In this sermon transcript, the preacher discusses the three main themes of the gospel: our sin, our need for pardon, and God's grace and promise of forgiveness through Christ. The sermon emphasizes the importance of faith, trust, thanksgiving, and dedication to God's service. The liturgy of the communion service is described as a double sequence of these themes, with the first part focusing on the proclamation of the gospel through words and the second part through the sacraments of receiving bread and wine. The sermon references Bible verses such as John 3:16 and Matthew 11:28 to highlight the promises of God to sinners.

O God, our Father in Heaven, Thou hast called us to love Thee with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we pray that Thou wilt enable us to use our minds rightly in learning of these Thy servants of old, who love Thee with all their hearts, and who set us so noble an example of loyal and faithful service to their Master. We ask it for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. At the end of last session, I was just in process of introducing you to Elizabeth I of England, and the problem that faced her when she became Queen in 1558 and had to devise a religious settlement for England. Her problem was, should she go Protestant or Catholic? And if she went Protestant, what sort of Protestantism should she establish? Well, there was really no question that she would have to go Protestant. Had she, with Mary, gone Catholic, she would have had straight away to admit her own illegitimacy, because the Roman Church, of course, didn't recognise the validity of Henry VIII's divorce, and she was the child of Henry's second wife, not the first. Furthermore, she knew that her people wouldn't stand it, so there was really no question of going Roman, although Elizabeth wanted a settlement that would keep the Roman Catholics guessing and keep them hoping that she might very soon commit herself to their cause. She must then go Protestant, but then the question was, could she afford to go Protestant, and what sort of Protestantism should she risk her money on, if I may put it that way? It was, in fact, a rather bold decision to take, any decision in that situation would have been a bold one, because in Europe, the Roman cause was in the ascendant, the Counter-Reformation was on, France and Spain had patched up their war and were there together, ready to fight England, if they were told to. Furthermore, Continental Protestantism was weak. Continental Protestantism, by the way, from a political standpoint, meant the Lutherans, the Lutheran states of Germany. We think, I suppose, of Continental Protestantism chiefly in terms of the little towns of Switzerland, Zurich and Geneva, but they were perfectly useless from the standpoint of military alliances and foreign policy in Europe. And when Elizabeth, as a politician, thought about the Continental Protestants, she thought about the Lutheran princes in Germany. And they, as I say, at this time were weak, and in terms of actual logistics, on the continent, across the English Channel, the Roman cause was undoubtedly the stronger. So what was she to do? Well, she decided she'd make her bold decision, she would go Protestant, but she would go Protestant in a way that, as I said a moment ago, would keep Roman Catholics guessing. Also, she would try to go Protestant in a way which, on the one hand, would keep her in with the Lutherans, because they would acknowledge her, they would be prepared to acknowledge her as one of them, and yet on the other hand, in a way which would not unduly outrage the Swiss-type Protestants, the Marian exiles, the men who'd taken their ideals from Geneva and the Swiss cities, the men who'd be coming back from their exile under Mary and hoping, and would be hoping now, to mould the Church of England and make it go their way. So she decided she would make a settlement which looked temporary, she would hold out hope to all parties of further religious changes at some unspecified future date, and she'd keep them all guessing, you see, as to which way the cat would jump at their future date, keep them all hoping that Elizabeth would finally go 100% their way, she would keep single, there may have been psychological reasons why she wanted to keep single, we don't know, but quite certainly she made a magnificent political weapon out of her sinsterhood, she undoubtedly from the first was quite clear that she was going to use it as a diplomatic weapon, holding out, you see, hope in all directions that she would ally herself by marriage with some European prince or other. Who would it be? One of the Catholics? One of the Protestants? Nobody was to be ruled out, the idea was to keep everyone guessing. If I may talk a lyrical for a moment, Elizabeth was smart. Thus, by following this policy, she would gain time, she might gain more, but at least she would gain time, and in the few years of time that she gained, she might have hoped of restoring the economic fortunes of the country, doing something about the coinage which Henry VIII would debate, building up British trade, which was very stagnant, building up British credit on the continent, which was nil, generally establishing the strength of the nation, which was in a very run-down condition. And VIII said, for the credit of Elizabeth, until 1570 this policy of hers worked. And then in 1570 she was excommunicated by the Pope. But even after 1570 it went on working because the strength that had been built up in that time was sufficient for England to maintain its position against the forces of Popery all the way through the rest of Elizabeth's reign. There were Popish plots against Elizabeth's life and she managed to evade them. There was finally the Spanish Armada, which, partly through the help of the elements, was destroyed and came to nothing. So that as a judgment on the whole of Elizabeth's reign we can say that as a result of, partly with the help of some happy providences, the policy worked. But you can see that from the religious standpoint, from the standpoint of men coming back from Switzerland hoping to give the Church of England a new Geneva-type look, this policy of Elizabeth didn't hold out much hope. And VIII said also, Elizabeth's policy is clear to later generations, but she didn't broadcast to the nation what she was doing naturally. The success of it depended on keeping everyone guessing. And so the Puritans and those Protestants in England who wanted further reformation, they, like others, were kept guessing. The hope for future reformation was never denied in turn. But on the other hand, Elizabeth consistently refused to do any of the things that they asked for. They could never understand why. But in the light of what I've said, perhaps you can see why. Religious change in the country would inevitably have meant a starting of new arguments and the creating of new upsets. And for the policy that Elizabeth was seeking to pursue, the maximum of national unity at each stage was absolutely essential. The nation must pull together if they were ever to get out of the kind of economic and political weakness in which they found themselves. That then is, in a very rough outline, the background of Elizabeth's reign. She made her settlement, the settlement which she thought would keep the nation together, and she held on to it. It was part of her policy not to change it for anything which would have run the risk of greater disruption and so a rejection of national unity on the religious front. Therefore, right from the beginning, as far as the Queen was concerned, there was no hope for the Puritans. But they didn't know that. This must be understood right at the beginning of the story. This explains why it was, in fact, such a sad story as you're now going to hear. First, though, the details of the religious settlement that Elizabeth established. The facts recorded in this section of the note stretch over the years 1559 to 1571. In 1559, Elizabeth put through Parliament two enactments. First, an act of supremacy, which did the following thing. It repealed all the Romanising ecclesiastical legislation that Queen Mary had had passed. Once again, it abolished papal authority in the Church of England and the nation of England too. It gave to Elizabeth the title of Supreme Governor in all spiritual and temporal causes. That is, it put her in supreme charge of Church discipline and the outward order of the Church as well as putting her in supreme charge of the nation and every branch of national life. It required from all officers in Church and State an oath of allegiance to her as Supreme Governor in both these departments. And it put into Elizabeth's hands and this was something new all ecclesiastical jurisdiction all action, all judicial process against both heresy and chism. Well, Elizabeth wanted a united Church and that's why that particular certification was made. And then she set up a body of ecclesiastical commissioners responsible directly to her whose business it was to keep tabs on everything that was going on in the Church to communicate directly with her in all cases and to communicate directly with her in all cases where there was trouble with heresy or danger of chism so that she might take direct action from herself as from the Crown, you see. Well, that in sum was the substance of the Act of Supremacy. And then with that in the same year went an Act of Uniformity which restored almost unchanged the second Edwardian prayer book that is the Prayer Book of 1552. Now, I think I'd better tell those of you who didn't have the fortune to be brought up Anglicans a little bit about this English prayer book because for all I know you don't know very much about it at all. Be it known to you then that there were two editions of a reformed Book of Common Prayer under Edward VI the first in 1549 the second in 1552. It was a book for the ordering of worship throughout England. Previously, there had been different forms of divine service used in different parts of the country. But Henry VIII who also, like Elizabeth was anxious to be in as direct control of the church as possible Henry VIII had believed in the value of uniformity. Everybody worshipping all over the country worshipping God the same way. And his Archbishop Cranmer who became Edward's Archbishop had also believed in the value of uniformity from a pastoral standpoint. It had seemed to him obvious that if you find the best form of service well then the most edifying thing all over the country is to have everybody using the best form of service rather than have some people using an inferior mode and manner of worshipping God. So even under Henry VIII forms of prayer for the whole country had been produced. And under Edward VI you had these two complete prayer books each of them for the use of every congregation in England. And their contents were approximately as follows. Together with a calendar and a lectionary there went a pattern for morning prayer and evening prayer. Two services for the Lord's Day and indeed Cranmer hoped on every day. Now that never came off but he hoped for it. Then there was a litany a general form of intercession that could be used for corporate prayer at any time. Then there were sacramental services baptism and the Lord's Supper. Then there were what's called occasional offices consolation, marriage thanksgiving for women after the birth of a child a little form of service called the Churching of Women and a funeral service. Also an ordinal also a set of scripture readings and prayers. Use the technical name collects, epistles and gospels for every Sunday of the Church's year and all the special saints' days that were kept, that were appointed for keeping in the prayer books. The rule of thumb which the English reformers used for the reforming of the enormous number of saints' days that were kept in the medieval church was to say that we will only observe the days of scriptural saints and we will not observe the days of saints who are not mentioned in the scriptures. And this was the use that you find regarding saints' days in the Edwardian prayer books. The principle on which these prayer books were compiled was a principle of reformed traditionalism. The English reformers were Lutheran in their attitude to ecclesiastical ceremonies. They took the line that provided ceremonies and prescribed usages were not contrary to scripture and had an obvious usefulness, or were held or thought to have an obvious usefulness in making for good order and edification in Christian worship then they might properly be kept. Again, a lot of medieval usages were dropped as being dumb and meaningless and unprofitable. Dumb ceremonies was the word actually used of them in the preface to the prayer book. But says the preface, we believe that the ceremonies that have been retained here as they are are useful orderly, instructive. The service of Holy Communion was of course from one standpoint the most significant feature in these reformed prayer books because the whole of the Reformation conflict kept revolving around the doctrine of the Mass and the service of the Mass. Where you had written in, as you will know, on the one hand the principle of transubstantiation, on the other hand the principle that the Lord's Supper is a propitious sacrifice for sin. And it struck at the central Reformation testimony to the person of Christ and the finished work of Christ. And so whenever anyone produced a new Communion service to replace the old Mass everyone went through it with a tooth comb to see what doctrine it was putting in the place of the Mass. Well, Cranmer's service of 1549 he believed taught a doctrine which as we know from his own exposition of it was identical of substance with that of Calvin set out in the Institute. It's the doctrine of the real presence of the glorified Christ not in the element but with his people as together they do what he told them to do in remembrance of him. It's the doctrine of genuine spiritual nourishment from Christ through faithful believing shall I say covenanting reception of the consecrated elements as we receive the bread and wine in our hearts giving thanks to the Lord and committing ourselves afresh to him so we are really nourished and spiritually strengthened by him. This follows says Calvin and Cranmer from the that it is precisely a right of eating and drinking receiving food, being nourished, that's the symbolism and our Lord surely wouldn't have instituted such a right had there not been genuine spiritual nourishment resulting from taking part in it. The symbolism then points to the reality of spiritual benefits spiritual blessings through right reception of the Lord's supper. But as I say there's no real presence of Christ in the consecrated elements and equally there is no propitiously sacrifice in the Holy Communion. There's only a remembrance of the Lord's sacrifice and an offering to him of the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and service, dedication to the doing of his will by the congregation. Remembering his atoning sacrifice offering our responsive sacrifice then of thanksgiving and service. Well this was Cranmer's doctrine and you'll find it in the Institutes as well. After Cranmer had brought out his first Eucharistic liturgy in the 1549 prayer book he wrote a book entitled The Defense of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord's Supper in which these things were expounded a book that was intended you see to serve as a companion to his 1549 liturgy and it was immediately controverted by a certain Stephen Gardner Bishop of Winchester who claimed well this is all very well but Cranmer I disagree with the doctrine of your book and furthermore I confine the older and truer doctrine of transubstantiation and propitiatory sacrifice in your revised 1549 liturgy and he wrote his answer to Cranmer in order to show this well Cranmer wrote an answer to Gardner which I think any right minded person would find pretty crushing but it also convinced him that he would have to do more in the way of revising the pattern of Eucharistic worship for England to stop the service being misunderstood in the way that Gardner had misunderstood it so in 1552 in the second edition of his prayer book he produced a quite radically revised revised form of the 1549 service which some of us who know it and in England we use it virtually unchanged in our in our book of common prayer in the Church of England some of us regard as pretty masterly let me tell you just very briefly how it goes it's divided into two halves, there's the medieval mass, well the traditional communion liturgies of the west and the medieval mass works first you have a fourth, what is called the anti-communion a pattern of worship centering around the reading and preaching of the word though unfortunately the preaching of the word had dropped out of the medieval service altogether Cranmer restored it and then you have a second part of the service which is the communion proper now what you had in the 1562 service, part two is a pattern which very clearly puts the gospel into a eucharistic liturgy like this it rings the changes twice on the following sequence of themes our sin, our guiltiness and our need of pardon theme one the proclamation of God's grace and the promise of forgiveness for those who trust in Christ theme two the exercise of faith in trust and thanksgiving and responsive dedication to the service of God theme three that's the gospel in liturgy and Cranmer arranged his communion service so that there would be a double sequence of these three themes the first taking forth the gospel with application in word and the second round if you like of this sequence taking forth the same gospel in sacrament the sacramental act of receiving the bread and wine thus coming in you see, to do what the reformers always insisted the sacraments should do, exhibit and thereby confirm the word, the word of the promise, and so you've got this, sequence number one a first confession of sin in which the congregation joins then a prayer for the pardon of the congregation's sin, uttered by the minister, followed by a declaration of the promises of God to sinners four of the comprehensive promises of the New Testament the introductory words are, hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to Him and the promises are John 3.16 Matthew 11.28 come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest 1 Timothy 1.15 isn't it this is a faithful saying and worthy of all its exhortation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and the final one 1 John 2.1-2 if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins in response to which, following straight on as seen free you've got an outburst of congregational praise to God which is in its context of course a praise specifically for saving grace there's round one and round two of the sequence a prayer of what's called humble access to the Lord's table in which the congregation acknowledges its unworthiness to come and prays that through faithful reception of the bread and wine and despite all our sins Christ may dwell in us and we in him and our union with him be made stronger that leads to the so called prayer of consecration, the heart of which is the narrative of the institution and which begins with a declaration of the meaning of the cross, that Christ by dying at the Father's will offered one perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world and that leads straight into the response of faith in receiving the bread and the wine take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving and drink this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and be thankful those are our words of administration and then you have prayers of self-consecration and praise following on that completing the response of the believing congregation to the grace set forth in the sacrament that's how the 52 service goes and you just couldn't understand a service like that as the mass even less could you understand it so when it said explicitly that the place where the service was to be conducted was a table standing in the body of the church among the people and not an altar stuck up at the end of the council it was said further that the minister was to stand not with his back to the people in the sacrificing priest position, the eastward position as we Anglicans call it but at the north side of the table identifying himself thereby so far as possible with a congregation the thought that the intention was you see, that in English churches most of which were oblong which none of them in those days had pews, the table would be right down in the middle about opposite where the door in this room is, the congregation would gather all round it and the minister would be standing sideways on to the table as closely identified with the congregation as he could be and furthermore it was specified that he mustn't wear any of the Eucharistic vestments and furthermore there appeared at the end of the service a rubrical explanation that the requirement of kneeling for the reception of communion and that was retained was not to be understood as implying adoration of the consecrated elements as if they'd been transubstantiated through the consecration they hadn't been transubstantiated said the rubric Christ's body is in heaven and not here and it's against the nature of Christ's body to be in more places than one at the same time well that as you can see is pretty strong and explicit in its Protestantism so far as the doctrine and the usage of the Roman mass was concerned now that's the communion service in the prayer book which Elizabeth resolved to restore and she restored it with only three small changes and all three undoubtedly I think were made by her and I say by her advisedly she kept her hand directly on all the legislation, ecclesiastical as well as civil and the prayer book went through in the form in which she wanted it and here are the changes that she had made the prayer for deliverance from the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities was excised from the litany that, you see, to keep the Romans guessing, they would notice the alteration and thus be encouraged to ponder on what it might mean the rubric at the end of the communion service disclaiming the doctrine of transubstantiation in connection with kneeling the so-called black rubric that was omitted too why was that? well, obviously to keep those Romans and Lutherans guessing to give them the feeling, well we note that the queen isn't taking a strong line against the doctrine of the real presence in the form in which either of us hold it and in the words of administration at the communion before take and eat and be thankful, drink this and be thankful, there was added some words which had been in the 1549 book and were dropped in the 1552 book as the bread was given to each communicant, it was said to him the body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life well that doesn't imply in itself, of course that this is transubstantiated bread any more than the corresponding words the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life, corresponding words that the administration of the cup in 1549 implied that it was transubstantiated wine but on the other hand the restoration of them gave the Romans and the Lutherans a little further encouragement to take it that way and to suppose that these were little gestures Elizabeth was making of her eventual intention of moving in their direction and the ambassador of course the Lutheran court relayed the fact that this had been done and it kept the Pope from immediate action against the Queen who had by her act of supremacy disclaimed his dominion in England it kept him from that further action for ten years a further point the last alteration in the Elizabethan prayer book a rather odd rubric declaring that ecclesiastical vestments not merely the surplus but alb and chasuble and the other vestments that had been used in the medieval days by priests celebrating the mass they were to be retained as they were in the second year of Edward VI so said the rubric, that is in the year before the 1549 prayer book even that is they were to be kept and used just as they had been in pre-liturgical reformation days in England until further order be taken. This again was a riddling form of words it encouraged Geneva type Protestants to look for the day when the Queen would take further order and abolish these things, encourage them to suppose that she was only restoring them in order to keep the ex-Romanists in the country happy for a little while equally of course it encouraged the Lutherans and the Romanists who both of them used vestments, or the Romanists at any rate used them for doctrinal reasons to feel that Elizabeth was making another friendly little gesture their way so that was Elizabeth's 1559 prayer book and this was what the act of uniformity established as the obligatory form of worship for the whole country then having fixed the shape of her settlement in this way Elizabeth could move on to filling gaps in the ranks of the senior clergy by 1559 fourteen bishops had been deprived of their fees together with 200 clergy for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to Elizabeth these were the Romish recusants as they were called they couldn't conscientiously bring themselves to renounce the Pope's supremacy and acknowledge Elizabeth instead as head of the church in England so they were deprived and already when she ascended the throne she'd had ten Episcopal fees vacant so there she was she needed 24 bishops and what she did in most cases was to appoint certain of the exiles the Marian exiles who'd come back to the country by now to be her new bishop she started off by appointing Parker a disciple of Cranmer a very Cranmerish sort of man as her archbishop and then quite a number of the other exiles were put into particular fees the final point the final thing that I must tell you about with regard to Elizabeth's religious settlement was what she did about the 39 articles when she came to the throne of course they had no constitutional force there was a good strong groundswell of opinion amongst English Protestants that desired them to be to be established as a confession of faith so Elizabeth four years after her accession five years after her accession rather let it happen and in 1563 she allowed the convocation she allowed the convocation to pass a revised form of the 39 articles a revised form of the 42 articles now reduced to 38 as a standard of faith for the Church of England though one of the articles the present article 29 which disclaims the doctrine of the real presence in all its forms was suppressed by her intervention convocation passed it but she immediately had it struck out the reason being of course that she didn't want to offend the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics by any explicit gesture against their sacramental doctrine but when she had been excommunicated by the Pope in 1570 and it was in any case becoming obvious that alliances with the Lutherans would not be a profitable diplomatic line she allowed it to be restored and in 1571 the articles were passed by Parliament with this particular one put back in thus they became the 39 articles as they are today in case you good Presbyterians and others have never read the 39 articles let me tell you just a little about them they are quite explicitly a reformed confession and they were expounded as such by Thomas Rogers in his work The English Creed published in 1593 in which he labours to prove at every point the identity of doctrine between the 39 articles and the confessions of the continental reformed churches all the reformed churches incidentally as well as the Lutheran ones and where there is a difference he goes with the reformed as the articles do against the Lutherans in sacramental doctrine for instance and the 39 articles were actually included in a volume published at Geneva about the turn of the century called The Harmony of the Protestant Confession I say this for the benefit of any of you who have heard that the Church of England and the Anglican churches of Christendom are not Protestant and not members of the reformed family as long as they got the 39 articles, willy-nilly they are a point to be remembered brethren and borne in mind in discussion especially with, as I say with Anglicans whom you may meet, who may not have woken up to the implications of this point the structure of them as they now stand are that they are a set of isolated statements, rather like the Augsburg Confession in this they are not an integrated body of divinity like the Westminster Standards they are rather a statement of where the Church of England stands on particular issues that were disputed at the time when the Confession was drawn up and these issues fell into two classes, those that were disputed with the Anabaptists and those that were disputed of course with the Church of Rome they are intended as a kind of minimal statement rather than a maximal one a minimal statement safeguarding the gospel for the Church of England, not settling everything but settling the things that had to be settled in order to preserve the Church of England against Roman and Anabaptist error touching matters essential to salvation or essential to good order I may add in the Church of England. This is the way they go Articles 1 to 5 summarising the statements of the creeds on God, the Trinity and Christology, person and work of Christ Articles 6 to 8 the sufficiency and the decisive authority of Scripture the formal principle of the Reformation it is sometimes being called Articles 9 to 18 a detailed statement of the bondage of man in sin justification by faith and salvation by grace Article 17 is a very clear doctrine of what was afterwards called the golden chain of God's act God's saving act from election through calling and justification on through sanctification to glorification a chain marvelled of course on what Paul says in Romans 8 29 and 30 and a very good positive statement on the doctrine of election and sovereign grace in the salvation of God's chosen Articles 19 to 31 the church and the sacraments Articles 32 to 39 aspects of the reformed order of the Church of England well I mustn't go further into my description of Anglican antiquity suffice it to say that it was with these documents the essentially the 1552 prayer book and after a few years these reformed articles of faith that the Church of England was launched into its future by Queen Elizabeth and you might have thought from this that the Church of England was going to have a glorious career as a reformed church in fact it didn't work out quite that way because of Elizabeth's insistence that ecclesiastical concerns should be subject to issues of national policy and that lots of the many forms in which Christian life was seeking to express itself in the church should be damped down for fear of causing confusion and religious unrest in the nation the effect of this policy was to produce a new sort of institutionalised Anglicanism which began to come to be at the end of the 16th century and whose lines were more definitely and decidedly blocked in under the Stuarts James I and Charles I and then which came back in a big way with the restoration in 1662 more about that as the course goes on I say this now only to fill in the background of the Puritan story which I'm now proposing to tell you We move on then from the Elizabethan settlement to the first section of the Puritan story proper under Elizabeth the controversy about sermons Heading A, the Elizabethan settlement Heading B, the controversy about sermons But either may I ask any questions about the Elizabethan settlement which you want to ask before we do thus move on Who's the author? Thomas Rogers, his name is and the volume was reprinted in the Parker Society edition of the works of the English Reformers. You can get it in most theological libraries You can certainly get it in the Westminster Library where all the Parker Society volumes are to be found It's there called, I think, an exposition of the 39 articles but the title, it's a reprint of the second edition which had its title changed, I can't for the moment remember to what, but the English Creed is the title of the first edition and I quoted it to you because it's so significant. The Church of England had a creed and the 39 articles expressed it This is what the Church of England stood for in a divided Christendom and it's a good Protestant doctrine Had somebody else? You said, um, the responsible for the church. Were these in fact Oh no, they were a separate crowd of people Laymen, I think in all cases, as a matter of fact The bishops certainly were regarded by Elizabeth as her lackeys, but she defined her relation to them in terms of simply prodding them from time to time to keep the established order in the church and see it was absurd Her commissioners acted independently. They made visitations and reported directly back to her and so forth And you gathered, I suppose, I hope from what I said, that the other order which the Puritans had hoped for regarding Eucharistic vestments was never in fact taken Although equally under Elizabeth no one was ever made the subject of ecclesiastical discipline for refusing to wear, well the Eucharistic vestments as such only for refusing to wear the surplus, which hadn't got any doctrinal significance at any rate according to Roman theory it was just one of the prescribed ecclesiastical garments. There was a dispute about that as you're going to see, but it didn't, the surplus wasn't one of the Eucharistic vestments In its communion service it does for substance, yes And it has done, as a matter of fact ever since its prayer book that is the English prayer book of 1662 which in England is still our authorised prayer book, it's the final revision of the 1552 book In America it was revised in, I think 1789, straight after independence And partly because the American Episcopal Church had links with the Episcopal Church in Scotland the sort of, the Anglican grump in Scotland which as a nation, you know has a national church of its own with Presbyterian form Because the American church had links with Scotland, and because the Scottish Episcopal Church had already gotten a prayer book for itself with this 1549 type service in it And the Americans a little incautiously, I think, when they revised their prayer book did so in the light of the Scottish example, and restored a 1549 type service And this was remained virtually unchanged, I think I might am saying, a few verbal changes not more in the 1929 revision, which has given the Episcopal Church the prayer book it has at the moment The 1549 form, of course means one thing to one person and one to another To Cranmer, coming to it away from the man it meant Protestantism To a lot of people who reverted to it from the 1552 form of words, it means a way back towards the real presence of the Eucharistic sacrifice in some form. This is one of the elements in the worldwide Anglican debate about Eucharistic doctrine at the present time. A debate that indeed has been going on ever since the Anglo-Catholic movement started 140 years... 130 years ago These are domestic things though, we mustn't go through them further Any more questions? Our time is gone, I shan't get on to the ceremony story this afternoon so I just as well talk Yes, they were They were produced by those in the Church of England who were capable of producing them. That is the Archbishop, Sir Cranmer, then Parker and learned clergy in the city of London plus theological teachers and learned men in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge Those were the only three centres where theological learning could be found Apart from that it was a very rare and unusual thing to find a man who knew his theological onions anywhere in the country This work was all done at the centres of learning The English Reformation and this is like the Lutheran Reformation I mean, you know probably, when the Lutheran princes wanted to get Lutheran ideals implemented and reform their own kingdoms, they got nobody on the spot who was capable of doing it They just sent off to Wittenberg and asked Luther and their fellow members of the Wittenberg theology faculty to advise and they would in many cases come down and view the situation in person one or more of them would, and then they would write written recommendations and more or less prepare a reformed constitution, or draft reformed constitution for the particular prince in question, and then this constitution would be debated and modified and finally the king would be elected But the ideas came from Wittenberg every time, but it's the same pattern It's only, you see, in the centres of theological learning, which are very very few, that this kind of knowledge is available. It couldn't have been done any other way Cranmer himself drafted the 42 articles essentially as he drafted the two prayer books He had teams working with him and he'd send drafts down for criticism and so on, but he was an extremely gifted draftsman and in fact these forms of words are actually masterpieces in the art of ecclesiastical draftsmanship But this is how it was done and if you're thinking of a full-blown Presbyterian set-up well, even if you wanted to insist that it would have been the right thing in those days, it just wasn't possible It couldn't have been done People simply didn't know enough You see, it wasn't like Switzerland In those Swiss cities, you've got a compact population They all lived together They could all get to churches where the word was faithfully preached They could most of them, if not all of them read, they were most of them involved in some sort of commercial activity which involved, as an absolute necessity that you should be able to read contracts and sign your name and communicate by letter with other people, you got literacy in those Swiss townships and this meant that in a comparatively short period of years it was possible at Zurich and Bern and Geneva and these other places to produce a comparatively well-clued laity and get a genuinely congregational form of life going but in these rural places Germany and England, it wasn't possible in the same way. This was the shape of a problem. It was everybody's problem, I mean, the problem was there in the situation and it just had to be tackled in the only way that the situation admitted, and what that meant was that the drafting was all done at the centre in these early days Well, it's gone four o'clock brethren, and so I better announce your release