Church of England was still erect. The unpolemical treatises, aiming to commend her worship as a whole, and not those parts of it alone which had been specially assailed, began in post-Laudian times, amid the darkness of those disasters which Laud himself, with whatever good intentions, had done not a little to bring about. The earliest of this series was a small unpretending book of 1657,-A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer, by the learned Anthony Sparrow, who had then been ejected from the rectory of Hawkedon in Suffolk, became Bishop of Exeter in 1677, and died in 1685. The Rationale, which by its title challenged the men of the Commonwealth to deny that the devotions of the rejected Church were a reasonable service, was several times reprinted. The second edition was in 1661, when Convocation was engaged in the revision of the Prayer Book, and in 1722 it was edited in octavo. In 1839 it appeared again, under the care of the Rev. J. H. Newman.

To that same early period, and also to the Laudian school, belongs Hamon L'Estrange's Alliance of Divine Offices, a folio of 1659, exhibiting, as the title intimates, "All the Liturgies of the Church

England since the Reformation." Hamon L'Estrange was a layman of good family, an elder brother of the more famous writer Sir Roger, but his dates appear unknown. The Alliance was an expository work, like the Rationale, as well as a textuary one, and in its execution shows ability and

good style. In 1690 it came out much improved, and in 1846 was reprinted for the Library of AngloCatholic Theology.

In 1672 Thomas Comber, Rector of Stonegrave in Yorkshire, brought out the first instalment of his. Companion to the Temple. The plan was completed at various intervals, and the result was two folio volumes under that title in 1701 and 1702. In 1841 a handsome edition in seven volumes, large octavo, issued from the Oxford University Press. Dr. Comber, who became Dean of Durham in 1691, died in 1699.

In 1708, when the Church of England in the friendly reign of Anne was occupying a commanding position, Dr. William Nicholls, Rector of Selsey in Sussex, but leading a literary life in Westminster, put forth a Paraphrase on the Common Prayer, 8vo, the merits of which were quickly recognised, and prepared the public for his principal work in 1710, A Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer, folio. Dr. Nicholls, an excellent scholar, author of numerous theological works, died in 1712, and was buried in the Church of St. Swithin. Dr. Stonehouse, in one of his letters to Stedman from Bristol in 1794, wrote thus warmly of the Commentary :-"I would have you recommend it to every family in your parish, as it will show them the use of the Common Prayer and Psalms as read in our churches, and be a standard book from father to son."

At various times between 1714 and 1719, in the reign of George I., while the Church found herself confronted by the ranks of Nonconformity now emboldened by the patronage of Parliament and the ruling powers, and while the Nonjurors, too, were proving a thorn in her side, Dr. Matthew Hole, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford (ob. 1730), issued his Practical Discourses on the Liturgy, which have been judged worthy of republication in modern times (4 vols. 8vo., 1837).

His contemporary, Charles Wheatley, Vicar of Brent and Furneaux Pelham, Herts (ob. 1742), brought out in 1720, in its largest and completed form, folio, his Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, "being the substance of everything Liturgical in Bishop Sparrow, Mr. L'Estrange, Dr. Comber, Dr. Nicholls, and all former ritualists, commentators, or others, upon the same subject; collected and reduced into one continued and regular method, and interspersed all along with new observations." It was reprinted at the Oxford University Press in 1839.

Coming to a much later period, we find the Rev. T. T. Biddulph of Bristol (ob. 1838), commencing in 1798 to interest his fellow-Churchmen in the rich devotional treasures they possessed in their Prayer Book. His Practical Essays on the Liturgy appeared in their fullest and final form (3 vols., 8vo) in 1810.

A few years later-in 1820-Dr. Richard Mant, a London rector, chaplain to the archbishop, and soon to be himself a bishop in Ireland, author of the well-known Commentary on the Bible with Mr. D'Oyly, brought out his Book of Common Prayer with Notes Explanatory, Practical, and Historical, from approved writers of the Church of England, a large 4to volume, citing at full length passages from Sparrow, L'Estrange, Comber, Nicholls, Matthew Hole, Wheatley, and many others.

In the times ushered in by the Reform of 1832 and the theological movement of 1833, when Churchmen were once more stimulated by a supreme anxiety both for the safety of their Church and the proper understanding of their Prayer Book, the older works began to be re-edited on the one hand, while, on the other, treatises of a new order were produced, handy in form, and calculated to excite an interest among church-going people. One of the earliest of these was A Key to the Liturgy, 1847, by the Rev. Robert Whytehead, of Ipswich, based upon the new liturgical and historical literature of the Reformation which the Parker Society was just then making accessible to every one. Mr. Whytehead's volume was warmly commended by his neighbour, Charles Bridges, the Vicar of Old Newton.

In 1855 appeared the Rev. Francis Procter's History and Rationale of the Prayer Book, a work of moderate size, accurate learning, and possessing a

new interest as well as utility in the illustrative material it drew from the ancient sources. The ninth edition in 1870 is a sign of its being still in constant request.

The larger and bulkier order of works had, however, by no means ceased in demand. In 1865 Dr. Blakeney, in his Book of Common Prayer, its History and Interpretation, expressed his desire "to interpret the Book of Common Prayer in the light of the Reformation."

Almost immediately afterwards, in 1866, there appeared The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (2 vols., imp. 8vo) under the editorship of the Rev. John Henry Blunt, assisted in the various departments of the work by other contributors. These two books present, from diametrically opposite standpoints, the views of ritual and doctrine which were about that time being keenly disputed in the Law Courts.

Nor is it to be overlooked how immensely the publication which has been going on of the Oriental Liturgies, both in the original Greek and in English versions, as well as of the various Latin service books of the medieval English Church, has contributed to the understanding of that great historical monument, the Book of Common Prayer. Never before have there been such opportunities for gaining an insight into the special characteristics of the whole range of the English offices, and of estimating the important