and contempt among the heathen, appears to have induced them to commit their public prayers to memory rather than suffer them to be preserved in books or writings (Dallæ. de Cultu Relig. Lib. I. c. 25; Bingham, as above, § 3; Brett, Dissn. on Liturgies, § 2). By the end of the third century, or beginning of the fourth, the evidence becomes more distinct. In the middle of the fourth century St Cyril's second Mystagogical Catechism gives us a clear idea of the ancient baptismal service, and the fifth gives an outline of the form of administering the Holy Communion.

It is scarcely possible to put the date of the Apostolical Constitutions later than the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century, and in them we have at great length services for Baptism, Holy Communion, and Ordination. Apost. Const. Libb. VII. VIII. But what is of more consequence still is this, that we possess a number of liturgies', which without doubt were early used in all the most widely separated portions of the Christian Church: the Liturgy of St James, or of the church of Jerusalem; that of St Mark, or of the Church of Alexandria; St Chrysostom's, or the Constantinopolitan; the Liturgy of St Basil, or the Cappadocian; the Liturgy of Severus, used in the patriarchate of Antioch; the North African, as described by St Augustine, which corresponds with St Cyprian's; the Roman; the Gothic, which prevailed, with some varieties, among the Gothic Churches of Gaul and Spain; the Mozarabic, used in Africa, and afterwards in Spain; the Nestorian, in use among the followers of Nestorius, who seceded from the Catholic Church in the fifth century. (See Guericke, Antiquities of Christian Church, § xxx11. 3; Brett, on Liturgies, passim.)

All these bear concurrent testimony to the existence of regular liturgies from the time when these different Churches had communion with each other, or with some common centre, and all resemble one another in their most important features; whilst from the wide separation of these churches, the difficulty of communication between

1 The word Liturgy, in the language of the ancient Church, was applied to the service for consecrating and administering the Eucharist or Holy Communion.

them, and the absence of any single authority which could influence them all, we are compelled to infer that the general harmony must have resulted from the handing down and spreading abroad to them all of some primitive form of liturgy which had been in use from Apostolic times. (Palmer's Orig. Liturg. Preliminary Dissertation.)

The primitive liturgies thus preserved to us were evidently in languages understood by the people amongst whom they prevailed (Bingham, Book XIII. ch. iv.) They contain no invocation of saints, no mention of purgatory, no doctrine of transubstantiation. Even the Roman canon of the Mass has descended to the present day so far free from such admixtures as to be a witness against the corruptions of later days.

The early British Church appears to have adopted the Gallican Liturgy, a form derived from the East; and after the conversion of the Saxons, Pope Gregory gave permission to Augustine to choose either the Gallican or the Roman services, or selections from various forms, as he might find most suitable for the infant Church of England, (Bede, Hist. Eccl. 1. 72). Augustine's bias was in favour of the Roman, whilst the bishops of the British Church still retained their predilection for the Gallican Liturgy; the result being, that different dioceses had different modifications of the forms of public worship, the various modes of chanting the services in each being distinguished as the special "Uses" of the various dioceses. Of all these the most esteemed was the Use of Sarum, drawn up in the latter part of the 11th century by Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury; a form, which was at length in great measure adopted in many other dioceses of Great Britain (Procter, Hist. of Com. Prayer, P. 4).

The Missals, Breviaries, and other books of devotion in the middle ages were of course in Latin; but there existed previously to the Reformation what was called a Prymer in English, containing the Pater Noster, Ave, Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Litany, the seven Penitential Psalms and other offices of devotion, intended

specially for the private use of the people. One of the first efforts of the early reformers was to substitute English services for those in the Latin tongue. In 1530 Marshall's Prymer was put forth. In 1540 the English Bible was set up in churches. In 1544 the Litany was translated, with an omission of the names of saints which had accumulated in the Latin Litanies. In 1547, the first year of Edward VI., Convocation authorized the administering of the Communion in both kinds, and Parliament issued a commission for the meeting of a body of bishops and other divines to reform the Church services. Their first publication, issued in March 1548, was "The Order of the Communion," a Communion Office partly in English, intended to serve until the whole of the projected Service Book should be prepared (see Sparrow's Collection, p. 15, Cardwell's Two Liturgies, p. 425, Two Liturgies, Parker Society, p. 1).

That book, commonly called the First Service Book of Edward VI.. is thought to have been approved by Convocation, and was certainly established by authority of Parliament in the year 1549.

The principle on which the reformers acted in the preparation of their book seems to have been as follows. They made use of the service books already existing in the Church, translating the prayers, psalms, epistles and gospels into English, omitting what appeared to have been derived, not from Scripture or primitive practice, but from the increasing superstitions of the medieval Church. They reduced all the different uses to one, simplifying the whole, and making it intelligible to the people. They endeavoured to conform the administration of both sacraments as nearly as they could to the primitive model, and they expunged especially the prayers of invocation to the Blessed Virgin and the saints.

In the same year, or rather in the early part of 1550, according to modern reckoning, the commissioners drew up a new Ordinal, called a "Form for the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons" (see Lathbury, Hist. of Convocation, p. 141).

In 1552 what is called the Second Service Book of Edward VI. was

put forth, and the Ordinal, slightly modified, was incorporated with it (Ib.).

The difference between the First and Second Books of the reign of Edward VI. consisted chiefly in the following particulars. The First Book began with the Lord's Prayer. All that now stands before that prayer was first added in the Second Book. In the Communion Service the Ten Commandments were added, the Gloria in excelsis having in the First Book occupied the place in which the Commandments now stand; the prayer "for the whole state of Christ's Church," which in the First Book contained a commendation of the departed, was changed in the Second Book into "the Prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth," mention of the departed being omitted. In the Prayer of Consecration the crossing and the invocation of the Holy Spirit to sanctify the elements "that they may be unto us the Body and Blood" of Christ, and the marginal rubrics respecting the manual action of the priest were omitted. In the administration of the elements wholly different words were used. In Baptism the First Service Book had exorcism, anointing, chrisom and trine immersion, which were omitted in the Second. In the Burial Service the prayers for the dead were changed into thanksgiving. A rubric was prefixed to the order for Morning and Evening Prayer forbidding alb, vestment, or cope, and enjoining the bishop to wear a rochet, and the priest or deacon a surplice.

It appears that the reform of the Services had now somewhat exceeded the desires of the people; for the Act of Parliament which authorized the new book declared that "the doubts which had been raised in the use and exercise" of the First Book "proceeded rather from the curiosity of the minister and mistakers than from any other worthy cause.' Convocation was never allowed to pass its judgment upon it; and indeed the extensive changes introduced in it are thought to have been in great measure due to the zeal for reformation on the part of the young king and his council. Of course, Queen Mary's reign

restored the Roman ritual. Soon after the accession of Elizabeth a

committee of divines was appointed, the chief of whom appears to have been Guest, who reported in favour of the Second Service Book of Edward VI. apparently objecting to any modification of it; but the book, as passed by the Parliament, contained the following changes. A new table of lessons was appointed for Sundays; the words "from the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities" were omitted in the Litany; the form of the words in delivering the consecrated elements was made to consist of the words in the First Service Book, together with those in the Second Book. The question of habits and vestments had long been, and still was, in dispute. The bishops were evidently in favour of the rochet and surplice only, as ordered in the Second Book of Edward VI.; whilst the queen inclined both to higher doctrine and richer ceremonial. At her instance a rubric was prefixed to the Prayer Book authorizing the minister "to use such ornaments in the Church as were in use by authority of Parliament" in the 2nd year of Edward VI.; but the Act of Uniformity (1 Eliz. c. 2), which contained the same provisions as that rubric, went on with the words "until other order shall be therein taken by the authority of the Queen's Majesty, with the advice of her commissioners......or of the metropolitan." This appeared to be making the provision temporary; and the bishops themselves inferred that the meaning was, "that they should not be forced to use such ornaments, but that others in the meantime should not convey them away, but that they should remain for the queen." (Bp. Sandys to Archbishop Parker, Strype, Ann. Vol. 1. P. I. p. 122, Cardwell's Hist. Conferences, p. 36.)

The main substance of the Book of Common Prayer may be said to have continued from that day to this unchanged. In the reign of James I. the form of service for private baptism was so far altered as to give authority to none but lawful ministers to use it, but does not define what a lawful minister was, and the Catechism was enlarged by the addition of the portion concerning the sacraments. In the reign of Charles the Second, the demands of the Puritans for reform were thought so unreasonable, that the result of the confer