CHAPTER VI.

E must now return to the Order of Communion put forth in 1548. This was not published without some notice, not only as we have already seen, that other order should be soon provided, but also of an intended uniformity of service in the church of England, and that the ancient Uses were no longer to be allowed. The letter which I have mentioned before directs the Bishops to cause copies of this new book to be delivered as soon as might be to every parson, vicar, and curate, and "that this order is set forth to the intent there should be in all parts of the realm, and among all men, one uniform manner quietly used."

48

The clergy in general did not obey and use this Form: nor perhaps was it either expected that they would, or much pains taken to enforce it.49 Within a few months

48 Documentary Annals. vol. i. p. 62. Wilkins. Concilia. tom. iv. p. 32.

49"Notwithstanding the difference of opinions, the new Communion-book was received over England, without any opposition. Thus Bishop Burnet. But Heylin reports the matter somewhat differently he acquaints us the bishops were not equally disposed to a compliance: that Gardiner of Winchester, Bonner of London, Voyesie of Exeter, and Sampson of Coventry

and Lichfield were more backward than the rest that many of the parochial clergy were no less dis

inclined to the order: &c." Collier. Ecc. History. vol. ii. p. 248. It may be said, that even Heylin's account scarcely comes up to the assertion in the text: but I do not doubt its correctness, upon the evidence which still exists about this famous Order, independently of the short time it was in use, the difficulty of so suddenly enforcing in remote parts of the country such great changes as it involved, and the little real authority upon which it rested. However, the reader can examine, if he thinks it worth while, Burnet's statement. Vol. iii. p. 139.

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not only it, but all the old liturgies were suppressed, and a new Order published in what is called the first Common Prayer Book of King Edward VI. entitled, "The Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." I have reprinted the liturgy of 1549 in the present volume after the Clementine : and the reader will see that so long as it was authorized, the rites and prayers which have always been held to be essential, and which had been religiously observed, since her earliest existence, in the English Church, are plainly and fully set down and required. The Act of Uniformity declares that the Book had been completed "by the aid of the Holy Ghost,"1 with one uniform agreement," i. e. of the compilers; and about a year after, another statute speaks of it in scarcely lower terms of praise, beginning, "Where the Kinges most excellent Maiestie hath of late set fourth and established by aucthoritie of Parliament, an uniforme ordre of common and open praier-agreeable to thordre of the primatiue churche, muche more comfortable unto his louing subiectes, then other diuersitie of Service as heretofore of long time hath been used, being in the saied boke ordeined nothing to bee read, but the very pure word of God, or whiche is euidentlie grounded vpon the same.'

50 It may appear an useless addition; because there are already so many reprints: for example, within the last few years, by Dr. Cardwell, and by Mr. Keeling. But these are parallel arrangements, not easily to be read throughout: and perhaps a better reason is, that those books may not happen to be at hand, and if they are, many readers will not take the trouble to refer to them.

51 It has been remarked, that "although the Parliament judged,

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and rightly perhaps judged, that the Holy Ghost assisted the Bishops and Divines who composed the First Book of Edward, yet we do not find that Bucer, or Peter Martyr, or Archbishop Cranmer, pretended to any aid of the Holy Ghost in the alterations which they made afterwards."

52 Grafton's Edit. of the Statutes of Edward VI. Fol. Lond. 1553. The Act is the 3rd and 4th Edw. VI. cap. x. entitled: An Acte for the abolishing and putting awaie of

Those, however, were not days when men would rest satisfied with merely cutting off superfluous branches, or feared to venture upon healthy limbs, nay even upon the trunk itself. It was emphatically a time of changes. During the few short years, or rather months, of the continuance of the first Book of Edward, foreign influence was actively at work, hourly encreasing in pertinacious opposition to catholic antiquity, until its successful efforts became unhappily apparent in the remodelled Common Prayer Book of 1552.53 The new sects at Geneva and other places earnestly desired to bring down the Church of England to the level not only of their heretical platform of discipline, but of ritual. And it must be acknowledged that their interference was not altogether unasked: because at the recommendation of some individual in authority, the Book of 1549 had been translated into Latin, for the express purpose of obtaining the opinions of their leading men upon it.5+

diuers bookes, and Images.”

Upon Merbecke's book which preceded the publication of the 2nd Book of K. Edw. little need be said: nor do I know how far it was to be called an adaptation of the old chaunts, or a new arrangement and composition of his own. Gerbert "Medio item sæculo xvi. says; Jo. Markeck ad librum precum, seu cantionum publicarum modulos fecit." De Cantu. tom. ii. p. 333. In the dissertation on Service Books, the reader will find an extract from an ancient parish register, about Merbecke's publication, very curious as regards the date of the entry. Monumenta Ritualia. vol. i. p. xxi. Note 32.

53 I cannot but remind the reader of the fact, one to which I shall

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again have occasion briefly to refer, that this Second Book was never authorized by the church of England. Dr. Cardwell acknowledges this; speaking of the convocation, and the disrespect with which the advisers of K. Edward treated it, in the latter part of his reign, he says: "It was not permitted to pass its judgment on the second Service Book put forth by authority of parliament in the reign of King Edward VI., and for this plain reason, that it would have thrown all possible difficulties in the way of its publication." Synodalia. vol. i. Pref. p. x.

54 This is a fact generally known; Bishop Burnet tells us, in his account of the First Book, "So now a review was set about. Martin

Still, in spite of all, though inverted in order, and more than half-obscured, the essentials of a valid consecration are to be found in the liturgy of 1552: much more then after the improvements, few though they may be, which from time to time have been made in it, by the Bishops in the reigns of Elizabeth, and James, and Charles, struggling to retrace their steps, and free the church of which they were the overseers, from the per

plexities into which it had been plunged by the followers of Calvin and Zuingle.55

I would not be understood as desirous to speak ill of the reformers of our Church. There are at present two parties who hold very different opinions of their merits: the extreme of the one would exalt them to the standard of the great fathers of the Catholic Church, of the saints and martyrs; the extreme of the other would depress them to the class of rash innovators, and speak of them in terms which may indeed be used of Peter Martyr, or Calvin, or Bucer. Rather let us on the one hand give what praise and honour may be justly due to their early exertions in the cause of truth, to which we owe our freedom from numerous errors and abuses which still overrun a large portion of the Church: let us upon the other disavow the lengths to which they were at last driven, not so much by the principle within, as by the pressure from without. Above all, let us remember that the Church of England has refused to ratify by her consent very many of the doctrines which have been attributed to her, by men who look upon the exiles at Frankfort, or upon Cranmer and Hooper and Latimer, and their decisions and indecisions, as her own, and as Herself.

55 In a remarkable letter to Bishop Skinner, in 1806, Bishop Horsley has said: "The alterations which were made in the communion service, as it stood in the first Book of Edward VI. to humour the Calvinists, were, in my opinion, much for the worse. Nevertheless I think our present Office is very good: our form of consecration of the elements is sufficient; I mean, that the elements are consecrated by it, and made the Body and Blood of Christ, in the sense