alcuin Club Cracts, in. LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS EEV. T. A. LACEY, M.A. YICAT; OF MADIXGLEX. PRICE TWO SHILLINGS. LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND GO. 39 PATEENOSTEE ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOitBAY 1898 \_All rights reserved] "Igifet&efe Books : 'ovhdirig if a CjiUege in this tSfionyt' •Y_&LIl«WMY_E_f^]IirY- • _LH13_KA_5Hr • Bought with the income of the Richard S. Fellowes Fund 19,3.5 i> mi n mn mi j"> Alcuin Clufr Cratts. in. LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS ET THE EEV. T. A. LACEY, M.A. r - VICAR OU MADINGLBT. PRICE TWO SHILLINGS. LONGMANS, GEEEN AND CO. 39 PATEENOSTEE EOW, LONDON NEW YOEE: AND BOMBAY 1898 [_4Z. rights reserved] LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. It is often said that during the last sixty years the face of the Church of England has been changed. This implies a purely external change, a change not of nature, but of aspect. So understood the statement is unquestionably true. It is true of the social order of the Church; it is true of the spiritual methods of the Church; it is true also of the outward presentment, the ceremonial treatment of divine worship. The actual rites of the Church remain unaltered, but they are performed in a fashion very different from that which formerly prevailed. The change is not a partial one ; it is almost universal. It is not now as when, some thirty years ago, the old order was retained in the majority of churches, while on others a new face was imposed, a mark of sectional peculiarity. At the present day the churches are few and far between where anything like the old fashion of worship can be found, and these are recognised as mere survivals, doomed to disappear. But if the old order is passed, can we say that a new order reigns ? Sixty years ago there was an order. In all parish churches alike divine worship was celebrated in the same fashion, with very slight differences only of detail: cathedrals and colleges were sharply distinguished in two points, the chanting of the service and the pre sence of a full choir of clerks in surplices. We have now obliterated this distinction between^ collegiate and parish services ; but, on the other hand, we have arrived at an extraordinary diversity in the parish services themselves. Nor does there appear to be any fixity in what we have attained. We can hardly be said to have any order at all. This is undoubtedly a serious state of things. We shall do no good by trying to disguise it. Acknowledging with thankful hearts the great things which have been done by the good hand of our God upon us, we ought also to recognise how much yet remains to be done. Great and salutary as the change has been, it is not yet complete. A 2 4 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. We are still in the period of change ; and this must last until a new order is evolved. We need, therefore, all the watchfulness and care proper to such a period, the willing ness to learn, the readiness to go back upon mistakes, the steady adherence to principle, which alone can bring us safely through it. We need also a fixed intention to bring it to an end, to have done with change as soon as the necessary changes are complete. Some, perhaps, are impatiently urging this. Why can we not rest and be thankful ? We cannot rest with things as they are. We need never again, perhaps, look for such a rigid uni formity as once prevailed ; but some sort of order there must be, for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Without hasting, but also without resting, we ought to work towards this end. This work requires continual testing. It is the work of God, and therefore it is lasting ; but the work is done by men, and therefore it is complicated by the necessary application of means to end, as well as by the inevitable mistakes of human agency. We must try to distinguish the changes which have a permanent value from those which were merely useful for tiding over a difficulty, or which were due to sheer mistakes. Of the changes that we have seen, I would call par ticular attention to those which affect the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. We have been told with much emphasis of late that at the time of the Reformation " it was the Mass that mattered." That is most true. We shall not, of course, run away with the foolish inference that the celebration of the Holy Communion, according to the English rite, is something essentially different from the Mass of. the Latin rite. We shall be able to make due allowance for the exaggerated language of sixteenth century controversy. When men contrasted Communion with Mass, when they talked of substituting the one for the other, we know that they were speaking not of the essence of the thing, but of its use. They were attacking not the institution of Christ, but its abuse. Grave abuses had certainly gathered about the Mass. Attacking these abuses more fiercely than wisely, men rushed "by an almost inevitable law of human nature into contrary evils. To deny the abuse is an outrage on history ; LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 5 to deny the bad result of the reform is an outrage at once on history and on common sense. _ The two chief points against which the attack was directed^ were the multiplication of private Masses and the habitual celebration of Mass with the priest com municating alone. The two were connected, but not intimately. Private Masses might have been clean swept away, and yet the public Mass left without communi cants ; on the other hand, frequency of Communion might have been revived, and the public Mass crowded with communicants, while the private Masses were left undisturbed. An obscure theological question, however, brought about a combined attack on the two points. The Em bassy of the German princes to Henry VIII. extolled the custom of the Greeks, which allowed only one Mass in each church on any day,1 and this idea afterwards took a firm hold on the English Church. An honest, but one sided, leaning to antiquity brought about the demand that the whole body of the faithful should communicate whenever the sacred mysteries were celebrated. Calvin insisted absolutely on this, and finding at Geneva that most of the people refused to communicate frequently, he acquiesced in the practice of celebrating the Communion only at rare intervals.2 The English reformers were con tent at first with a provision for securing that, if possible, at least one layman should communicate with the priest each Sunday. This we find in the Prayer Book of 1549. Within three years, the ideas of the Swiss reformers had gained such hold on England, that in the second Prayer Book we find a rubric, obscurely worded, but apparently forbidding the celebration of the Holy Communion except when there are communicants amounting to about a fifth part of the adult population of a parish.3 The result was 1 See their letter in Burnett, ed. cate. " This," he said, " is the law of Poeock, Vol. iv. p. 373 : "' In Graecis God, and this is now and hath been parochiis fit una publica missa, privatas heretofore the practice of the churches vero non habent." reformed." See the notes in Keble's - Cartwright, the leader of the English Hooker, Vol. ii. pp. 375-6. Calvinists, denounced the practice of 3 " And there shall be no celebration celebrating the Lord's Supper in the of the Lord's Supper except there be a presence of a part only of the people, good number to communicate with the ttie rest being gone away, and he would priest, according to his discretion. And have all men compelled, even by civil if there be not abovo twenty persons in punishment, to stay and to coinmuni- the Parish of discretion to receive the b LITURGICAL INTEEP0LATI0NS. that the Holy Mysteries were but rarely celebrated — once a month only, or even less frequently — a terrible state of things which continued to our own day. Setting aside the difficult question of the literal sense of this rubric, what shall we say of the general sense underlying it ? The spirit of the rubric seems to be the demand that the Holy Mysteries should not be celebrated without a considerable proportion of the parishioners present and communicating, a demand generally complied with so long as the custom of monthly or less frequent communion prevailed. This demand, moreover, was inti mately connected with the idea that the sacrifice should be offered only once a day in each church.1 The custom of the Eastern Church, one church, one altar, one Mass, became from the time of the Eeformation the practice of the English Church. From the year 1559 until within the last sixty years, it was a rare thing for the Holy Communion to be celebrated twice on the same day.2 These two ideas we have with one consent abandoned. They are practically inconsistent with the frequent cele brations of the Divine Mysteries to which we are now accustomed. We have not here in any degree a party movement. The new practice is fully accepted throughout the English Church. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of this unanimous change of ideas, as illustrating the character of the progress we have made. Certain of us are sometimes charged with desiring to Communion; yet there shall be no Com- provision was cancelled in 1552 on the munion, except four, or three at the advice of Bueer. {Censura, c. 27.) least communicate with the priest." In 2 Early in the eighteenth century it some editions for " a good number " is was occasionally done in some few read " a great number." The second London churches ; at St. Andrew's, clause of this rubric appears to limit Holborn, on Easter-day; at St. Anne, the discretion of the Priest, allowed in Soho, at Easter, Christmas, and Pente- the first clause, by requiring a certain cost ; at St. James', Piccadilly, at minimum which is expressed as a certain Christmas, on Palm Sunday, Easter- proportion of the whole number of pos- day, and Whitsunday ; at St. Martin's- sible communicants, while three is in-the-Eields, ou Christmas-day, Easter treated as the absolute minimum. In day, and Whitsunday; at St. Mary-le- 1G62 " a pood number" was changed Savoy, and at St. Matthew, Friday street, into "as convenient number," i e. a fit- on the first Sunday in each montli; at ting number, the rest of the rubric St. James' Chapel, every Sunday, if remaining to set the standard of com- the Queen were present. Seo James venience. l'aterson, Pietas Londiniensis, Lond. 1 It will be remembered that in the 1714, pp. 19, 27, 114, 152, 179, 187, Prayer-book of 1549 a " second Com- and 108. I am obliged to Dr. Percival munion " was expressly provided for on of Philadelphia for calling my attention Christmas day and Easter day. This to this. LITURGICAL INTEEP0LATI0NS. 7 undo the work of the Eeformation. We may here find an answer. In the Eeformation, as in all the works of men, there was a mixture _ of good and evil. Some good principles were then revived. Some bad principles were appealed to. Some good work was done ; some bad. In the movement of the last sixty years we have been repudiating the bad principles while adhering to the good ; we have been labouring to undo the bad work while maintaining the good. In this sense it is true that we are going behind the principles of the Eeformation, and are undoing its work. And this is being done not by a party only among us, but by the whole English Church. But are we careful to adhere to the good principles, to maintain the good work done ? I will refer to a principle, the goodness of which cannot, I think, be disputed, a principle laid down not by English Eeformers only, but by Eeformers elsewhere in the Church as well. It was a principle with the English Eeformers that whenever the Holy Mysteries were celebrated there should be some to communicate with the priest. The Eeformers of the Council of Trent also expressed the desire of the Church that at every Mass there should be some to communicate with the priest.1 By the Eoman Church no attempt has been made to enforce this principle in practice. In the English Church it was enforced by measures which, as we have seen, were disastrous in their results. We may, perhaps, applaud the practical wisdom of the Eoman Church in not attempting to enforce too rigid an adherence to principle. On the other hand, we may surely try to preserve such good fruits as have been reaped from the dangerous severity of the Church of England in the past. It has become with us a custom, as well as a principle, to have some to communicate with the priest. We need not, perhaps, 'insist fanatically on the observance of this custom in all places and at all times. But we should be careful not to discourage Com munion, above all at the principal Mass of Sunday. The language one hears at times would seem to imply that a 1 Sess. xxii. Decrelum de Sacrificio fideles adstantes, non solum spirituali Missae, Cap. 6. " Optaret quidem sacro- affectu, sed sacramentali etiam euchar- sancta synodus, ut in singulis missis istiae perceptione communicaret." 8 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. great principle is asserted, when there are no communi cants at such a Mass. May we not put this down as one of the mistakes of our movement, the abandonment of a genuine principle of the Eeformation? Where the English Eeformers and the Council of Trent are agreed, it seems pretty safe to follow them. There is another good principle which seems to be in some danger, a principle not invented or even revived by the Eeformers, but one which ruled the practice of the Church from the earliest age down to our own time. I mean the principle that the Holy Sacrifice shall hold the chief place in our worship, and shall therefore be celebrated on Sunday at the hour when the faithful can best congregate in church. Is it not strange if in our very progress this principle be obscured ? Consider the point from which our progress started. Consider the Sunday morning service of sixty years ago. It was practically alike in all churches. The faithful were assembled, Mattins were recited, the Litany was said ; then there was the voice of sacred song, as the poem of " The Christian Year " puts it : The white-robed priest ..... to guide Up to the Altar's northern side. " The order of the Administration of the Lord's Supper " was begun. It was not finished. An evil tradition for bade that. The so called Dry Mass, the reading of a part of the Liturgy, without the central and essential action, which was permitted by the Church as an exceptional thing, had become the ordinary custom, for lack of " a convenient number to communicate with the priest." But still the priest began the Liturgy ; he went to the altar, and his presence there was a standing protest before the people against the omission of that for which alone the altar existed. Then at intervals, more or less frequent, the altar was prepared for use, still before the people. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean. They saw that the Divine Mysteries were to be celebrated, and if they turned their backs upon them, it was with some consciousness of what they were doing. Those of LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 9 us who have known this state of things will remember the added mystery and awe with which on these days the whole service was invested. From this starting point, what was the natural line of progress ? It was that of the often quoted advice given by the Tractarian leaders to their followers in the country, " Where there is a monthly Communion make it fort nightly ; where fortnightly, make it weekly." There was to be no change in the order of proceedings, but the Divine Liturgy, begun every Sunday, was to be com pleted more and more frequently until the Offering of the Holy Sacrifice was made once more the chief, the in variable feature, of the Sunday morning worship. If steady progress had been continued on these lines, the restoration might now have been complete. But steady progress was cut across by the introduction cf what our people have learnt to call familiarly, " Early Celebrations," a startling innovation upon the existing practice of the Church. There were several good reasons for the innovation. It was required in the interest of those who could not go fasting to the very late hour at which our morning service usually ends. It was adopted in some places where the parish priest thought it unwise to make too rapid an advance with his people generally, but wished to make a special provision at a separate hour for some few enlightened ones. It was adopted by others, with more doubtful wisdom, as affording a convenient field for ceremonial changes. Adopted for such reasons, the " early Celebration " is obviously useful, in some cases necessary, as an addition to the principal services of the day. What is strange and almost inexplicable is to find that its adoption has for result the removal of the Divine Liturgy from its proper and traditional place in the order of the services. A practice originally adopted only as a means to an end, or for the evasion of a difficulty, tends to become fixed ; and not only fixed in practice, but approved in theory. There is some danger of our people coming to find their ideal of Sunday worship in an arrangement which dislocates the service of the day,1 and 1 It is hard to understand how anyone reading the twenty-seventh chapter of can be satisfied with an arrangement St. Matthew beforo the twenty-sixth. which, on Palm Sunday, involves our 10 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. deprives the Holy Communion of the prominence intended by the Church. In taking note of our progress it is well to note also the dangers which accompany it. Mistakes are everywhere possible, as in the graver readjustments necessary to a time of movement and growth, so also in minor details. The extraordinary change in the outward presentment of Divine worship, which has been so rapidly effected, has given occasion to not a few blunders. We are beginning to find that some things have been changed which might rather have been left alone ; many things have been done through inexperience or partial knowledge, which need revision. Such revision is always annoying ; it frets people with its suggestion of perpetual change ; but, as I nave tried to show, we must endure an atmosphere of change yet awhile ; we have no right to fasten our mistakes upon the Church for all time to come. There is one feature of our ritual and ceremonial progress about which one can hardly fail to be anxious. I mean the supplementing of the Prayer Book by matter drawn from other sources. For ceremonial we have in the Ornaments Eubric a reference to the practice of a certain period as our one guide. In the study of that practice and in the application of it to our existing circumstances there is room for much diversity of opinion. The work is left entirely to individuals ; and the result is an equal diversity of practice. But it is not only in matters ceremonial that the Prayer Book is supplemented. Additions are made, less conspicuous, but not less important, which call for the gravest consideration. The worshipper will notice at times long pauses of silence, during which, as he understands, the celebrating priest is privately reciting certain prayers. These are clearly indicated in many of the books of devotion which circu late among our people; in some they are set out at length. What does this mean ? If it be done purely as an act of private devotion, something may be said in defence of it, as will be shown below. But if it means, as too often is the case, that the priest is interpolating into the English rite portions of another rite, it is a very serious matter. A simple priest can hardly take upon himself a graver responsibility. He is doing what according to Catholic LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 11 usage a Bishop only can do; what, according to the limitations accepted by the English Church, a Provincial Synod perhaps only can do. How, then, can the practice be defended ? It is adopted by men whose loyalty is unimpeachable, whom we hold in the greatest reverence, whose actions we are loth to criticise. It is not the mark of a few extreme men only. A book so studiously moderate, and so widely used, as The Priest to the Altar, contains prayers to be thus inter polated. There must be some cause, some excuse for it at least. Is it a good one ? Is it sufficient ? It is the fashion in some quarters to speak of our English liturgy as incomparable, as perfect and entire in all its parts. There is much unreality about such phrases. A cool and candid student of the English liturgy would hardly use them. Its language, he will allow, is unapproached, and perhaps unapproachable. It contains all essentials. But no liturgical student will be satisfied with its structure. Can we thus sit in judgement on the Church and her liturgical appointments ? One would shrink from doing so, were it not that we know so well the history of the Prayer Book, and the t pinions with regard to it of such men as Wake a ad Thomas Wilson. The English liturgy, indeed, as first designed in the year 1549, was admirable. But mischievous influences were brought to bear at once. The foreign reformers assailed it, and in the revision of 1552 it was miserably handled. In 1559 there was a question whether the first or second Book should be revived. The worse counsel unhappily prevailed, and the second Book, with some few valuable changes, came into use. It remains, and a certain beauty as of age has gathered about it. It is sufficient. We have here all that is essential, all the necessary elements of the Divine Liturgy. But they are dislocated, their interrelation is confused, their meaning obscured. What are the essentials of the Christian Sacrifice ? Theologians all but unanimously find the essence of the Sacrifice in the double act of Consecration. The elements, the gifts as they are called, the prime oblation of the Church, are consecrated according to the word of Christ himself, to be his Body and Blood. Sacramentally these 12 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. are separate, though naturally they cannot be separated, since Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. Sacramentally they are separate, and thus, in the words of St. Paul, we proclaim the Lord's death. In this liturgical action the Sacrifice of the Cross is represented ; but it is not merely represented as in a figure. We must weigh our words, carefully in speaking of so great a mystery, but with the grave and cautious Andrewes we may say that the Sacrifice of the Cross, the one true Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, is here "repeated in memory unto the world's end."1 Indeed, the Sacrifice of the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Eucharist are one and the same ; though how to define wherein this oneness and identity consist may overtax the subtlest human intellect. Such is the essence of the Christian Sacrifice. So far theologians are agreed. It has been denied that the Church of England teaches this truth, and the two Primates of England have addressed an Encyclical Letter to the bishops of the whole world, declaring and demon strating her faithfulness. They vindicate the Sacrifice offered by us in the act of Consecration ; they declare in words of seemly reserve that the Sacrifice of the Eternal Priest and the Sacrifice of the Church " in some way certainly are one."2 The value of this declaration is best shown by the desperate efforts to empty it of meaning made by those who are bent on denying the orthodoxy oi the English Church. They try to empty it of meaning either by quibbling over its terms, or else by grotesquely exaggerating the doctrine of which it is the temperate and guarded expression. Portentous exaggerations of the doctrine of the Sacrifice have at times been current in the schools of theology. No part, of the Church has been committed to them, but the Eoman Church has tolerated them. Such venerable names in theology as those of the Cardinals de Lugo and Franzelin can be quoted in defence of them. Franzelin went to the ex treme of suggesting that in the act of consecration there is a sort of exinanition of our blessed Lord's glorified 1 Lancelot Andrewe?, Sermons, Ed. 2 Responsio Archiepiscoporum An- 1629. p. 453. gliae. § xi. ad fin. LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 13 humanity.1 Lessius defined the Consecration as an act which tends essentially to a real killing of Christ, which effect is only accidentally hindered,2 so that the glorified humanity of our Lord hangs (the words have been written) "on the brink of the abyss of nothingness." When we find such words spoken and written we may well learn to be guarded in our language. They provoke a natural reaction; and it is with joy, but without surprise, that we find one of the chief living professors of theology at Eome, the Jesuit Father Billot, formally rejecting all these delirious fancies, undismayed by the great names of Franzelin and De Lugo, and re turning to the simpler and more reverent treatment that we associate with the genius of Bossuet. There is nothing in his treatise on the essence of the Sacrifice of the Mass, unless it may be here and there some details of the wording, to which any of us could take exception. For him, as for us, the essence of the Sacrifice consists in the " proclamation of the Lord's death " effected when the Body and Blood of Christ become sacramentally present under the separate forms of bread and wine.3 This being the essence of the Sacrifice, it is clear that the one essential feature of the liturgy is the Consecration itself. Where there is Consecration, there is the Sacri fice. The English liturgy, therefore, contains all that is essential. But no liturgy consists of the Consecration only. The object of a liturgy is to illustrate the meaning of the essential action ; and a liturgy is satisfactory in proportion as it sets this out with clearness. How does our own answer to this requirement ? I turn again to the Archbishops' Encyclical. They gather and piece together the phrases of the liturgy which express the meaning of the Sacrifice ; and this is done, they show, as clearly and as well as in the Eoman Canon of the Mass. True. But I am not sure that in the liturgy, as used, the expression is so prominent. The liturgy is one thing to the student in his library ; it is another thing in use to priest and people. In the Prayer Book of 1549, indeed, where the same phrases are differently assorted, the expression is clear enough. But it can hardly be 1 Franzelin, De SS. Eucli. Sacr. Pars ': Lessius, De Perf. Div. xii. 13, n. 97. ii thesis xvi " Billot, De Eccl. Sacramentis -. thesis liv. 14 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. denied that in the liturgy -as we now have it, through that dislocation of parts of which I have spoken, the expression of the Sacrifice is comparatively obscured. During our progress of the last sixty years there has grown up a strong desire to express the full meaning of the Sacrifice. This, and nothing else, is the reason for interpolating prayers which do not belong to our rite. Is the practice defensible ? Is it necessary ? Is it reasonable ? There is a distinction to be drawn. Of the prayers thus interpolated, some are essentially private prayers ; others are as essentially ritual prayers. There are points in the liturgy at which no one would deny the right of the celebrant to engage in private individual prayer. We can hardly imagine a devout priest receiving the holy Sacrament for his own Communion without at least some mental prayer or meditation. Even in a liturgy so minutely complete as that of the modern Eoman Church, room is left for this.1 In our liturgy nothing whatever is here prescribed. It resembles in this respect the older Eoman Sacramentaries. The priests who used those books undoubtedly added prayers at their own discretion before Communion, aud such prayers, gradually crystal lizing into form, found their way into the later missals.2 The priests who use our liturgy have the same unques tionable right to obey the instinct of devotion. Prayers thus added, from whatever source they are* derived, are essentially private prayers. It is reasonable again, though not in the least necessary, for the priest to say a prayer equally private and individual, while carrying out the direction to " place upon the Table " the oblations of bread and wine. At this point also there are no prayers in the older Sacramentaries. There is indeed reason for supposing that, down to a comparatively recent period, no prayer at all was said at the offering.3 Various 1 "Sumit reverenter ambas partes later hand. See the edition of the hostiae, jungit manus, et quiescit ali- Henry Bradshaw Society, 1896, p. 47. quantitlum ia meditatione sanetissimi 3 L. Duchesne, Origines du eulle Saaramenti." {Miss. Rom. . . S. Pii. Chretien, Paris, 1889, p. 1G6. It should, V. rubric in the order of the Mass.) however, be observed that the liturgy of 2 The Missal of Robert of Jumieges, the Apostolic Constitutions provides for which is a Sacramentary written a few a private prayer on the part of the years before the Norman Conquest, has celebrant at this point, these customary prayers added by a LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 15 devotions, however, crept into use, and these too found their way into the Missals. Their general structure is the same everywhere, but the details differ widely in the various churches which followed the Eoman rite.1 Originally private, they acquired a ritual character, and became integral parts of the liturgy. Our English rite has no such prayers ; but we can hardly deny the right of the celebrant to pray in a like fashion, mentally, or even orally, and to use prayers drawn from whatever source, so long as he bears in mind that his prayers are essentially private and individual, forming no part of the ritual of the Church. Altogether another matter is the interpolation of prayers essentially ritual in their character and use. Here again we may draw a subordinate distinction. Such interpolations are made in more ways than one, In the first place prayers are introduced which belong to what we may call the skeleton of a rite other than our own. To come to particulars, the two Collects, known as the Seer eta and the Postcommunio in the Eoman liturgy, are occasionally borrowed. They are among the most characteristic features of the Eoman rite ; they were, of course, included in the Salisbury form of that rite used in England down to the year 1559. .Nothing analogous to them is found in our English liturgy. Inserted in more or less appropriate places they do not indeed seriously disturb its structure, but they are an alien matter embedded in its mass. Books are published which assume that the priest will say them, as if they were an integral part of the rite. Such an interpolation might perhaps be regarded as merely trivial, if it were, not a very serious matter for any one without authority to touch the structure of the Divine liturgy. It is perhaps easier to form a calm judgement of such a proceeding if we imagine a like treatment of some liturgy other than 1 Bona, {Rer. Litnrg. lib. ii. c. 9, § ii. sixteenth century, wliich contains no cd. Sala, Aug. Taurin, t. iii. p. 200.) less than thirty -two prayers for use at collects the various forms found in the the offertory, from which the priest Missals of the Monastic Orders, of the might select at his discretion. The Churches of Lyons, Salisbury, and Seville, same Ordo contains long prayers or and of the Dominicans. In his first meditations for the use of the priest Appendix ho gives a curious Ordo, first during the singing of the liturgical edited by Matthias Elaccus Illyricus, hymns. and reprinted several times since the 16 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. our own. We should have a strictly analogous case if we could imagine a priest of the Eoman Church, struck by the beauty and appropriateness of the recital of the Decalogue in the English rite, introducing that feature into his own Mass. These interpolations may be in themselves trivial ; they touch only the framework of the liturgy. Of a much more serious nature are such as affect the inner core, the vitally necessary part of the whole rite. The one essential feature of the Divine liturgy, as we have seen, is the consecration of the elements. This is ef fected by a benedictory prayer, containing the recital of the Institution, which is imbedded in a great act of worship known as the Anaphora. Every liturgy has its own form of Anaphora, which is justly regarded as the most sacred, and most inviolable part of the rite. What shall we say then of the interpolation of the English Anaphora with portions of one belonging to another liturgy? Yet this is perhaps the most common form of interpolation. What reason can pos sibly be alleged for it ? To understand the reason and to estimate its worth we need a comparison of the different forms of Anaphora known to the Church. They have certain features in common : all alike begin with the exclamation Lift up your hearts, which is followed by the act of thanks giving, known to us as the Preface, culminating in the Angelic hymn. Then follows a prayer leading up to the recital of the Institution; but here, and in what follows, there is great diversity. The Lord's Prayer, however, is always included.1 For our purpose it will be convenient to look first at the Eoman liturgy. The Anaphora is here divided by the Sanctus into two unequal parts, the Preface and the Canon, but these form in reality one continuous act of worship proceeding in stately progress from Sursum corda to Paternoster with its Embolism following. But though continuous, the Canon has several well-marked divisions. There is in the first place a long section, the purpose of 1 It is not given in the liturgy of the arcani. It is found in all liturgies Apostolic Constitutions, but this was known to have been actually used. probably on account of the disciplina LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 17 which is to commemorate those in whose name the offering is made, the whole Christian family alike of the living and departed.1 This passes, by an admirably conceived transition, to the recital of the Institution, and the actual consecration (Qui pridie). Then follows the Anamnesis (Unde et memores), in which the Passion, Eesurrection, and Ascension of our Lord are verbally commemorated, and the Epiclesis (Supra quae), which is a prayer for the intervention of the Divine Power in the Mystery.2 After this comes a very brief intercession for the dead and for the living (Memento and Nobis quoque) and so we pass to the Lord's Prayer, and its extension in the Embolism (Libera nos.) The Greek Anaphora is constructed on precisely the same lines, except that it has nothing corresponding to the long Commemoration of the living with which the Eoman Canon begins ; on the other hand the Greek in tercessions following the Epiclesis are much longer and more important. If now we turn to the Gallican liturgies,3 we find a 1 Duchesne, ibid. p. 171. ".A pres le Saxictus, le Canon romain, au lieu de passer tout de suite au recit de la derniere Cene, intercale un long morceau destine' a enumerer les personnes au nom de qui se fait l'oblation . . . L'oblation est ainsi celle de toute la famille chre tienne." This consists of those parts of the Canon, known as Te igitur, Memento, Communicantes, and Hanc igitur; it is followed by the Quam oblationem, through which the transition is effected to the Qui pridie, or recital of the Institution. 2 Duchesne, ibid. p. 173, notes the inferiority of the Latin form of the Epiclesis to that of the Greek liturgies, " Elle est aussi une priere adressee a Dieu pour qu'il intervienne dans le mystere. Mais au lieu que les liturgies grecques s'expriment en tennes clairs et Bimples, la liturgie romaine s'en- veloppe ici de formes symboliques . . . Le mouvement symbolique est de sens contraire a celui des formules grecques : ce n'est pas le Saint-Esprit qui descend vers l'oblation, c'est l'oblation qui est emportee au ciel par l'ange de Dieu. Mais dans un cas comme dans .'autre, c'est apres son rapprochement, sa com munication, avec la vertu divine qu'on parle d'elle comme du corps et du sang du Christ." 3 The only living example of the Gallican Anaphora is the Mozarabic; the Ambrosian rite, though showing many points of resemblance to the Gal lican, employs a Canon which differs only slightly from the Eoman form. In the Mozarabic rite Sursum Corda is preceded by the versicles: — Introibo ad altare Dei : Ad Deum- qui laetifieat iuvent-utem meam : Aures ad Dominum . Habemus ad Dominum. The following is the arrangement of the Anaphora : Sursum Corda. Illatio (Preface). Sanctus. Collectio post Sanctus (a variable prayer). Eecital of the Institution, in a form beginning Qui in qua nocte tradebaiur. Collectio post Secreta (a variable prayer). Confractio (done by the priest in silence, the choir meantime sing ing the Creed, or a special Anthem. Memento pro vivis. Pater noster, with its preface and embolismus. B 18 LITUEGICAL INTEEP0LATI0NS. very different structure of the Anaphora. The prayers of which it is composed are all variable, with the excep tion of the Sanctus and the recital of the Institution, which commonly began, as in the Eoman rite, with the words Qui pridie. Nor is this all : some important features of the Greek and Eoman rites are occasionally unrepresented in the variable prayers of the Gallican masses. None of these prayers correspond to the great Commemoration of the Eoman liturgy, the analogous section of the Gallican liturgy being placed outside the Anaphora, at an earlier point of the service : the varying prayers which follow Qui pridie do not always furnish anything analogous to the Anamnesis, and only occasion ally suggest the sense of the Epiclesis. Let us compare with these our English liturgy. In the Prayer-book of 1549 the Eoman form was adhered to : there was a very long Canon, the language of which was very largely new, but the structure unchanged, except that the clause preceding the recital of the In stitution was so worded as to acquire the character of an Epiclesis, more distinct and express in its terms than that of the Eoman Canon. In 1552 the Anaphora was broken up in an extraordinary way, and so we still retain it. Let us examine the existing structure. It begins as before with Lift up your hearts, the Preface, and Sanctus. This is followed by the Prayer of Humble Access, and this again by a weakened form of Epiclesis, leading to the recital of the Institution. At this point the fraction takes place. Then we proceed at once to communion ; after communion, the Lord's Prayer is said, and is followed by a prayer which contains a verbal oblation of the sacrifice with a brief intercession for the "whole Church," a phrase which can only be interpreted as including the departed. In this arrangement there are three features which differ from those of all other liturgies. They are (1) the position of the fraction, (2) the position of the Lord's Prayer, and (3), most remarkable of all, the introduction of the Communion into the middle of the Anaphora. It is this last especially that we think of when we speak of the dislocation of our service. The remaining peculi arities are of comparatively small importance, and every LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 19 other feature of our rite may be compared with what is found in other liturgies. Have we no Anamnesis ? Neither have many of the Masses of the Gallican rite. Have we a very obscure Epiclesis in an unusual position ? The Masses of the Gallican rite sometimes have none at all ; that of the Eoman Canon is even more obscure ; and the position of ours may be defended as peculiarly appropriate. Our Anaphora has nothing answering to the great Commemoration of the Eoman Canon. This, as Duchesne remarks, corresponds with the recitation of the diptychs before the Preface in the Eastern and Gal lican liturgies, a position which he regards as more natural, that is to say liturgically more appropriate.1 Now at the change of the English rite in 1552 this part of the Canon was removed precisely to that position. We have it still, in the Prayer for the Church Militant, before the beginning of the Anaphora. It is doubtful whether the revisers of 1552 knew what they were doing, but they did in fact bring our rite, in this respect, into harmony with the early Oriental and Gallican liturgies. Our Anaphora being thus complete in all essentials, why should it be thought necessary to interpolate into it portions of any other rite ? We need not shut our eyes to its faults, viewed from the standpoint of liturgical science. We need not hesitate to compare it unfavourably with those of other rites. We need not pretend to admire the arrangement which brings the communion into the middle of the eucharistic action, or that which displaces the fraction2 and the Lord's Prayer from their normal and 1 L. Duchesne, Origines du Culte - In the Eoman liturgy the fraction chretien, p. 172. " Toute cette partie takes place during the Embolism, as du eanon correspond a la recitation des ordered by St. Gregory the Great. Be- diptyques en usage dans la liturgie fore his time it took place immediately gallicane et dans les liturgies d'Orient, before Paternoster as in the Gallican mais placee, dans ces liturgies, avant liturgies, and it still retains this place in le commencement de la preface. Cette the Ambrosian rite at Milan, where derniere disposition peut paraitre plus the Canon is practically identical with naturelle." The Egyptian liturgy, how- the Eoman form. (See Duchesne, ever, has affinities with the Eoman Origines da culte chretien, p. 176. Bona, here, but the Commemoration is placed Rer. Liturg. II. 15. § iv.) In the in the Preface, before Sanctus. Bona, present Orthodox Eastern liturgies it Rer. Liturg. II, 12, § i. notes that the usually follows the Lord's Prayer, section of the Canon beginning Memento, though not immediately. Domine, is in some MS. Missals entitled Oratio super Diptycha. 20 LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. more appropriate position. Our rite has not that glamour of extreme antiquity which forbids the very thought of alteration, which makes even the most critical rest con tent with the obvious defects, for example, of the Eoman Canon. We may reasonably hope for improvement, suggest amendment or change. But in the meantime the liturgy is appointed as it stands. It has its faults. We shall not mend them by unauthorised alterations. I will go further. We exaggerate those faults to our own eyes and to those of our people by a vicious method of improvement. Our plain duty is to use the rite that is appointed us by authority. If any priest will abandon his interpolations and celebrate Mass according to the English liturgy exactly as it stands, I am convinced (and I speak not without experience) that he will find there an unlooked for beauty and dignity, and will offer the Holy Sacrifice with more joy to himself, and with more acceptance on high, since to obey is better even than sacrifice itself. LITURGICAL INTERPOLATIONS. 21 Postscript. The object of the Alcuin Club is to defend and expound the existing Liturgy of the English Church, not to suggest changes. It may however be permissible to point out that by a slight readjustment, literally involving the change of not a single word in text or rubric, the English Anaphora might be brought into harmony with other Liturgies, including the English Eite of 1549. This would be effected if the prayer 0 Lord and heavenly Father were appointed to be said immediately after the Conse cration, and followed in its turn by the Lord's Prayer, the priest then proceeding to Communion. A minor im provement might be effected by removing the prayer We do not presume to a place immediately before Communion. The order would then be as follows : — Lift up your hearts. Preface. Holy. Almighty God, our heavenly Father. 0 Lord and heavenly Father. Our Father. We do not presume. Communion. Almighty and everliving God. Glory be to God. Blessing. LONDON : HABEISON AND EONS, PEIMEES IN OBDINAEY TO HEE MAJESTY, ST. MAETIN'S IANB. The ALCUIN CLUB. There existed already in London three Societies, the Henry Bradshaw Society for editing rare Liturgical Texts, the Plainsong and Mediteval Music Society, and St. Paul's Ecclesiological Society, for dealing with liturgical and musical subjects, and with ecclesiology in general; but there was no Society which dealt with the practical study of ceremonial, or the arrangement of churches, their furniture, and ornaments, in accordance with the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. To encourage this study the Alcuin Club was formed, which, although practical, is intended to work upon purely historical, and of course, English, lines. Strict obedience to the Book of Common Prayer is the guiding principle of the work of the Club. The Club has already published the following tracts : "The Ornaments of the Rubric" by J. T. Micklethwaite, F.S.A. "Consolidation," by the Rev. W. C. E. Nkwbolt, M.A. Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's. " Liturgical Interpolations " by the Rev. T. A. Lacey. [P.T.O. And as soon as its funds permit, the Club will publish other Tracts, and Works containing illustrations from miniatures and other ancient examples, on the following subjects : " The English Altar " (a series of collotypes : with illustrative text.) " The Ornaments of the Ministers." " The Liturgical Colours." " The Ornaments of the Altar." " A Celebration of the Eucharist with only one Minister." " The Divine Service." " Chancels as in times past." " The Burial Service." " The Marriage Service," Sec, &o. The Club consists of Members and Associates, who must be in communion with the Church of England. The Subscription for Members is £1. a year, entitling them to all publications gratis; and for Associates five shillings a year, entitling them to such of the Tracts gratis, and to such reductions on other publications as the Committee may determine. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08954 9795