apprehension of the essential distinction between the offices of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon. The ecclesiastical standpoint of the German divine is far removed from that of the framers of the English Ordinal. Yet it is plain that many of his thoughts and many of his turns of speech were adopted and wrought into the English book. To exhibit this in detail would occupy more space than can be allowed in the present work. But it may be stated that the long address of the Bishop to those about to be ordained Priests, which commences "You have heard, brethren, as well in your private examination," etc., seems throughout to be a rendering of Bucer's Latin, treated with such freedom as we find the Reformers employing elsewhere in their translations from more ancient sources.

A writer in the Church Quarterly Review (April, 1897), who can be no other than Dr. Richard Travers Smith (to whom must, I believe, be assigned the credit of first calling attention to the true connexion between Bucer's work and the English Ordinal *), remarks, "From a literary point of view it is interesting to note the admirable skill with which the English editor, doubtless Cranmer, manipulated the cumbersome composition of Bucer, and brought it to the noble form which we know so well.

He [Bucer] had the defects in style, and in clearness of thought, which so many Germans have since displayed, but along with them the learning and copiousness which have made their works stores

* In his pamphlet, We ought not to alter the Ordinal, (Dublin), 1872.

of suggestion for men of better literary powers." The parallelism between the two documents will be found exhibited in full (and more than six pages of the Church Quarterly are filled in this way), so that it is needless for me to do more than direct the reader's attention to a feature in the liturgical structure of our Prayer Book, which, till pointed out by Dr. Smith, had escaped the notice of the commentators.

CHAPTER III.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREEK LITURGIES AND

OF THE MOZARABIC RITE.

W

HEN the Reformers undertook to give to the English people an English Prayer Book, cleared of medieval superstition and reduced to conformity with the faith of the primitive Church, they entered upon a great work. It was natural for them to look around for help. The English servicebooks with which they had been familiar from their childhood might well supply the framework and much of the material for their design. But large questions were involved. We have already seen how they put under contribution the service-books that had been the outcome of the reforming movement in Germany. We have seen, too, that for much they were indebted to the reformed Breviary of the Spanish Cardinal Quignon, more particularly in respect to the simplification of daily prayers and the introduction of the continuous reading of Holy Scripture. But the liturgical researches of Cranmer were not restricted to these quarters. We have positive evidence that Cranmer, at least as early as 1544, had been studying the Liturgy of St. Chry

sostom.* And at this day we have in the "Prayer of St. Chrysostom" (which now closes not only the Litany, but also both Morning and Evening Prayer), a precious relic of his inquiries. It seems probable also that some of the petitions of the Litany are due to the same source.

It seems likely, in addition, that the Communion Service (or Liturgy proper) of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. (where the Invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the elements in the prayer of consecration appears as a new feature, unknown to the Roman and old English missals) bears a trace of the influence of this Liturgy. But, of course, without the actual possession of the text. of any Greek Liturgy, it was a matter of common knowledge among theologians that the Greek Church made the express Invocation of the Holy Spirit an essential in the consecration of the Eucharist. Again the Mozarabic Missal, which we can say, with a confidence little short of certainty, was in the hands of Cranmer,† had exhibited a large number of examples of a prayer that the Holy Spirit would bless the elements. Hence Cranmer may well have hesitated to determine practically whether the Roman theory of consecration (which made the recital alone of the words "Hoc est enim Corpus meum," etc., the essential and effective factor of

* Messrs. Gasquet and Bishop have shown that the printed sources of information as to the Greek Liturgies both in the original and in Latin translations were abundant before 1549. Edward VI. and the Book of Common Prayer, p. 187, note.

+ See p. 55.

consecration) represented the true and primitive form. The form of words here adopted in the First Prayer Book has certainly an air of hesitancy and caution. It seems to indicate a desire to comprehend both the Eastern and Western conceptions. The form runs: "Hear us, O merciful Father, we humbly beseech thee, and with thy Holy Spirit and word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ." This seems to me a deliberately composite structure, and (so far as I am aware) has no parallel in either the East or the West.*

The Invocation of the Holy Spirit was removed from the Second Prayer Book of Edward, and has never been restored in England. But Cranmer's original form has borne fruit. In 1637 in the noble, but ill-fated, Booke of Common Prayer for the use of the Church of Scotland (commonly, though not quite correctly, called Laud's Liturgy) the words, with some modification, were restored as follows:"Hear us, O merciful Father, we most humbly beseech thee, and of thy almighty goodness vouchsafe so to bless and sanctify with thy word and Holy Spirit these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son; so that we receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and

* I take it that the term "word" here refers, as understood by Cranmer, to the formula of institution. See p. 51.

E