The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is to take place after the sermon and psalm. The communicants are to sit round a table covered with a white cloth. Prayer is to be offered, in which it is to be specially noted that the bread and wine remain bread and wine, but that by faith the body and blood of Christ are taken by the communicant.
The “Sanctification of the Lord’s Day” assumes that it is the Sabbath, and orders that no unnecessary work be carried on, and that the same not spent in church is to be devoted to reading, meditation, and catechising.
The marriage service is very short. There is to be a prayer with a declaration of Scripture on the subject, after which the man and the woman are to take hands and take each other for wife and husband:—
“Concerning the Burial of the Dead,” the Directory says, “and because the customes of kneeling down, and praying by, or towards the dead Corps, and other such usages, in the place where it lies, before it be carried to Buriall, are Superstitious: and for that, praying, reading, and singing both in going to, and at the Grave, have been grosly abused, are no way beneficiall to the dead, and have proved many ways hurtfull to the living; therefore let all such things be laid aside.”
On days of fasting there is to be total abstinence from all kinds of food and from all kinds of work.
As for singing of Psalms:—
“The voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered: but the chief care must be, to sing with understanding, and with Grace in the heart, making melody unto the Lord.”
“That the whole Congregation may joyne herein, every one that can read is to have a Psalme book, and all others not disabled by age, or otherwise, are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the Congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the Minister, or some other fit person appointed by him and the other Ruling Officers, doe read the Psalme, line by line, before the singing thereof” (Directory, p. 43).
On the 23rd of August following, another ordinance was passed for the taking away of the Book of Common Prayer from all churches and chapels in the kingdom. It was also ordered that the knights and burgesses of the counties should send copies of the Directory, bound in leather, to the constables and other officers of every parish in the kingdom, and that within one week after receiving the books, the constables should hand the books to the minister of the parish.
Pains and penalties for disobedience to these orders conclude the Ordinance.
There are abundant materials for showing the violence of the passions excited in London by the religious controversy of the time. We see the soldiers on guard at Lambeth breaking into the church in time of service, tearing the Prayer Book to pieces, stripping the clergyman of his surplice, and desecrating the altar, until the Thames watermen come to the assistance of the people and there is a fight in the body of the church. We see a party of horse riding through the streets, four of them attired in surplices, tearing the Book of Common Prayer in pieces, leaf by leaf, with gestures unseemly. We find the clergy accused of the most infamous crimes—“common drunkenness, looseness of life, adultery,” and worse. We find some of the people in church sitting with their hats on, and some with their hats off, and riots in consequence. We hear of fanatics preaching the wildest doctrines and forming the most wonderful sects. There is neither tolerance, nor charity, nor patience. There is no authority; there is no respect for learning; every one, in every station, interprets Scripture in blind confidence that he is fully equal to the task of framing a bran-new constitution for a bran-new sect. And with it all, a power almost pathetic, of sitting out the longest sermons. On one occasion two ministers, one after the other, engaged the attention of the House of Commons for seven long hours. The people presently grew weary of the incessant wranglings over doctrine; sane persons began to understand that the task of making ignorant men and women agree in matters of creed was hopeless; it became understood that divergence of opinion would be no more tolerated by Independents than it was by Presbyterians; at this point of weariness it was extremely fortunate for the country that the reaction restored them to the Church of England instead of the Church of Rome. It was wonderful how the great mass of the people sank back contentedly into their old form of faith, relieved to find at last that they might leave the dogmas of religion to divines and scholars and be free themselves to illustrate in their private lives the virtues of religion by the exercise of faith, hope, and charity, which, for twenty years and more, seemed to have deserted the City of London.