foreign language. But their work not having been completed, a select Commission consisting of Seven Divines of the Episcopal Order, and Six other high Dignitaries of the Church was appointed, in the year 1547 to draw up a complete service of public offices for the Church of England. They were persons distinguished for piety and for prudence, for learning and for humility. In the disastrous reign which brought back the Romish Superstitions, many of them were driven from their preferments and from their country: -two of them, ARCHBISHOP CRANMER and BISHOP RIDLEY, Suffered Martyrdom for the faith. In a period short of two years, through the indefatigable labours and the great body of antecedent Scriptural knowledge of the Commissioners, their task was accomplished. A revision of this book was had in two years after under CRANMER, who had been at the head of the former Commission, and who called to his assistance two foreign Divines of high repute.* The principal alteration then made consisted in prefixing to the Lord's Prayer (with which the Service before began) the Sentences, the Exhortation, the general Confession, and the Absolution; which now stand as the first member of our devotional offices, concluded by and introductory to that sublime prayer which our Lord gave * Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, from Germany. as a model for the prayers of his Church. At different subsequent periods, Commissions were issued and Conferences held with special dissenting teachers, to consider of objections taken against the Liturgy, and in the hope of bringing into one Communion all who protested against the errors of the Church of Rome. This expectation unhappily proved vain, and, any alterations made after the time of Edward the Sixth being comparatively of little importance, the Liturgy compiled in his day may be considered as the great body of the Church of England-man's devotion, approved and sanctioned as it now is by the experience of nearly three hundred years. And can there be a stronger test of the great ability with which their most important task was executed by those learned and pious persons to whom it was assigned? This work has met the attacks of cavillers, of schismatics, of unbelievers-it has passed seasons of returning superstition—reigns of revengeful persecution it has triumphed over gainsayers: it has endured adversity. The language of its day in all other works has grown obsolete: in this, it continues to the present times, intelligible to all-preserving, as in perpetual youth, its vigour unimpaired, its voice clear and distinct. Very few words in the whole are antiquated-scarcely a single sentence is obscure. Foreigners have bestowed on it the highest praise, and the most learned of our dissenting brethren have spoken of it with profound respect and veneration. Do we arrogate too much, when we intimate our persuasion that the men who were engaged in drawing up this national testimony to God's honor, as well as those in whose steps they walked, the translators of the British Bible, may have been peculiarly favoured in the composition by the aid of his Spirit; and that their work has been protected against the varied host of their opponents, by the strength of his providential care? By the mouth of his Prophet Jeremiah the Lord said to his people, "Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls."* Never was this precept of "asking for the old paths, where is the good way," more strictly adhered to, than by the Compilers of our Liturgy in the composition of the Book of Common Prayer. The principal of them were masters of all the learned materials which had connection with their great subject: but in their wise discretion they were above the vain folly of changing what needed not reform, and they looked for the way that was good rather than the ways that were new. Yet they did not from a reverence to antiquity suffer ought that was * Jeremiah vi. 16. superstitious, ought that was unscriptural, to pass unreformed; but, for a standard by which to reform them, they looked to the earlier and purer ages of the Church, to the offices of piety transmitted from the Apostolic times.. They had the sagacity to detect the erroneous additions with which the middle ages, ages of darkness and barbarity, had corrupted their simplicity and obscured their brightness; and they separated the gold from the dross. They knew that the earlier Christian Church borrowed much of its services from Jewish rituals handed down under inspired sanction; that the Hymns of the New Testament bear a close analogy to several of the Old; and that the Psalms, a body of devotion among the Israelites, had been at once transferred to the uses of the Church of Christ; and their principle was that of Scribes instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven: they were householders who "brought out of their treasure things new and old."* In the Book of Common Prayer, they speak pre-eminently the words of truth and soberness; comprehending all that is fitting for the uses of the congregation, in a spirit of piety which suits the holiness of him to whom it is addressed. Surely every reflecting Minister of our Church must feel himself happy, that this part of our service-this in which he addresses God for * Matthew xiii. 52. the congregation-is not left to his inability, to his carelessness, to his forgetfulness, to his vanity, to his indiscretion; and happy, I am persuaded, is every reflecting Minister of Churches whose opinion and practice on this subject differs from ours, in having so many excellent models, so many judicious forms pre-composed for public prayers, thus making his task only the task of applying, of expanding, and of modifying; and where what he would alter bears so small a proportion to what he would adopt. Objection has indeed been raised against established formularies of devotion, on the ground that the words by constant use become too familiar to call up the just idea, and that the service is therefore in danger of becoming an office of the lips, instead of an effusion from the heart. Now what is there in the frailty of all human concerns, which is attended with numerous advantages, without one single disadvantage? But is our sense of God's blessing, is our zeal for God's honor unhappily so languid, that attention cannot for the short period of his service be kept upthat the old ways have become tiresomethat there is some novelty wanted to the itching ears-something to be hazarded without submitting to sober deliberation in doctrine, something wild and extravagant in words to stimulate devotion? No such objection had E |