Page:The Parson's Handbook - 2nd ed.djvu/30

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

14

THE PARSON'S HANDBOOK

the censorious Protestantism with which we are familiar.^[1]

4. From the prefaces the Prayer Book takes us to the Calendar, where we find, as we should expect, a simplification indeed, but a simplification which contains all the main features of the old,—the great feasts, and the seasons, the saints’ days (which are broadly classified into two divisions only). Hidden away under the ‘Lessons proper for Holy-Days,’ as if specially to secure them against Puritan attacks, we find the old phrase the ‘Annunciation of our Lady,’ and the old names for the services of ‘Mattins’ and ‘Evensong.’ Passing through the Calendar, with its careful provision for a continuous reading of the Holy Bible, we come upon a list of the ‘Vigils, Fasts and Days of Abstinence’ which are ‘to be observed,’^[2] as of old time.

From this we come to the rubric as to the ‘accustomed place’ in which Morning and Evening Prayer are to be said, a rubric that was revised in 1559 by the significant omission of the provision of the Second

↑ This is made still clearer by the 30th Canon touching the very same point of the abuse of ceremonies. ‘But the abuse of a thing doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies, which doth neither endamage the Church of God, nor offend the minds of sober men; and only departed from them in those particular points, wherein they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity, and from the Apostolical Churches, which were their first founders.’ Here the intense conservative reverence of the English Church for the old ceremonies, and its desire to destroy nothing that could be defended on the ground of antiquity, is made even clearer. But it must be confessed that those who try to read in the broad tolerance of this Canon a sanction for the imitation of modern Roman Catholic customs, are hard pressed for an excuse.
↑ And so indeed they were: e.g. an entry in the register in Darsham Church—‘A license granted to Mr. Thomas Southwell to eat meat in Lent, aged 82, and sickly, by John Eachard [Vicar], for which he paid 6s. 8d. for the use of the poor in Darsham, according to the statute, March 4, 1638.’

[1] This is made still clearer by the 30th Canon touching the very same point of the abuse of ceremonies. ‘But the abuse of a thing doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies, which doth neither endamage the Church of God, nor offend the minds of sober men; and only departed from them in those particular points, wherein they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity, and from the Apostolical Churches, which were their first founders.’ Here the intense conservative reverence of the English Church for the old ceremonies, and its desire to destroy nothing that could be defended on the ground of antiquity, is made even clearer. But it must be confessed that those who try to read in the broad tolerance of this Canon a sanction for the imitation of modern Roman Catholic customs, are hard pressed for an excuse.

[2] And so indeed they were: e.g. an entry in the register in Darsham Church—‘A license granted to Mr. Thomas Southwell to eat meat in Lent, aged 82, and sickly, by John Eachard [Vicar], for which he paid 6s. 8d. for the use of the poor in Darsham, according to the statute, March 4, 1638.’

[1]

[2]