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Preface.
vii

at such an act of injustice, when we take into consideration the vast and sudden change in the principles of that journal. Not long since it condemned such meetings on Church questions as those which have been held in the Diocese of Exeter, which it now approves. The views, therefore, of a paper, in which a petty dispute of a proprietor with the Clergyman of his parish is made a national grievance, and by which a flame is attempted to be kindled throughout the country, are entitled to little consideration.

While the last chapter was going through the press, my attention was directed to a most extraordinary statement in the Record. Because the Prayer for the Church Militant has been neglected in many Churches, the editor of the Record, a paper professing to be conducted on religious principles, actually designates the use of that Prayer as a change. The prayer was enjoined by the Reformers, whom the Record boasts of following, and until modern times it was universally read. In Cathedral Churches and College Chapels it is still read on Sundays and holy-days: and on the latter also in all parochial Churches in which the festivals are observed. Of this fact the editor would have been aware, had he been accustomed to attend public worship on such occasions. Whether the Rubric enjoining the Prayer be right or wrong, it was framed by