CHAPTER II.

THE INFLUENCE OF LUTHER, MELANCTHON, AND BUCER ON THE FIRST PRAYER BOOK OF EDWARD VI., AND THUS UPON OUR PRESENT PRAYER BOOK.

HE First Prayer Book of Edward VI. owes much to other foreign ecclesiastics as well as to Cardinal Quignon; and many features traceable to German sources are still embodied in our Prayer Book. It was both natural and reasonable that the English Reformers should look with interest towards the great religious movement on the Continent, and to the action there taken in the direction of liturgical reconstruction. More particularly the reforming efforts of the Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied, Prince Elector of the Empire (who in the end died, like Cranmer, excommunicated by Rome), attracted the attention of our Archbishop. Archbishop Hermann, though, as it would seem, not himself a man of any considerable erudition, had called to his aid Martin Bucer and the learned Philip Melancthon, the pride and wonder of the University of Wittenberg. With their aid Hermann put forth, first in German (1543) and afterwards in a Latin form (1545), a book which had a very large

influence upon the English Prayer Book. An English translation of the Latin appeared in 1547 entitled, "A simple and religious consultation of us Hermann, by the grace of God Archbishop of Cologne and Prince Elector, etc., by what means a Christian reformation, and founded in God's word, of doctrine, administration of the Divine Sacraments, of ceremonies may be begun," etc. The demand for this book appears to have been so considerable that a second (and revised) English edition appeared in 1548. In the following year the first English Prayer Book appeared.

Our Litany owes several suffrages to Hermann ; and some of the most beautiful features in our two great sacramental services, that for the Holy Communion and that for Holy Baptism, are distinctly traceable to the work of Bucer and Melancthon as embodied in Archbishop Hermann's Simplex ac pia Deliberatio, or, to be quite exact, its original form in the German tongue, which sometimes appears to approach our English more closely. Thus the suggestion of the "Comfortable Words" came from this source, and three out of the four sentences are taken directly from it.

And (though I have not seen it hitherto noticed by commentators) the suggestion of the beautiful, and here most appropriate, verse, "Come unto Me all that travail," etc., which has been generally supposed to be an original and independent act of the English Reformers, may be traced not improbably to a passage in the preliminary discourse on the Lord's Supper in Hermann's work, where we read

(fol. lxxxvii., verso), "So great a benefit, therefore, of our Lord Christ, freely offered, men ought not despise, but rather receive with the utmost eagerness and the greatest thankfulness, mindful of these blessed words of the Lord inviting us to Himself: 'Come unto Me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,' for with this food and this drink He refreshes and revives (recreat) to life eternal."

It may be remarked that in Hermann the sentences of Scripture (which, in addition to the three in our service, contained John iii. 35 and the beginning of 36, and Acts x. 43) are placed between the Confession and the Absolution. And it may be questioned whether that is not a more fitting position for them than that which they occupy in our service.

Again, to this source may be traced several expressions in the Exhortations and in the Confession and Absolution.* Yet in dealing with these forms the English Reformers showed an independent and critical spirit, making alterations in them as they thought fit. If they did not regard the ancient forms of the Church's worship as too sacrosanct to be touched, it was not likely that they would feel scruples in dealing, as wisdom suggested, with the

* I shall not discuss the question whether the variations of our Prayer Book from the old English Missal in the narrative of the Institution of the Eucharist, contained in the Prayer of Consecration, are due to the Mozarabic or to the Brandenburg-Nuremberg KirchenOrdnung (1533). I lean rather to the latter. Material for a comparison of the three forms, English, German, and Mozarabic, is conveniently exhibited in GASQUET and BISHOP'S Edward VI., etc., appendix vi.

productions of even such eminent men as Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer.*

Another feature of our Communion Service that was in part suggested by Hermann is the form which in our present Prayer Book appears as the second of the two alternative Post-Communion Prayers. But here our English Reformers were unable (obviously for doctrinal reasons, which must not here be discussed) to follow German guidance beyond the general conception and the opening words.

Again, our Prayer "for the whole state of Christ's Church," though vastly superior to the two corresponding alternative forms in Hermann, "pro omnibus hominum statibus et necessitatibus Ecclesiæ," owes perhaps as much to the latter as to the prayer for the Church in the Canon of the Sarum Missal. Though it seems to be due mainly to the original work of our Reformers that we possess this prayer in all its comprehensive scope and tender beauty of expression, it may be remarked, in passing, that the words just quoted from Hermann, as well as the words "pro universali statu ecclesiæ" in a rubric of the Sarum Missal (see the nine collects for Good Friday), make it more probable that the word "whole" (in the expression, "the whole state of Christ's Church") was used by the Reformers in the

* Thus while the opening words of the Cologne Confession are beyond doubt the source of the corresponding words in our own, we are at once sensible of the marked difference in the words which follow :-"Omnipotens, æterne Deus, Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, creator omnium, judex cunctorum hominum, agnoscimus et deploramus nos in peccatis conceptos et natos, ideoque ad quævis mala pronos," etc.

sense of "entire," "complete," "universal," rather than, as is sometimes suggested, "healthy," or (as it appears in one old English formula) "the good state" of the Church militant here on earth.

The exquisitely tender and beautiful Benediction with which our Communion Service closes owes something, I think, to Hermann, or perhaps to the Brandenburg-Nuremberg Order of 1533. The first part, "The peace of God which passeth all understanding," etc., had appeared substantially in 1548 as the conclusion of Cranmer's Order of the Communion, where the words, "in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord," run closer to the verse of Philippians (iv. 7), on which it was based. But the insertion of the word "and" before "in His Son," etc., was certainly a little awkward. The awkwardness of construction was got rid of in 1549 by striking out the "in." It might have been better if the "and" had been struck out. But even as it stands it is a beautiful and impressive close to the service.

The commentators have not, so far as I know, been able to find an exact parallel to the second half of the Benediction in the medieval servicebooks. The words "be amongst you and remain with you always" seem to have been suggested by Hermann's "Benedictio Dei Patris, et Filii et Spiritus sancti nobiscum, et maneat in æternum. Amen," which in the English translation (1548) appeared as "The Blessing of God.... be with us and remain with us for ever." The change of us into you marks Cranmer's sense of the authoritative priestly character of the act of benediction. The Brandenburg