CHAPTER XIV.

VARIOUS SHORT FORMS.

$ 80. The Lord's Prayer.-It appears twice in Morning and Evening Prayer, once in the Litany, twice in the Communion, and once in every Occasional Service. Only twice does it end with the doxology (added in 1662), viz. when it occurs first in Morning and Evening Prayer, and in the Churching of Women (cf. § 122 fin.). The version is that of the King's Primer of 1545 (Burt. 459). In the Primer of 1535 (Burt. 78) there is considerable difference in one petition "Thy will be fulfilled, as well in earth

as..."

The Lord's Prayer is usually preceded by versicles, which are nearly always the Lesser Litany, while other versicles commonly follow it, so that it stands in the very midst of versicles,-Holy Communion, Baptism, Visitation of the Sick being the exceptions. Thus the Lord's Prayer, being itself versicular in structure, has its effect harmoniously varied as well as prolonged. In the old Latin services, and likewise in the English before 1662, the opening clause being followed by an etcetera, and the two concluding ones arranged responsively, the prayer sometimes

appears in the form of three versicles in the midst of others, as

Our Father, which art in heaven, etc.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

A question arises whether the Lord's Prayer in our present services should be considered as marking a conclusion to what precedes it, according to the common custom in family and social devotions, or rather as forming an introduction to what follows. The latter view seems the preferable one. At Morning and Evening Prayer the Lord's Prayer originally began the service, as it still does in the Holy Communion. After the Creed, and when the Psalms and Lessons have ended, it begins the Prayers. In the Occasional Services, too, it frequently holds a corresponding place. If such is the right view to take, it is much more apparent to the eye in our book, where the prayer is given in full, than when it was written as a versicle.

§ 81. The Gloria Patri.-This doxology acquired its present shape amid the Arian controversies. Earlier than the fourth century ascriptions of glory to the Trinity were usual in Divine service, but in wording they varied, and in or by the Son, by or with the Holy Ghost, or and to each, were said indifferently, and without scruple in view of such a text as Eph. iii. 21, "Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus." The Arians, however, asserted that it favoured their view of the Divine Persons to recite Sià Toû Yioû ev Ayi IIveúμarı (Theod. H. F. iv. 1, in P. G. lxxxiii. 413); and when they laid such stress, for

which no Scripture could be alleged, on that form, their opponents adopted the distinction of dropping the prepositions and using only the conjunction, which suggested an equal co-ordination in all the Divine Persons. A treatise, De Virginitate (§ 14), by or attributed to Athanasius (Opp. iv. inter Dubia, P.G. xxviii. 268), exhibits the orthodox doxology in these words: Δόξα Πάτρι καὶ Υἱῷ καὶ ̔Αγίῳ Πνεύματι καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ; but two MSS. omit the last clause kaì vûv, etc. These little particles, therefore, were in Arian days a test resembling the oμoovσiov of the Creed, and a striking illustration of this occurs in the account given by Theodoret (H. E. ii. 24) of Leontius bishop of Antioch (A.d. 348—357), whose party views no one could detect, since listeners could never catch anything of his Gloria, except the "world without end" (D.C.B. 8.v. LEONTIUS).

It might have been thought that the doxology as cited from the De Virginitate left no further opening for Arian astuteness; yet Arians claimed that it conceded one material point to them. They had no objection to viv and deí; their heresy primarily concerned the past, their doctrine being that the Son was born in time. To exclude that cavil, and no doubt with a recollection of John i. 1, the Athanasians commenced the second distich with, "As it was in the beginning." How long before A.D. 529 this addition was made there is no evidence; but the council of Vaison in Gaul (Hard. ii. 1106) that year directed that after the example of the Apostolic See, all the East, Africa, and Italy, the Gloria should be recited in their churches with Sicut erat in principio, as a protest

against the Arians, who taught that the Son was not always with the Father, and that there was a time when He was not so. Arianism was at that date still dominant over all the Latin world, but it had received its first great blow in Gaul (§ 74). The Sicut erat made its way gradually; but the Spanish Church, on its conversion in 589, did not think it necessary, if we may judge from the fact that at the fourth council of Toledo in 633 (canon xiii.) the Gloria was cited with only the end of the second distich: "Gloria et honor Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto in sæcula sæculorum" (Hard. iii. 583).

The Gloria Patri in the Book of Common Prayer may be considered as the Athanasian Creed in brief, a constant antiphonal confession of the Holy Trinity at every turn of the service.

§ 82. Oremus, "Let us pray."-This exhortation occurs once in Morning and Evening Prayer, twice in the Litany, once in Holy Communion. In the Greek Liturgies the corresponding word was denowμev, pronounced by a deacon (officiating as a kind of vocal rubric), who sometimes more emphatically called δεηθῶμεν ἐκτενῶς, " Let us pray earnestly,” and δεηθῶμεν ÉKTEVÉσTEрOV, "Let us pray more earnestly," as though ἐκτενέστερον, to stimulate any flagging attention (Wh. 150).

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§ 83. The Kyrie Eleison.-These words represent the Greek Kúpte èλéŋσov (Matt. xx. 31; cf. Luke xvii. 13). Eleison might seem a slightly inaccurate spelling, but it was quite common in mediæval times to represent the Greek ŋ by an i, as Paraclitus twice in the

η

Veni Creator. The word in the Publican's prayer (Luke xviii. 13) is different, iλáolŋtí μol. The Latin of the Litany is miserere nobis. Kyrie eleison alternating with Christe eleison forms the Lesser Litany (§ 63) in the Sarum Use. It is usual to call the response after the Commandments the Kyrie, from the former half of it, although the original was neither Greek nor Latin, but English.