chaplains, Cosin, Lindsell, James, Duncan, &c. all bowing to the altar a comely gesture, and they practise it very often and profoundly, especially at their coming in and going out......... The representation of the death and passion of CHRIST is an action of humiliation, of sorrow, and weeping. Why then should our cathedral priests of Durham, pompously and gloriously attired in sumptuous copes embroidered with images, come to a brave painted altar with pipers and singers, making delicate melody in such a time of humiliation ?"—Ibid.

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"Our altar-worshippers bow their bodies down to the ground to the altar standing on the earth directly before their faces, yet they say they make legs to GOD and to CHRIST, not to the altar, than which what can be more absurd?...... To teach the choristers going up to the altar to make legs to GOD when they light the tapers, and when they have done them to go backwards with their faces towards the east, and looking on the altar make legs again to GOD; at every approaching near it, and every departure from it, at the taking up or setting down of any thing upon the altar, ever and anon to make a low curtsey......is vain, superstitious, and idolatrous.

"Dr. Cosin dishonoured and reviled Christian people in the church, yet he made low legs to the altar, so low that his breech was higher than his head, as was proved before the Lords in Parliament."-Ibid. pp. 13, 14.

[85]

"To this [Smart's charge, &c.] Dr. Cosin put in his answer, as far as he was concerned himself, upon oath; and proved it so well, even by Smart's own witnesses, that Mr. Glover, one of Smart's lawyers, told him openly at the bar of the House of Lords, that he was ashamed of him, and could not in conscience plead for him any longer. Whereupon the House of Lords dismissed the Doctor, and never sent for him more. As to the particulars of the charge against him, the Communion-table which is mentioned in it was set up by the Dean and Chapter, Mr. Smart himself being at that very time one of them, before Dr. Cosin was Prebendary there, or had ever seen the country: and the whole appurtenances and all the rest put together did not cost above £200, as appeared by the Chapter accounts. The copes also were brought thither before ever Dr. Cosin had any relation to the church, and whilst Mr. Smart

himself was not only Prebendary there, but allowed his part of the charge towards them, as appeared by the Act book. As for the picture of the TRINITY on any of the copes of the church, there was no such thing there in all Dr. Cosin's time, nor ever had been as far as could be learned. One of them indeed was embroidered with the story of the Passion; but that which the Doctor himself wore was only of plain white satin. The image of CHRIST, &c. which was said to be upon another of the copes, was nothing but the top of Bishop Hatfield's tomb, set up two hundred years before Dr. Cosin was born; and that too standing thirty feet high appeared not ten inches long, and so could hardly be discovered with any distinction by those who were not before advised what it was. As to the two hundred candles they were more than had been used all over the church in any day, and no more were lighted on Candlemas-day at night than on any other holy day, and sometimes less were set up that night than there had been on others. Nor did the Doctor ever forbid the singing of psalms, but used to sing them himself at morning prayers.”—Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, part II. p. 59.

Altars.
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Stone Altars.

1547, 1 Edw. VI.] "Two lights upon the high altar.”—Injunc

tions.

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"The priest

1549, 2 & 3 Edw. VI. till 1552, 5 & 6 Edw. VI.] standing humbly in the middes of the altar, setting both the bread and wine on the altar the priest shall say. Then the priest turning him to the altar, shall say. These words before rehearsed are to be said, turning still to the altar."-Rubricks in the Book of Common Prayer.

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Cverthrow of Stone Altars by Edward Eth's Nobles, and the Zuinglian Gospellers.

"John a Lasco bringing with him a mixed multitude of Poles and Germans, obtained the privilege of a church for himself and his, distinct in government and forms of worship from the Church of

England. This gave a powerful animation to the Zuinglian Gospellers (as they are called by Bishop Hooper and some other writers) to practise first upon the Church of England; who being countenanced, if not headed, by the Earl of Warwick, (who then began to undermine the Lord Protector,) first quarrelled [with] the Episcopal habit, and afterwards inveighed against caps and surplices, against gowns and tippets; but fell at last upon the altars, which were left standing in all churches by the rules of the Liturgy. The touching on this string made excellent music to most of the grandees of the court, who had before cast many an envious eye on those costly hangings, that massy plate, and other rich and precious utensils which adorned those altars. And what need of all this waste? said Judas, when one poor chalice only, and perhaps not that, might have served the turn. Besides, there was no small spoil to be made of copes, in which the priest officiated at the Holy Sacrament [during the first four years of the reign of Edward VI., in conformity with the rubricks respecting vestments in his first Prayer-book which were confirmed by Elizabeth, again confirmed in 1662, and are still in force]; some of them being made of cloth of tissue, of cloth of gold and silver, or embroidered velvet; the meanest being made of silk or satin, with some decent trimming. And might not these be handsomely converted into private uses, to serve as carpets for their tables, coverlids to their beds, or cushions to their chairs or windows. Hereupon some rude people are encouraged underhand to beat down some altars, which makes way for an order of the council-table to take down the rest and set up tables in their places, followed by a commission to be executed in all parts of the kingdom for seizing on the premises to the use of the king. But as the grandees of the court intended to defraud the king of so great a booty, and the commissioners to put a cheat upon the court lords who employed them in it; so they were both prevented by the lords and gentry of the country, who thought the altar-cloths, together with the copes and plate of their several churches, to be as necessary for themselves as for any others. This change drew on the alteration of the former Liturgy, reviewed by certain godly prelates......and confirmed by Parliament in the 5th and 6th years of this king, but almost as displeasing to the Zuinglian faction as the former was. In which conjuncture of affairs died King Edward the Sixth."-Heylyn's History of the Reformation, Introd.

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Queen Elizabeth's Permission for the substitution of Wooden for Stone Altars, provided that the former are placed Altarwise.*

1559. 1 Eliz.] "Whereas her Majesty understandeth, that in many and sundry parts of the realm the altars of the churches be removed, and tables placed for the administration of the Holy Sacrament, according to the form of the law therefore provided ; and in some places the altars be not yet removed, upon opinion conceived of some other order therein to be taken by her Majesty's visitors; in the order whereof, saving for uniformity, there seemeth no matter of great moment, so that the Sacrament be duly and reverently ministered; yet for observation of one uniformity through the whole realm, and for the better imitation of the law in that behalf, it is ordered that no altar be taken down, but by the oversight of the Curate of the church and the churchwardens, or one of them at least, wherein no riotous or disordered manner be used. And that the Holy Table in every church be decently made, and set in the place, where the altar stood, and there commonly covered, as thereto belongeth."-Injunctions.

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Stone Altars retained in the Royal Chapels and the Cathedrals, at and after the Reformation.

Circa 1619.] "In King Edward's first Service-book the word Altar was permitted to stand, as being the same that Christians for many hundred years had been acquainted withal. Therefore, when there was such pulling down of altars, and setting up of tables, in the

* It has been recently asserted by persons of undoubted orthodoxy, that stone altars are forbidden by the Church of England. This statement however appears to be destitute of proof. The injunction of Elizabeth above cited permits, but does not enjoin, the removal of stone altars: such altars remained in Bishop Overall's time in the Chapels Royal and many of the Cathedrals, and they were in very many places restored by the Caroline Bishops and Confessors. The rubrick directs that "the chancels shall remain as they have done in times past," i. e. posterior to Edward the Sixth's second Prayer-book, and the removal of the ancient altars; and on the supposition that the altar is an "ornament of the church" (as affirmed by Bishop Cosins), it ought to be of stone in obedience to the rubrick, which directs that "such ornaments of the church shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England, by authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward vi.”—EDD.

beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, she was fain to make an injunction to restrain such ungodly fury-(for which S. Chrysostom says, the Christians in his time would have stoned a man to death that should but have laid his hands on an altar to destroy it)-and appointed decent and comely tables covered to be set up again in the same place where the altars stood; thereby giving an interpretation of this clause [The table at the Communion time shall stand in the body of the church or in the chancel] in our Communion-book. For the word table here stands not exclusively, as if it might not be called an altar, but to shew the indifferency and liberty of the name; as of old it was called Mensa DOMINI, the one having reference to the participation, the other to the oblation, of the Eucharist. There are who contend now, it was the intent and purpose of our Church at this Reformation to pull down and wholly extinguish the very name of an altar: but all their reason being only the matter of fact that altars were then pulled down, and this place of the Liturgy that here it is called a table; we answer that the matter of fact proves nothing, being rather the zeal of the people that were newly come out of the tyranny that was used in Queen Mary's time. But if this were not by order of the Church, or according to the intent and meaning of the Church and State at the Reformation, how came it to pass then, that from that day to this the altars have continued in the King's and Queen's households after the same manner as they did before? They never dreamt there of setting up any tables instead of them and likewise in most cathedral churches, how was it that all things remained as they did before? And it will be worthy the noting, that no cathedral church had any pulling down, removing or changing the altar into a table, no more than in the court; but in such places only where Deans and Prebends were preferred, that suffered themselves more to be led by the fashions of what they had seen at Strasburg in Germany, and Geneva in France, and Zurich in Switzerland, than by the orders of the Church of England established, and continued in her Majesty's family, the likeliest to understand the meaning of the Church and State than any other place. Therefore they that will not either endure we should have, or they who will not believe we have, any altar allowed or continued in our Church (howsoever as it is here, and as it is in most of the Fathers, sometimes called a table), let them go to the King's court and most of our cathedral churches, and enquire how long they have stood there,

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