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re-establishment of the Convocation, or for some other authority for legalizing a revisal of the Liturgy, those who are conversant in ecclesiastical law could best determine.* Let there only be a readiness manifested in the rulers of our Israel to engage in this important work, and the best authorities could be easily ascertained, and no doubt, as easily procured. All that the writer wishes to add on this subject is, that as the principal responsibility would necessarily devolve upon our bishops, they should be fully entitled to the principal honour in its execution; and that for this purpose, they should be invested with full authority to direct, revise, and confirm every alteration before it was finally adopted, so that their

"From the establishment of the Convocation to the present time, the ordinary and legitimate exercise of legislative power has been vested in that body; nor can the long disuse of their services, be considered as more truly affecting their original authority and constitutional place in the church, than the determination of Charles the first to call together no more parliaments, could have made a parliament less a branch of the civil constitution of the realm." London Review.

names might justly be handed down to posterity as the grand instruments of accomplishing a work, the direct object of which would be to promote the stability and efficiency of the Established Church, and the spirituality and edification of its members.

CHAPTER II.

PUBLIC SERVICES.

Introductory Sentences-Exhortation-General ConfessionAbsolution-Lord's Prayer-Versicles and Gloria Patri— Psalms-Psalmody.

INDISCRIMINTAE censures of a long established and highly admired institution, are evidently the dictates of decided hostility, whereas a mild specification of defects, especially when accompanied with the proposal of a facile and effectual remedy, may justly be attributed to the purest friendship. An objector, indeed, is imperiously called upon to show that the defects of which he complains are not only real in themselves, but also susceptible of a remedy; for to inveigh against such imperfections as are necessarily connected with every human system,

displays the ignorance, if not the factious spirit of the declaimer.

It is under a deep impression of these sentiments, not unmixed with a considerable degree of hesitation and diffidence, that the writer presents the following suggestions to the sincere admirers of our established ritual. He has not the vanity to suppose that all his alterations will be deemed unobjectionable, much less that they will be regarded as the most suitable that might be proposed. It is probable, that some of them may be deemed unnecessary, and others more liable to censure than the evils complained of. All that he requests of the reader is, that he will candidly consider the separate value of the proposed emendations, and freely reject those which appear to him ill adapted for their object, but without prejudice to the remainder. Should the present work produce no other effect than that of eliciting the suggestions of an abler and more successful emendator, and thus be indirectly the means of promoting a judicious and

authorized revision of the Liturgy, it will not have been written without an adequate end. "The more perfect we can make our Church, the more secure will she be, and the timidity of the coward who refuses the aid of the physician till all medicine be too late, is equally to be condemned with the rashness of the empiric, who prescribes his patient into the grave."*

THE INTRODUCTORY SENTENCES.

The public Service of the Church of England is introduced by the minister's reading one or more passages of scripture, which are chosen by him out of a number appointed for that purpose. Perhaps a few others might have been beneficially added to the selection. Habakkuk ii. 20, Malachi i. 11, and Ps. xix. 14, might be prefixed as in the American Prayer Book, and Ps. xcv. 6, would appropriately close the whole.†

*Christian Remembrancer.

Hab. ii. 20,-"The Lord is in his holy temple : let all the earth keep silence before him."

Mal. i. 11,—“ From the rising of the sun even unto the

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