I must begin by saying that it was increasingly borne in upon me as I listened to Professor Hayes that I should not be here and am disqualified; disqualified I might say on three grounds. First, the one stated by Dr. Johnson when some lady caught him out on a statement in his dictionary. She said, "How do you account for that?" Johnson said, "Ignorance madam, pure ignorance.' Well the subject I have chosen to speak on is one of which I am grossly ignorant, by any normal standards.
Then, I am not a theologian, obviously. And the worst confession of all, I am not even an Anglican. Some of you may say, "What in the world is he doing here?" Well, I'm afraid you must to some extent blame your Chairman for that. I had a kind of semi-Anglican upbringing and as a result know a great deal of the Prayer Book by heart. When Graham Eglington said to me, "Do you want to join the Prayer Book Society; you are a Prayer Book man." I said, "I can't, I'm not an Anglican." he went to the headquarters, and came back and said to me, "they want you to join, and they want you to be a patron." I said, "I don't want to join under false pretenses, but I'm perfectly willing to join and take as actite a part as my 80 year infirmities, intellectual and physical allow."
I have a set of notes here that I need to keep me on track. If my old friend Arthur Meighen were here he would be ashamed of me, because he never had one word in front of him when he spoke. Everything came from his memory. But I'm not in his class and I'm obliged in my old age to have notes.
Now I have some reasons to be devoted to the Prayer Book, some personal reasons. One is that I was brought up as a Methodist, and our Communion Service was based very closely on the Anglican service, as one would expect from John Wesley. You remember what he said in his last years, "I die a member of the Church of England, and nobody who values my opinion will ever leave it." Well, I don't know that some of the early Methodists ever wanted to leave, but they found it impossible to stay, which is one of the tragedies of history.
When I was at Oxford I always went to the college chapel. Then I went every weekend for three years to the parish church in Chambly, Quebec, where the rector going down the aisle one Evensong leaned over and said to me, "I'm depending on you for the responses."
Finally, what induced me to consent to speak today was an article I read in a publication of the English Prayer Book Society: a speech by the Rev. Lord Soper who, as you know, is a very eminent English Methodist, who delivered a most impressive statement of his veneration, his respect, his acknowledgment of the necessity of the Prayer Book.
Now to get to the subject that has been assigned to me. What Have These Reformers Wrought?
I'll give you a very very lay answer to that, a series of answers, and I must beg your indulgence for the errors and shortcomings which will be painfully obvious, I'm afraid.
First of all, I think it ought to be emphasized that the reformers weren't carried about by every wind of-- not even of doctrine-- but of popular fashion, as I'm afraid some people tend to be now. That's, a most uncharitable remark perhaps, but I find it difficult to resist.
They made great changes, yes, but changes based on what? I think the answer is: based on history, and the particular history of the fathers of the church, and on scripture.
Now what specifically did they do? First, they gave us a Book of Common Prayer; and I want to emphasize that word "common". It was common prayer in a number of ways. First it was common to the whole kingdom. There had been a multitude of liturgies all across the land. Now there was to be one single common liturgy. Single, common, but not uniform, not stereotyped. There are in fact, it seems to me, quite a number of alternative services contained in the Prayer Book itself.
I looked at it again when I started to think about this and I was astonished to find the number of variations which can be introduced. For example, sometimes you have the Litany, sometimes you don't have it. Sometimes you have this and sometimes that. Sometimes you have the whole Ten Commandments, and sometimes you have the Summary of the Law. You find that there is a great variety of prayers in our own Canadian Prayer Book that have been added from various sources, one of my favourites being number 46, Cardinal Newman's great prayer: "O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
There is a great deal of variety within the context of the Prayer Book. But it is within a common framework and it is something that comes home, or used to, to every Anglican wherever he or she vas. If you went to an Anglican Church, you knew you would get the liturgy you were used to. There might be some variation, or emphasis, or some variation in the way it was said or sung. But you found yourself in a familiar atmosphere. It was to my mind a great strength of the Anglican Church that that was so.
It is a common Prayer Book in another sense and Lord Soper in his article emphaszes this and gives it as one of his reasons for feeling that the Prayer Book is necessary, one of his reasons for feeling that the Methodists have lost something because they have abandoned it.
In the nonconformist or free churches, or whatever you want to call them, there is usually what is referred to as the long prayer and Lord Soper calls it that, and he says within that you get the minister praying a prayer which necessarily addresses his particular concerns, which may or may not be those of the worshipers.
In the Prayer Book you have common prayer which speaks to the necessities and expresses the necessities and the cocerns of the whole congregation. It's not just something that the individual minister needs, but something that is important to everybody, and I think it comes out particularly in the Exhortation before Mattins: the acknowledgment and confession of sin, forgiveness, thanksgiving, praise, hearing the word, petition, intercession for ourselves and others.
Then the Prayer Book is common to priest and people and it is common because it's "in a language understanded of the people."
I'll come back to that more specifically in a moment. It is so spoken that it may be heard by the people. It is not just someone up at the altar saying something in a tone that someone can overhear, or, as it used to be, in a foreign language. It is a liturgy heard by the people and understood by the people: "he that speaketh so turning himself that he may be heard by the people." It is in a language of paramount beauty, dignity, reverence, simplicity and precision.
I want to emphasize simplicity and precision. You hear people say, "oh well, it's so elaborate, ancient words and all sorts of out of date expressions"; what a fellow-countryman of mine used to call, "Dem big long words, dat's over de'eads of de people."
I have looked at Collect after Collect, prayer after prayer, and tried to analyze them linguistically, to the best of my ability; and in every case I have found 80-85% are words of Anglo-Saxon origin. They are not long words of elaborate Latin origin, but simple, forthright, plain English words.
Take the prayer, another of my favourite collects, the fourth Sunday after Epiphany: "O God, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our natre we cannot always stand upright: Grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations." Now that's simple.
Take the confession: "We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings." Any person with a knowledge of English who can't understand 'we are heartily sorry for these our misdoings" is not going to be helped much by something written in journalese or the latest fashionable jargon, whether academic or popular.
"Repent" is, I suppose a little bit more esoteric. But it isn't after an such a dreadfully complex word.
The other thing that I want to emphasize about this common language is the precision of it. I saw a criticism somewhere of the Prayer Book, that some priest had said "Cranmer used ten words when he needed only one." I don't think that is justified for a moment. I think Cranmer used great precision. Repenting is not just the same thing as being heartily sorry. Repentance and remorse are not the same thing. "We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry." Those are two things. The prayer for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany has "strength and protection": not the same things. "Grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations." Supporting us in dangers and carrying us through temptations, again are different things. It seems to me there is great precision in prayer after prayer. The other prayer I quoted a few minutes ago is at the beginning of the Eucharist: "Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit": that's very precise. It's not ordinary repentance for something we have done wrong. It's "cleanse the thoughts of our hearts". That is very precise.
Then there is another illustration of the precision in the general confession where we say "we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things which we ought not to have done". That's very precise and the order is truly interesting.
We start off with the things we have left undone that we ought to have done. The special thing which the reformers brought us, as was pointed out by one of the writers of the English Prayer Book Society organ I was reading, was that they gave us not only the Anglican rite for the Eucharist, but also Mattins and Evensong; described by one of the writers I was looking at as "a balanced diet of worship, unique in Christendom." They gave us the Eucharist, a rite which is clearly written with the prayer of thanksgiving, the Gloria in Excelcis and blessing. This makes our rite one which comes to a climax, as no other rite does, of an uplifting kind, that ends with a chorus of praise.
Third, the reformers gave us both a liturgy and articles of religion. I say "us" because I sometimes think I was a natural born Anglican who went astray. I can't refrain from saying "us" when I'm thinking of the Prayer Book. They gave us a liturgy and articles of religion that have balance.
There used to be in St. George's Church in Montreal, a large inscription, "Evangelical Faith, Apostolic Order." I think that expresses one aspect of this balance. Balance seems to me to be of tremendous importance. That may be just a reflection of my Englishness. I am of almost purely English ancestry. I once said in a speech I was giving, "I am solidly and stolidly English alike by ancestry and cast of mind." I think English people like balance. But this is not the whole thing. It's not just prejudice on my part. Here I am treading on very dangerous ground, I suppose. It has always seemed to me that many heresies, many misunderstandings, many divisions have arisen from overemphasizing one aspect of the Gospel and neglecting other aspects. I think Anglicanism has avoided that. It has been very tolerant, comprehensive within a framework, a doctrinal and liturgical framework, but it has had room for a great deal of variety in the way the framework is interpreted and illustrated.
I think the balance comes out again in the Exhortation before Mattins. "Although we ought at all times humbly to acknowledge our sins before God; yet ought we most chiefly so to do when we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul." Note again the precision there: the body and the soul; the comprehension balances the precision at the same time.
The last thing I want to say is that I have an answer, however inadequate, to those critics who say the Prayer Book is too penitential. It's fashionable nowadays to push sin into the background and to talk about heredity, upbringing, the environment and some of the social conditions and complexes and so on. All those things are important. All those things play a part in wrongdoing and ought to make us more careful about passing judgment on others. All of them must play a very large part in social policy. But on the other hand it seems to me that anyone who is even moderately sane is responsible. You can't just say, "Oh my grandfather such and such, my mother such and such."
We had a minister one time who said heredity was what a man blamed on his mother ard father and environment was what he blamed on his wife and children. I think one can blame a good deal on environment, an unchristian environment, and say that's not his fault, that's not altogether her fault, but that doesn't cover the whole spectrum, by any means.
I can't, myself say that all the things I've done wrong, which are as the sands upon the seashore in multitude are because somebody else did something that he shouldn't have done or somebody didn't provide me with this or that he should have provided. Some of it is my responsibility and I can't push it into the background. Some years ago a psychiatrist at McMaster University wrote a furious, bitter, very nasty letter in the "Globe and Mail" in which he attacked the churches for fostering guilt in people and said it was a terrible tragedy for those of us who ever felt guilty.
I wrote a reply to the "Globe and Mail", which they didn't publish. I said: "What Professor So-and-So says has a certain point in it. But he overlooks something that is of enormous importance. People in the churches recognie sin, and who that lives in this world can't recognize it? Confessing sin is there, but so is forgiveness, a beginning again, a new life, redemption, pardon, absolution." just look at the confession of sin. You may get some with terrible feelings of guilt which may ruin their fives but the other thing is there, and it is of enormous importance. This the learned gentleman had completely overlooked.
I don't think that I have been guilty of any of the spectacular sins of the flesh. I have never murdered anybody, I've never committed adultery, I've never been drunk. But when I come to the phrase in the confession, "We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings", my mind always races on to the phrasing in the old English ad Canadian Prayer Books with which I was familiar; "the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable", and that comes right home to me.
I think of the untruths I've been guilty of, the hardness of heart I've been guilty of, the damage I've done to myself and other people by the sins of the spirit on which it seems to me our Lord was much harder than he was on sins of the flesh. Remember how he treated the woman taken in adultery, remember also how he talked about people who committed adultery in their hearts. I thik of the sins I have committed and the things I have left undone though they are not the gross sins of the flesh. "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done." How can any ordinary person say, "Well, I don't think it applies to me; I have done everything I should have done, I have left undone nothing I ought to have done"? Anyone who says that would incur my very deep suspicion as to his or her truthfulness.
I do say with very great sincerity that the remembrance is very grievous and the burden is intolerable. But immediately after comes the great phrasing about mercy and the beautiful prayer of humble access, which has been jettisoned, I think, in most of the Books of Alternative Services. You have, "We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy," You get this balance of the two things, and this is part of the heritage and form that we need.
Now all that is most inadequate, poorly expressed. I hope you may find something in it which is not altogether foreign to your concerns, something which will give you some idea why I at least feel that the heritage of the Prayer Book is worth preserving, worth using, worth relying on for comfort, for strength, for belief.
Again, I ask your indulgence for my shortcomings. I have no doubt left unsaid things I ought to have said, and have said things I ought not to have said and there is no health in me. I hope you will be indulgent enough to treat my shortcomings with a certain degree of tolerance.
The late Senator Eugene Forsey, was a patron of the Society. An address given by Senator Forsey at the Cranmer Quincentenary Celebrations, Ottawa, 13-16 October, 1989.
02/27/98 ~ © SAT, 1998.
