Part Two · General Literary History of the Book

Chapter IV

THE PRAYER BOOK FOR THE
LIFE OF TODAY

§ 1

Revisions

We have treated the story of the Prayer Book through 1662 as one of arriving at a stable “Reformation Settlement” of a Protestant liturgy. Developments since have had the purpose of adapting that liturgy to contemporary needs, under changing conditions, with a growing knowledge of liturgical history and principles, and with a continually increasing desire to make the Church impartially comprehensive. These developments are essentially a history of the Revisions. This division of time is not altogether accurate, since one of the greatest founts of inspiration for what we may call modern modifications of worship was the Scottish book of 1637. There were forward-looking moves before 1662. But after 1662, the liturgy has been fixed in its parent country; while the American books, which we now approach, began with a revision, and have twice improved that revision,—leading the way which has been followed by most other branches of our communion in the last decade.

§ 2

A “Broad-Church” Draft

Six years after the establishment of the standard of 1662, the heads of the Church of England, under the leadership of Archbishop Tillotson, were moved to seek a greater relaxation, in order not to drive out of the Church altogether those whose consciences would not permit them to accept the Prayer Book as it stood. Parliament, however, would have none of the proposals. Further attempts were defeated on account of the threat of Romanism under James II, who attempted to play off Romanists and Dissenters against the Church, so that concession in any direction was regarded as dangerous.

After the accession of William of Orange, the project was revived; and a commission in 1689 drafted 598 alterations—virtually as many as in 1662. But the clergy and laity united against the Bishops, in sympathy with the voluntary sacrifices of the “Nonjurors,” of whom we shall speak presently; so the matter was never even submitted to Convocation. Then from 1717 to 1852 the Convocations were silenced by royal authority; during which time nothing of any kind could be done with the Prayer Book.

This draft of 1689 was made in the form of an interleaved Prayer Book. There is record of only two copies of this book. One of them was lost by lending, and the other disappeared for many years. Finally discovered in the Lambeth library, it was printed as a parliamentary document in 1854. Perhaps the lost copy made its way to America, though of this there is no information, and no such copy is now extant. Yet in some manner it seems to have been known to the makers of the first American Prayer Book, as the Preface then adopted, and still retained, alludes specifically to “this great and good work.”

Some features from these proposals of 1689 which were embodied in the first American book exactly a century later, were the removal of lessons from the Apocrypha on Saints' Days, the use of the Gloria Patri at the end of the whole portion of Psalms, the substitution of Psalms for the Canticles at Evening Prayer, the placing of the Psalm Jubilate before the Benedictus, and a shortening of the Litany before the Communion.

§ 3

The Nonjurors

At the British “Revolution” of 1689, which peaceably deposed the Roman-Catholic King James II and called to the throne the Protestant Prince William of Orange by parliamentary authority, many of the Tory party, most unfortunately for themselves and for the good of the realm, took the narrow view that their oath of allegiance to the King bound them to the individual, rather than his office. Archbishop Sancroft, eight bishops, and 400 priests, refused to take a new oath to the new King, and were ejected from their benefices. This exiled the heart of the conservative party, and, as it happened, those most loyal to the Church itself, and gave control to the “Erastian” faction, which tended to conceive the Church as a subsidiary function of the State.

After Sancroft's death, the schism was perpetuated by the ordination of new bishops and clergy, and endured for more than a century. Soon some of them availed themselves of their freedom from State control to revert to the use of the Communion Office of 1549. In 1718 they published their own office, based upon the First Prayer Book, but modified from a study of the Greek liturgies. The book of 1718 embodied some ancient ceremonies known as The Usages, namely the Mixed Chalice, Prayers for the Dead, and prayers of Oblation and Invocation, in the Communion. Other distinctive Usages of the Nonjurors which began to be current about this time comprised triple immersion at Baptism, the use of chrism at Confirmation, and the Unction of the Sick. This group issued virtually a complete Prayer Book in 1734, which continued to be printed to the end of the century.

§ 4

The Scottish Church

Similar conditions to those of the Nonjurors faced the “faithful remnant” in Scotland. At the time of the Revolution, the Episcopal following in the northern kingdom was practically as strong as the Presbyterian. The former indeed was actually the Established Church of the land, though it remained non-liturgical. King William offered the Episcopalians his support in exchange for their allegiance; this being refused, the Episcopal Church was disestablished in 1689, and its members treated as “Nonjurors.”

After the Disestablishment, the Church gradually turned to liturgical forms of prayer. Their own book of 1637 was hard to obtain; but quantities of the English book were sent by sympathizers in the southern kingdom. The Scottish Communion Office of 1637, however, was increasingly printed separately from 1724 on; it was adopted by the Bishops in 1731, and successively revised in 1735, 1755, 1764, 1911, and 1929. The example of the English Nonjurors encouraged its use, and eventually effected modifications toward conformity with their own rite. This movement was reënforced by the publication of Bishop Rattray's Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem in 1744, bringing a direct knowledge of the Greek standards. These influences made available a better understanding of the organic order and significance of the primitive Christian Liturgy than Cranmer had possessed, and made it possible actually to improve upon the rite of 1549; so that the Scottish Consecration Prayer has been freely acclaimed by many English liturgiologists as the most perfect in Christendom.

§ 5

The First American Prayer Book

The birth of the new American nation made inevitable a radical correction of the State Prayers. It also raised questions of the whole canonical and disciplinary position of the Church, including those of its formularies of worship, and presented a challenge to review the fitness of those formularies for its missionary needs in the New World.

The representatives of seven “southern” States (i.e. those outside New England) met at a “General Convention” of the nascent American Church, and issued a draft of a Prayer Book, “as revised and proposed to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church, at a Convention of the said Church in the States of New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and South-Carolina, held in Philadelphia, from September 27th to October 7th, 1785.”1

This revision followed closely the lines of the English project of 1689, whose principles were discussed in much detail in its Preface. It has been fashionable to deprecate the “Proposed Book” of 1785, and to minimize its possible use, and its influence upon the Prayer Book of 1789. It is true that this draft fell rather under a cloud. The English Bishops were frightened at the prospect of giving the Episcopate to the American Church if this book were to become its standard, for it eliminated two of the historic Creeds, and mutilated the third. It does, no doubt, represent a sort of low-water-mark of churchmanship, bearing marks of Puritan and even Unitarian influences. A century later the Reformed Episcopal Church found it accorded perfectly with their views, adopted it in 1873 as their first Liturgy, and reissued it just as it stood. Yet the book of 1785 fairly enough represented the state of liturgical knowledge at the time; it was animated by a spirit of comprehensiveness which was wholly admirable; and it contributed several valuable features to the First American Book of four years later. Besides those mentioned on p. 111 below, these comprised the admission of parents as sponsors, and the omission of the sign of the Cross if desired, at Baptism; the abridgment of the Marriage Service; the Visitation of Prisoners, taken from the Irish Book of 1711; the curtailing of the Commination Service; and an office for Thanksgiving Day. Indeed, as Dr. Huntington pointed out, the Proposed Book was in some points more “churchly” than that finally adopted: giving the Venite and the Benedictus in full, and retaining the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.2

The first authentic General Convention met in Philadelphia on October 2, 1789. Bishop Seabury had been consecrated at Aberdeen on November 14, 1784, and White and Provoost in London on February 4, 1787. With these Bishops, Convention was organized in its two Houses, adopted a Constitution, and set to work on the Prayer Book. The task was completed in two weeks! However, it had the advantage of the thorough discussions of the draft of 1785; and it represented the judgment of experienced men, who had long had under consideration the changes which would be desirable for the work of the Church in America.

The Prayer Book of 1789 carried out a quite minute revision of the Book of 1662 to remove obsolete words and improve smoothness of phrase. In this, as in major matters, the aim was not doctrinal, but practical. The only changes of any possible doctrinal significance were the dropping of the “Athanasian” Creed, and perhaps the adoption of the Scottish Prayer of Consecration. The latter was the result of an agreement between Bishop Seabury and the Convention. He had pledged the Scottish Bishops at his consecration to commend their book to the American Church. Otherwise his book was that of 1662, with such few changes as had been already approved.3

§ 6

The Nineteenth Century

… flexibility and variety in liturgical use. The Memorial was ahead of its time. It fell before the wall of satisfied conservatism. The only substantive result was a “Declaration” by the Bishops, that Morning Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy Communion were distinct services, which might be used separately or together; and that on special occasions the clergy might use any parts of the Bible or Prayer Book, or the Bishops might prescribe particular forms of service.

The only other change before the revision of 1892 was a slight modification of the Lectionary in 1877. In England, the Lectionary was revised in 1871, and shortened services were allowed by the Act of 1872.

Meantime, another important factor had been at work in both countries—the revival known as the “Oxford Movement.” This movement, which was in fact complementary to the Evangelical revival which preceded and continued parallel to it, contemplated neither subverting nor supplanting the current doctrinal and liturgical formularies of the Church. It aimed to restore to the Church of England a realization of its living continuity with the Catholic Church of the ages, and to develop the real meaning of its standards in the light of history. Inevitably, this historical method gave new life to the neglected study of Liturgics.

Most of the old Anglican books on the subject were homiletical and polemical, circumscribed by a lack of any real knowledge of any liturgy but their own. The genetic and comparative researches which began with Palmer's Origines Liturgicæ (1833–41) changed all that, and opened up a wide field of ecclesiastical scholarship which even yet has hardly begun to be explored, and which yielded rich returns throughout the nineteenth century. It began to appear that there was much to be learned from the worship of other Churches, and that not all the changes in our own at and since the Reformation had been undeniable improvements. Such revision of the Liturgy as might best adapt it to those qualities of human nature which are changeless, was seen to involve in some cases a return to ancient landmarks.

“Who once hath seen how far above
The sought-for is the foregone store,
Should haste him to his earlier love,
And seek again what he forswore.”4

To a considerable degree the fruits of these learned labors were advertised, dramatized, and popularized by the bitter controversies over ceremonial. Just as in the Reformation and other periods of rapid change, trivial matters (such as the Eastward Position, or the eucharistic candles) came to symbolize deep divergencies of view, unreasoning fears on the one hand, and unreasoning faiths on the other. The late sixties and early seventies saw this ceremonial controversy reach and pass its culmination.5 The time came when sober second thought set itself to consider what permanent use could be made of what had been learned; and the task of revision could be undertaken with greater liturgical knowledge than any former revisers had ever possessed.

In 1877 Dr. William R. Huntington moved in General Convention to appoint a Joint Commission to consider “what changes, if any, are needed in the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer to remove difficulties of interpretation, to amend the Lectionary, and to provide by abbreviation or otherwise for the better adaptation of the services of the Church to the wants of all sorts and conditions of men.” This eminently rational and practical proposal was tabled; but three years later Dr. Huntington introduced a resolution equipped with a certain sentimental appeal, proposing a Joint Commission to consider “whether, in view of the fact that this Church is soon to enter upon the second century of its organized existence in this country, the changed conditions of national life do not demand certain alterations in the Book of Common Prayer, in the direction of Liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of use.”

The Commission was appointed; and began its labors by adopting these significant resolutions:

Resolved, That this Committee asserts, at the outset, its conviction that no alteration should be made touching either statements or standards of doctrine in the Book of Common Prayer.

Resolved, That this Committee, in all its suggestions and acts, be guided by those principles of liturgical construction and ritual use which have guided the compilation and amendments of the Book of Common Prayer, and have made it what it is.6

This undertaking not to alter doctrine, and an assurance which Dr. Huntington had given General Convention while his original resolution was being debated, that the Communion Office would not be revised,7 ensured that the changes would not be great. Those proposed were exhibited in the Book Annexed of 1883 and 1886, showing how the entire Prayer Book would appear if all were adopted. Partisan suspicion8 and the intense conservatism of the Church slowed up consideration of the matter so that the revision was not completed until 1892, and limited the alterations to a somewhat meagre list.

The gains in flexibility were confined to some shortening of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Communion on occasion; the adoption, in a general rubric, of the Bishops' Declaration of 1856 as to the separate use of the services; a revised Lectionary with some options as to its use; and further Proper Psalms and Selections of Psalms. The enrichments included provision for the festival of the Transfiguration, and for early celebrations of the Communion on Christmas and Easter; the restitution of a Penitential Office; the restoration of the Gospel Canticles, and of the full list of Preces at Evening Prayer; additional forms for the Occasional Prayers, and the Burial Office; and a presentation of candidates and a Lesson at Confirmation.

The real achievements of this revision were the partial destruction of the fetich of Uniformity,9 and the better education of the whole Church in liturgical principles through the comprehensive discussions during the twelve years that the work was in the making. And as soon as it had been demonstrated that such a revision could be achieved without realizing any of the fears which had attended its progress, and indeed with an increased harmony and efficiency of the Church, it became inevitable that some of the “unfinished business” of 1880–92 should be taken up again in a further adaptation of our standards of worship to new knowledge and new needs.

§ 7

The Twentieth Century

While the nineteenth century opened to the eyes of our Church the great field of a comparative knowledge of the texts of the historic liturgies of the world, the twentieth set itself with increasing success to the evaluation of the enormous mass of that material. The process is still far from complete. Hitherto, the study has fallen in the lines of the ancient conflict between Eastern and Western standards of doctrine, discipline, and worship. What has been needed is a complete account of the origin and evolution of Christian worship, in order to find its essential meaning in its ultimate sources, and to make it possible to assay the value of competing forms symbolizing historic “positions” by assigning them a place in a comprehensive scheme of historic evolution which shall account for them. In the battle of East and West, Scotland, America, South Africa and most other missionary regions, and finally England, have espoused the Eastern side. But the reluctance of the Catholic party in England to accept the new alternative Communion Office of the Deposited Book is evidence of the great importance of a definitive solution of the immemorial enigma of the Roman Canon, in particular.

It is only very recently that the identification of the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, and the assimilation of the perplexing testimony of the Didaché, have furnished us with the primal starting-point for such a general reconstruction of the evidence: a brief outline of which, to the best of present knowledge, is sketched in this book. Even this was not generally available for the several revisions completed in the last decade; though some portions of it had their effect, especially in England and her overseas missions: and it may be fairly said that America was intuitively on the right track, and has none of its work to undo.

§ 8

The American Prayer Book of 1928

Many factors combined to set in motion the revision of 1928. The work of 1892 was obviously incomplete; but even so it had made the Church realize that the Prayer Book was not absolutely unchangeable. Many new emphases had appeared in the life and thought of Church people. They looked at the problems of health, the social order, international relations, missionary work, and the interpretation of the Bible, in a way greatly different from that of previous generations. They were surer of God's love, and less dogmatic about his wrath. They were increasingly eager to make worship more beautiful, and thus more worthy. They were equally determined to make their Church's worship available for “all sorts and conditions of men,” and in all kinds of places. They wanted enrichment—a constant spring of liturgical growth throughout history—and they wanted its contrary, brevity, even to the point of making mere skeletons of some of the offices upon occasion.

To satisfy these demands, revision had to turn to the past as well as to the future: fearlessly restoring elements of beauty and indeed of faith, which had been lost through the bitterness of controversy, as well as framing or finding new prayers for new needs; and pressing to the utmost the peculiarly Anglican principle of flexibility, which entrusts the minister with large discretions of choice in the conduct of the services.

The actual process of revision began in 1913. A Memorial from the Diocese of California10 resulted in the appointment of a Joint Commission of bishops, presbyters, and laymen, to report on the “revision and enrichment of the Prayer Book,” with express instructions, copied from the procedure of the Commission of 1880, “that no proposition involving the Faith and Doctrine of the Church be considered or reported.”

In a strict sense, this stipulation was quite impossible of fulfilment, since one cannot so much as alter the punctuation of the Lord's Prayer without affecting the “proportion of the faith”: and a narrow adherence to this restriction would have limited the revision to as purely a literary significance as that of 1892. Dropping a prayer which intimated that disastrous weather was a direct divine retribution for sin, was certainly quite as much an alteration of doctrine as was the insertion of a prayer for the Departed. Yet the Commission proposed, and Convention approved, exactly these changes, and many others: wisely interpreting the “Faith and Doctrine of the Church” as referring to the permissible bounds of Anglican orthodoxy, and consequently exploring and developing our inherited liberties in every direction—to the great enlargement of the inherent comprehensiveness of the Church.

The Commission was appointed in 1913.11 The work was completed in 1928. At four General Conventions, the reports (which were so considerable as to be issued in book form) were debated with thoroughness, and with varying fortunes. The appointment of the Commission had met with no serious objection; but its recommendations at once met not only criticism in detail for doctrinal reasons (e.g. in the case of prayers for the Departed), but also conservative unreadiness to make any change at all. Yet steady progress was made. The Deputies took the lead in 1916 and 1919; the Bishops in 1922, when they devoted a whole week preceding the opening of General Convention to a consideration of the Revision Commission's Report. In that year also, mere conservative inertia seemed to cease. Action on the Report went rapidly forward. The work was finished at the Convention of 1925, and final ratification took place in 1928. In order not to delay further putting into the hands of the people a Prayer Book containing the changes adopted, final minutiæ were entrusted to the Commission under a grant of general editorial discretion.12

Many enrichments were made: a new Canticle, Prayer for the President, and proper “Invitatories” to the Venite, in Morning Prayer; an alternative Absolution in Evening Prayer; suffrages in the Litany; three new Proper Prefaces in the Communion, and intercessions for the Departed in the Communion and the Burial Offices; an entirely new service for the Burial of a Child; new devotions, with a prayer for the Anointing or Laying on of Hands, in the Visitation of the Sick; added questions at Baptism and Confirmation; sections on the Church and the Ministry in the Offices of Instruction, which were to take the place of the Catechism; supplementary prayers at a Marriage; many new Collects, Epistles, and Gospels for liturgical days old and new; and a doubling of the number of Occasional Prayers. A supplement of new prayers was added to the offices for Family Prayer, which were also provided with brief alternative forms, and the whole moved to the back of the book, thus making it technically out of the Prayer Book, so that additions or alterations might be made at any General Convention.

New flexibility was given by a new Lectionary, with further options as to its use, and by far greater liberty as to the Psalter, now specifically adapted in an optional table to all Sundays as well as other festivals, supplanting the aimless dictation of the day-of-the-month in the Sunday offices. There was an almost too complicated freedom in the use of the Daily Offices and the Litany, separately or in combination with other services, varying from the baldest brevity to the utmost elaboration. There were some further provisions for shortening the Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, and Ordination services. The rubrics throughout the book were minutely revised for both definiteness and liberty. The Baptismal orders were consolidated, and vastly simplified in use.

Liturgical amendments included the optional restoration of the Lord's Prayer to its proper place in Morning and Evening Prayer. The Lord's Prayer and the “Humble Access” were appended to the Consecration of the Communion—though the revision rightly rejected the liturgically faulty position of the Intercession and the Confession in the Scottish Book, and did nothing to review the Consecration Prayer, or to adjust the somewhat unsatisfactory use of some elements at the beginning and ending of this Office. The system of Proper Sentences in the Daily Offices was extended; and a consistent policy adopted as to the manner of printing and using the Lord's Prayer.13 The Offices for those At Sea and for the Visitation of Prisoners were eliminated.

Space has not permitted us to follow in detail the interesting process of revision, making a comparison of the four Reports with the Convention's completed work. But two observations seem pertinent.

During the period of revision, there was constant criticism of the method required by the Constitution of the Church. It was asserted that General Convention was incompetent to judge in these matters, that its criticism was futile, and that the only proper way to deal with liturgical revision was to leave it in the hands of experts. The 1928 revision, so it seems to these writers, throws a good deal of light on this matter. If the Church wants rapid revision, or if it wants chiefly what may be assumed to be “historically” correct, the experts can do it. If it wants on the other hand a Book which will commend itself to the great bulk of Church people, which is practical, and therefore liturgically correct, the method followed was thoroughly sound. A comparison will, we believe, show that the finished Book of 1928 is better than any of the Reports, if adopted in full, could have made it. Some minor proposals of value were lost; but widespread study and discussion saved the Church from some grievous mistakes.

The other observation has to do with the future. The Church has now at last recognized that while it cannot issue new books for its entire membership every few years, liturgical change is inevitable. General Convention has constituted a permanent Liturgical Commission, not to impose changes, but to collate and appraise proposals for revision, to bring them before Convention when the time seems appropriate, to recommend or prepare offices for special occasions not provided for in the Prayer Book, and to experiment and to guide in liturgical development. This Commission prepared the Lectionary which is now being tested throughout the Church. It has in preparation a Book of Offices for special occasions. But perhaps its chief value is that its appointment is recognition of the fact that worship is an ever-growing, ever-changing thing. Further revision is inevitable. There will be provision for a shorter Communion Service, and for the elimination of some of the phrases in that great Office which grow less and less congenial to our modern ears. There will certainly be less emphasis on eschatological conceptions and phrases which few people now accept, and greater emphasis upon the process of salvation in this world—including the responsibility of the Church for the Christianizing of the whole social order.14 Along these and other lines, the careful study and consistent criticism not only of liturgical scholars, but of clergy and laity, is most important. Worship concerns us all.

§ 9

Other Recent Anglican Revisions

The last two American revisions may legitimately be credited with having helped to inspire like movements in all other branches of the Anglican Communion (save conservative Australia and New Zealand): though on the other hand the latest American book owes much to the indefatigable efforts especially of English and Scottish scholars, who assembled a great mass of available material during the concurrent process of their labors.

The Canadian revision from 1911 to 1922 was very conservative, and resulted in a Prayer Book essentially comparable to our Book of 1892: concerning itself chiefly with the Daily Offices and supplemental prayers, and leaving the Communion almost entirely untouched.15

The Episcopal Church of Scotland revised its Communion Office in 1911, and from 1918 to 1929 reviewed the whole Prayer Book on lines of flexibility and enrichment.16 This recension originated many of the features adopted in the English Book of 1928.

In England, the process of revision went on from 1906 to 1920 in Convocation. After this, the erection of the new Church Assembly necessitated submission of the results to that body. Groups of scholars representing parties in the Church offered books of further suggestions. The work was finally completed in 1927, and submitted to Parliament. There it was defeated, after debates largely concerned with the matter of Reservation. The English “Deposited Book” of 1928 is in general comparable with the American Book of the same year, the order of whose consecratory Canon at the Eucharist it adopts; though in some respects it represents a still more advanced stage of development, a fuller liturgical knowledge, and a larger liberty. In the last particular indeed it is peculiar, permitting the new offices as alternatives to the old in any parish. Though rejected by Parliament, many parts of it are widely used in the English Church, with consent of the Bishop and the Parochial Councils.

The missionary dioceses of the Anglican Communion throughout the world, free from State control, and exempt from constitutional inflexibilities, have tried a great many experiments toward fitting the Anglican tradition to local requirements. Some exceedingly interesting moves have been made to assimilate native customs and ceremonial, exactly as the historic liturgies did at their inception, and indeed through much of their history. Many of these regional rites, fostered by “High-Church” societies, are strongly Romanized, accommodating Latin private prayers and subsidiary ceremonies to an Anglican public order and framework. In spite of this, it is interesting to note that virtually all the missionary “Uses,” with hardly an exception, have adopted or approached the Scottish-American type of an “Eastern” Canon of the Eucharist.17