of the impulse to which this work of revision owes its origin. As was recalled at the commencement of this article, it arose out of the Report of a Royal Commission appointed to consider the prevalence of irregularities in the Service of the Church. For that purpose it reviewed the general condition of the Church in reference to the conduct of Public Worship, and it reported that there was a certain class of irregularities which distinctly violated the existing principles of the Church as laid down in her formularies, and others which, without conveying any such significance, had simply arisen from the fact that the law of public worship in the Church of England is too narrow for the religious life of the present generation. In an age which has witnessed an extraordinary revival of spiritual life and activity, the Church has had to work under regulations fitted for a different condition of things.

. . The result has inevitably been that ancient rubrics have had to be strained.' Accordingly the Commission recommended that Letters of Business should be issued with instructions for the prepatation of a new Rubric regulating the ornaments of the ministers of the Church at the times of their ministrations, and also 'to frame . . . such modifications in the existing law respecting the conduct of Divine Service .. as may tend to secure the greater elasticity which a reasonable recognition of the comprehensiveness of the Church of England and of its present needs seems to demand.' It has been reasonably doubted whether these instructions really authorized any revision at all of the actual Forms of Prayer; but they certainly imply that the external conduct of Divine Service would be the main subject of consideration by the Convocations, and they contain no suggestion at all for considering alterations in the teaching and doctrine of the Church. The Commission assumes as unquestionable that there exists a clear standard of doctrine in our Church, and that it is clearly violated by certain irregularities which it specifies certain practices, they say, 'lie on the Romeward side of a line of deep cleavage between the Church of England and that of Rome.' They assume therefore that

that line of deep cleavage will be maintained, and there is nothing in their recommendations to countenance any deviation from it. But at the present crisis it would seem that the only security for maintaining that line is to maintain unmodified the existing formularies in which it is drawn. Perhaps, indeed, there is nothing so much to be desired at this moment as a revival of the sense that the formularies and the history of the Church of England do embody a standard, and an ideal, which are perfectly distinct and well established. That standard was definitely formulated by the series of real Anglo-Catholic Divines, who were the acknowledged glory of the Church from the days of Hooker to those of Beveridge. Their works were reprinted by the leaders of the Tractarian Movement some seventy years ago, and there is no excuse for ignoring them. In particular, one of the most conspicuous High Churchmen among them, Bishop Cosin, published in 1652 a full statement for the information of all Christian Monarchs, Princes and States,' of the Catholic Religion of the Church of England; Prisca, Casta, Defaecata '-primitive, pure, and purged. It is to be found in his works in the AngloCatholic Library. It was reprinted in 1906, in Latin and English, by the S.P.C.K., and it is very much to be regretted that it has been allowed to fall out of print. The account in that treatise of the worship of the Church of England corresponds exactly to the worship in an English cathedral as it prevailed in nearly all of them twenty years ago, and as it is still maintained in Canterbury Cathedral. Bishop Cosin also states very clearly and fully the nature of that cleavage' between the Church of England and the Church of Rome of which the Royal Commission speaks. There can be no fair question that a distinct and grand ideal for the Church of England-a truly Anglo-Catholic one is thus delineated. A true and vivid sketch of it was drawn by one of the latest of these great Anglo-Catholic Divines-Bishop Beveridge. In the Dedication' to Archbishop Sancroft of his Godex Canonum Ecclesiae Primitivae, he gives this memorable judgement of the Church of England as it stood reformed after the Restoration:

'How great is the agreement between the Primitive Church and that over which you preside must be patent to anyone who is but moderately versed in the decrees and rites of the two. It is indeed so great that they are scarcely distinguished by anything but time. In each there is the same Government, the same faith, the same number of Sacraments, the same mode of administering them; moreover the same ceremonies, the same laws, the same feasts and fasts. In short all things are so established and proclaimed in both that the Anglican Church is justly and deservedly denominated the Primitive Church revived in these last times.'1

May not the salvation of our Church be found in recurring once more to this venerable, sacred and truly Anglo-Catholic ideal?

HENRY WAce.

1 The following is the original Latin: Quanta sit primitivam inter et eam cui ipse praesides ecclesiam concordia, neminem in utriusque decretis ritibusque vel mediocriter versatum latet. . . . Tanta nimirum est, ut nihilo fere inter se praeterquam tempore distinguantur. Idem enim in utroque regimen, eadem fides, idem Sacramentorum numerus, eademque eorum administrandi forma, iidem etiam ritus, eaedem leges, eadem festa et ieiunia; omnia denique usque adeo eadem in utraque habentur, constituuntur, praedicantur ut Anglicana iure merito Primitiva nuncupatur ecclesia, ultimis hisce temporibus rediviva.

VOL. XCVII.-NO. CXCIII.

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A

ART. III. THE REVISION OF THE PRAYER BOOK.

I. No. 533. Proposals for the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer as approved by the Convocation of Canterbury, 1920. (London: S.P.C.K.)

2. N.A. 60. National Assembly of the Church of England. Second Report of the Prayer Book Revision Committee with Schedule of Proposed Alterations, 1922. (London: National Assembly, Church House, Westminster ; S.P.C.K.)

3. N.A. 84. National Assembly. Revised Prayer Book (Permissive Use) Measure, 1923. (London: National Assembly and S.P.C.K.)

4. N.A. 89. National Assembly. Revised Psalter (Permissive Use) Measure, 1923. (London: National Assembly and S.P.C.K.)

5. English Church Union. Prayer Book Revision. Square. 1922.)

Report of the Committee on (London: E.C.U., 31 Russell

6. A New Prayer Book drawn up by a Group of Clergy; with a Foreword by the Bishop of Manchester. (Oxford University Press. 1923.)

7. Alcuin Club Publications. A Survey of the Proposals for the Alternative Prayer Book. 1. Holy Communion. (London: Mowbray. 1923.)

THE revision of the Prayer Book is an outcome of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1904-1906, which recommended reform as well as discipline, and especially that Convocation should be charged with the work of drawing up a new rubric on vesture of ministers and ornaments of churches, and of modifying the law of Divine Service in the direction of elasticity, with a view to the enactment of their proposals by Parliament. In bringing the subject

before Convocation, the Archbishop of Canterbury dwelt on the need of a revision which should be abreast of modern needs and yet loyal to ancient order.' Objections in Convocation were overcome, and the work proceeded, with difficulties and delays, including those caused by four years of a national state of war. The Schedule, at last completed in 1920, failed even then of agreement between the Convocations of Canterbury and York on the crucial matter of the Order of Holy Communion.

The proposals passed from Convocation to the new National Assembly, in accordance with the Enabling Act. Their Committee amended them in some respects, and drew up a new proposal for the Communion Service, all as set forth in N.A. 60. At this point the authorities of the English Church Union decided no longer to stand aside from what was going on. A committee was charged to draw up a Report, the Green Book,' stating their divergencies from the Assembly proposals. These were chiefly over the Eucharist, and the E.C.U. Liturgy at once gained warm support, as more satisfying than the official scheme. It has been followed by a ' Grey Book,' a New Prayer Book, by a group associated with the Life and Liberty Movement in the Church. Its spiritual suggestiveness is very stimulating; its liturgical science often extremely unconventional; its dogma sometimes undesirably vague.

The Assembly next cast their official scheme into the form of a Measure, N.A. 84, in which the comparisons with the Convocation proposals are omitted, and the full text of the Athanasian Creed as revised and of the new Epistles and Gospels is printed. The proposals for omissions from the Psalter and emendation of its text and punctuation are tabulated as the Revised Psalter Measure.

There have been various debates on the rival proposals, both in and out of the Assembly. For instance, the London Diocesan Conference, in a special session on Revision in December 1922, voted in favour of the English Church Union amendments to the Assembly Committee Report. In its official progress, the Measure has received 'general approval' from the several Houses of the Assembly, the