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280
History of the Nonjurors.

in our present office: but he thinks that express terms are desirable.

A fourth thing is specified, namely, the Restoration of the Oblatory Prayer, which in the First Liturgy came after the Consecration Prayer. In that prayer are the following words: "We thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy Son hath willed us to make." Collier's view of this prayer is thus stated: "The Oblatory Prayer goes upon this ground, that the Holy Eucharist is a proper sacrifice: and that Our Blessed Saviour, at His last supper, offered the bread and wine to God the Father, as the symbols of his body and blood, and commanded His apostles to do the same."[1] As before, several testimonies from antiquity are produced, besides the authority of Hickes in his Christian Priesthood, and Johnson in his Unbloody Sacrifice. He closes with an allusion to Bucer Calvin, and Peter Martyr, to whom our reformers are supposed to have yielded, in rejecting these four practices. "From hence we infer," says he, "that the explanations, as they are called, in the Second Book, were not made without compliance with the weakness of some people; not without condescension to those who had more scruples than understanding, more heat than light in them."[2]

In a very short time, an Answer was published by a Nonjuror.[3] Collier had written with moderation, and the reply evinces a similar spirit. The writer is


  1. Reasons, &c. 26.
  2. Reasons, &c. 34.
  3. No Reason for Restoring the Prayers and Directions of Edward VI.'s First Liturgy. By a Nonjuror. London, 1717. Spinkes was, I believe, the Author. It is assigned to him by Watt.