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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
The Book of Common Prayer 1662
[This sermon was given at Nashotah House Theological Seminary. No audio file exists.]
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
We are celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, which was ratified in 1662. Why? Because BCP 1662 is the rock from which most all other Prayer Books in the Anglican Communion were hewn. Because, even though it can be hard to find in the Church of England, BCP 1662 remains our Mother Church’s official Prayer Book and is widely in use in English cathedral worship for Choral Evensong, remaining basic to the musical and liturgical patrimony of our Anglican tradition. Because BCP 1662 contains elements which, like so many phrases in the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (which had its 400th anniversary last year), are permanent gems within English-speaking Christianity. “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep; we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…”
BCP 1662 was forged in the fires of the Reformation of the sixteenth century and the reactions against it. This was the period of Archbishop Cranmer’s move, following the death of King Henry VIII in 1547, under the young and sickly King Edward VI, from quite a Catholic Prayer Book in 1549 to a very Evangelical Prayer Book in 1552. Edward died the next year. Then, five years of return to the Latin Mass under Queen Mary. Then, under Queen Elizabeth, the BCP returned in 1559; Elizabeth was the architect of what we know as Anglicanism; her Prayer Book remained until Oliver Cromwell’s puritan Commonwealth ninety years later. With a few changes, the Church of England’s bishops and the BCP were re-established in 1662, following the restoration of the monarchy under King Charles II in 1660.
The best illustration I can think of to show how all this affected church life is the development of the Words of Administration for Holy Communion in the first three Prayer Books of 1549, then 1552, then 1559 (and of course 1662 and all other Anglican Prayer Books). With BCP 1549, you received, in a Mass that looked in most places fairly like the medieval Eucharist, the Host on your tongue with these words: “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Amen.” Three years later, with BCP 1552, in a service which looked very much like the Calvinist services on the continent, you received the Bread into your hands with these words: “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving. Amen.” Seven years after that (with the five-year Latin Mass interlude), with Elizabeth’s BCP 1559, a somewhat more liturgical service was re-developing in many places such as the Chapel Royal, and you received the Bread with these words: “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving. Amen.” The Evangelical-Catholic comprehension was settled.
Thus the architecture of Queen Elizabeth and her bishops, establishing classical Anglicanism. This is the heritage of Richard Hooker, which under King James I and King Charles I received progressive “high church” enrichment. This was the Church of bishops such as Lancelot Andrewes and saints such as George Herbert and holy places such as Little Gidding. Then came the deluge of puritanism in the 1640s. We fast forward to BCP 1662. Puritan grievances were considered as they had been earlier; most were dismissed.[1] But texts from King James’ Bible were added for the Epistles and Gospels of the Eucharist. This brings me to a point: O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The Psalms and the Canticles in BCP 1662 (and subsequent Prayer Books of the Anglican Communion) are English translations which are fully 70 to 80 years older than the 1611 King James Bible. They are from the Bishops’ Bible (the work of Bishop Myles Coverdale) of 1535, which had been the only royally ratified English Bible – these Psalms and Canticles entered the Prayer Books from their beginning in 1549. What is so special about that? These texts are, even when perhaps not as accurate, more euphonious for recitation and chanting than the King James (venerable as it is). Here are only two examples of which there could be many. Coverdale/BCP: From the Magnificat: “For he that is mighty hath magnified me; and holy is his name.” King James: “For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.” Again, Coverdale/BCP from Psalm 42: “Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.” King James: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”
The Coverdale/BCP translation is easier to recite and to chant. Why? Because the chanting of the medieval church, with its psalms and canticles of the monastic offices, was still echoing in the souls of the first translators such as Bishop Coverdale. The translators of King James were their grandchildren or even great grandchildren, and by that time the echo of the old cloisters of England had passed away. This was explained to me by Dean Robert Willis of Canterbury, where they use BCP 1662 for daily choral evensong. For the Eucharist for the most part they use the newer rites.
Dean Willis also tells me that in spite of the dire reports we hear about attendance in the Church of England, there is a well attested and persistent surge of attendance in cathedral worship around the English Church, not only for big festivals but for Choral Evensong. There are no doubt a number of factors – transcendence, personal space, musical beauty, and certainly, the clarity and precision of the traditional language.
BCP 1662 was known to be imperfect even at the time. The long-suffering Bishop John Cosin of Durham, a father of that Prayer Book who endured exile in France during the Puritan Commonwealth, wanted much more. He would have rejoiced in such things which we enjoy in American BCP 1979: a Eucharistic Prayer with an Oblation and Invocation, Sacramental Confession and Anointing of the Sick, the emphasis on the Paschal Mystery, Prayers for the Departed, Marian festivals, and the inclusion of Historical Documents of the Undivided Church along with the Articles of Religion.
So again, why should we bother with BCP 1662? Well, at Saint Thomas Church in Manhattan we have a choral foundation, a residential choir school and an acclaimed Choir of Men and Boys who sing five choral services each week. There is the Choral Eucharist on Sunday mornings; but then there is Choral Evensong Sunday at 4:00 pm, and then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 5:30 pm These services each draw (in addition to the choir) between 100 and 200 people on average – that is between 400 and 500 on average each week in addition to Sunday morning. Those who attend are friends from other churches, workers at the end of the day, tourists, seekers, lookers and wanderers. Evensong, as in the English cathedrals, has grown at Saint Thomas. Fifth Avenue is quite a place, a mall in the middle of the world. We use the BCP 1662 Evensong settings, Coverdale Psalter and Canticles. Why? Because that is what the choral settings, from the late 16th century to the day before yesterday, were and are composed for.[2] It’s a little like the Greek and Latin ordinary of the Mass for which music is being composed even now; except it is Elizabethan English. Given what we hear constantly from those all over the country and the world who listen to Evensong on our webcasts, New York City is not the only place where this patrimony is appreciated and loved.
Anglicanism clearly has developed and will develop other forms beyond BCP 1662. Yet that old book, written in the era of Shakespeare, retains a voice that abides in English religion and literature. Its phrases still feed and warm the soul; they are, in a word, memorable. And because they are memorable, they attract. We have found, as have the English Cathedrals, that appropriate use of the old BCP has a way of attracting young people and helping with church growth. Listen to what the grandchildren say when they discover the wonders hidden in the attic in their grandparents’ house. They rediscover old things and see them as new, refreshing and delightful. The Good News of Jesus Christ should be just that; and Jesus said that the scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven brings out of his treasure both things new and things old.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[1] At the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 and the Savoy Conference of 1661 between the Church of England’s bishops and the puritan divines.
[2] The Versicles and Responses and Lesser Litany as well as the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis.
