the presence of the Decalogue and the position of the Gloria in excelsis, which may not be paralleled in the other Uses of the Roman liturgy. In one ceremonial particular, our Eucharistic office has even departed from what was the universal Western custom in the sixteenth century, that is, in directing the Priest to consecrate the bread upon the paten instead of upon the corporal. But in so ordering, the Prayer Book invented no new and unheard of ceremony; it has but returned to what was the earlier custom in the West, which is still observed in the East, and which is unquestionably the more reverent practice. And it is our bounden duty loyally to conform to what the Church has prescribed for our observance.

II. Of the American Rite as compared with the

Roman Rite.

Not only may precedent be found for almost every ceremonial particular of the Prayer Book wherein it differs from the pre-reformation English Uses, but, what is all important, the Mass as prescribed in the American Prayer Book contains every corresponding ritual feature of the ancient Roman liturgy for the presentation of the oblations both before and after consecration, and is also as clear and express in its sacrificial language as was that rite. So that our office lacks nothing necessary to fulness of doctrinal statement with regard to the holy sacrifice, if it be judged by the Roman liturgy as that rite was before its revision and expansion by Alcuin.

But our office is, fortunately, unlike the Roman liturgy in that it lacks those inexplicable passages found in the Latin Canon which are so hard to recon

cile with the doctrine of the Real Presence, and which, Dom Gasquet frankly admits, "it is not easy to explain." We may be thankful that our Prayer of Consecration does not contain such an incongruity as the prayer Supra quæ: "Upon which [i. e. the holy gifts] do thou vouchsafe to look with a propitious and gracious countenance, and to accept them even as thou didst vouchsafe to accept the gifts of thy just servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and that holy sacrifice and immaculate host which thy High Priest Melchizedek offered unto thee." In this prayer the Sacrifice of the Mass is apparently placed on the same level as the offerings of the patriarchal dispensation, God being asked to accept it even as he accepted the earthly offerings of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek. And the same exalted terms, used in the paragraph before of the sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood, are here applied to Melchizedek's mere oblation of bread and wine, which is called "a holy sacrifice," "an immaculate host"!

We may also be thankful that by our American Canon we do not have to say at the altar the prayer Supplices te rogamus: "We humbly beseech thee, O Almighty God, that thou command these things (hæc) to be borne by the hands of thy holy angel to thine

Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, 1890, p. 197. This work is an attempt to shew that the Prayer Book is largely derived from the early Lutheran Service books. But after all has been said, there is comparatively little in our Prayer Book that can certainly be said to be derived from a Lutheran source. And even if it were otherwise, what would it matter? Whatever good things have been produced by men, even though they were heretics or infidels, have been brought to pass by the power of God and for the elect's sake. Therefore, the Apostle says, "All things are yours." And accordingly the Church has not hesitated to appropriate many things, even from the heathen, and to make use of them in the very worship of the sanctuary. For whatever the Church appropriates she cleanses and sanctifies by her touch, as did the Son of God when out of the mass of sinful human nature he took to himself a body, but "without spot of

altar on high in the sight of thy divine majesty." Certainly no one at the present day who believes that Christ is present under the Eucharistic species in the fulness of both natures, could possibly pen such a prayer. It is simply unintelligible.

Then there is the prayer Per quem towards the end of the Canon, which modern liturgiologists say refers to the offerings of the fruit of the earth, but which the rubrics of the medieval missals, as also the present Roman missal, apply to the sacramental gifts.

Many explanations have been given of these strange passages in the Latin Canon, but there is not one which satisfactorily removes their seeming inconsistency with the doctrine of the Real Presence. Had such statements, so contrary on the face of them to the Tridentine definition, been penned by the Prayer Book revisers and inserted into our Prayer of Consecration, how eagerly they would have been seized upon by the Roman controversalist as evidence of how defective was our conception of the doctrine of the Real Presence, and of the Christian priesthood and sacrifice.

Now it was precisely these incongruities of the Latin Canon which were not reproduced in the First Prayer Book. The Canon of 1549 (which is the source of our American Canon through the non-juring Scotch office) was a free rendering and expansion of the Latin Canon, and agrees with it paragraph by paragraph, although not in precisely the same order, but the prayer Supra quæ, in which the Mass is placed on a level with the offerings made before Christ's coming, was omitted altogether, and in its place there was substituted, "entirely desiring thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacri

fice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the death of thy Son Jesus Christ and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins and all other benefits of his passion." The pleading of Christ's passion is surely more satisfactory ground for asking God to accept our sacrifice, than the mention of the offerings of the patriarchs. The clause Supplices te rogamus was retained and translated, but the difficulty presented by the ambiguity of hæc and of angeli tui was removed by interpreting hæc, in accordance with the gloss of Saint Thomas," as meaning "our prayers and supplications," and by changing "thy holy angel" into "thy holy angels," thus making the reference to be unmistakably to the created angels and not to the Angel of the Convenant our Lord himself. The clause Per quem was entirely dropped, the revisers apparently understanding that it could have no possible reference to the Eucharistic offering. Thus were eliminated by the revisers of 1549 all these verbal incongruities, so that there is not one word in our American Prayer of Consecration which is remotely inconsistent with the doctrine of the Real Presence, even as that doctrine is defined by the Council of Trent.

III. Of the American Rite as compared with the English and Scotch Rites.

The excellency of our American office is still further appreciated when we compare it with the other vernacular rites of the Anglican Communion. We have said. Summa, iii., 83, 4, ad Nonum.

that it contains every corresponding verbal and ceremonial feature of the ancient Roman Liturgy for the presentation of the oblations, both before and after consecration. This cannot be said of the other liturgies of our Communion, every one of which is lacking in some one sacrificial feature. The English office is the most unsatisfactory of all. It has indeed a verbal oblation of the unconsecrated gifts, but its Canon, while containing everything absolutely necessary to sacramental validity, stops abruptly with the consecration of the chalice, without so much as a word of formal presentation of the holy gifts. The present Scotch office is deficient in that it has no verbal oblation at the Offertory. And while it has an oblation, like our own, after the consecration, the doctrinal force of this oblation is considerably neutralized by the fact, that the very words with which, by the English and by our own book, the unconsecrated bread and wine are presented (to wit, the words, 'to accept our oblations'), are in this Scotch office unfortunately placed after the Canon and made to refer to the consecrated gifts. When we examine the office of the Mass in the Prayer Book of 1549, we find, that while it has corrected all those "admittedly difficult" statements of the Latin Canon, which seemed inconsistent with the doctrine of the Real Presence, it is not as full and explicit in setting forth the sacrificial character of the Eucharist as it might be. There is in this office no verbal oblation whatever of the bread and wine at the Offertory. After the consecration 'a memorial is made,' but it is not expressly said, that this memorial is made by offering up the holy gifts then present upon the altar. This latter defect Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI and the Bk. of Com. Prayer, p 210,

note.