enactments by addition and excess, is, in our apprehension, as wrong as a refusal to act up to its requisitions. Every Bishop, Priest, and Deacon is sworn to comply with those injunctions: "to obey is better than sacrifice", and were the prescribed English Ritual carried out in all its fulness, there would then be, at least so far as mere externals go, little more to desire. Let us endeavour to restore everywhere amongst us the Daily Prayers, and (at the least) weekly Communion; the proper Eucharistick vestments, lighted and vested altars, the ancient tones of Prayer and Praise, frequent Offertories, the meet celebration of Fasts and Festivals. (all of which and much more of a kindred nature is required by our ecclesiastical statutes): but let us be careful not to retard the general return of the Clergy to Rubrical regularity, by attempting as individuals, and by the adoption of isolated practices, to do more than our Church sanctions in the ceremonial departments of Divine Service.

It is not, then, as giving a licence for illegal and uncanonical innovations that the precedents above alluded to are of value and importance. They will be found so (1.) as illustrative and interpretative of the rubrick in cases of doubt or difficulty, whether relative to the conduct of the Divine Offices, or to church arrangement and decoration: and further (11.) as directory in matters of the latter description, and in regard to those pious observances, e. g. processions and the like, where a certain degree of liberty is allowed. by our Communion to its members and ministers. Το elucidate our meaning by examples,-We shall seek in vain in the rubrick for any distinct mention of the surplice, cope, or chasuble, altar-lights, fronts, and coverings*; the only allusion which it makes to these being comprised in the command that "such ornaments of the church and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be

Perhaps we ought to except the order concerning the "fair white linen cloth" in the Communion Office.

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." Those persons who are unacquainted with the "ornaments" here intended, or are in quest of precedents for their complete resumption, will find in the Hierurgia copious information derived from authentick sources respecting them, and authorities in evidence of the almost uninterrupted "use" of many, if not the whole of them,

E. g. of copes (in cathedrals, and on occasions of peculiar solemnity); and of altar-lights (in cathedrals and many parochial churches). At p. 187 of this volume (note) will be found ample evidence that two lights on the altar (as distinct from the light or lamp attendant upon the pyx) were among the "ornaments in this Church of England, by authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI.," and are therefore enjoined by the present rubrick above quoted. The proof that the retention of these "ornaments" is ordered by our Church, has been thus succinctly stated in a recent publication: "(1.) In the injunctions of Edward VI., set forth in 1547, the first year of his reign, it is ordered that all deans, archdeacons, parsons, vicars, and other ecclesiastical persons, shall... suffer from henceforth no torches, nor candles, tapers or images of wax, to be set before any image or picture, but only two lights upon the high altar, before the sacrament, which, for the signification that CHRIST is the very true light of the world, they shall suffer to remain still.' (2.) That such 'lights' were in this Church of England....in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI.' appears from Archbishop Cranmer's Articles to be enquired of in the Visitations in the Diocese of Canterbury' in that year (1548), in which he asks 'whether they suffer any torches, candles, or tapers, or any other lights in their churches, but only two lights upon the high altar?' (3.) The act of 31 Henry VIII. c. 8, declared 'that the king's proclamations, set forth by the advice of his privy council, were to be obeyed as though they had been made by authority of parliament.' The aforesaid injunctions of King Edward were made by the advice of his privy council;' and having been issued before the statute which gave to injunctions so set forth parliamentary authority was repealed, possessed such authority, and retained, of course, their original force after the repeal of that statute. This view of the subject is further confirmed by the internal evidence of the proclamations, &c. issued in the second year of Edward, in which the previous injunctions are still referred to as existing and obligatory; and by the fact that Cranmer's Articles' (before cited), in the same year, were framed upon them in the very matter of lights, and that such articles are always framed upon the existing ecclesiastical law. Consequently two lights upon the altar were 'in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI.:' and (4.) are consequently enjoined by the rubrick in the Prayer-book immediately preceding

from the date of the Reformation until very recent times. Again, as regards the garb of the preacher in the Morning Service-a point upon which the rubrick is considered by some not explicit-the Hierurgia affords a body of evidence amply sufficient to determine the Church's intention upon this vexed question.* Again, in respect to the station of the celebrant at the Holy Communion (i.e. as to whether he ought to stand at the north end or in front of the altar, facing the east, during the solemn act of consecration), concerning which the mere force of the words of the rubrick may not oblige a clergyman to turn from his congregation in such a way as to give the idea of his being engaged in any priestly function, the Hierurgia fixes their signification by proving, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, that the custom of the clergy of the Reformed Anglican Church in her best days, was to stand at the "bread-side" of the Holy Table, with "their faces to the east and their backs to the people," when consecrating the Eucharistick elements: and that when the Presbyterians, at the Savoy Conference, thought the rubrick so much favoured the ancient catholick practice, as to petition for its alteration on the ground that it is fit and convenient for the minister to turn to the people throughout the whole ministration, the bishops of the Church and the latest revisers of the Offices then asserted and justified the principle, that it is convenient "to turn another way" when the priest is acting for the people in "things that pertain to GOD." Again, the Book of Common Prayer says nothing, totidem verbis, of the distinctness and separation of the chancel from the nave, of rood-screens, stalls, &c.: in

the Order for Morning and Evening Prayer daily throughout the year,' which stands thus: And here it is to be noted, that such ornaments of the Church, and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth.'". Obedience to the Church in Things Ritual, &c. pp. 20, 21. 8vo. 1847.

See the Ecclesiologist, vol. v. pp. 103-114.

this case, the Hierurgia attests that, according to our best ritualists, the first rubrick in the Prayer Book (i.e. the chancels shall remain as they have done in times past), requires the retention of all these features of catholick arrangement, so dear to the lovers of primitive order and christian symbolism. Such are a few examples of our first position respecting the worth of our Hierurgical collections. We proceed to give two or three illustrations of our second. Is the church restorer at a loss (in the absence of precise rubrical or canonical guidance), how suitably to decorate the eastern wall of his chancel, the Hierurgia will direct him to choose for that purpose hangings of costly material and appropriate colour, and prove by numerous documents that such" ornaments" have had the best and highest sanction in our Church since the Reformation: or, being a bishop, is he desirous of drawing up a satisfactory service for the consecration of altar-plate or the reconciliation of desecrated sanctuaries, the Hierurgia will refer him for precedents to the offices which Laud, Sancroft, and Hacket deemed suitable for similar occasions: or, being a parish priest, is he in doubt whether, e.g. Dedication feasts; rogation and other processions; the separation of the sexes at publick worship; the mixed chalice at the holy Eucharist; the use of the credence-table; flowers, crosses, incense, pictures and imagery in churches; feretories, herses, banners, escutcheons, and the Holy Communion at funerals; have the sanction of the Church of England, the Hierurgia will convince him that the maintenance of all these is perfectly compatible with her obedience, and has been so regarded by her staunchest and most dutiful sons.

We have now, we believe, said enough to exhibit the intention and value of the present volume: and we have said it not boastfully (because any persons with some little amount of reading, patience, and diligence, and with our means of access to publick and private libraries, might have

done as much as, and perhaps more than, we have effected in the Hierurgia Anglicana), but in order that our motives and labours may not be misrepresented or stigmatized as disloyal to our Church and Papistical in tendency, by the apologists of rubrical irregularity so long as it diverges on the side of Puritanism, in our Communion. We take our stand on the ground held by Andrewes, Bancroft, Laud, Wren, Montague, and their fellow confessors, and we claim, with them, for the English Church, the revival of all the vestments and ornaments to which, it can be proved, she is justly entitled. In reference to the Eucharistick vestments in particular, we are surprised that the ecclesiological movement of the last ten years has accomplished little or nothing towards their restoration. In the course of the above space of time we have witnessed the revival amongst us of many usages concerning which the injunctions of the Church are not nearly so obvious and direct as in the matter in question. We have been privileged to walk in white-robed procession with gleaming banners (vexilla Regis),

flourished fair

With the REDEEMER'S Name:"

:

We have assisted at High Communion, when jewelled cross and chalice, embroidered frontal and lighted tapers, have decorated the stone altar we have seen, here and there, the reedification of churches and chancels, "all glorious within," as before the overflowings of ultraprotestant sacrilege and impiety: but nowhere have we witnessed one instance of compliance with the rubrick, "Upon the day and at the time appointed for the ministration of the Holy Communion, the priest that shall execute the holy ministry, shall put upon him the vesture appointed for that ministration,

Since the above was written we have heard that a chasuble was worn by an English Priest, at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, on a recent festal occasion; and that a Priest in the Diocese of Exeter has, for some time past, officiated at the altar similarly apparelled.