at least be questioned. The system, as a system of numerous daily offices of public worship, prescribed for the use of the members of the Church, has been practically for hundreds of years abandoned throughout Christendom. So far as the offices survive at all, (and in the West it is but a fragment that does so,) two services, by aggregation, or three at the most, testify with no uncertain voice to the sound wisdom of the primitive and apostolic provision in this matter. The great Church of the West, moreover, had she but eyes to see it, has good reason, in the present degraded state of her ordinary worship, to rue the day when, in the shape of vastly multiplied, as well as complex and unvernacular services, she laid a yoke upon the neck of her children, which the event has shown that they were not able to bear."-Pp. 149, 150.

The western offices next engage his attention, and he shows at some length that they too are of eastern origin. Little indeed is known for certainty of them in their early stages, prior to the revision in the fifth century, but what appears all points to the east. The Eastern services, as we have seen, consisted mainly of psalms and hymns, with confessions and prayers, and were remarkable for an absence of Scripture lessons. They took place partly by day, partly by night, were nocturno-matutinal, and evening. The same features, viz., abundance of psalms and absence of lessons, are conceived by Grancolas to have constituted the Western ritual previously to the fifth century. Milman goes so far as to assert that for three centuries the Roman ritual was Greek, a view acquiesced in, Mr. Freeman says, by such opposite authorities as Cardinal Wiseman and Chevalier Bunsen. How came then the Western offices to assume their present form? Mr. Freeman rejects the tradition preserved by Durandus that Pope Damasus commissioned S. Jerome to rearrange the Roman office after the existing Eastern models, which had become more elaborated and been more fully developed, in order to meet the Arian heresy. Neither does Mr. Freeman allow that the Roman was derived from the Benedictine, but contends that both came from a common Eastern stock. The agent in the change he considers Cassian, conjointly with Pope Leo, while he attributes to the former exclusively (who had fixed his residence at Marseilles) the formation of that French variety of the Roman rite, to which we find our own old English offices correspond. And this brings us to our own Church.

Finding as we do, but one type of the ordinary daily services in East and West, there can be little doubt that, whatever be the origin of the early British Church or its relations to the see of Rome, its ordinary ritual presented the same features as elsewhere.

"If then it be asked, what was the ordinary service of the Church of this country from the first introduction of Christianity, down to the time of S. Augustine's arrival, it may be answered that here, as throughout Western Christendom, it was most probably a service of Psalms and

hymns; performed, originally at least, partly at night, partly in the early morning, and again in the evening; possessing perhaps the same fixed Psalms as the Eastern Nocturns and Vespers, with a considerable addition of continuous psalmody; that it commenced possibly with some kind of penitential preparation, or else with the Venite; was devoid of Scripture Lessons, the Psalms being used for the purposes of meditation as well as of praise; but contained responsive Canticles, among them the Te Deum, the Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis. The 51st and 63rd Psalms were also probably used in the Morning Office at day-break, with more Canticles, such as the Benedictus, the Songs of Moses, &c. Such, in their general outline, we may fairly presume, were the offices used by the Church of S. Alban and S. Amphibalus. The change to the offices introduced by S. Augustine, though considerable, would thus be no greater than the other churches of the West had experienced in the century or two preceding; and would be rather of the nature of a development than of an actual substitution."-Pp. 240, 241.

What services then did S. Augustine bring with him? Cassian's revival had affected the whole of Western Christendom. We meet with French, Spanish, Milanese varieties as well as Roman, all bearing marks of "connection with the East, through other channels, besides what they owe to the Cassianic movement;" and moreover, these first-named, exhibit "with much affinity, a marked independence of the Roman and each other." The English offices brought over by S. Augustine form another class of this great Orientally derived family. They are not Roman, as is usually assumed, though presenting many points of resemblance. Nevertheless, there are important particulars in which they differ, and in which they coincide with the Gallican varieties.

"These diversities as clearly establish the distinctness, as the correspondences before mentioned do the close affinity, of the two rites. For that the variations of the English use from the Roman are of the essence of it, and not, or rarely, the effect, as might be supposed, of a gradual departure from the forms at first received, appears in various ways. Some of them, as e. g. the Compline and Prime peculiarities, have every appearance of having come direct from the East. The whole rite is by many degrees more Oriental than the Roman. How should the English Church develope such Orientalisms? Again, it is well known that the Roman Church, on more than one occasion, used considerable efforts to assimilate the English use to her own; as, e. g., at the Council of Cloveshoo (748), and probably did so to some extent. Grancolas, who probably never had seen the English rite, hastily concludes hence that it was originally the same as the Roman; whereas it proves exactly the contrary. The fact that such material variation remained after all, argues the essential and invincible irreconcilableness of the two rites."-Pp. 247, 248.

Now, that S. Augustine had communications with Marseilles, (the former residence of Cassian the great reviser of Western offices), was well received by its Bishop to whose counsel and guidance he

was afterwards commended by S. Gregory; that he was consecrated at Arles, and was left at liberty to select for his infant communion all things tending to edify, which he might find in the Roman, Gallican, and any other Church; all this is matter of history, and will account for England inheriting a service really independent of the Roman, and more distinctly Oriental.

"The English variations bespeak an Oriental hand, and extend to the whole structure of the rubrical part of the Office, and to not a little of the office itself. Some alterations, tending to assimilate it to the Roman, such as certain of the Gelasian or Gregorian adjustments in respect of the collects or antiphons, S. Augustine may have introduced; though I think it more probable that even these had reached the French churches previously. But in any case, the stock upon which he grafted them was indisputably, I conceive, not the Roman, but the French, or pure Cassianic ritual."-P. 253.

We have now arrived at an important stage in our inquiry. The whole Western ritual, whether S. Benedict's variety, or the Roman, or English, or French, or Spanish, or Milanese, is derived from the East. While in the West, the simpler earlier ritual had remained stationary, perhaps declined, the East had “put” her apostolically received deposit" out to usury." Suddenly the Western branch became alive to the beauty and majesty of the Eastern offices, and her different Churches vied with each other in importing the features with which the East had been enriched. Among them the Church in this land received a new development, and her acceptance of Gallican offices marks the second period in her liturgical history. And this revision of her office books is her justification and her precedent for the further revision of the sixteenth century.

"But it is still more to the purpose of this work to observe, that the facts which have here been pointed out furnish a complete answer to that favourite theme of declamation against the English Church; viz., that in the full and fearless revision she made of her ritual in the 16th and 17th centuries, she committed an act unprecedented, singular, and schismatic. I have already had occasion to allude to the condemnation which has been freely and confidently pronounced upon particular features of her revised offices; as, for example, upon the penitential commencement and the thanksgiving close. We have seen how entire a justification those features receive from the primitive condition of our offices, and indeed from the general principles, recognized in the East and West alike, of Christian worship. But, as is well known, this sentence of condemnation is by no means limited to details, but extends to the act of revision itself, in all its parts. Now it is certain that neither the Western Church as a whole, nor any particular branch of it, is in a position to judge us in this matter; for she herself, that judges, has done the same things.' Of all the points in which Rome. and the West have sat in judgment on the English Church, there is not one in which they have not set us the example.

"To confine ourselves here to the daily offices. Did the English Church, in the 16th century, re-adjust the whole scheme of her services?

All the Churches of the West in the fifth and sixth centuries did the same. Did England add new features? Rome and the West imported new offices. Are we accused of fusing together offices originally distinct, by the omission of some things, and the transposition of others? They dismembered the great Morning Office of the East, and divided its spoils between their Lauds and Nocturns. Did our revision involve the rejection of the then existing scheme of Psalms, omitting the fixed and re-arranging the continuous psalmody? The West revolutionized hers no less; rejecting, we can hardly doubt, the 119th, and perhaps other anciently fixed Nocturns Psalms, and substituting for the free course of Psalms, which followed, a fixed daily portion. Was the number of psalms thus used in the English Church greatly reduced? So was it, in all probability, by the Western revision. Is it an unheardof thing for a Church to be for three centuries without antiphons? The whole West had probably had few or none for four or five. Did we, again, put our lection system on a new footing? Rome and the West devised the system itself. Did we increase the amount of Scripture used? They brought in the reading of Scripture into their Daily Offices for the first time. Did Ridley and Sanderson compose Collects? Leo invented them. Or, lastly, was the sin of the English Church in this, that she acted for herself as a national Church, and not in concert with the whole West? Nay, all the churches of the West acted with the same independence, revising, as we have seen, each one their own ritual; and that not even simultaneously, but in the course of two centuries. And the real composers and compilers' of services, after all, were Leo and Gregory, Isidore and Fructuosus, Cæsarius and Hilary.

"It is in no spirit of recrimination that these things are pointed out. On the contrary, as I have said at the outset, I conceive that the churches of the West were not only justified in the main principle of thus revising their ritual, but were, so far as we can judge, fulfilling therein a great and general law of the Church's growth and progress. All I desire to do is to point out this as a signal exemplification of the saying,

'Quam temerè in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam ;'

and to claim for the English Church of the 16th century the benefit of that weighty truth, which, though she was the first to enunciate it, the whole West had accepted and acted upon a thousand years before, viz., that

“The particular forms of divine worship, and the rites and ceremonies appointed to be used therein, being things in their own nature indifferent; it is but reasonable, that upon weighty and important considerations, such changes and alterations should be made therein, as to those that are in place of authority shall from time to time seem either necessary or expedient.'

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Freely, too, is it admitted, as was indeed noticed in the first chapter, that the changes effected in the West, though very great, were after all sufficiently conservative of the old landmarks to ensure ritual continuity. Only we claim no less for the English Revised Offices, as compared with the older forms, that (to adopt again the language of the document just quoted) this Church did indeed,

"Upon just and weighty considerations her thereunto moving, yield to make such alterations as were thought convenient; yet so as that the main body and essentials (as well in the chiefest materials, as in the frame and order thereof,) have still continued the same until this day.'' -Pp. 256-259.

We have now seen how the two, or at most three, daily services of the early Church, had been developed into the well-known sevenfold scheme. Of the grandness of the conception, or the beauty and the depth of the details of that noble system, there can be but one opinion. All that is wanting is its practical utility. It is too intricate for daily use. Forced upon the Church by the working of the monastic elements within her; whatever the seven-fold offices were in theory, they never were in practice, the devotions of the whole body of the faithful. The series of decrees from Archbishop Egbert downward, urging the attendance of the laity at these offices, while it disproves the fiction that they were originally intended for the clergy only, also bears testimony to the fact that the laity did not habitually attend them; so that at last this nonattendance was acquiesced in, and the offices came to be considered the peculiar heritage of the clergy. Under these circumstances our Reformers were called upon to act. What they had to do, and what they did, and how they did it, is well set forth by Mr. Freeman in the following passage. As the services had been originally two, and been increased to seven, the English revisers finding the seven impracticable, resolved to restore the two. But they restored them carefully. They did not make new services. Out of the old Matins, Lands, and Prime they formed their morning prayer; out of Vespers and Compline their evening prayer. And though we have had some general idea of this, yet Mr. Freeman has been the first to point out how carefully it was done; how the ideas of each service have been preserved; how one joins the other; "how truly and bona fide the new scheme was redacted and developed out of the older." Our extract is long, but its importance is our best apology.

"NOTE.-In these tables the dotted lines will show from which of the old Offices the parts of our own are derived. Any features transposed for the sake of comparison are included in brackets. S. signifies Sunday.