Book of Common Prayer

Question 1

What is the Book of Common Prayer?

Answer 1

Official form of public worship in the Church of England since the sixteenth century

Question 2

What does it contain?

Answer 2

It contains:

1) the daily service of morning and evening prayer,
2) the forms for the administration of the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion,
3) the services for baptism, marriage, burial, the churching of
women after childbirth, the ordination of deacons and priests, and the consecration of bishops.

It also includes
4) the Psalter, 5) the Catechism, and 6) the scripture readings for
the collects (a specific collect, or short prayer, is provided for each Sunday of the year), and 7) the portions from the Gospels and Epistles appointed for each Sunday.

Question 3

Revisions

Answer 3

It has been revised several times and has in the past included forms of service for specific occasions, such as that acknowledging England’s delivery from the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605

Question 4

Act of Uniformity

Answer 4

The Book of Common Prayer was introduced in 1549 when Edward VI’s Act of Uniformity made it the mandatory form of national worship.

The work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, this prayer book was intended to replace the Latin Mass with a collective form of worship in English and to embody the Protestant theology of the Church of England.

Question 5

Canmer’s 1552 Revision of the BCP

Answer 5

Cranmer trod carefully around political difficulties and differences in public opinion, but his 1552 revision of the Prayer Book marked a more decisive turn to Protestantism of a Zwinglian kind: all references to the “mass” and “altar” were excised; the surplice was enjoined as the standard vestment; and explanatory notes were added, such as “the declaration on kneeling” (known since the nineteenth century as the “black rubric”), which stated that
kneeling at the communion did not imply adoration.

Question 6

Revision under Queen Elizabeth

Answer 6

The 1559 Book of Common Prayer issued by Queen Elizabeth was based on the 1552 Book. However, it omitted “the declaration on kneeling” and conflated the formulae used at the reception of the bread and wine in the 1549 and 1552 prayer books so as to allow worshippers and celebrants more freedom of interpretation about the theology of the Eucharist.

It included a rubric that restored the ornaments of the church and minister as they had been in the second year of Edward VI until the queen or archbishop made “other order.” This order was never forthcoming, and many saw the rubric as allowing “popish” ornaments.

Question 7

Puritan reaction to 1559 Book of Common Prayer

Answer 7

Formation around resistance to it. They were not happy with Elizabeth’s compromises, taking issue with the role of bishops or predestination.

They believed the prayer book was redolent of popery and that its imposition was a burden on the godly consciences both of ministers and their flocks formed a persistent strand in English Puritanism until at least the end of the seventeenth century.

Question 8

Specific complaints ranged from the retention of the term priest to the readings taken from apocryphal books of the Bible.

Answer 8

Puritans objected to the cap and surplice worn by the minister, standing at the reading of the Gospel, bowing at the name of Jesus, kneeling to receive the sacrament, the use of a ring in marriage, the making of the sign of the cross at baptism, and the burial service’s confident hope that the deceased would rise again to eternal life.

Beyond these particular “inconveniences,” Puritans resented the principle of such a minutely prescribed form of worship.

Question 9

How did Elizabethan Puritans such as John Field and Thomas Cartwright responded to the re-issue of the BCP?

Answer 9

They argued that the clergy were simply reading prayers rather than praying with the Spirit as St. Paul demanded.

They complained that set forms thwarted ministers in the exercise of their “gifts” for extemporized prayer and deadened devotion among the congregation.

Prayer book worship in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have justified these complaints.

Question 10

How many people owned the Book of Common Prayer?

Answer 10

Few among the congregation owned a copy of the prayer book, and many were illiterate, so the parish clerk led the laity’s responses. Although many may have learned the liturgy aurally, there were frequent laments from both Puritans and conformists about the mumbled or inaudible prayer, the passivity of the congregation, and the lack of emphasis on the intelligent preaching they believed the laity were hungry for and needed

Question 11

How did Elizabethan Puritans campaign against the Book of Common Prayer?

Answer 11

1) They produced their own alternative liturgy, A Booke of the Forme of Common Prayers (1584)

2) They lobbied Convocation and Parliament for relaxation of uniformity and for specific modifications of the prayer book

3) In their own parishes they adapted the liturgy and omitted parts of it.

Question 12

How did the authorities respond to their efforts?

Answer 12

By making conformity to the prayer book into a shibboleth by which to identify and penalize Puritan clergy.

Archbishop Whitgift’s articles of 1583 demanded among other things that ministers acknowledge that the Book of Common Prayer was lawful and
consonant with the word of God and that they promise to use it.

This requirement was extended to all those entering the ministry by the canons of 1604.

Although the drive to enforce clerical subscription at the beginning of James I’s reign claimed some notable Puritan victims, the king generally turned a blind eye to those modifying or omitting prayer book worship once they had subscribed. The millenary petition presented to James I in 1603 demanded revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and the consequent Hampton Court Conference led to minor amendments to the liturgy.

Question 13

To what extent did Puritans abandon use of the Book of Common Prayer in their services, esp. in 1630-1645?

Answer 13

Official tolerance or pragmatism in England had evaporated by the 1630s when Charles I and Archbishop Laud demanded conformity to the Book of Common Prayer and attempted to impose a new version on Scotland.

Liturgical issues, now combined with charges of “popish” practices and Arminian theology, were a major factor in the political crisis that led England into civil war.

Question 14

What happened to the Book of Common Prayer in 1645?

Answer 14

It was banned, and the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for the Public Worship of God, prefaced by an indictment of the Book of Common Prayer, was issued as a guide to ministers on how to structure their services.

Question 15

When did the Book of Common Prayer return?

Answer 15

With the monarchy: the 1661 Savoy Conference was a golden opportunity for revision, but the changes were minor; the readings from the Gospels and Epistles were taken from the Authorized Version, and a modified “black rubric” was reinstated.

The 1662 Act of Uniformity required clergy to offer their “assent and consent” to the Prayer Book. As hopes of reunion with the Church of England dwindled and Nonconformists grasped the opportunities presented by the 1689 Toleration Act, Puritan distaste for the Book of Common Prayer became irrelevant to the movement

Migrating to New England

Question 16

What change did the 1662 Act of Uniformity make?

Answer 16

It required clergy to offer their “assent and consent” to the Prayer Book. As hopes of reunion with the Church of England dwindled and Nonconformists grasped the opportunities presented by the 1689 Toleration Act, Puritan distaste for the Book of Common Prayer became irrelevant to the movement

Question 17

Thirty-nine Articles

Answer 17

historically defining statements of doctrines and practices of the Church of England with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. The Thirty-nine Articles form part of the Book of Common Prayer used by the Church of England

A series of defining documents were written and replaced over a period of thirty years as the doctrinal and political situation changed from the excommunication of Henry VIII in 1533, to the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570. These positions began with the Ten Articles in 1536, and concluded with the finalisation of the Thirty-nine articles in 1571. The Thirty-nine articles ultimately served to define the doctrine of the Church of England as it related to Calvinist doctrine and Roman Catholic practice.[1]

The articles went through at least five major revisions prior to their finalisation in 1571. The first attempt was the Ten Articles in 1536, which showed some slightly Protestant leanings – the result of an English desire for a political alliance with the German Lutheran princes.

The next revision was the Six Articles in 1539 which swung away from all reformed positions, and then the King’s Book in 1543, which re-established most of the earlier Roman Catholic doctrines. During the reign of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s son, the Forty-two Articles were written under the direction of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1552. It was in this document that Calvinist thought reached the zenith of its influence in the English Church. These articles were never put into action, owing to Edward VI’s death and the reversion of the English Church to Roman Catholicism under Henry VIII’s elder daughter, Mary I.

Finally, upon the coronation of Elizabeth I and the re-establishment of the Church of England as separate from the Roman Catholic Church, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion were initiated by the Convocation of 1563, under the direction of Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Question 18

Article 9 Of original or birth sin
ORIGINAL sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation..

Answer 18

Excerpt from the 39 Articles drawn in 1563 (based on the 42 articles of 1552) and endorsed by Convocation in 1571

Question 19

Article 10 Of Free-Will.
“The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”

Answer 19

Article 12 Of Good Works
ALBEIT that good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins and endure the severity of God’s judgement, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.

Question 20

Article 17 Of predestination
Predestination to life, is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly Decreed by his Counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation, those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to Gods purpose by his spirit working in due season: they through grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only begotten son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works: and at length by Gods mercy they attain to everlasting felicity.

Answer 20

As the godly consideration of Predestination and our Election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons and such as feeling in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: so for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation or into wretchlessness of most unclean living no less perilous than desperation.

Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise as they be generally set forth in Holy Scripture; and in our doings that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God.