INTRODUCTION.
THE English Prayer Book embodies, in tangible form, the chief principles of the English Reformation. It was no new book, drawn up by the religious leaders of the 16th century, but was mainly a reformed republication of those old Services, which had grown up through nearly a thousand years of English Christianity, being themselves developments of the Liturgies of an even remoter antiquity. So far it exemplified the famous Declaration( in the Act against suing for Dispensations at Rome, A.D. 1533), that the English Church and nation in the Reformation" intended not to decline or vary from the Congregation of Christ's Church, in things concerning the Catholic faith of Christendom, or declared by Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary to salvation." But, at the same time, it was the assertion of a right to remodel and reform, to add to and to take from, those old Services, so as to adapt them to the needs of the people and of the age; and in this respect it implied the claim of national religious independence, under the supreme authority of God's Word, and appeal to a General Council of the Church freely chosen, which was a distinct defiance of the Papal authority, and thus a resolute, though independent, adhesion to the Reformation movement.
I. MATERIALS AND HISTORY.- The materials from which it was compiled were large and various. There were, first, the Latin Service- Books; which may be, generally speaking, reduced to three, ( a) the BREVIARY, containing, besides the Calendar and Rubrical directions, the Psalms, Hymns, Antiphons, Collects, Lections,& c., to be said at the several hours of prayer, whether on ordinary days or days of special observance.( b) The MISSAL, containing its own Calendar, Rubrics, and elaborate ritual directions, the invariable part of the Order of the Communion Service or" Mass," with the variable Introits, Collects, Epistles, Gospels,& c., for various seasons of the Ecclesiastical year.( c) The MANUAL, containing the Baptismal Service, and the" Occasional Services." To these may be added the PONTIFICAL, containing the Ordination Service, and other Services, which could only be performed by a Bishop. These Service Books were voluminous and intricate, each( except the Manual) longer than our whole Prayer Book.
Of these various Latin Service Books there were extant several forms or USES. St. Augustine, on his mission to England, found various Services already existing in the ancient British Church, not improbably framed on the Gallican model, which has strong affinities with the Eastern Liturgies, and differing considerably from the authorized Roman form of his time. By the wise counsel of his superior, Gregory the Great, he refrained from rigidly enforcing ritual uniformity within the sphere of his own influence; and the variety of Service, thus caused, was still further increased by the fact, that Christianity was largely diffused in the north and centre of England by independent Celtic missionaries from Scotland. To these causes is probably to be traced the co- existence