already quoted-was put out between the reign of Henry VIII. and that of Elizabeth. We may fairly assume therefore that this statement on purgatory is the key to the Twenty-second Article.

The next point that solicits our attention is the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. In the Office for the Burial of the Dead, when the priest throws earth upon the corpse he says, 'I commend thy soul to God the Father Almighty, and thy body to the ground,' &c.

The next prayer begins thus: We commend. into Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother departed, that when the judgment shall come, which Thou hast committed to Thy well-beloved Son, both this our brother and we may be found acceptable in Thy sight, and we may receive that blessing,' &c.

The next prayer concludes thus: Grant, we beseech Thee, that at the day of judgment his soul, and all the souls of Thy elect departed out of this life, may with us, and we with them, fully receive Thy promises, and be made perfect altogether, through the glorious resurrection of Thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.'

The Second Lesson is followed by some versicles, of which the following are samples. The priest says, with reference to the dead, 'From the gates of hell,' and the congregation reply, 'Deliver their souls, O Lord!'

Then follows a prayer, in which occurs this petition: Grant unto this Thy servant that the

sins which he committed in this world be not imputed unto him, but that he, escaping the gates of hell and pains of eternal darkness, may ever dwell in the region of light, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the place where is no weeping, sorrow, nor heaviness.'

This is almost a literal rendering of a prayer in the Apostolical Constitutions, which shows the practice of the Christians of the third century. The prayer is as follows: 'Let us pray for our brethren departed in the faith of Christ, that the most merciful God, who has received the spirits of the deceased, would forgive all their voluntary and involuntary failings; and that, being restored to the Divine favour, they may have a place assigned them in the region of the blessed; in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in the company of those where pain and sorrow and dissatisfaction have no place.'

But I may be told that the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. was superseded by the Second Prayer Book, from which prayers for the dead were excluded. My answer to that objection is this: The very authority which published and sanctioned the second book-i.e. the Act of Uniformity-declared explicitly and emphatically that it was not intended as a condemnation or censure of anything contained in the first book. The Act of Parliament, by which the second book of King Edward was ratified, states that there was nothing in the first book but what was 'agreeable to the Word of God and the primitive Church, and very comfortable to all good people desir

ing to live in Christian conversation.' The Act then goes on to explain 'that such doubts as had been raised in the use and exercise thereof proceeded rather from the curiosity of the minister and mistakers than from any other worthy cause.' The first Act of Uniformity bears still stronger testimony to the excellence and orthodoxy of the first book, for it declares that by the aid of the Holy Ghost it was with one uniform agreement concluded.'

I think I am right, therefore, in asserting that in substituting the Prayer Book of 1552 for that of 1549, the Church of England was as far as possible from refusing her sanction to anything contained in the latter. She expressly guarded against any such inference in the passages which I have just quoted; and therefore the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. cannot be quoted as any argument in favour of the view that the Church of England does not sanction prayers for the dead. They were excluded under pressure from Calvin, acting on the English Reformers through the boy-king and through Bucer and Peter Martyr, who were then holding positions of considerable influence in England. Calvin's objection to prayers for the dead was natural enough; for they were inconsistent with his doctrine that the great mass of mankind are irrevocably foreordained to eternal damnation, while the small flock of the elect, whose fall was impossible, were privileged to enter heaven as soon as they passed away from earth. But the Church of England has ever instinctively recoiled against the unchristian cruelty

of the Calvinistic system, and has never without protest accepted, even temporarily, any of its fundamental tenets.

The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. was, of course, abolished on the accession of Queen Mary in 1553. When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558 she took immediate steps to restore some of the most important omissions in the Prayer Book of 1552, and her Primer of 1559, published by authority, contains prayers for the dead. The Marian persecution, however, had caused such an anti-Roman reaction that even the strong Tudor will of Queen Elizabeth could do comparatively little against it. Those who had fled to the Continent during the reign of Mary now returned with soured, and in some cases vengeful, feelings, and thought that it was impossible to rush too far or too fast in a direction opposite to that of Rome. Such a period of feverish excitement was not very favourable to a policy of moderation, and Queen Elizabeth, backed as she was by the support of the old leaders of the Reformation, found it impossible to restore, as she wished to do, the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. in its integrity. But all the alterations made were in that direction. The commemoration of the faithful departed was not, however, restored to its old place in the prayer for the Church militant till the last review in 1661.

The present state of the question, then, so far as the Church of England is concerned, I take to be this. In the years 1536, 1543, and 1549, she gave, freely, deliberately, and publicly, her sanction to the doctrine

of prayers for the dead, and that sanction she has never since withdrawn. On the only occasion on which she seemed to do so (1552), she was careful to put on record, through the mouths of the spiritual and temporal organs of the nation, a distinct protest that that was not her intention. And as a matter of fact, prayer for the dead was not altogether excluded even from the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI., though it was certainly reduced to very narrow compass. 'There was one clause,' says the very moderate Wheatley, 'permitted to stand' in the Prayer Book of 1552, viz. in the prayer that immediately follows the Lord's Prayer, in which, till the last review, we prayed that we WITH THIS OUR BROTHER, and all others departed in the true faith of God's holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss.' He goes on to say, what we all know, that the Puritans at the Savoy Conference objected to the words, with this our brother,' not because it implied, as it certainly did, prayers for the dead, but because, in Wheatley's language, 'they did in general object against all that expressed any assurance of the deceased party's happiness, which they did not think proper to be said indifferently over all that died.' The words were therefore, and on that ground only, omitted in the last revision. But Wheatley contends:

That the sentence, as it is still left standing, may well enough be understood to imply the dead as well as the living. For we pray (as it is now) that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of God's holy

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