66 u stopped from them,-nor the rulers of the church, that the mysteriousness of Scripture were abused by the petulancy of the people to consequents harsh, impious, and unreasonable, in despite of government, in exauctoration of the power of superiors, or for the commencement of schisms and heresies. The church, with great wisdom, hath first held this torch out; and, though, for great reasons intervening and hindering, it cannot be reduced to practice, yet the church hath shown her desire to avoid the evil that is on both hands, and she hath shown the way also, if it could have been insisted in. But, however, this choice of the more remarkable portions of Scrip of the thing, that, because the gospels and epistles bear their several shares of the design, (the gospel representing the foundation, and prime necessities of christianity, and the mysterious parts of our redemption, the sum, the faith, and the hopes of christianity,) therefore it is attested by a ceremony of standing up, it being a part of the confession of faith: but the epistles containing superstructures upon that foundation, are read with religious care, but not made formal or solemn by any other circumstance. The matter contains in it sufficient of reason and of proportion, but nothing of necessity, except it be by accident, and as authority does intervene by way of sanction. variâ sunt, ut eruti et liberati Deum collaudent in- | complain, that the fountains of our Saviour were columitatis autorem." So far goes our form of prayer. But St. Ambrose adds, " Referentes quoque gratiarum actiones." And so it was with us in the first service-books of King Edward, and the preface to the prayer engages us to a thanksgiving; but I know not how it was stolen out, the preface still remaining, to chide their unwariness that took down that part of the building, and yet left the gate standing. But if the reader please to be satisfied concerning this prayer, which, indeed, is the longest in our service-book, and of greatest consideration, | he may see it taken up from the universal custom of the church, and almost in all the words of the old liturgies, if he will observe the liturgies them-ture is so reasonable and proportionable to the nature selves, of St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and the concurrent testimonies of Tertullian, P St. Austin, 9 Celestine, Gennadius, Prosper,' and Theophylact.' 26. I shall not need to make any excuses for the church's reading those portions of Scripture, which we call epistles and gospels, before the communion. They are Scriptures of the choicest and most profitable transaction. And let me observe this thing, that they are not only declarations of all the mysteries of our redemption, and rules of good life, but this choice is of the greatest compliance with the necessities of the christian church that can be imagined. For if we deny to the people a liberty of reading Scriptures, may they not complain, as Isaac did against the inhabitants of the land, that the Philistines had spoiled his well, and the fountains of living water? if a free use to all of them, and of all Scriptures, were permitted, | should not the church herself have more cause to complain of the infinite licentiousness and looseness of interpretations, and of the commencement of ten thousand errors, which would certainly be consequent to such permission? Reason and religion will chide us in the first, reason and experience in the latter. And can the wit of man conceive a better temper and expedient, than that such Scriptures only or principally should be laid before them all in daily offices, which contain in them all the mysteries of our redemption, and all the rules of good life? which two things are done by the gospels and epistles respectively: the first being a record of the life and death of our blessed Saviour; the latter, instructions for the edification of the church, in pious and christian conversation; and all this was done with so much choice, that as obscure places are avoided by design, as much as could be, so the very assignation of them to certain festivals, the appropriation of them to solemn and particular days, does entertain the understandings of the people with notions proper to the mystery, and distinct from impertinent and vexatious questions. And were this design made something more minute, and applicable to the various necessities of times, and such choice scriptures permitted indifferently, which might be matter of necessity and great edification, the people of the church would have no reason to 27. But that this reading of epistles and gospels before the communion, was one of the earliest customs of the church, I find it affirmed by Rabanus Maurus. * "Sed enim initio mos iste cantandi non erat, qui nunc in ecclesiâ ante sacrificium celebratur: sed tamen epistolæ Pauli recitabantur, et sanctum evangelium :" "The custom of reading St. Paul's epistles, and the holy gospel before the sacrament, was from the beginning." Some other portions of Scripture were read, upon emergent occasions, instead of the epistle, which still retain the name of epistle; but it is so seldom, that it happens upon two Sundays only in the year: upon Trinity Sunday, and the twenty-fifth Sunday after: upon Saints' days it happens oftener, because the story requires a particular rememoration, and, therefore, is very often taken out of the Acts of the Apostles; but being in substitution only of the ordinary portion of the epistle of St. Paul, or other the apostles, it keeps the name of the first design, though the change be upon good reason, and much propriety. 28. There remains now nothing but the litany and collects to be accounted for: for the matter of which, I shall need to say nothing, because the objections whatsoever have been against them, are extremely low, and rather like the intemperate talk of an angry child, than pressures of reason or probability, excepting where they are charged with their virtues, for their charity in praying for all men, for their humility in acknowledging such a worthlessness in ourselves, as not to dare to ask our petitions upon our own confidences. These things t L. 1. de Vocat. Gent. c. 4. T 29. But for the form, I think themselves will make answer, when they consider that they are nothing but a pursuit of that apostolical precept, which, next to the Lord's prayer, was the first is Scripture pattern, whence the church framed her liturgies. "First of all, let there be made intercessions, and prayers, and supplications, and giving of thanks, for all men."y In which words, if there be not an impertinent repetition of divers words to the same sense, then needs must δεήσεις, προσευχαὶ, ivTεúžeis, be as much distinct from each other in their form, as they are all from Eixaρioriai. Fil 30. St. Austin expounds πрoσevxaç, "prayers made in and about the blessed eucharist." "Ideo in hujus sanctificatione et distributionis præparatione existimo apostolum jussisse proprie feri προσευχάς, id est, orationes. Interpellationes autem vel postulationes fiunt, cum populus benedicitur.”z the form, since, besides that we have the wisdom of so many ages, and holy and prudent persons to confirm them, the form is made with design to represent all the needs of the catholic church, and to make the prayer itself fitted for an active and an intense devotion; and that it co-operates rarely well to these ends, is so true, that of the first, every man is judge,—of the second, every man may be judge, that will, without prejudice, and with pious predispositions, use the form; for if they help my devotion infinitely, they may do as much to another, if he be disposed as I am; and he that says they do no advantage, or singular relish to my spirit, may as well tell me the meat I eat does not please me, because he loves it not; but the exceptions which are against it, are so fantastic, and by chance, that, unless it be against a single adversary, and by personal engagement, they cannot be noted in a series of a positive discourse. Sometimes they are too long, and sometimes they are too short, and yet the objectors will make longer and shorter when they please; and, because no law of God hath prescribed to us in such circumstances, if the church leaves the same liberty to their private devotions, it is not reasonable they should prescribe to her in public, and in such minutes, in which the ordinary prudence of one wise man is abundantly sufficient to give him laws and directions, and in matters of greater difficulty. 32. Of the same consideration is the form of our church collects, which are made pleasant by their variety of matter,—are made energetical and potent by that great endearment of “ per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum," are cleared from a neigh 31. But St. Austin, if he were not deceived in his criticism, says, that besides the general name of prayer, which is signified by all those words, eux in Scripture signifies "votum" or desire, such surely as we express by sudden and short emissions, and then poσε is but a prayer, ρòç εuxǹν, that is, but an expression of short and ejaculatory desires, and may be better applied to such forms of prayer as are our collects, rather than the longer and more solemn parts of the canon of communion. 'Erreves, though it signifies an address to God, yet it may with propriety enough be applied to our interlocutory prayers where the people bear a share; for ETEVE signifies "congressum" or "collo-bourhood of tediousness by their so quick intercision quium,” τὰς ἐντεύξεις μὴ πυκνὰς ποιοῦ τοῖς αὐτοῖς, Isocrates: "Make no frequent societies or confederations with them." However, although grammarians may differ in assigning these several words to their proper, minute, and incommunicable signification, yet it is most clear, that they mean not prayers distinct, and made several by the variety of matter, but several addresses differing only in "modo orandi," and, therefore, by these are intended the several forms of prayer and supplication: and the church hath at all times used prayers of all variety, long and short, ejaculatory, determined, and solemn. And the church of England understood it in this variety, calling the short ejaculatory prayers and responsories by the names of litanies, or suffrages, which I should render in the phrase of St. Austin to be "postulationes," or denσic; but the longer collects he calls "prayers," which is the true rendering of porεvxas, I suppose, and therefore twice in the litany, after the short responsories, the priest says, "let us pray," by that, minding the people of the apostles' precept, that "prayer" as well as "supplications" be made. For the litanies it is certain, the form is of great antiquity; Mamercus, bishop of Vienna, made solemn litanies, four hundred years after Christ, and he and all his diocess repeated them together: and, therefore, I know not what matter of doubt there can be reasonable in : 1 Tim. ii. Epist. 59. ad Paulin. q. 5. VOL. II. 2 and breakings off, and have for their precedent the forms of prayer used by the religious of Palestine mentioned by Cassian; "Et hæ fuerunt monachorum jaculatoriæ orationes, ut frequentius Dominum deprecantes jugiter eidem cohærere possimus, et ut insidiantis diaboli jacula, quæ infligere nobis tum præcipue insistit cum oramus, succinctâ vitemus brevitate." In all these forms of prayer there is no difference but what is circumstantial; and therefore, although these circumstances be of great efficacy for the procuring of accidental advantages to our spirits, which are often swayed, moved, and determined by a manner, as much as by an essence, yet there is in it nothing of duty and obligation ; and, therefore, it is the most unreasonable thing in the world to make any of these things to be a question of religion. 33. I shall therefore press these things no further, but note, that since all liturgy is, and ever was, either prose or verse, or both, and the liturgy of the church of England, as well as most others, is of the last sort,-I consider that whatsoever is in her devotions besides the lessons, epistles, and gospels, (the body of which is no other thing, than was the famous "lectionarium" of St. Jerome,) is a compliance with these two dictates of the apostle for liturgy: the which, one for verse, the other for prose, "in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs," ■ De Instit. Cleric. lib. i. c. 32. for verse; for prose, "deprecations, and prayers, | the offices are so ordered, that the most indifferent and intercessions, and giving of thanks,”—will warrant and commend, as so many parts of duty, all the portions of the English liturgy. 34. If it were worth the pains, it were very easy to enumerate the authors, and especially the occasions and time when the most minute passages, such I mean as are known by distinct appellatives, came into the church; that so it may appear, our liturgy | is as ancient and primitive in every part, as it is pious and unblamable, and long before the church got such a beam in one of her eyes, which was endeavoured to be cast out at the reformation. But it will not be amiss to observe, that very many of them were inserted as antidotes and deleteries to the worst of heresies, as I have discoursed already: and such was that clause, "Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God:" and some other phrases parallel were put in, in defiance of the Macedonians, and all the species of the Anti-trinitarians, and used by St. Ambrose in Milan, St. Austin in Africa, and Idacius Clarus in Spain; and in imitation of so pious precedents, the church of England hath inserted divers clauses into her offices. 35. There was a great instance in the administration of the blessed sacrament. For upon the change of certain clauses in the liturgy, upon the instance of Martin Bucer, instead of "the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life," was substituted this, "take and eat this in remembrance," &c. and it was done lest the people, accustomed to the opinion of transubstantiation and the appendant practices, should retain the same doctrine upon intimation of the first clause. But in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, when certain persons of the Zuinglian opinion would have abused the church with sacramentary doctrine, and pretended the church of England had declared for it in the second clause of 1552, the wisdom of the church thought it expedient to join both the clauses; the first, lest the church should be suspected to be of the sacramentary opinion; the latter, lest she should be mistaken as a patroness of transubstantiation; and both these with so much temper and sweetness, that by her care she rather prevented all mistakes, than by any positive declaration in her prayers, engaged herself upon either side, that she might pray to God without strife and contention with her brethren. For the church of England had never known how to follow the names of men, but to call Christ only "her Lord and Master." 36. But from the inserting of these and the like clauses, which hath been done in all ages, according to several opportunities and necessities, I shall observe this advantage, which is in many, but is also very signally in the English liturgy; we are thereby enabled and advantaged in the meditation of those mysteries, "de quibus festivatur in sacris," as the casuists love to speak ;—which, upon solemn days, we are bound to meditate, and make to be the matter and occasion of our address to God; for | and careless cannot but be reminded of the mystery in every anniversary, which, if they be summed up, will make an excellent creed; and then let any man consider what a rare advantage it will be to the belief of such propositions, when the very design of the holiday teaches the hard-handed artisan the name and meaning of an article, and yet the most forward and religious cannot be abused with any semblances of superstition. The life and death of the saints, which is very precious in the eyes of God, is so remembered by his humble and afflicted handmaid the church of England, that by giving him thanks and praise, God may be honoured, the church instructed by the proposition of their example, and we give testimony of the honour and love we owe and pay unto religion, by the pious veneration and esteem of those holy and beatified persons. 37. Certain it is that there is no part of religion, as it is a distinct virtue, and is to be exercised by interior acts and forms of worship, but is in the offices of the church of England. For if the soul desires to be humbled, she hath provided forms of confession to God before his church; if she will rejoice and give God thanks for particular blessings, there are forms of thanksgiving described and added, by the king's authority, upon the conference at Hampton-court, which are all the public, solemn, and foreseen occasions, for which, by law and order, provision could be made. If she will commend to God the public and private necessities of the church, and single persons, the whole body of collects and devotions supplies that abundantly ; if her devotion be high and pregnant, and prepared to fervency and importunity of congress with God, the litanies are an admirable pattern of devotion, full of circumstances proportionable for a quick and an earnest spirit; when the revolution of the anniversary calls on us to perform our duty of special meditation, and thankfulness to God for the glorious benefits of Christ's incarnation, nativity, passion, resurrection, and ascension, (blessings which do as well deserve a day of thanksgiving as any other temporal advantage, though it be the pleasure of a victory,) then we have the offices of Christmas, the Annunciation, Easter, and Ascension; if we delight to remember those holy persons, whose bodies rest in the bed of peace, and whose souls are deposited in the hands of Christ till the day of restitution of all things, we may, by the collects and days of anniversary-festivity, not only remember, but also imitate them too in our lives, if we will make that use of the proportions of Scripture allotted for the festival which the church intends: to which if we add the advantages of the whole psalter, which is an entire body of devotion by itself, and hath in it forms to exercise all graces by way of internal act and spiritual intention, there is not any ghostly advantage which the most religious can either need or fancy, but the English liturgy in its entire constitution will furnish us withal. And certainly it was a very great wisdom, and a very prudent and religious constitution, so to order that part of the liturgy, which the ancients called the " lectionarium," that the psalter should be read over twelve times in the year, the Old Testament once, and the New Testament thrice, besides the epistles and gospels, which renew with a more frequent repetition, such choice places as represent the entire body of faith and good life. There is a defalcation of some few chapters from the entire body in the order; but that also was part of the wisdom of the church, not to expose to public ears and common judgments some of the secret rites of Moses's law, or the more mysterious prophecies of the New Testament, whose sense and meaning the event will declare, if we, by mistaken and anticipated interpretations, do not obstruct our own capacities, and hinder us from believing the true events, because they answer not those expectations, with which our own mistakes have prepared our understandings; as it happened to the Jews in the case of Antiochus, and to the christians in the person of Antichrist. 38. Well thus as it was framed in the body of its first constitution and second alteration, those excellent men whom God chose as instruments of his honour and service in the reformation, to whom also he did show what great things they were to suffer for his name's sake, approved of it with high testimony, promoted it by their own use and zeal, and at last sealed it with their blood. 39. That they had a great opinion of the piety and unblamable composure of the common prayerbook, appears, 1. in the challenge made in its behalf by the archbishop Cranmer, to defend it against all the world of enemies; 2. by the daily using it in time of persecution and imprisonment; for so did Bishop Ridley, and Doctor Taylor, who also recommended it to his wife for a legacy; 3. by their preaching in behalf of it, as many did; 4. by Hulliers' hugging it in his flames, with a posture of great love and forwardness of entertainment; 5. besides the direct testimony which the most eminent learned amongst the Queen-Mary martyrs have given of it. Amongst which, that of the learned rector of Hadley, Doctor Rowland Taylor, is most considerable his words are these in a letter of his to a friend: "But there was after that, by the most innocent king Edward, (for whom God be praised everlastingly!) the whole church-service, with great deliberation, and the advice of the best learned men of the realm, and authorized by the whole parliament, and received and published gladly by the whole realm; which book was never reformed but once, and yet, by that one reformation, it was so fully perfected, according to the rules of our christian religion, in every behalf, that no christian conscience could be offended with any thing therein contained I mean of that book reformed." b men and martyrs, and that it is easy to say such words of any man that is not fully of our mind, I suppose the advantage and the out-weighing authority will lie on our part, in behalf of the common prayer-book, especially since this man, and divers others, died with it and for it, according as it happened by the circumstance of their charges and articles, upon which they died; for so it was in the cases of John Rough, John Philpot, Cuthbert Simson, and seven others burnt in Smithfield; upon whom it was charged in their indictments, that they used, allowed, preached for, and maintained respectively, the service-book of King Edward. To which articles they answered affirmatively, and confessed them to be true in every part, and died accordingly. с 41. I shall press this argument to issue, in the words of St. Ambrose, cited to the like purpose by Vincentius Lirinensis: "Librum sacerdotalem quis nostrûm resignare audeat, signatum à confessoribus, et multorum jam martyrio consecratum ? Quomodo fidem eorum possumus denegare, quorum victoriam prædicamus ?" d "Who shall dare to violate this priestly book, which so many confessors have consigned, and so many martyrs have hallowed with their blood? How shall we call them martyrs, if we deny their faith? how shall we celebrate their victory, if we dislike their cause? If we believe them to be crowned, why shall we deny but that they "strove lawfully ?" So that if they, dying in attestation of this book, were martyrs, why do we condemn the book for which they died? If we will not call them martyrs, it is clear we have changed our religion since then. And then it would be considered whether we are fallen; for the reformers in King Edward's time died for it, in Queen Elizabeth's time they avowed it under the protection of an excellent princess; but, in that sad interval of Queen Mary's reign, it suffered persecution and if it shall do so again, it is but an unhandsome compliance for reformers to be unlike their brethren, and to be like their enemies, to do as do the papists, and only to speak great words against them; and it will be sad for a zealous protestant to live in an age that should disavow King Edward's and Queen Elizabeth's religion and manner of worshipping God, and in an age that shall do as Queen Mary's bishops, persecute the book of common-prayer, and the religion contained in it. God help the poor protestants in such times: but let it do its worst; if God please to give his grace, the worst that can come is but a crown, and that was never denied to martyrs. 42. In the mean time I can but with joy and eucharist consider with what advantages and blessings the pious protestant is entertained, and blessed, and armed against all his needs, by the constant and religious usage of the common prayer-book: for be40. I desire the words may be considered and sides the direct advantages of the prayers and deconfronted against some other words lately pub-votions, some whereof are already instanced,—and lished, which charge these holy and learned men but with a half-faced light, darkness in the confines of Egypt and the suburbs of Goshen. And because there is no such thing proved of these blessed Acts and Monuments, p. 1385, 1608, 1565, 1840, 1844, et alibi. the experience of holy persons will furnish them with more, there are also forms of solemn benediction and absolution in the offices; and if they be not highly considerable, there is nothing sacred in c P. 1848, 1649, 1840. d Contra Hæres. c. 7. the evangelical ministry, but all is a vast plain, and | people, appointing it to be done, not in the priest's the altars themselves are made of unhallowed turf. 43. Concerning benediction (of which there are four more solemn forms in the whole office, two in the canon of the communion, one in confirmation, one in the office of marriage) I shall give this short account, that" without all question, the less is blessed of the greater," and it being an issue spiritual, is rather to be verified in spiritual relation than in natural or political. And, therefore, if there be any such thing as "regeneration" by the ministry of the word, and " begetting in Christ," and fathers, and sons after the common faith, (as the expressions of the apostle make us to believe,) certain it is, the blessings of religion do descend most properly from our spiritual fathers, and with most plentiful emanation. And this hath been the religion of all the world, to derive very much of their blessings by the priest's particular and signal ministration: Melchisedeck blessed Abraham, Isaac blessed Jacob, and Moses and Aaron blessed the people. So that here is benediction from a prince, from a father, from the Aaronical priest, from Melchisedeck, of whose order is the christian, in whose law it is a sanction, that, in great needs especially," the elders of the church be sent for, and let them pray over him that is distressed." That is the " great remedy" for the great necessity." And it was ever much valued in the church, insomuch that Nectarius would, by no means, take investiture of his patriarchal see, until he had obtained the benediction of Diodorus, the bishop of Cilicia. Eudoxia, the empress, brought her son Theodosius to St. Chrysostom, for his blessing; and St. Austin and all his company received it of Innocentius, bishop of Carthage. It was so solemn in all marriages, that the marrying of persons was called "benediction." So it was in the fourth council of Carthage; "Sponsus et sponsa cum benedicendi sunt à sacerdote," &c. benedicendi for married. And in all church offices it was so solemn, that, by a decree of the council of Agatho, A. D. 380, it was decreed, "Ante benedictionem sacerdotis populus egredi non præsumat." By the way only, here is averría for two parts of the English liturgy for the benediction in the office of marriage, by the authority of the council of Carthage; and for concluding the office of communion with the priest's or bishop's benediction, by warrant of the council of Agatho; which decrees, having been derived into the practice of the universal church for very many ages, is in no hand to be undervalued, lest we become like Esau, and we miss it when we most need it. For my own particular, I shall still press on to receive the benediction of holy church, till at last I shall hear a "Venite, benedicti," and that I be reckoned amongst those blessed souls, who come to God by the ministries of his own appointment, and will not venture upon that neglect, against which the piety and wisdom of all religions in the world infinitely do prescribe. 44. Now the advantages of confidence, which I have upon the forms of benediction in the common prayer-book, are therefore considerable, because God himself prescribed a set form of blessing the e extempore, but in an established form of words; and because, as the authority of a prescript form is from God, so that this form may be also highly warranted, the solemn blessing, at the end of the communion, is in the very words of St. Paul. 45. For the forms of absolution in the liturgy, though I shall not enter into consideration of the question concerning the quality of the priest's power, which is certainly a very great ministry; yet I shall observe the rare temper and proportion, which the church of England uses in commensurating the forms of absolution to the degrees of preparation and necessity. At the beginning of the morning and evening prayer, after a general confession, usually recited before the devotion is high and pregnant, whose parts like fire enkindle one another, there is a form of absolution in general, declarative, and by way of proposition. In the office of the communion, because there are more acts of piety and repentance previous and pre-supposed, there the church's form of absolution is optative and by way of intercession. But in the visitation of the sick, when it is supposed and enjoined that the penitent shall disburden himself of all the clamorous loads upon his conscience, the church prescribes a medicinal form by way of delegate authority, that the parts of justification may answer to the parts of good life. For as the penitent proceeds, so does the church; pardon and repentance being terms of relation, they grow up together till they be complete: this the church, with the greatest wisdom, supposes to be at the end of our life, grace by that time having all its growth that it will have here; and, therefore, then also the pardon of sins is of another nature than it ever was before, it being now more actual and complete; whereas, before, it was "in fieri," in the beginnings and smaller increases, and upon more accidents apt to be made imperfect and revocable. So that the church of England, in these manners of dispensing the power of the keys, does cut off all disputings and impertinent wranglings, whether the priest's power were judicial or declarative; for possibly it is both, and it is optative too; and something else yet, for it is an emanation from all the parts of his ministry, and he never absolves, but he preaches or prays, or administers a sacrament; for this power of remission is a transcendant, passing through all the parts of the priestly offices; for the keys of the kingdom of heaven are the promises and the threatenings of the Scripture, and the prayers of the church, and the word, and the sacraments, and all these are to be dispensed by the priest, and these keys are committed to his ministry, and by the operation of them all, he opens and shuts heaven's gates ministerially; and, therefore, St. Paul calls it "verbum reconciliationis," and says it is dispensed by ministers, as by "ambassadors" or delegates: and, therefore, it is an excellent temper of the church, so to prescribe her forms of absolution, as to show them to be results of the whole priestly office, of preaching, of dispensing sacraments, of e Num. vi. 23. |