and comely surplice with sleeves;" only with a special exception, recognised in another Canon, in the case of Cathedrals. And yet on the same occasion was retained the rubric of Elizabeth (1559), about "the ornaments of the Church, and of the ministers thereof," with only such variation as fully proves that it was not an oversight, but a deliberate perpetuation of the law concerning vestments more especially. For the previous form of it,—dating from 1603, and but slightly altered from that of Elizabeth,—was, that "the minister at the time of the Communion, and at all other times in his ministrations, shall use such ornaments in the Church as were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI., according to the Act of Parliament set in the beginning of this Book." But the altered form was, "Such ornaments of the Church, and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministrations, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England in the second year," &c.; omitting only the mention of the Act of Parliament. It will be observed, that in lieu of "ornaments of the Church," which might have seemed to be irrespective of vestments, was now substituted "ornaments of the Church, and of the ministers thereof." And again, compare the words "shall be retained, and be in use" with "shall use." In truth, the new rubric is a citation from the Act of Elizabeth, only omitting the limitation "until such time, &c.," and it cannot be taken as expressing less than a real desire and earnest hope, on the part of our latest revisers, that the original Edwardian "ornaments" might really be used; that they should—gradually, perhaps, but really—supersede, in the case of the Communion Service, the prevalent surplice.

If it be asked, how it came to pass that the surplice had superseded the proper eucharistic vestments prescribed by Elizabeth's rubric? we can only answer, that the prevailing tendency during her reign was decidedly in favour of simpler ways in the matter of ritual; and that, the Second Book of Edward VI. (1552), having distinctly forbidden those vestments by the words, "the minister at the time of the Communion, and at all other times of his ministration, shall use neither alb, vestment, nor cope, but, being a bishop, a rochet; and being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only:" the Elizabethan clergy would, owing to the reaction after Queen Mary's reign, be inclined to recur to that position rather than to retain the other vestments. Some, indeed, did retain them, as appears by allusions to them as in use in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign;[25] but, as a general rule, their use was discouraged, and apparently put down. "For the disuse of these ornaments we may thank them that came from Geneva, and, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, being set in places of government, suffered every negligent priest to do as he listed." (Bishop Overall.)[26]

On the other hand, one form of the Edwardian "Ornaments" had survived, even through Elizabeth's reign; viz. the cope (of course with the alb), chiefly in cathedrals. For so it is recognised in the 24th canon of 1603. "In all cathedrals and collegiate churches the Holy Communion shall be administered upon principal feast-days by the Bishop, the Dean, or a Canon or Prebendary, the principal minister [i. e. celebrant] using a decent cope." This was in accordance, as far as it went, with the original rubric of Edward VI.'s First Book. "The priest that shall execute the holy ministry shall put upon him ... a vestment, or cope." But during the Elizabethan period two limitations had, practically, been introduced; the cope, only, was used; and chiefly, though not exclusively, in cathedral churches only.[27] However, the fact that to this extent the rubric of Edward VI. was still acted upon, might well encourage the revisers of 1662 to contemplate a general return to its provisions.[28] It was but a hundred years ago that they had fallen into desuetude; and the devout zeal of Bishop Cosin, and others among the revisers, on behalf of the Eucharist, would lead them to desire the restoration of whatever, in their judgment, would tend to its higher honour and more becoming celebration. Cosin himself was accustomed, as a Prebendary of Durham Cathedral, to wear the cope, and to see it worn by others; and not by the celebrant only, but by the attendant clergy. For in his answer to the articles of impeachment sent to the House of Lords against him in 1640, he says "That the copes used in that Church were brought in thither long before his time. One there was that had the story of the Passion embroidered upon it; but the cope that he used to wear, when at any time he attended the Communion Service, was of plain white satin only, without any embroidery upon it at all."[29] The canon of 1603 must not, therefore, be understood as confining the use of the cope to the celebrant, but only as providing that the celebrant, at least, must, in cathedrals, be so apparelled. It may be added, that the copes still preserved in Durham Cathedral, and only disused[30] within a century, are a proof that, in this point at any rate, it is but very recently that the Edwardian "ornaments" ceased to be used in the English Church in our cathedrals; while, in a solitary instance, that of the Coronation Service, the use of copes by the Archbishop, the attendant Bishops, and by the Dean and Canons of Westminster, survives to the present day.