Easter. And the numbers are still prefixed in the Calendar to the days between the 21st of March and the 18th of April, denoting the days upon which those full moons fall, in the years of which they are respectively the golden numbers. But inasmuch as the Metonic cycle of 218 lunations differs from the solar cycle of 19 years by about 1 hours, this mode of finding Easter requires the correction of one day in about 300 years, and this correction will have to be made after the year 1899.

CHAPTER V.

The Order for Morning and Evening Prayer.

IT

daily ser

T is probable that, apart from the Communion- Ancient service, or Liturgy properly so-called, the Church vice. had from the earliest ages a daily Service, which was held soon after midnight'. The Service, the original form of which cannot now be ascertained, appears to have been in some degree remodelled by Cassian, an Oriental monk, about A. D. 420; but it was in the time of St Benedict, a. D. 530, that the daily rituals of the Western Churches assumed the form of the hours, in which form they were subsequently collected into the Breviary. These offices were better suited to the monks, who were chiefly concerned in framing them, than to the people at large, for whose benefit they were intended. They appear never to have been popular with the laity, who preferred the office of the Mass. Though privately observed by the Romish clergy, it is said that, with the exception of the office of Vespers, they have long ceased to be used as a public service of the Romish Church3. Elsewhere they becamė almost a dead letter; but in our own Church they were endued with a new life, when they were revised and consolidated by our Reformers, trans

1 See St Basil, quoted infra, p. 87.

2 See above, p. II.

3 See Freeman, Principles of Divine Service, I. pp. 82, 158, 277; Maskell, Mon. Rit. II. XXXI.

The first rubric.

lated into English, and made the basis of the Order for Morning and Evening Prayer'.

At the time of the Reformation much discussion was raised by the extreme Reformers, as to the place where morning and evening prayer should be said. It had been customary to use for this purpose the chancel, so called from its being divided by cancelli, or lattice-work, from the body of the church; in ancient times called the sacrarium, from its being the place in which the holy rites were celebrated. Partly from the wish that the Service should be better heard by the congre gation, and partly with the intention of departing as far as possible from the practice of the unreformed Church, the Puritans demanded that the Service should be said in the body of the church, and that the Minister should turn towards the people, and not, as in former times, towards the East. They also cavilled against some ornaments of the church and Minister, especially against the surplice.

To set this controversy at rest, the rubric which precedes the Order for Morning Prayer was framed in 1559. In consequence of the discretion which it gives to the Bishop, the reading-desk was very generally erected in the body of the church. In conformity with a rubric which appeared only in the Prayer Book of 1552, the custom of turning to the East was discontinued, and it became the practice to 'turn so that the people might best hear;' and as the same rubric forbade the use of the alb, the cope, and the tunicle, which had previously been worn by the Priest administering the holy Communion, those vestments have become obsolete, though, strictly speaking, they are legal, inasmuch 1 See above, p. 12.

as they were prescribed by a rubric in the Prayer Book of 1549, and therefore were in the Church, 'by the authority of parliament,' in the second year of King Edward VI.

The Bishop is called in this rubric the ordinary (a term borrowed from the civil law), because he exercises the regular and ordinary, as distinguished from the extraordinary jurisdiction in causes ecclesiastical.

duction.

It becomes us well to enter the house of God The Introwith a sense of our sinfulness, and of our unworthiness to appear in His presence. And it is proper that we should have an opportunity of giving utterance to this feeling in words of humiliation, and that we should also receive an assurance of His mercy, before we take up the language of praise and thanksgiving. The introductory part of the daily service is, therefore, grounded in good reason: and it is in accordance with ancient precedent; for we learn from one of the epistles of St Basil, that Epist. 63. it was the universal practice of the Church in his time for the people to rise before daybreak (EK νυκτὸς ὀρθρίζει ὁ λαός), and repair to the house of prayer (τὸν οἶκον τῆς προσευχῆς), and there with much labour and affliction and contrition and weeping, to make confession of their sins to God. When this was done, they disposed themselves to psalmody (εἰς τὴν ψαλμωδίαν καθίστανται), sometimes singing alternately (αντιψάλλουσιν ἀλλήλοις), sometimes one beginning the psalm, and the rest joining in the close (vrηxoûσ); and thus they spent the night in psalmody, praying between whiles (ueragù πрoσEνXóμevo). Confession and absolution also formed

The Ex

part of the service in the Church before the Reformation at prime, or the first hour of the day, and again at compline. The Priest made his confession to God, the Virgin, and the saints, and the people prayed absolution for him; the people then repeated the same confession, and the Priest prayed absolution for them, using a precatory, not a declaratory form of words:

Sacerdos respiciens ad altare, Confiteor Deo, beatæ Mariæ, omnibus sanctis, Vertens se ad chorum, et vobis; peccavi nimis cogitatione, locutione, et opera: mea culpa. Respiciens ad altare, Precor sanctam Mariam, omnes sanctos Dei, respiciens ad chorum, et vos orare pro me. Chorus respondeat ad eum conversus. Misereatur: postea primo ad altare conversus, Confiteor; deinde ad sacerdotem conversus ut prius sacerdos se habuit: deinde dicat sacerdos ad chorum: Misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus; et dimittat vobis omnia peccata vestra: liberet vos ab omni malo: conservet et confirmet in bono: et ad vitam perducat æternam. Amen. Absolutionem et remissionem omnium peccatorum vestrorum, spatium veræ pœnitentiæ, emendationem vitæ, gratiam et consolationem sancti Spiritus, tribuat vobis omnipotens et misericors Deus. Amen.

There was nothing to correspond with this in the Book of Common Prayer, as it was originally drawn up. The part which precedes the Lord's Prayer was added in 1552, having probably been suggested by the commencement of Calvin's French Liturgy, of which a Latin translation had been published in England in 1551'.

The Exhortation opens with the affectionate hortation. greeting, 'Dearly beloved brethren,' which St Paul Phil. iv. 1. addresses to the Philippian Church, and which was commonly used in the primitive Church, and by the ancient fathers in their homilies. For the 'sundry places' in which the Scripture moves us to confession of our sins, it is sufficient to refer 1 See above, p. 16.