98 THE PRESENT LITURGY A NATIONAL PUNISHMENT. friends have been, with the painful changes subsequently made in this very service book ;* though this first book of Edward was said, when it was first published, to be given to the nation by the Holy Ghost.† But I shall speak of these changes when I consider some of the expressions of my favorite prelate respecting them, and shew the identity of his opinions with those of my friends. Though I am compelled to condemn and have condemned many things which the Reformers established, I am still prepared to defend the greater part of their labors, and to point out the indications of a superintending Providence in the preservation of the Prayer Book, and in the changes which it has undergone. This declaration has appeared to some of my Oxford friends, to be an inconsistency; but I have proved that this is not the case, by demonstrating in the same Tract, that our present Liturgy, though we may reverently trust its omissions, additions, and alterations were ordered by the same spirit, under whose controul the first rites of Catholic worship were ordained,§ is still to be regarded as a kind of punishment to us; that its changes took from us a part of our antient inheritance.|| It is * Tract 69, pp. 267 and 269. Tract 86, p. 1. This is the title of my favorite Tract, No. 86. § Tract 86, p. 7. Tract 86, p. 7. LANGUAGE of the LITURGY SERVILE. 99 It is the language of servants rather than sons.' with the Church at large as with an individual; he who sees the returning penitent afar off and hastens to meet him, should put becoming words into his mouth, by which he confesses himself to have forfeited the claim of sonship, and to be willing to be received in a lower state.† Our requests, as that UltraProtestant puritan, Cartwright, with whom in this case I agree, observes, in some instances carry‡ with them the note of servile fear, which is peculiarly our own; and the exhortation and appeals to repentance in our Prayer Book indicate a low and decayed state of the Church. Though as my friend Froude, whose sentiments are ever to be remembered with affectionate esteem, has remarked, "such passionate appeals to the feelings as those are, would not be so objectionable in themselves, if they were given outside of the Church; and not be allowed to occupy the place of religious worship."§ I have given many proofs of this judicial humiliation;|| but I postpone any other notice of these demonstrations of our religious degradation afforded us by our Liturgy, till I compare the conduct of the Ultra-Protestants who admired it, and who foolishly died at the stake in its defence, with the devotional expressions of Bon *Tract 86, p. 9. + Tract 86, pp. 9, 10. § Tract 86, p. 18. Tract 86, p. 26. H 100 BONNER'S PRAYERS FROM THE OLD RITUAL. ner, who presided over, or commanded their punishment. I shall only say now, that even the first Prayer Book of Edward could not have satisfied the more elevated holiness of Bonner, who derived his prayers from our inheritance, the unreformed ritual of Rome. The Liturgy of 1548, with the exceptions to which I have alluded, was the same as that we now possess. This Liturgy was completed and prepared for the approbation of the Parliament, which met on the 24th of November. A bill to make this first Liturgy the service established by law, as the Common Prayer to be offered up by the people, in every Church, Morning and Evening, daily, throughout the year, was brought into the House of Commons on the 9th of December, 1548, within six days after the introduction of the bill, which allowed married men to be made priests, and two days after another bill which allowed the unmarried clergy to marry. The bill enacting the first Liturgy as the legal worship of the community was passed on the 15th of January. The bills relating to the marriage of the Clergy were passed as one measure by the Lords, on the 19th of February. We have no accounts of the Parliamentary debates at this period, but Bishop Bonner opposed both measures; and I have no doubt that much which the venerable Prelate uttered, would have been amply confirmatory of many sentiments of my own friends on the propriety of the celibacy of the Clergy. Though we do not at present de BONNER OBEDIENT TO THE NEW CHANGES. 101 sire to abolish the Liturgy, or to restore the laws which command celibacy to the priest, we only think and say that our Liturgy requires revision, with the view to the restoration of some things omitted in the second service book, which were found in the first and we prefer celibacy to marriage, in the Clergy, and commend the single life to our brethren. Both bills passed in spite of Bonner's opposition. Neither was this all. A new visitation of the whole Church and kingdom was ordered, under his enemy, Cranmer's direction, in which the influence of Bonner seems to have been more especially aimed at. The Bishop of London, like a conscientious statesman or councillor, had opposed in Parliament every change in every legal manner to the utmost of his power. When, however, the laws to which he had objected were once enacted, he complied so readily and obediently to the new statutes, that, to use the language of Burnet,* it was not easy to find any matter against him. He executed also He executed also every order, that was sent to him, so readily, that there was not and could not be any ground for complaint. His influence with the old party was thus continued, while the Ultra-Protestants, though they knew his unchangeableness, could find no fault with him. While Bonner thus obeyed every enactment, a certain number of his clergy, equally attached with himself to the reasonable ordinances of Henry VIII., * Burnet Ref., p. 2, b. i., p. 121, folio.edit., 1681. 102 PRIVATE MASSES CELEBRATED AT ST. PAUL'S. endeavoured to continue the old manner of worship to the utmost of their power. When they were required, therefore, to read the new service, they did so with the same tone of voice, with which they had formerly read the Latin service.* Many ceremonies were also continued in the Communion Service, which had been used in the celebration of the Mass, and we read in the letters which the Council sent down to Bonner in the course of this year,t that private Masses for the repose of the Souls of the Dead were celebrated in St. Paul's Cathedral, with the silent sanction, or without the probibition, of the firm and unyielding Diocesan. The injunctions of Cranmer at his visitation, Burnet says, do not refer to the Liturgy, though they refer to the Law permitting the marriage of the Clergy; and he, therefore, thinks it probable, that they were not issued before Whit-Sunday, 1549-for, on that day, the Liturgy was to come into universal use, and after the meeting of Parliament, which ceased its sittings at the end of March. But Burnet has not observed that the second and seventh injunctions mentioned the Book of Common Prayer, and I consider this reference, therefore, to be made to the new Liturgy; and the injunctions themselves, to prove that Cranmer was resolved to compel Bonner to obey the law more fully. Some of the clauses in the injunctions must have been peculiarly hateful to * Burnet, ut supra. † 24th June-from Richmond. Ap. Foxe, vol. 5, p. 723. |