English Ceremonial BY E. G. CUTHBERT F. ATCHLEY 1 suppose that no one will venture to maintain that the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer contain all that is needful for the due performance of the ceremonial of the divine worship and other rites, at any rate explicitly. Implicitly, perhaps, they do, as there is a tacit assumption that a very large amount of ceremonial detail is left to tradition and custom. And until the tractarian revival there were many minor customs still surviving which have since been altered or disused through ignorance of their historical pedigree. The tractarian leaders were theologians, and with but few exceptions knew little of ecclesiology, or even of liturgiology. And so it has happened that much old English ceremonial was deliberately given up as being protestant accretion of late growth, and so on. Instead of retaining this, they, or rather their immediate successors, modelled their ceremonial on what they saw in their continental tours, that is to say, on the use which the bishop of Rome was endeavouring more or less successfully to impress on the other Churches of his obedience. Now, just before Morning Prayer we find a rubric that has caused more fierce discussion and bitterness, and, may I say, display of casuistry (using the word in the popular sense), than any other. We call it the Ornaments' Rubric. There we learn that the chancels are to remain as they have been in times past; and that such ornaments of the church, as well as those of the ministers |