The first Book of Common Prayer was built up of blocks that for the most part had been previously used in other buildings, but the resulting structure exhibited, from the very moment it received a name, such distinct and unmistakable characteristics as have guaranteed it personal identity through more than three hundred years. Hence, while it is in one sense true that there are no fewer than eight Books of Common Prayer, it is in another sense equally true that the Book of Common Prayer is one.
An identity of purpose, of scope, and of spirit shows itself in all its various forms under which the book exists, so that whether we are speaking of the First Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth, or of the book adopted by the Church of Ireland after its disestablishment, or of the American Book of Common Prayer, what we have in mind is, in a very real and deep sense, one and the same thing.
Let us proceed now to a rapid survey of the facts connected with the first issue of the Common Prayer.
For a period long anterior to the Reformation there had been in use among the English brief books of devotion known as "primers," written in the language of the people. The fact that the public services of the Church were invariably conducted in the Latin tongue made a resort to such expedients as this necessary, unless religion was to be reserved as the private property of ecclesiastics.
By a curious process of evolution the primer, from having been in mediaeval times a book wholly religious and devotional, has come to be in our day a book wholly secular and educational. We associate it with Noah Webster and the Harper Brothers. The New England Primer of the Puritans, with its odd jumble of piety and the three R's, marks a point of transition from the ancient to the modern type.
But this by the way. The primer we are now concerned with is the devotional primer of the times just previous to the Reformation. This, as a rule, contained prayers, the Belief, the Ave Maria, a litany of some sort, the Ten Commandments, and whatever else there might be that in the mind of the compiler came under the head of "things which a Christian ought to know." There were three of these primers set forth during the reign of Henry the Eighth, one in 1535, one in 1539, and one in 1545. During the space that intervened between the publication of the second and that of the third of these primers, appeared "The Litany and Suffrages," a formulary compiled, as is generally believed, by Cranmer, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, and in substance identical with the Litany we use to-day. This Litany of 1544 has been properly described as "the precursor and first instalment of the English Book of Common Prayer." It was the nucleus or centre of crystallization about which the other constituent portions of our manual of worship were destined to be grouped. A quaint exhortation was prefixed to this Litany, in which it was said to have been set forth "because the not understanding the prayers and suffrages formerly used caused that the people came but slackly to the processions." Besides the primers and the Litany, there were printed in Henry's reign various editions of a book of Epistles and Gospels in English. There was also published a Psalter in Latin and English.
All this looked rather to the edification of individual Christians in their private devotional life than to the public worship of the Church, but we are not to suppose that meanwhile the larger interests of the whole body were forgotten. So early as in the year 1542, Convocation, which according to the Anglican theory stands toward the Church in the same attitude that Parliament holds to the State, appointed a Committee of Eight to review and correct the existing service-books. We know very little as to the proceedings of this committee, but that something was done, and a real impulse given to liturgical revision, is evidenced by the fact that at a meeting of Convocation held soon after King Henry's death a resolution prevailed "That the books of the Bishops and others who by the command of the Convocation have labored in examining, reforming, and publishing the divine service, may be produced and laid before the examination of this house."
The next important step in the process we are studying was the publication by authority in the early spring of 1548, of an Order of the Communion, as it was called, a formulary prepared by Cranmer to enable the priest, after having consecrated the elements in the usual manner, to distribute them to the people with the sentences of delivery spoken in English. The priest, that is to say, was to proceed with the service of the Mass as usual in the Latin tongue, but after he had himself received the bread and the wine, he was to proceed to a service of Communion for the people in a speech they could understand.
Almost everything in this tentative document, as we may call it, was subsequently incorporated in the Office of the Holy Communion as we are using it to-day.
We have, then, as an abiding result of the liturgical experiments made in anticipation of the actual setting forth of an authoritative Prayer Book, the Litany and this Order of the Communion.
The time was now ripe for something better and more complete; a new king was upon the throne, and one whose counsellors were better disposed toward change than ever Henry had been. The great movement we know under the name of the Reformation touched the life of the Christian Church in every one of its three great departments—doctrine, discipline, and worship. In Henry's mind, however, the question appears to have been almost exclusively one of discipline or polity. His quarrel was not with the accepted theological errors of his day, for as Defender of the Faith he covered some of the worst of them with his shield. Neither was he ill-disposed toward the methods and usages of public worship so far as we can judge. His quarrel first, last, and always was with a certain rival claimant of power, whose pretended authority he was determined to drive out of the realm, to wit, the Pope. But while it was thus with Henry, it was far otherwise with many of the more thoughtful and devout among his theologians, and when the restraint that had been laid on them was removed by the king's death, they welcomed the opportunity to apply to doctrine and worship the same reforming touch that had already remoulded polity.
An enlarged Committee of Convocation sat at Windsor in the summer of 1548, and as a result there was finally set forth, and ordered to be put into use on Whitsunday, 1549, what has become known in history as the "First Prayer Book of Edward VI."
To dwell on those features of the First Book that have remained unaltered to the present day would be superfluous; I shall therefore, in speaking of it, confine myself to the distinctive and characteristic points in which it differs from the Prayer Books that have succeeded it.
It is worthy of note that in the title page of the First Book there is a clear distinction drawn between the Church Universal, or what we call in the Te Deum "the holy Church throughout all the world," and that particular Church to which King Edward's subjects, in virtue of their being Englishmen, belonged. The book is said to be "the Book of the Common Prayer and administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of The Church, after the use of the Church of England." "The Church" is recognized as being a larger and, perhaps, older thing than the Church of England, while at the same time it is intimated that only through such use of these same prayers and sacraments as the English Church ordains and authorizes can English folk come into communion with the great family of believers spread over the whole earth.
The Preface is a singularly racy piece of English, in which with the utmost plainness of speech the compilers give their reasons for having dealt with the old services as they have done. This reappears in the English Prayer Book of the present day under the title "Concerning the Service of The Church," and so described is placed after the Preface written in 1662 by the Revisers of the Restoration.
The Order for Daily Morning Prayer, as we name it, is called in Edward's First Book "An Order for Matins daily through the year." Similarly, what we call the Order for Daily Evening Prayer was styled "An Order for Evensong." These beautiful names, "Matins" and "Evensong," which it is a great pity to have lost, for surely there is nothing superstitious about them, disappeared from the book as subsequently revised, and save in the Lectionary of the Church of England have no present recognition. One of them, however, Evensong, seems to be coming very generally into colloquial use. The Order for Matins began with the Lord's Prayer. Then, after the familiar versicles still in use, including two that have no place in our American book, "O God, make speed to save me. O Lord, make haste to help me," there followed in full the 95th Psalm, a portion of which is known to us as the Venite. From this point the