THE Greek word Litaneia, meaning Prayer or Supplication, appears to have been used in the fourth century for devotions public or private; but it soon came to have a narrower and more technical sense as applied to solemn acts of processional prayer. Whether St. Basil uses it in this sense, when in his 107th epistle he reminds the clergy of Neocæsarea that "the Litanies which they now practise were unknown in the time of their great apostle Gregory, and therefore might form a precedent for other salutary innovations, is a matter of opinion, on which Bingham and Palmer (the latter more expressly than the former) take the affirmative side, the Benedictine Editor and Keble [note to HOOKER'S Eccl. Pol. v. 41, 2] taking the negative. But when we are told [MANSI, Concil. iv. 1428] that the aged abbat Dalmatius had for many years never left his monastery, though repeatedly requested by Theodosius II. when Constantinople was visited by earthquakes "to go forth and perform a Litany," there can be no doubt as to the meaning of the statement.

The history, however, of Litanies, in the proper sense of the term, is rather Western than Eastern. We find, indeed, in the Eastern Liturgy and Offices some four or five specimens of a kindred form of prayer, called Ectene, Synapte, etc., in which the Deacon bids prayer for several objects, sometimes beginning with "In peace let us beseech the Lord," and the people respond with "Kyrie eleison," or with "Vouchsafe, O Lord." The reader of Bishop ANDREWES' Devotions will be familiar with this type of prayers. [See Oxford edition, pp. 5, 92.] And we have it represented in the Western Church by two sets of "Preces" in the Ambrosian Missal, one used on the first, third, and fifth Sundays in Lent, the other on the second and fourth. One of these begins, "Beseeching the gifts of Divine peace and pardon. . . we pray Thee," etc., proceeding to specify various topics of intercession with the response, "Lord, have mercy. The other is shorter, but in its imploring earnestness ("Deliver us, Thou Who deliveredst the children of Israel . . . with a strong arm and a high hand. . . . O Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for Thy Name's sake") is even more interesting as a link between the Ectene and the Litanies of the West, an essential characteristic of which is their deprecatory and more or less penitential tone. Somewhat similar are the Mozarabic "Preces" for Lenten Sundays, with their burdens of "Have mercy," "We have sinned," etc. It may also be observed that "Preces," like the "Pacifica of the Ambrosian rite, were anciently sung at Mass in Rome (at first only on days when the Gloria in Excelsis and Alleluia were omitted) until the ninth century. They formed an Eastern feature in the service, and may be compared with the Preces of the Abbey of Fulda, which, like a Greek Ectene, intercede for various persons and classes, supplicate for a Christian and peaceful end, and have for their responses, "We pray Thee, O Lord, hear and have mercy,' "Grant it, O Lord, grant it :" also with a series of Invocations, followed by "Tu illum adjuva," occurring in an old form for an Emperor's coronation in MURATORI, Lit. Rom. ii. 463.

But to confine ourselves to the Western Litany. It became common among the Gallic churches in the fifth century, as it was in the East, to invoke the Divine mercy in time of excessive rain or drought by means of Rogations or processional supplications. But these, according to the testimony of Sidonius Apollinaris [v. 14], were often carelessly performed, with lukewarmness, irregularity, and infrequency-devotion, as he expresses it, being often dulled by the intervention of meals. The shock of a great calamity wrought a change and formed an epoch. The illustrious city of Vienne, already famous in Christian history for the persecution under M. Aurelius [EUSEB. Eccl. Hist. v. 1], was troubled for about a year-probably the year 467-68 [FLEURY, Eccl. Hist. xxix. c. 38]-with earthquakes. In the touching language of Gregory of Tours [Hist. Francor. ii. 34] the people had hoped that the Easter festival would bring a cessation of their distress. "But during the very vigil of the glorious night, while

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Mass was being celebrated," the palace took fire, the people rushed wildly out of the church, and the Bishop Mamertus was left alone before the altar, entreating the mercy of God. He formed then a resolution, which he carried out in the three days before the Ascension festival, of celebrating a Rogation with special solemnity and earnestness. A fast was observed, and with prayers, psalmody, and Scripture lessons the people went forth in procession to the nearest church outside the city. Mamertus, says Fleury, had so appointed, “voulant éprouver la ferveur du peuple... mais le chemin parut trop court pour la dévotion des fidèles." Sidonius imitated this "most useful example" in Auvergne at the approach of the Goths. He tells Mamertus [vi. ep. i. ] that the Heart-searcher caused the entreaties made at Vienne to be a model for imitation and a means of deliverance. Gregory of Tours writes that these Rogations were even now celebrated throughout all churches with compunction of heart and contrition of spirit ;" and tells how St. Quintianus in Auvergne, celebrating one in a drought, caused the words "If the heaven be shut up," etc. [2 Chron. vi. 26], to be sung as an anthem, whereupon at once rain fell; how King Guntram ordered a Rogation, with fasting on barley-bread and water, during a pestilence [Hist. Francor. ix. 21]; how St. Gall instituted Rogations in the middle of Lent [ibid. iv. 5]; how the Bishop of Paris performed them before Ascension, "going the round of the holy places" [ix. 5]. St. Cæsarius of Arles [A.D. 501-542] in his Homily "de Letania" (it became usual so to spell the word) calls the Rogation days "holy and spiritual, full of healing virtue to our souls," and "regularly observed by the Church throughout the world; " and bids his hearers come to church and stay through the whole Rogation service, so as to gain the full benefit of this "three days' healing process." The Second Council of Lyons [A.D. 567] ordered also in its sixth Canon that Litanies should be said in every church in the week before the first Sunday in November in the same manner as before Ascension Day.

In order to estimate the comfort which these services then gave, one must take into account not only such afflictions as drought or pestilence, but the painful sense of confusion and insecurity which in those days brooded over Western Europe, and which still speaks in some of our own Collects, imploring the boon of peace and safety. We cannot wonder that, while the Rogation Mass in the Old Gallican Missal speaks of "sowing in tears, to reap in joys," a Collect in the Gallican Sacramentary "in Letanias dwells on "the crash of a falling world." So it was that, as Hooker expresses it, "Rogations or Litanies were then the very strength, stay, and comfort of God's Church." Council after Council-as of Orleans in 511, Tours in 567-decreed Rogation observances in connection with a strict fast. But the Spanish Church, not liking to fast in the Paschal time, placed its Litanies in Lent, in Whitsun week, and in the autumn, while the Milanese Rogations were in the week after Ascension. We learn from the Council of Cloveshoo [A. D. 747] that the English Church had observed the Rogations before Ascension ever since the coming of St. Augustine: and the anthem with which he and his companions approached Canterbury, “We beseech Thee" (deprecamur te), "O Lord, in Thy great mercy, to remove Thy wrath and anger from this city, and from Thy holy house, for we have sinned, Alleluia," was simply part of the Rogation Tuesday service in the Church of Lyons. [MARTENE, de Ant. Eccl. Rit. iii. 529.] This urgent deprecatory tone, this strong "crying out of the deep," which expresses so marked a characteristic of the Litanies, appears again in another Lyons anthem for Rogations, "I have seen, I have seen the affliction of My people;' " in the York suffrage, which might seem to be as old as the days of the dreaded heathen King Penda, "From the persecution by the Pagans and all our enemies, deliver us ;" and yet more strikingly in the Ambrosian, "Deliver us not into the hand of the he then Thou art kind, O Lord, have pity upon us; encom

pass Thou this city, and let Angels guard its walls; mercifully accept our repentance, and save us, O Saviour of the world; In the midst of life we are in death :" although this latter anthem, so familiar to us, was composed on a different occasion by Notker of St. Gall. [See Notes to Burial Office.] The strict rule which forbade in Rogation time all costly garments, and all riding on horseback, may be illustrated by the decree of the Council of Mayence in 813, that all should “go barefoot and in sackcloth in the procession of the Great Litany of three days, as our holy fathers appointed."

This name, "Litania Major," was thus applied in Gaul to the Rogations, but in Rome it has always been used (as it now is throughout the Roman Church) for the Litany of St. Mark's Day, which traces itself to St. Gregory the Great, and of which the Ordo Romanus says that it is not "in jejunio.' In order to avert a pestilence, Gregory appointed a sevenfold Litany," using the term for the actual processional company, as the Litany of clergy, the Litany of laymen, that of monks, of virgins, of married women, of widows, of the poor and children; and, in fact, the Roman Bishops did not adopt the Rogation Litany, properly so called, until the pontificate of Leo III., which began in 795. This was some fifty years after England, on the other hand, had adopted the Litany of St. Mark's Day as that which at Rome was called the Greater.

But although in strictness, as Hugh Menard says, "Litania ad luctum pertinet," the Litany was not always confined to occasions of distress or of special humiliation. As early as the close of the fifth century the Gelasian Sacramentary, in its directions for Holy Saturday, had the following [Muratori, i. 546, 568]: "They enter the Sacristy, and vest themselves as usual. And the Clergy begin the Litany, and the Priest goes in procession, with those in holy orders, out of the Sacristy. They come before the altar, and stand with bowed heads until they say, 'Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world.' Then comes the blessing of the Paschal taper; and after the series of lessons and prayers which follows it, they go in procession with a Litany to the fonts, for the baptisms: after which they return to the Sacristy, "and in a little while begin the third Litany, and enter the church for the Vigil Mass, as soon as a star has appeared in the sky."

And so it became natural to adopt a form of prayer which took so firm a hold of men's affections on various occasions when processions were not used. At ordinations, or at consecrations, at the conferring of monastic habits, at coronations of Emperors, at dedications of churches, etc., it became common for the "school," or choir, to begin, or as it was technically called, to "set on" (imponere) the Litany,- for the Subdeacon to "make the Litanies,"-for the first of the Deacons to "make the Litany,' "that is, to precent its suffrages [Muratori, ii. 423, 426, 439, 450, 452, 458, 467], beginning with "Kyrie eleison," or with "O Christ, hear us. A Litany never came amiss: it was particularly welcome as an element of offices for the sick and dying its terseness, energy, pathos, seemed to gather up all that was meant by being instant in prayer."

:

For some time the Litanies were devoid of all Invocations of Angels and Saints. The Preces of Fulda simply asked God that the Apostles and Martyrs might "pray for us." But about the eighth century Invocations came in. A few Saints are invoked in an old Litany which Mabillon calls AngloSaxon [MABILLON'S Vet. Anal. p. 168; comp. HADDAN and STUBBS Councils, etc. ii. 81], and Lingard Armorican [LINGARD'S Angl. Sax. Ch. ii. 386]. Names of Angels, with St. Peter or any other Saint, occur in another, which Mabillon ascribes to the reign of Charlemagne. The Litany in the Ordo Romanus [Bib. Vet. Patr. viii. 451] has a string of saintly names. As the custom grew, more or fewer Saints were sometimes invoked according to the length of the procession; “quantum sufficit iter," says the Sarum Processional; and the York, "secundum exigentiam itineris." The number was often very considerable: a Litany said after Prime at the venerable Abbey of St. Germain des Près had, Martene says [iv. 49], ninety-four Saints originally: an old Tours form for visitation of the sick has a list of Saints occupying more than four columns [ibid. i. 859]: and a Litany of the ninth century which Muratori prints, as accommodated to the use of the Church of Paris," has one hundred and two such Invocations. [Muratori, i. 74] The Invocations generally came between the Kyrie, etc., at the beginning, and the Deprecations which, in some form or other, constituted the most essential element of the Litany. Palmer thinks that the space thus occupied had originally been filled by many repetitions of the Kyrie, such as the Eastern Church loved, and the Council of Vaison in 529 had

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recommended; and in consequence of which St. Benedict had applied the name of Litany to the Kyrie, just as, when Invocations had become abundant, the same name was popularly applied to them, which explains the plural form, Litaniæ Sanctorum," in Roman books. Sometimes we find frequent Kyries combined with still more frequent Invocations, as in a Litania Septena for seven subdeacons on Holy Saturday, followed by a Litania Quina and Terna. [Martene, i. 216.] A Litania Septena was used on this day at Paris, Lyons, and Soissons.

The general divisions of Medieval Litanies were-1. Kyrie, and "Christ, hear us," etc. 2. Entreaties to each of the Divine Persons, and to the whole Trinity. 3. Invocations of Saints. 4. Deprecations. 5. Obsecrations, "by the mystery," etc. 6. Petitions. 7. Agnus Dei, Kyrie, Lord's Prayer. 8. Collects. The present Roman Litany should be studied as it occurs in the Missal, on Holy Saturday; in the Breviary, just before the Ordo Commendationis Anima; and in the Ritual, just before the Penitential Psalms; besides the special Litany which forms part of the Commendatio. The Litany of Holy Saturday is short, having three deprecations and no Lord's Prayer. The ordinary Roman Litany, as fixed in the sixteenth century, names only fifty-two individual Saints and Angels. It is said on St. Mark's Day, and during Lent, in choir, and "extra chorum pro opportunitate temporis."

The Litanies of the Medieval English Church are a truly interesting subject. Procter, in his History of the Common Prayer, p. 254, has printed an early Litany much akin to the Litany of York, and considered by him to be of AngloSaxon date. The Breviaries and Processionals exhibit their respective Litanies and the ordinary Sarum Litany used on Easter Eve, St. Mark's Day, the Rogations, and every weekday in Lent (with certain variations as to the Saints invoked), occurs in the Sarum Breviary just after the Penitential Psalms. It is easy, by help of the Processionals, to picture to oneself the grandeur of the Litany as solemnly performed in one of the great churches which followed the Sarum or York rites. Take, for instance, Holy Saturday. The old Gelasian rule of three Litanies on that day was still retained. In Sarum a "Septiform Litany" was sung in the midst of the choir by seven boys in surplices (compare the present Roman Rubric, that the Litany on that day is to be sung by two chanters "in medio chori"); the York Rubric says, seven boys, or three where more cannot be had, are to sing the Litany. It was called septiform, because in each order of saints, as apostles, martyrs, etc., seven were invoked by name. After "All ye Saints, pray for us,' five deacons began the "Quinta-partita Letania" in the same place (the York says, "Letaniam puerorum sequatur Letania diaconorum"): but after "St. Mary, pray for us," the rest was said in solemn procession to the font, starting, ex australi parte ecclesiæ.' First came an acolyte as cross-bearer, then two taper-bearers, the censer-bearer, two boys in surplices with book and taper, two deacons with oil and chrism, two subdeacons, a priest in red cope, and the five chanters of the Litany. In these two Litanies the four addresses to the Holy Trinity were omitted. After the blessing of the font, three clerks of higher degree in red copes began a third Litany, the metrical one which, Cassander says, was called Litania Norica, "Rex sanctorum Angelorum, totum mundum adjuva" (with which may be compared, as being also metrical, what Gibbon, vol. vii. p. 76, calls the "fearful Litany" for deliverance from the arrows of Hungarians): after the first verse was sung, the procession set forth on its return. In York the third Litany was sung by three priests, and was not metrical. There were processions every Wednesday and Friday in Lent (on other Lenten week days the Litany was non-processional), the first words of the Litany being sung "before the altar, before the procession started" [Process. Sar.], and the last Invocation being sung at the steps of the choir as it returned. In York, on Rogation Tuesday, the choir repeated after the chanter, processionally, the Kyrie and Christe eleison with the Latin equivalents, "Domine, miserere; Christe, miserere;" then, "Miserere nobis, pie Rex, Domine, Jesu Christe." The responses in this Litany were curiously varied. The chanter said, for instance, "St. Mary, pray for us;" and the choir responded, "Kyrie eleison. Again, "St. Michael, pray for us;" the response was, Christ, hear us. "The York Litany of Ascension Eve has, "Take away from us, O Lord, our iniquities," etc., the response being a repetition of the first words. Then, "Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy, Lord, on Thy people," etc., the response being "Have mercy; then Hear, hear, hear our prayers, O Lord:" response, "Hear." The Rubric adds, "Et dicatur Letania per cir

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cuitum ad introitum chori." On the same Eve, in Sarum, a metrical invocation to St. Mary was chanted, "Sancta Maria, Quæsumus, almum Poscere Regem Jure memento; Salvet ut omnes Nos jubilantes." On St. Mark's Day, in Sarum, as in the Rogation Litany of York above quoted, the suffrage included pray for us," and the response was Kyrie. The Sarum rule was, "Whatever part of the Litany is said by the priest must be fully and entirely repeated by the choir, as far as the utterance of 'We sinners beseech Thee to hear us.' For then after That Thou give us peace,' the choir is to respond, We beseech Thee, hear us and after each verse, down to 'Son of God.'" So the Processional; the same rule is given, in somewhat different form, by the Breviary.

The Litany was nearly always sung in procession in the Medieval Church of England, the singers sometimes singing the whole within the church, and at others going into the churchyard, or on particular occasions, as on the Rogations, into the streets, roads, and fields around. The supplications which preceded the Invocations of the Saints were said in front of the Altar, before the procession started; and the rule was that the procession should return to the same place to sing all that followed the last of these Invocations. All that is now said in the church, according to our modern use, was therefore said in the church in mediæval times, and was said kneeling as at present.1

Besides the Latin Litanies for church use, the Primer contained one (in English) which may be seen in Mr. Maskell's Sarum Primer of about A.D. 1400; with two other English Litanies from MSS. in the Bodleian. [MASKELL'S Monumenta Ritualia, iii. 99, 227, 233.] A MS. English Litany of the fifteenth century, somewhat different from these, is in the Library of University College, Oxford.

Coming down to the sixteenth century, we find the first form of our present Litany in that of 1544, probably composed by Cranmer, who would have before him the Litany in the Goodly Primer of 1535, and perhaps the Cologne Litany published in German 1543, or Luther's of 1543: and it was imposed on the Church by Henry VIII., to be used "in the time of processions." It contains only three Invocations of created beings, as follows:

"Saint Mary, Mother of God our Lord Jesu Christ, pray

for us.

All holy angels and archangels, and all holy orders of blessed spirits, pray for us.

All holy patriarchs and prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins, and all the blessed company of Heaven, pray for us."

These were dropped in 1548. In Henry's reign there was also a Litany published in the King's Primer of 1545. It is carious that "procession," in Cranmer's language [see a passage in Private Prayers, Parker Soc. pref. p. 25], meant the actual supplication. In 1547 the Injunctions of Edward VI. forbade processions about the Church or Churchyard; and, borrowing part of the Sarum rule above mentioned as to the Easter Eve Litania Septiformis, ordered the priests, with other of the choir, to kneel in the midst of the church immediately before High Mass, and sing or say the Litany, etc., which Injunction was repeated by Queen Elizabeth in 1559, with the alteration of "before Communion," etc. In the Prayer Book of 1549 the Litany was ordered to be said or sung on Wednesdays and Fridays, and was printed after the Communion; but in the Book of 1552 it was printed in its present place, "to be used on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and at other times," etc. About Christmas, 1558, Elizabeth sanctioned the English Litany nearly as before, for her own Chapel [see_CARDWELL, Docum. Ann. i. 209, and Lit. Services, Parker Soc. p. xii]; it soon came into more general use, and was inserted in the Prayer Book of 1559, the Rubric of 1552 being repeated. Injunctions of Elizabeth in 1559 ordered the Curate to “say

The

1 "Seynte Marke fallyng in Ester wyke, or up on any Sonday, he schal neyther haue faste nor procession that yere." [Rule of St. Saviour, ch. xl. ; AUSGEER'S Hist. Syon, p. 353.]

be also "Processioners" was the name given to copies of the English Litany which were sold in Cambridge for twopence each in 1558. [CARTER'S Kesi's Coll. Chap.)

The English Litany was nevertheless used in procession at the Queen's court in copes to the nombur of xxx," on St. George's Day, April 23, 1560 and 1561. Again at Windsor on May 28, 1561, "After matens done, they whent a prosessyon rond about the cherche, so done the mydes and so ront a-bowt... the clarkes and prestes a xxiiii syngyng the Englys prossessyon in chopes xxxiiii, and sum of them in gray ames and in calabur." The same is narrated of the years 1562 and 1563. [MACHYN's Diary, 292, 257, 258, 280, 206.] There is also an engraving by Hollar of a similar parvocession, ten or twelve years later, in AsuMOLE's Order of the Garter, p. $15.

The fifteenth canon of 1604 provides for the saying of the Litany in church after tolling of a bell, on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the last review of the Prayer Book the words "to be sung or said" were substituted for "used (both phrases having occurred in the Scotch Prayer Book), and are very carefully added-an erasure being made to give precedence to the word "sung "-in Cosin's Durham Book. The Litany was sung by two Bishops at the coronation of George I. With regard to the place for saying or singing the Litany, the present Prayer Book in its rubric before the 51st Psalm in the Commination, appears implicitly to recognize a peculiar one, distinct from that in which the ordinary offices are performed. As we have seen, the Injunctions of Edward, followed herein by those of Elizabeth, specified the midst of the Church and Bishop Andrewes had in his chapel a faldistory (folding-stool) for this purpose, between the western stalls and the lectern. So Cosin, as archdeacon of the East Riding in 1627, inquired whether the church had "a little faldstool or desk, with some decent carpet over it, in the middle alley of the church, whereat the Litany may be said after the manner prescribed by the Injunctions ;" and in his first series of Notes on the Common Prayer he says, "The priest goeth from out his seat into the body of the church, and at a low desk before the chancel door, called the faldstool, kneels, and says or sings the Litany. Vide Proph. Joel de medio loco inter porticum et altare," etc. Compare also the frontispiece to Bishop SPARROWw's Rationale, and to the Litany in Prayer Books of 1662, etc. Cosin gave such a faldstool to Durham Cathedral, which is constantly used by two priests; and the Rubric of the present Coronation office speaks of two Bishops kneeling in the same manner at a faldstool to say the Litany. The custom doubtless signified the deeply supplicatory character of this service. Finally, in the Durham Book the Rubric before the Litany ends with these words: "The Priest (or Clerks) kneeling in the midst of the Quire, and all the people kneeling, and answering as followeth."

In the present day there is a disposition to make the Litany available as a separate service. Archbishop Grindall's order in 1571, forbidding any interval between Morning Prayer, Litany, and the Communion Service, was far from generally observed.5 At Winchester and Worcester Cathedrals the custom of saying the Litany some hours after Mattins has prevailed: and we learn from PECK'S Desiderata Curiosa [lib. xii. no. 21] that in 1730 the members of Ch. Ch. Oxford, on Wednesdays and Fridays, went to Mattins at six, and to Litany at nine. The 15th Canon, above referred to, recognizes the Litany as a separate office. Freedom of arrangement in this matter is highly desirable and if it be said that the Litany ought to precede the Communion, according to ancient precedent, instead of being transferred, as it sometimes now is, to the afternoon, it may be replied that the Eucharistic Ectene of the East is not only much shorter than our Litany, but far less plaintive, so to speak, in tone, and therefore more evidently congruous with Eucharistic joy. The like may be said, on the whole, of the "Preces Pacifica once used at Rome (as we have seen) in the early part of the Mass, and at Milan on Lenten Sundays: although indeed a Lenten Sunday observance could be no real precedent for all the Sundays in the year. Of the Puritan cavils at the Litany, some will be dealt with in the Notes. One, which accuses it of perpetuating prayers which had but a temporary purpose, is rebuked by Hooker [HOOKER'S Eccl. Pol. v. 41, 4], and is not likely to be revived. He takes occasion to speak of the "absolute" (i.e. finished) "perfection" of our present Litany: Bishop Cosin, in his Devotions, uses the same phrase, and calls it "this principal, and excellent prayer" (excellent being, in the English of his day, equivalent to matchless); and Dr. Jebb describes it as "a most careful, luminous, and comprehensive collection of the scattered treasures of the Universal Church." [JEBB's Choral Service, p. 423.]

It may also be regarded as a comprehensive form of prayer

This note is found also in a Prayer Book in the Bodleian Library, which contains many annotations written about 1655 by Bishop Duppa; and he adds, "So ordered by the composers of this Book in imitation of the Lutheran Churches."

5 In fact, there is a direction exactly opposite in an Occasional Service of Queen Elizabeth's reign, exhorting the people to spend a quarter of an hour or more in private devotion between Morning Prayer and the Communion. See also a note on the expanded Kyrie eleison in the Communion Service.

which especially carries into practice the Apostolic injunction, "I exhort therefore that.. supplications, prayers, intercessions . . . be made for all men. After the Acts of Adoration with which it opens, there follow a number of "Deprecations," relating to the sins or dangers of national or individual life, from which we pray Christ, as our "Good Lord," to deliver us. After these the " Obsecrations" plead the acts and sufferings of our Redeemer, as each having an efficacious power of its own. Then come the "Petitions "Supplications," which are full of intercessory prayer, for the Sovereign and the Royal Family, for the Clergy, for the Sovereign's counsellors and agents in the government of the Kingdom and in the administration of justice, for all

or

Christians, for all nations, for the increase of ourselves in love and obedience, for the advancement of all Christians in grace, for the conversion of those who are not yet in the way of truth, for persons in various troubles and dangers, for God's mercy to all men, and for our enemies; the whole closing with a prayer for the Divine Blessing on all the labours of our hands, and for His forgiveness of our sins, negligences, and ignorances. Such a fulness of supplications, combined with the comparative familiarity and homeliness of its subjects, makes the Litany welcome to the lips of every age; and it is none the less so in that it speaks a language of prayer which has been substantially that of our forefathers for twelve centuries.