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THE
HIGH CHURCH TRADITION
by
G. W. O. ADDLESHAW, M.A., B.D.
Chapter 4
ORDER
I
The seventeenth-century liturgists held very strong
convictions on the subject of order in the Prayer Book rite. The
meaning which they attached to the word is best expressed in
Beveridge’s famous sermon on the Prayer Book which he
preached at the consecration of Saint Peter’s, Cornhill, in
1681. He is anxious for his flock to miss nothing of the Church
services; for in missing a part they in some measure lose the
meaning of the whole. ‘All the parts of it’, he says,
‘being linked together in so excellent a manner and method
that they influence and assist each other; so that nothing can be
omitted either by minister or people but the whole will suffer by
it and lose something of that virtue and efficacy which otherwise
you will find in it.’ [Works, VI, p. 396-7.]
Beveridge means that the Prayer Book services are not a
meaningless series of exhortations, Bible-readings, psalms,
hymns, and prayers, strung together for the sake of making a
service. Each service is an ordered structure; each element is in
a certain place because it means something in that place, and
through its position there bears a relation to the whole. The
daily services and the Eucharist too are related to each other
through the lectionary and the collects, epistles, and gospels.
The full meaning of the structure is not apparent until the
Prayer Book is viewed over the whole length of the Church’s
year.
In old-fashioned circles in the Church of England the
Eucharist is often called the second service. This title
came into use in the seventeenth century and expressed the belief
that the Eucharist logically followed on Mattins by way of the
Litany as a second separate service. Through Mattins and the
Litany the movement of the Sunday liturgy of the Church reached
its climax in the Eucharist and was brought to a quiet close with
Evensong. In this movement it was joined by a certain link and
rhythm with what preceded or followed it.
Cosin thought that the clause ‘the beginning of this day’
in the third Collect at Mattins made six in the morning the most
appropriate hour for the service. [Works, V, p. 66.]
Sparrow regarded nine as a suitable hour for the Eucharist on the
ground that it was possible to come fasting at that time and that
the hour was the traditional one both for the beginning of Our
Lord’s passion and the descent of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost. [op. cit., p. 157.] The interval between Mattins and
the Eucharist was valued as an opportunity for the priest to
receive the names of intending communicants and give them
absolution or spiritual help and advice. [Wheatly, op. cit., ch.
6.] The practice of joining the two services together, or that
sanctioned by the Revised Prayer Book of beginning the Eucharist
immediately after the Benedictus or Jubilate would have been
regarded as a grave disturbance of the essential structure of the
Prayer Book.
On the principle that there is a rational order on which the
Prayer Book services are built up, it becomes a gross piece of
vandalism to destroy the order by altering the service,
substituting prayers, psalms, and Bible-readings of the minister’s
own choice for those laid down in the rite; in fact such
alterations render the rite quite meaningless. This sense that
the Prayer Book services formed a beautiful and ordered structure
made the classical liturgists nervous of any changes and
revisions unless they were carried out with a deep reverence for
its underlying structural unity. Jebb speaks of such changes as
producing ‘the present disfigurement, and eventual ruin, of
a goodly fabric; till at length the divinely suggested outline of
the Temple itself is lost for ever.’ [op. cit., p. 5.] In a
comparison of the Prayer Book with Saint Paul’s Cathedral
Wickham Legg writes: ‘Both have something of a medieval
basis; neither belongs to the golden age of liturgy or
architecture; yet no one has ever touched either of them without
spoiling it.’ [The Principles and Services of the Prayer
Book considered, p. 130.]
But where did this order come from? The idea of such an order
did not figure largely in the minds of the reformers when the
Prayer Book was compiled. The seventeenth-century liturgists
shirk the issue; they are content to read an order into the rite
as they found it, without bothering about its origins. Keble
faced the possibility that the present shape of the Prayer Book
services is due as much to chance and the personal prejudices of
the reformers as any definite plan of arrangement. He deals with
the question in Tract XIII. The Tract is on Archbishop Parker’s
table of first lessons for Sundays. Keble thinks it no longer
possible to ascertain whether Parker in drawing up the table had
any definite scheme in mind, nor does it much matter. The
question of order and meaning is not affected by origins; the
table can acquire an order and meaning which it did not have at
first, by a process of what he calls spontaneous evolution.
[Tracts for the Times, No. XIII, p. 7.] To Keble liturgy
is not a dead, mechanical thing; it is something living. As
centuries have gone by, its constant use by the faithful, their
ever-increasing understanding of its implications, has given it
an order and meaning which it may not have possessed at the
beginning; in much the same way as age gives a pattern and order
to human life. This principle of spontaneous evolution is true of
all liturgies; the constant meditation of the faithful has given
the canon of the Latin rite an order and meaning which it did not
have to begin with. Nobody for one moment believes that the
liturgy of Saint Chrysostom was in its early years thought to
reveal that order and structure which Gogol describes in his Meditations
on the Divine Liturgy. Liturgy only comes to perfection
slowly and gradually; it is not made in a day.
Comber and Beveridge were the two seventeenth-century
liturgists who paid particular attention to the order and
structure exhibited by the Prayer Book services; much of what
Comber says is embodied almost word for word in Wheatly’s
rationale. They are fully aware that there are antiquarian and
historical reasons for the places occupied by the different
elements in the services; they discourse on them with their usual
ponderous learning. But their main interest is concentrated in
seeing each service as an ordered structure with a beginning and
an end, with each part following on what has gone before and
leading to what follows in a logical sequence.
II
They think of the daily offices as centring in the recitation
of the psalter and the reading of scripture in a regular course.
This part extends from the versicles to the Creed and is held to
be particularly concerned with praise. To it is prefixed an
introduction, and it is followed by petitionary and intercessory
prayer. The introduction which extends from the Sentences to the
Our Father is concerned with preparation for the main feature of
the office, the praise of the second and central part. The
offices fittingly begin with sentences from scripture, God’s
own words; in the Exhortation the congregation are reminded of
what they are going to do in the office and are then led to
prepare for the opus Dei by confessing their sins and
receiving absolution. [Cosin: Works, V, p. 444; Thorndike:
Works, I, p. 370; Beveridge: Works, VI, p. 382;
Wheatly, op. cit., ch. III, 1.] George Herbert used to tell his
people at Bemerton that until they had begged and obtained pardon
for their sins, they were neither able nor worthy to offer their
praise to God. At the consecration of the church at Abbey Dore in
1634, the introductory and preparatory nature of this part of the
office was marked by one of the clergy, the chaplain of the
consecrating bishop, taking it kneeling in the middle of the
chancel facing east; he moved to his stall at the end of the Our
Father when the office proper can be said to begin. [Wickham Legg:
English Orders for Consecrating Churches, p. 163.]
The Our Father, since it is the foundation on which all prayer
is built, forms the transition to the main part of the service [Sparrow,
op. cit., p. 17], the recitation of the psalter and the reading
of scripture, what Wheatly calls ‘the office of praises’.
It opens with the versicles which are petitions to God for help
to praise Him; then with the Gloria the note of praise is struck
which is carried right through this part of the service to its
close in the creed. Its structure is explained by reference to
Canon XVII of the Council of Laodicea which forbade the reading
of numerous psalms together at the synaxis before the Eucharist.
Psalms, hymns, canticles, and lessons are intermingled to provide
variety and to prevent weariness on the part of the congregation.
[L’Estrange, op. cit., pp. 114-15.] In the lessons the
people are provided with food for meditation which they turn into
praise in the hymns and canticles. [Sparrow, op. cit., p. 27.]
Hooker, in giving the classical exposition of the part played by
the lessons in the offices, speaks of ‘the riches of the
mysteries of heavenly wisdom continually stirring up in us
correspondent desires towards them’, desires which the
Church expresses in the hymns and canticles that follow. [Hooker,
V, 34.] The lessons are not intended primarily for instruction;
their purpose in the liturgy is to inspire and help the faithful
in the work of praise.
To emphasize the importance of the psalms in the structure of
the office, it was customary in the seventeenth century to hold
up the action of the service by the playing of an organ voluntary
before the First Lesson. [Jebb, op. cit., p. 317.] The praise
offered in the psalms has made the people ready to hear God
speaking to them in the lessons. Stress is laid on the fact that
there are two lessons, one from the Old Testament or Apocrypha
and one from the New. They show the harmony of God’s action
in history, first through the law and then the gospel; they lead
us from the imperfect revelation of the old covenant to the
unveiled glory of the new; by hearing of the darkness of the law
our minds are made ready for the light of the gospel. [Beveridge:
Works, VI, p. 385; Wheatly, op. cit., ch. III, 10.]
For the First Lesson on ordinary days the Church began the
year with Genesis and continued through most of the Old Testament
and a few books of the Apocrypha. Isaiah was left till the end of
the year as a preparation for Christmas. There was a separate
table of First Lessons for Sundays, Saints’ days, and Holy
days. That for Sundays began on Septuagesima and ended on the
sixth Sunday after Epiphany; the lessons were so arranged as to
exhibit God’s former dealings with Israel in such a way that
from them the faithful could learn of His present dealings with
the individual soul and the response the latter should make. [Keble:
Tract XIII, p. 2.]
The psalms and First Lesson have been prophetic of the
Incarnation. In the Te Deum, the Benedicite, and the Magnificat
the Church expresses its joy at seeing, as Comber puts it, ‘all
those types verified, all those predictions completed, and
allthose promises made good, which are contained in the law and
prophets concerning Christ’. [op. cit., p. 116.] The
Magnificat comes fittingly after the First Lesson at Evensong
because it expresses Our Lady’s joy as she reflected on the
promises of the Old Testament to be fulfilled in Our Lord’s
birth. In the Te Deum or Benedicite at Mattins, in the Magnificat
at Evensong, is the climax of this part of the office, ‘the
office of praises’. Here the Church passes from the
preparation for the Gospel to the Gospel itself. To express its
joy incense was used in some places at this point, the clerk
having got it ready during the reading of the First Lesson. [Andrewes,
Minor Works, p. xcviii.]
At the Second Lesson, to mark its importance usually read by
the most important cleric present, the Church contemplates the
Incarnation. The New Testament was read through three times in
the course of the year. No proper lessons are provided except for
the greater festivals. Keble saw in this a valuable testimony to
the fact that the Prayer Book was built up round the daily
services of which those on Sunday were but a continuation and
expansion. He also delighted in the endless variety of mutual
combinations between the Old and New Testaments which the system
presented. [Keble, op. cit., p. 9.] At Mattins the lesson was
taken from the Gospels or the Acts, at Evensong the Epistles. The
Benedictus follows the Second Lesson at Mattins as an act of
thanksgiving for the Incarnation; at Evensong the Nunc Dimittis
is the Church’s response to the vision of Our Lord and the
Christian character which has been presented to it in the
Epistles. [See Wheatly, op. cit., ch. III, and for what
follows.]
The seventeenth-century liturgists found nothing shocking in
the provision of alternative psalms for the Gospel canticles.
They argue that they relieve those Puritan consciences which had
scruples about the canticles; they make for variety and do not
disturb the structure of the offices. Psalm 98 follows very
suitably after hearing a First Lesson containing an account of a
great temporal deliverance. Psalm 100 leads us to thanksgiving
for the Gospel proclaimed by the Second Lesson at Mattins; Psalm
67 expresses our desire that all nations may be illuminated by
the doctrine we have heard read in the Second Lesson at Evensong.
[Hooker: V, 40; L’Estrange, op. cit., p. 116; Comber, op.
cit., pp. 113, 121, 128.]
The Creed forms the transition from the second to the third
part of the office. It looks back to the lessons; the faithful
after hearing the Word of God declare their belief in it. It
looks forward to the prayers; for we cannot call on Him on whom
we have not believed. The third part is devoted to prayer and
intercession. It is important to notice two things about its
structure.
Firstly, the modern idea that the office ends with the third
Collect finds no support in the thought of the seventeenth
century. The liturgists who write after 1662 unanimously speak of
the office ending, except when the litany is said, with the
Prayer of Saint Chrysostom and the Grace. It is devoted to two
kinds of prayer: petition and intercession, with the anthem
coming between. In churches which did not possess a choir capable
of singing an anthem, it was usual to have a metrical psalm. The
anthem or psalm served the double purpose of marking the division
between petitionary and intercessory prayer and preventing the
congregation finding the prayers too long. It was intended to be
short.
Secondly, the section is intended to form a prayerful close to
a service whose main feature is the recitation of the psalter and
the reading of scripture. It is not meant to be stressed at the
expense of the central section or to be lengthened out so as to
appear the most important part of the service. This is emphasized
by Dr. Thomas Bisse; he points out that the prayers,
supplications, and intercessions, in the Collects and Litany,
though necessary duties, are only appendages to the nobler work
of praise and thanksgiving, the chief element in the Church’s
daily public worship. [op. cit., pp. 12-13.]
The Our Father forms the chief point in the section. The
Church prepares for it by a mutual prayer of minister and people
that God will help them in the work of prayer, and by pleading
for mercy in the Kyries. The seventeenth-century liturgists love
to dilate on the suitability of the second and third Collects; in
the morning the Church prays for outward peace in converse with
the world and for preservation from the dangers and temptations
that beset it; in the evening for that help which comes from a
good conscience and for help against the terrors of darkness.
There is a logical order in the intercessions; first comes the
Prayer for the King owing to the peculiar relationship between
the Crown and the Church, then the prayers for the Royal Family
and the Clergy and People; special prayers follow in cases of bad
weather, plague or war, if it is embertide or Parliament is
sitting; on days on which the Litany is not said, the
intercessions are concluded by the ‘Prayer for all
conditions of men’. The latter was intended as a general
intercession at Mattins in place of the Litany; it was not
supposed by the more rigid liturgists to be used at Evensong,
though the custom of the age sanctioned the practice. The
intercessions, it is well to notice, are general and impersonal
in their tone; they reflect the needs of a community and have
little individual appeal; and as such they are fittingly included
in the liturgy. At the conclusion of the intercessions the office
ends with the prayer of Saint Chrysostom and the Grace in which
the Church professes its faith in Our Lord’s perpetual
intercession in heaven and asks that its prayers may be heard in
accordance with His will.
III
The seventeenth-century liturgists regard the structure of the
Eucharist as built up round various parts of the Eucharistic
action itself into which are worked the preparation of the Church
for taking part in the action and its response afterwards. [For
this section see Comber, op. cit., pp. 417-578; Wheatly,
op. cit., ch. VI.] These elements are interwoven to form a unity.
In spite of the frequency of Altar Prayers they treat the rite as
a whole from the Our Father to the Blessing without any decisive
break in its movement, not even at the Offertory; they are fully
aware of the distinction between the Missa Catechumenorum
and the Missa Fidelium, but it plays no part in their
conception of the structure of the Anglican rite. It was
customary to speak of the whole service as a ‘holy action’.
[Cf. Bishop Simon Patrick: The Christian Sacrifice, Part
II.]
It begins with the Our Father, not only as in the case of the
offices because it is the basis of all prayer, but also because
of the immemorial tradition that ‘Give us this day our daily
bread’ refers to the blessed food of the Eucharist. The
preparation for the Eucharistic action extends from the Collect
for Purity till the end of the Prayer of Humble Access, though it
is broken into by the first part of the action itself, the
offering of the elements. It is made up of what Comber calls
‘holy desires’ by which the faithful are made ready for
the Eucharistic action [op cit., p. 416]; Comber also likens it
to the ‘abstinence, patience, and many labours’ which
preceded initiation into the mystery religions of antiquity. [op
cit., p. 491.]
In the Collect for Purity the Church prays for a clean heart
to worship aright and that the faithful may recognize their
faults when they hear the Commandments. The commandments are both
a means of self-examination helping to make the General
Confession more sincere, and an act of contrition and a cry for
mercy on the part of sinful humanity. The Collect for the King
and that of the day are acts of prayer for the country, the
Church, and ourselves. Wheatly thinks the position of the Collect
for the King far superior to the one it occupied in the Te
igitur in the medieval rite – he seems to have forgotten
that the petition for the King in the Prayer for the Church is
the Anglican counterpart to the latter – for the King is the
defender of both tables of the law; and it is therefore fitting
to pray for him after the Commandments. The Church’s outward
prosperity depends on good government; before praying for
spiritual graces in the Collect for the day, it seems logical to
pray first for the good government of the country.
The preparation is continued in listening to God’s Word
in the Epistle and Gospel, and in making an act of faith at the
recital of the Creed, so that, as Sparrow puts it, ‘those
who approach these holy mysteries may be purified with a true and
right faith’. [op. cit., p. 160.] Jebb sees in this section
a logical sequence, the apostolic scriptures and Our Lord’s
words are followed by the teaching of the Church in the Creed and
by instruction from its ministers in the sermon. [op. cit., p.
490.] Cosin thought the sermon should fit into the liturgy by
being on the lessons or Epistle or Gospel for the day. In his own
sermons, to show their connection with the liturgical theme for
the day, he usually began with a few remarks on the liturgical
significance of his subject; he then recited the Bidding Prayer
and Our Father; after this came the text and sermon proper.
But faith without charity is dead; so to the exercise of faith
succeeds one of charity expressed in a practical way in the
offering of the alms and then in an act of intercession in the
Prayer for the Church. Wheatly, connecting it with Our Lord’s
work as intercessor, says we cannot hope to intercede more
effectually ‘than just when we are about to represent and
show forth to the divine majesty that meritorious sacrifice, by
virtue whereof our great High Priest did once redeem us, and for
ever continues to intercede for us in heaven’. The school
were careful to point out that the words ‘militant here on
earth’ did not exclude the charitable practice of praying
for the dead; they held that the words only emphasize that in the
Prayer for the Church we chiefly pray for the living because
amidst the trials of this life they are in greater need of our
prayers than the faithful departed. An anonymous pamphlet which
appeared in 1723 speaks of ‘our petition for their
consummation as well as our own, tho’ chiefly for our own,
who are always, while in this life, in hazard of coming short of
so inestimable a blessing’. [Two Discourses, 1723, p.
xiii. This pamphlet betrays certain Non-juring sympathies.]
At this point comes the first stage in the Eucharistic action
itself; the elements are solemnly placed on the altar, and in the
Prayer for the Church they are offered to God as the first fruits
of His creatures and as an acknowledgment that He is our
sovereign lord and benefactor. [Hickes: Treatises, Lib. of
A. C. Theol., II, p. 120.] Thorndike calls it the setting apart
of our goods for the service of God. [Works, IV, pp. 106-7.]
Wheatly says the action corresponds to Our Lord’s giving of
thanks and blessing at the Last Supper. The thought of the
Eucharistic action which is now approaching is brought out in the
phrase ‘give thanks for all men’ at the opening of the
Prayer for the Church. Since the phrase had become meaningless by
the omission in 1552 of the thanksgiving for the saints, Cosin
refers it to the action of celebrating the Eucharist. [Works,
V, pp. 466-7.]
At the close of the Prayer for the Church the sacrificial
action begins to draw near; the celebrant warns the communicants
in the Exhortation of the dangers of unworthy reception and the
dignity of the action in which they are about to take part. To
symbolize the drawing near to the moment of sacrifice, the
faithful at the Invitation leave the body of the Church and kneel
in the chancel. The Confession follows since human frailty and
sin were the cause of the Lord’s passion now to be set forth.
The faith of the Church in Our Lord’s sacrifice is confirmed
in the Absolution and Comfortable Words. Lifted up above the
world by its faith the Church is able to join with the heavenly
host in an act of praise and thanksgiving. [Beveridge: Works,
VI, p. 34.] The Eucharistic action is about to be accomplished;
the long preparation is brought to a close by an act of humility
in the Prayer of Humble Access, or as it was frequently called in
this period the Approach. For it is only in intense humility that
the Church dares to celebrate the Eucharist, a humility
symbolized by the celebrant kneeling before the altar.
A certain rhythm and pattern runs through the preparation; it
reads almost like a commentary on Pascal’s epigram that man
is ‘le glorie et le rebut de l’univers’. The
changes are rung on what man is by virtue of the divine
supernatural life given him at baptism, and man in all his
frailty and sin. In the Epistle and Gospel the Church proclaims
to man what his life should be as a son of God; in the Creed, the
Offertory, and the Prayer for the Church, he is led on to that
faith and charity which makes him here and now a sharer in
eternal life. Yet in the collects, the confession, and the Prayer
of Humble Access, he is never allowed to forget either his need
of divine grace or that sin and frailty which threaten to shut
him out from the heavenly vision.
The break in the movement of the service at the end of the
Prayer of Humble Access, the ending of the preparation – the
continuation of the Eucharistic action begun at the offering of
the elements, comes out in the ceremonial of the period. Those
priests who were in the habit of taking the ‘eastward’
position would at this point in the service move from the north
side to the centre of the altar. Their position at the north side
up till this point symbolized that what had hitherto been done
was of a preparatory nature. Here Andrewes placed the bread or
wafers on the paten, and poured the wine with a little water in
the chalice; he then took the lavabo, repeating the
customary verses from Psalm 26. [Both the mixed chalice and
lavabo were also practised by the Presbyterians in the
seventeenth century: W. M. McMillan The Worship of the
Scottish Reformed Church, pp. 188, 204.] Andrewes regarded
the lavabo as an act of civility before the Consecration.
[Minor Works, p. 31.] The rubrical direction in the 1662
Prayer Book on ordering the elements, an action which breaks the
movement of the service, witnesses to a sense that at this point
the rite moves to another stage. The preparation for the
sacrifice is ended, the sacrifice itself is now to be offered.
Before the Consecration Prayer the priest arranges the
elements, symbolizing, as Beveridge puts it, ‘God’s
eternal purpose, and determinate counsel, to send His Son into
the world, and to offer Him up as a sacrifice for the sins of
mankind’. He stands alone before the altar, an action
symbolic of the loneliness of Calvary [Works, VI, p. 35],
and in the opening words of the Consecration Prayer commemorates
the actual sacrifice on Calvary and the institution of a
perpetual memorial of that sacrifice. At the words ‘Hear us,
O merciful Father,...’ he implores the blessing of God the
Father on the great action now to be performed. [For this
analysis of the Consecration Prayer, vide Cosin: Works,
V, p. 106; Hickes: op. cit., II, pp. 121-2. The best rationale of
the whole action is to be found in Thorndike: Works, IV,
pp. 106-19, 134-5.] Wheatly thought there was nothing out of
place in making the sign of the cross over the elements at these
words, though the practice had been discontinued in 1552, since
it symbolized the connection between the Cross and the
Eucharistic action, or as he puts it, ‘that it is performed
in honour of a crucified Saviour’.
The central point of the Eucharistic action has now been
reached. Every word and action is big with mystery; Comber warns
the celebrant to say the words of institution with ‘great
deliberation, and the profoundest reverence’ [op. cit., p.
537]; for he is speaking in the person of Christ. In Wheatly’s
words he is performing to God ‘the representative sacrifice
of the death and passion of His Son’, or our sacrifice of
praise and thanksgiving, as the liturgists usually call it.
Andrewes likens the fraction, and the pouring of the wine into
the chalice, to what was done on Calvary [Sermons, II, p.
304]; but it is not just a symbolical action. Something is
actually happening; it is a representation, a renewing, a bring
back of the sacrifice of Calvary. [Thorndike: Works, VI, p.
112.] Andrewes calls it an action, carrying us not only up to
Christ, but also back to Him, ‘as He was at the very
instant, and in the very act of His offering’. [Sermons,
II, p. 306.]
The Eucharistic sacrifice on the earthly altar is offered as a
sacrifice, ‘propitiatory and impetratory’, for the
needs of the whole Church, living and departed. [Thorndike, Works,
IV, pp. 107-8.] Andrewes speaks of the sacrifice of Christ’s
death as available ‘for present, absent, living, dead (yea
for them that are yet unborn)’. [Minor Works, p. 20;
cf. Cosin: Works, V, pp. 119, 351-2.] The Church is
setting forth its peace offering, ‘the body whose hands were
here shewed, and the side, whence issued sanguis crucis,
"the blood that pacifieth all things in earth and heaven;
that we, in it and by it, may this day renew the covenant of our
peace’. [Andrewes, Sermons, II, p. 254.]
The Eucharistic action is brought to a close by the act of
communion and the offering of the faithful, soul and body, to the
Father, in union with Our Lord’s offering in the sacrifice.
The liturgists made much of this element in the Eucharistic
action, as something apostolic and primitive, and prided
themselves on the way it is emphasized in the Prayer Book,
compared with the scant notice it receives in the Latin Mass. To
Thorndike the Eucharist is a renewing of the covenant of grace
established on Calvary and a tendering of its blessings; the
offering of ourselves is our share in the covenant, the condition
on which the promises of the Gospel depend for their fulfilment.
[Thorndike, Works, IV, pp. 118, 135; L’Estrange, op.
cit., pp. 271, 325.]
The act of Communion brings to the faithful through the
Eucharistic sacrifice all the benefits of Christ’s death.
Beveridge tells his people that at the administration of
Communion they are to fix their faith on Christ Himself offering
to them His Body and Blood and all the benefits of His passion. [Works,
VI, p. 36.] Comber bids his readers consider that when the priest
approaches them, ‘the sound of his Master’s feet is
behind him’. They are to behave as if ‘Jesus were
visibly present with a train of glorious angels’; they are
advised to say with the primitive church ‘Lord, I am not
worthy, etc.’ [op. cit., p. 546.] In devotional books of the
period, communicants are advised to say this and the Agnus Dei
before Communion. [Wickham Legg: English Church Life, pp.
58-60.] But the act of Communion not only brings the faithful all
the benefits which Our Lord has won for them on Calvary; it is a
true fruition of the Body of Christ, making the soul really and
truly one with its Lord. The union is a foretaste, a preparation
for the beatific vision; it is the ‘highest perfection we
can in this life aspire unto’. [Andrewes, op. cit., I, pp.
152, 284.]
The liturgists differ as to the exact moment when the
sacrifice is pleaded for the living and the dead. Thorndike [Works,
IV, p. 135] and Sparrow [op. cit., p. 181] refer it to the
appropriate phrase in the Prayer of Oblation: ‘we and all
Thy whole church may receive remission of our sins and all other
benefits of His passion’, said of course after the Communion.
Others such as Hickes [op. cit., II, pp. 120-2] and Johnson [The
Unbloody Sacrifice, pp. 399-401] speak as if it is inherent
in the words of institution; the words in the Prayer of Oblation
only make explicit something which has already taken place. This
is due to a difference of view on what the Prayer of Oblation is
meant to be. Wheatly treats it as a post-communion, coming after
the Eucharistic action has been completed. But Thorndike speaks
as if it is part of the Eucharistic action, and Sparrow in his Rationale
treats the whole section from the beginning of the Consecration
Prayer to the Gloria in Excelsis as the whole. [op. cit., p. 155.]
This is quite understandable when we remember that before 1662
there was no ‘amen’ at the end of the Consecration
Prayer; in consequence it looked as if the sacrificial action was
carried on to the end of the Prayer of Oblation.
With the exception of Sparrow and possibly Thorndike, the
liturgists treat the section from the Our Father to the Blessing
as the response of the faithful, their thanksgiving for the
action in which they have taken part. They attach no meaning or
importance to the Consecrated Elements remaining on the altar
till the Blessing. It was usual to liken the close of the service
to that of the Last Supper, a habit of thought which they
inherited from Cranmer. But whatever Cranmer himself believed,
the seventeenth-century liturgists show no trace of the erroneous
belief that the Eucharist is a repetition of the Last Supper.
The thanksgiving begins with the Our Father, as it is fitting
that after Communion the Church should pray in the words of the
Lord who now lives and speaks in the faithful. The communicants
can now most properly say Our Father; for in receiving Christ
they have received power to become the sons of God. It is also a
declaration of their union one with another in Christ after
Communion. The two prayers that follow are alternatives, as
sometimes the Church wants to make its thanksgiving an expression
of love and duty, in which case the Prayer of Oblation is used,
and sometimes one of thankfulness for the benefits of communion,
in which case the Prayer of Thanksgiving is most suitable.
Modern Anglicanism is inclined to be on the defensive about
the position of the Gloria in Excelsis; it is looked on as
something which needs an explanation. The classical liturgists
know no such qualms. Jebb sums up their views on the subject when
he says that it is difficult to conceive a more glorious
termination to a service. [op. cit., p. 512.] It is looked on as
an imitation of Our Lord’s action after the Last Supper. It
position is considered to be much more suitable here than at the
beginning of the service since it provides the faithful with a
fitting form in which to express their sense of joy and comfort
at what Sparrow calls ‘the heaven which they see in
themselves’. To Sparrow nothing could be more suitable than
the song of the angels after communion; for Christ is made one with
us in communion, as He was made one of us at His birth. [op.
cit., p. 181.] Andrewes is at his most typical on the position of
the Gloria in Excelsis; if ever we are fit to sing the song of
the angels, it is when we draw near to the state of angels by
Communion. [Sermons, I, pp. 214-15, 232-3.] L’Estrange
was apparently the only liturgist who was aware that there is a
good deal to be said against the position of the Gloria in
Excelsis in the Prayer Book. But he dismisses the objections on
the curious ground that since the hymn is addressed to Christ as
the Lamb of God, it is improper to refer to Him in such language
until the Eucharistic action is passed; for the Eucharist ‘is
a sacrifice, wherein Our Saviour Christ is considered as an
immaculate Lamb, offered upon the altar to God for the remission
of our sins’. It looks as if L’Estrange’s views
were influenced by the thought of the Consecrated Elements
remaining on the altar; if this is the case, he is the only one
of the school to betray such an influence. The order they found
in the rite is not disturbed by taking the ablutions after the
Communion instead of at the close of the service.
After the Gloria in Excelsis, which brings to a close the post-communion
or thanksgiving, the communicants were accustomed to leave the
chancel and return to their original places in the nave, thus
symbolizing their return to the world from the heavenly action in
which they have been taking part. [Andrewes: Minor Works,
p. 158.] They are then dismissed with the Blessing. The school
are full of admiration for the latter. To Sparrow it recalls Our
Lord’s words in the upper room on the first Easter night;
presumably he thought it a fitting close to that service in which
the Risen Lord has come to His own. [op. cit., p. 182.] Jebb
speaks of the service reaching its climax in the ‘peace of
God’, since it is the consummation of the blessings which
Christ has promised to the faithful. To him there is no ritual on
earth which ministers so effectually to a glad serenity of mind
and temper as that of the Church of England, and so brings with
it a peace rooted in the wisdom and charity belonging to the
eternal world. [op. cit., p. 513.]
IV
The rational order, which the seventeenth-century liturgists
found in the daily offices and the Eucharist, is emphasized by
the ceremonial of the period. It was made up of the traditional
ceremonial accompaniments of Christian worship, vestments, the
mixed chalice, the lavabo, incense, the usual liturgical actions;
but they were all employed in a scheme of ceremonial which had
very little in common with that of the Latin rite. The
seventeenth-century liturgists realized the importance of
ceremonial in the liturgy; they felt that the reformers had made
a great mistake in discarding so much in the preceding century;
they even apologized for them by saying that they had been led
astray against their better judgement by continental
protestantism, or that they had done it purely as a temporary
measure to wean the people from medieval superstitions. In the
liturgical revival which dawned with the Jacobean period, it was
felt that it was time to complete the real intention of the
reformers by giving the Prayer Book a magnificent ceremonial.
In this ceremonial the old usages found a place, but they were
employed in a new way. The liturgists realized that the Prayer
Book rite had a structure and meaning of its own, and that it
would merely obscure them to graft on it a scheme of ceremonial
which belonged to another rite. So they evolved a ceremonial
which is something sui generis; it embodies the
traditional ceremonial acts and usages of Christendom; but they
are employed in such a way as to provide an intelligible
accompaniment to the movement of the Prayer Book rite, to mark
the transitions from one stage to another, to emphasize the
important moments, to teach its lessons through material things
and bring out its content and meaning.
The features of this ceremonial can be studied in Hierurgia
Anglicana, and they are discussed in the introduction and
notes in Wickham Legg’s English Orders for Consecrating
Churches [pp. lii-lxiv, 338-42, 353-8. For a description of a
service according to this ceremonial, vide W. H. Frere:
The Principles of Religious Ceremonial, ch. XIII.]. It
appears to have originated in Andrewes’ private chapel; but
where Andrewes obtained it remains a mystery. It was propagated
by Laud and eventually became the customary ceremonial in those
churches which had come under the influence of the liturgists. It
was an eclectic thing, partly based on medieval precedents, with
borrowings from the East and customs of Andrewes’ own
invention. Its use of incense at the offices as a fumigatory and
in processions, its two candles and alms bason on the altar, can
claim medieval precedent. The small altars and the numerous
prostrations which the school practised are reminiscent of the
East. The movement of the communicants to the chancel at the
Exhortation presumably grew out of an attempt to carry out the
purpose of the Elizabethan Injunction ordering the altar to be
placed in the body of the Church for the Eucharist. This purpose,
enabling the congregation to take a greater share in the service,
was held to be fulfilled by the communicants moving up to the
chancel at the Exhortation. The Lavabo before the Prayer
of Consecration can be paralleled by the Lavabo before the Te
igitur at Mainz and before the Qui pridie in the
Ambrosian rite. [Ibid., p. 340.] But the actual movements
and gestures of the ministers in the sanctuary, the preparation
of the elements and making the chalice immediately before the
Prayer of Consecration, would seem to be usages evolved by
Andrewes himself.
This ceremonial, whose authority rested as much on customary
usage as on positive law, lasted in a somewhat decayed state till
the Oxford Movement. The Tractarians at first were disposed to
revive it; in 1838 Dr. Bloxam, Newman’s curate, gave a pair
of candlesticks and a Bible bound in two parts in crimson velvet
for use on the altar at Littlemore; the altar also had a frontal
falling in folds at the corners, worked by Miss Anne Mozley, J. B.
Mozley’s sister. [R. H. Middleton, Magdalen Studies,
pp. 35-41.] Unfortunately the nineteenth-century ritualists would
have none of it, either because it was not medieval or Latin, or
because it reminded them of that deadness from which they were
trying to rescue the Church. The ceremonial revival in the
Victorian age was on medieval lines, with the result that the
Laudian ceremonial was swept away. The ceremonial in Anglican
churches today, even in those which pride themselves on their
moderation, is based on medieval or Latin models. The movement of
the rite is obscured and its real meaning hidden. The rite is
made to look like a vernacular edition of the pre-Reformation or
modern Latin rite. But this is exactly what the Prayer Book is
not; it is a rite with a structure and meaning of its own, and
needs its own scheme of ceremonial. That used in the seventeenth
century, though neither medieval nor Latin, had at least the
merit of providing an intelligent accompaniment to the Prayer
Book, which seldom can be said for the ceremonial prevailing in
the majority of our churches today. The High Church ceremonial
tradition, as Jebb remarks, provided it does not ‘contradict
any fundamental or really Catholic law, deserves as much
reverence as the traditions of Rome or Constantinople’. [The
Ritual Law and Custom of the Church Universal, p. 29.]
To become intelligible the Prayer Book order needs not only
its traditional seventeenth-century ceremonial; it needs also
churches either built or restored in the style of the period as
an appropriate setting. For its full meaning and beauty to become
apparent our liturgy has to be celebrated in such buildings as
the chapel of Trinity College, Oxford, which Newman said he loved
more than any other building, the churches of Wren, or those
restored under the inspiration of Cosin and Granville in County
Durham, all of which were planned in accordance with the
liturgical principles of the period. Since, as Mr. Somerset
Maugham says, we are all getting a little tired of Gothic, it is
to be hoped they will receive the attention they deserve. It was
a thousand pities that in the last century they were so often
allowed to be spoilt by Gothic enthusiasts. Anglicans should feel
a special affection for these buildings designed for the
celebration of the liturgy in its full and native splendour.
V
The rational order which we have found exhibited by the daily
services and the Eucharist presupposes a faithful laity living
the life of the Church, steeped in its truths, more particularly
those concerning the nature of the Church as the Body of Christ,
and conversant with the principles of liturgical worship. These
services are not likely to mean much to the uninstructed and
nominal Christian. The seventeenth-century liturgists realized
this; the order which they found in the Prayer Book inspired the
liturgical sermons of such divines as George Herbert and
Beveridge. People cannot be expected to make much of the liturgy
unless they have been given some idea of what it means. The
modern Church of England laments its diminished congregations;
often it is due not to lack of spiritual zeal but to the fact
that people do not understand what the liturgy is meant to be;
they have never been given an idea of the glory of liturgical
worship. It is a short-sighted solution of the problem to scrap
the liturgy and to attempt to win people back by made-up ad
hoc popular services. A full and mature Christianity needs
liturgical worship; without it Christianity declines into the
second-rate.
The order which the liturgists found in the daily offices
shows that the main element is constituted by the psalms and
lessons. The psalms are par excellence the chief vehicle
of the Church’s praise here on earth: the Church’s
children are to be fed daily with the written word of God. [Wickham
Legg: The Principles and Services of the Prayer Book, pp.
135-6.] In the two lessons the Church is led in contemplation
from the darkness of the old covenant to the full unveiled glory
of the new. Each lesson is vital to the service, and it is
related to the lesson which precedes and that which follows it in
the lectionary. The meaning of each lesson does not become
apparent until it is viewed in relation to the whole series of
lessons appointed for the year. The psalms and lessons are
preceded by a penitential preparation and concluded by dignified
petitions and intercessions, reasonably short in comparison with
what has gone before. The practice of beginning the service with
a hymn destroys the penitential character of the introduction;
the habit of only having one psalm robs the service of one of its
chief elements, while omitting one of the lessons or choosing
them to suit the sermon destroys the purpose which the psalms and
lessons are intended to fulfil. Ending the service with lengthy
personal and emotional prayers destroys its balance and turns it
into an intercession service. Too often the Sunday services (which
are quite wrongly announced as Mattins and Evensong) lack body
and meaning on account of what is omitted, and are chaotic in
structure; they are most certainly not Mattins and Evensong in
the sense understood by our classical liturgists.
Modern Anglicanism can learn a salutary lesson from the order
which the liturgists read into the 1662 Eucharist. The service is
constantly criticized because the position of the prayers is not
that of the corresponding ones in the Latin Mass, or in those
Anglican rites which continue after the consecration with an
anamnesis, epiklesis, the Prayer of Oblation, and the Our Father,
and place the Prayer of Humble Access either before the Preface
or immediately before the Communion. It is said to be a
liturgical muddle, that the canon has been dismembered, that
without such things as an anamnesis or epiklesis it is lacking in
an essential.
The seventeenth-century liturgists would have hotly rebutted
all this. To them the 1662 Eucharist was not an adapted
vernacular version of the pre-Reformation service, nor just a
mangled liturgy which the Scottish Episcopalian Church had
succeeded in putting right, but which the English Church was
compelled to tolerate owing to its connection with the State. The
Prayer Book Eucharist had its own order and structure; but since
they did not happen to be the same as those of the Latin rite or
the Scottish Communion Office, it was quite illegitimate to
criticize them for their dissimilarity. They would have agreed
with Archbishop Benson that we have a very good mass; but they
would have added that its order does not happen to be the same as
that of Rome or Aberdeen.
Although the 1662 Eucharist is composed of elements derived
from what had gone before, it is built up on a structure of its
own and has its own meaning. It begins with the Our Father,
setting the tone for the whole service; it works up to the
Eucharistic action through a preparation, summed up by Beveridge
as giving continual matter and occasion for the exercise of the
Christian virtues of repentance, faith, and charity [Works,
VI, pp. 29-30]; it is brought to a close by the post-communion
and the blessing. The Eucharistic action itself moves on a
perfectly coherent plan. It begins with a recitation of Calvary
and Our Lord’s institution of a ‘perpetual memory’
of that act; it brings Calvary back into space and time so that
it may be pleaded for the living and the departed, and that its
benefits may be communicated to the faithful in Communion; in it
the whole Church is offered in and through Calvary to the Father.
It is consequently wrong to speak of a dismembered canon; for
the canon in the 1662 rite does not begin till the Prayer of
Consecration. Elements which in the Latin rite are part of the
canon, in the 1662 service serve as a preparation before the
Eucharistic action or a thanksgiving after it has taken place;
they enjoy a different position in the 1662 rite from what they
do in the Latin rite, not because the Church of England has been
compelled to put up with a liturgical muddle, but because they
serve a different purpose.
It is equally wrong to lament the absence of an anamnesis or
epiklesis. The Scottish Communion Office and the rites which it
has inspired reflect the influence of Greek liturgical thought,
popular in High Church circles at the end of the seventeenth and
beginning of the eighteenth centuries; here an anamnesis and
epiklesis are both essential to the movement of the Eucharistic
action. In the Scottish rite there is an emphasis which is
eastern, on the whole of Our Lord’s redemptive action, in
which Calvary is a chief element, but which is completed by the
Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.
The 1662 rite sees redemption in terms of Calvary; not of course
Calvary viewed purely as a death, but Calvary as it is seen to be
in the light of the Resurrection and Ascension, a Calvary
victorious and triumphant, the culminating act of God in history,
that which alone gives meaning to life, suffering, and death. In
this interpretation the Resurrection and Ascension do not
complete the redemption achieved on Calvary; they demonstrate the
victorious nature of Calvary itself. In the words of consecration
Calvary is brought back, but it is a Calvary whose glory is
attested by the Resurrection and Ascension; these are brought
back too in the words of consecration. An anamnesis adds nothing
to the movement of the rite; at the most it does but make
explicit what has already happened.
For much the same reasons an epiklesis after the words of
consecration is out of place in the 1662 rite. In the
consecration the Eucharistic action reaches its central point,
the perpetuating for all time of the one sacrifice on Calvary. A
special invocation of the Holy Spirit after this merely confuses
the movement of the action; it asks God to perform something
which has already taken place. It is possible to criticize the
1662 rite for its lack of emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit
in the Eucharist; but to this the liturgists would have replied
that the whole action is done in the power of the Spirit, and
that in the 1662 order the only suitable place for a prayer to
the Holy Spirit is in the Collect for Purity, at the beginning or
immediately prior to the words of consecration as in the 1549
Prayer Book; it was not uncommon in some High Church circles to
speak of the words ‘Hear us, O merciful Father....‘in
the Prayer of Consecration as a kind of epiklesis. On the
principles underlying the 1662 order, the prayer in the 1928
epiklesis asking God to bless and sanctify with the Holy Spirit
not only the elements but the congregation is too late; for the
congregation are already in the middle of doing that action for
which they specifically need the blessing of the Holy Spirit and
which they dared not have begun without His help. There is no
epiklesis in the technical sense of the word in the 1662 rite,
partly because the order of the rite allows no room for it, and
partly because in the thought of the seventeenth-century
liturgists the very celebration of the Eucharistic action was in
itself a manifestation and demonstration of the power and glory
of Pentecost.
It can be said with some justice that the seventeenth-century
liturgists in their anxiety to find a coherent and logical order
in the Prayer Book threw into the background the parts played by
the different elements in the services in previous liturgies; the
Church was allowed to forget that its prayers had a background
and history long before Cranmer came on the scene. On the other
hand the order which they found in the Church services had one
significant result. Anglican worship finds its centre in Calvary.
In their Eucharistic piety the seventeenth-century liturgists
were incurably medieval; the Eucharist in their eyes meant
Calvary, and in a way not much dissimilar to their Roman
brethren, once the difference in terminology and their emphasis
on the corporate nature of the service has been taken into
account. [Cf. Ratcliff, op. cit., in K. E. Kirk: The Study of
Theology, p. 449.] Jeremy Taylor, who links the Eucharist
with the Resurrection, is quite an exception. It is often
forgotten that in the religion of seventeenth-century High
Churchmen the cross was their joy and hope. Laud on the scaffold
asks God to have mercy on him; ‘but not’, he goes on to
pray, ‘till Thou hast nailed my sins to the cross of Christ;
not till Thou hast bathed me in the blood of Christ; not till I
have hid myself in the wounds of Christ; that so the punishment
due unto my sins may pass over me’. [Laud, Works, IV,
p. 436.] They love the daily services because their order leads
to and from the Eucharist; they love the Eucharist because it is
rooted in Calvary, because it flows from Calvary, because it
applies Calvary. The order which they read into the liturgy makes
it culminate in the perpetual memory of Calvary till the
end of time; in the light of this order our liturgy is one of the
most evangelical things in the world; its glory is the glory of
the cross.
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