INTRODUCTION.

" LORD, teach us to pray, as John also taught his Disciples," was the request made to Our Lord, and considered so rea­sonable by Him, that He gave that form of Prayer which has ever since been the model for all our Devotions.

That the primitive Christians used set forms, is evident from the expressions to be found in the earliest Fathers. St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose, composed Forms of Prayer; and the Sacramentary of St. Gregory perfected the offices of the Church of Rome.

Out of these Liturgies were compiled the forms of public Service used in this kingdom before the Reformation; they were known under the several names of Breviaries, Missals, and Mass Books; these varying after the use of Sarum, of York, of Bangor, of Lincoln,& c; they were all in Latin.

The principle upon which the Fathers of our Church pro­ceeded in the work of Reformation was, to depart no further from the Church of Rome than their sense of the purity of faith and worship required; they, therefore, continued those ceremonies which had been the practice of the primitive

Church.

The first step taken was in the year 1537, when a Book was published, called, The godly and pious institution of a Christen Man; containing the Lord's Prayer, Ave Maria, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Seven Sacraments.

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