Prayer Book Through the Ages. William Sydnor

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СКАЧАТЬ seems to be that often their attachment to the services and ceremonies with which they are familiar is so great that they consider them the ultimate and final expression of Prayer Book worship, the end of liturgical history.

      The less violent reactions to the 1549 Book ranged from one end of the ecclesiastical spectrum to the other. Princess Mary simply continued to have the old Mass said by her chaplains. Bishop Bonner took no steps to introduce the new book into the diocese of London until ordered to do so by the Council in August, after which he “did the office . . . sadly and discreetly.” Indeed, the divided sympathies of the country were graphically mirrored in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. While Dean May was eagerly in favor of the reforms, Bishop Bonner was steadfast against them. Consequently, innovations were rapidly made, but old customs lingered on much longer than the reformers liked. Bishop Bonner persisted in his opposition and was finally publicly denounced, imprisoned, and on October 1 deprived of his see.

      The conservatives grasped at any pretext to avoid change. “The fall of the Protector, Somerset, in the autumn of 1549 gave rise to the rumor that the Book would be withdrawn, and some of the Oxford colleges actually reintroduced the Mass. The Council, now led by Warwick, reacted vigorously, and issued an Order calling in all copies of the medieval servicebooks (with the exception of the pontificals, which had not yet been superseded), to be defaced and abolished.”⁸

      In the forefront of church leaders who were pushing for even greater reform were Bishops Hooper and Ridley. John Hooper, a leading English disciple of Zwingli, the continental reformer, pronounced the book “defective, and of doubtful construction, and, in some respects indeed, manifestly impious.” He was thrown into prison for refusing to wear the proper vestments at his own service of consecration as Bishop of Gloucester. Eventually, he “agreed to wear the vestments for the occasion, so long as he was not expected to wear them in his diocese.” Ridley, transferred to London in April, 1550, led a drive against those practices which remotely suggested perpetuation of the Mass, such as the priest’s kissing the Lord’s Table, washing his fingers, ringing of sacring bells. He urged incumbents and churchwardens to replace their high altar with a table set in the place “thought most meet by their discretion and agreement” This was done in St. Paul’s in June. The table was placed in a diversity of positions. Bishop Ridley had it standing east and west “in the midst of the upper quire,” with the minister on the south side. At the same time, he had the iron grates of the quire bricked up, to prevent anyone from watching the Communion without communicating.

      The 1549 Book expressly referred to “the Altar,” never a holy table. Ridley, along with Hooper, was a prime mover in the widespread destruction of “the altars of Baal.” This was both high-handed and illegal. Rich hangings, jewels, gold and silver plate were removed and destroyed, or simply disappeared. Some courtiers desired their destruction because they hoped to enrich themselves. So there was plunder of valuable furniture, and in its stead “an honest table.” Throughout the country, church walls were being limewashed and the Royal Arms and Scripture texts replaced medieval wall paintings. By the end of young King Edward’s reign, there had been a clean sweep of all that was worth stealing: the churches, their chests, their treasures had been ransacked. It was a tragic time. The Edwardian robbers were not genuine reformers, but they certainly helped destroy the manner of worship which had gone on under the 1549 Prayer Book by their looting of the ornaments. The work of destruction which they began was to be continued by the Puritans in the next century. In an attempt to reconcile parishioners to the loss of their ornaments and altars, the Council stepped in after the fact with an order to bishops on November 4, 1550, to remove altars and replace them with holy tables.

      The campaign to bring about reform was reflected in the evolving leadership of the church. Older bishops were gradually replaced by men of the “New Learning.” Gardiner and Bonner were sent to prison for preaching against the new doctrine of the Eucharist; Heath was deprived of his see for refusing to accept the Ordination service, Day for refusing to remove altars, and Rugg resigned.

      The influence of the “New Learning” had begun to reach England by the early 1530s. Cranmer had first experienced Lutheran worship in Lent, 1532, at Nuremberg. He was no doubt familiar with Martin Bucer’s book (1524) on “the Lord’s Supper.” This was a new name for the ancient sacrament, a name which found its way into the 1549 Book. Bucer was “the leading light of the religious life” of the city of Strasbourg, Germany. It is not surprising that when life on the continent became intolerable for Protestant reformers, Cranmer invited Bucer to come to England. This he did in April, 1549. By the end of the year Bucer, whose views on the sacrament were somewhere between those of Calvin and those of Zwingli, had the divinity chair at Cambridge. Peter Martyr was another reformer who crossed the Channel. He was an Italian whom the Inquisition drove out of Italy. Zurich and Strasbourg were only temporary havens for him before coming to England. In less than a year he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He and Bucer were friendly rivals. These two were in the forefront of the continental reformers who put their mark on the second Prayer Book of Edward VI.

      Continental pressure for reform reached England by mail packet as well as in person. Calvin, “the Geneva Pope,” was graciously pleased to say that the Book contained “many tolerable absurdities.” He called for more drastic changes. Actually the first Book was too conservative for all of the continental reformers. While they were thankful for it, they obviously hoped for and expected further revision. They considered the retention of ceremonies as only a temporary expedient.

      It is not surprising that because of English extremists such as Hooper and Ridley and continental reformers like Bucer and Peter Martyr, the pressure for revising the 1549 Book began almost from the moment of publication. By August, 1549, the translation of the Te Deum had been improved, and the Litany had been placed between Evensong and the Sacrament. (Its 1549 position had been right after the Lord’s Supper.)

      One unintentional cause for the extremely reformist nature of the revision came out of the trial of Bishop Gardiner. He was being tried for preaching against the doctrine of the Eucharist. In his defense he presented a paper, “An Explication and Assertion of the true Catholic Faith,” which was a reply to Cranmer’s “Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ.” Gardiner’s method was both clever and exasperating. He picked out various passages in the 1549 Book which appeared to express the Catholic doctrine rather than Cranmer’s, and warmly commended them. The only way to stem this kind of opposition was to alter the text at these points. So the effect of Gardiner’s criticisms was to make the next revision more narrowly Reformed in doctrine and harder for well-disposed Catholics to accept.

      No conclusive consideration of the proposed revision took place in the Houses of Convocation. The moderates had been repressed, and their leaders—Bishops Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day, Tunstal, and perhaps others—were in the Tower. In Parliament, the second Act of Uniformity was considered for a month and passed on April 14, 1552. The Book was to become official on November 1 of that year.

      Perhaps for appearances’ sake that second Act of Uniformity spoke favorably of the 1549 Book. It was “a very godly order, agreeable to the Word of God and the primitive Church, very comfortable to all good people.” Percy Dearmer observed that “the First Prayer Book was indeed too fair-minded for the violent and bitter spirit of the age.”

      The Act justifies the revision as having two purposes: “more plain and manifest explication,” and “more perfection of . . . some places where it is necessary . . . to stir Christian people to the true honoring of Almighty God.” In a sort of halfhearted way these purposes were followed. For example, in relation to the former, “The Purification of Women” is changed to “The Thanksgiving of Women After Childbirth, commonly called the Churching of Women.” The latter may be identified with “the requirement of saying the Office daily . . . more congregational participation, especially in the Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer (though not, as Bucer suggested, in the Prayer of Humble Access and Thanksgiving); communion at least three times a year, instead of once СКАЧАТЬ