BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, the name given to the service book of the Angli can churches both in England and in all coun tries where Anglican communities are estab lished. Such a book is more than a mere prayer book, and this fact is made plain in the title which reads 'Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church.' Toward the middle of the reign of Henry VIII an at tempt was made to simplify the equivalent books of the Catholic Church by turning them into English and excluding from them all that the Reformers considered "superstitious and ungodly?' But it was not until the reign of Edward VI (1549) that the first complete book embodying all the changes thus far made was compiled and published. It was the work of 13 ministers, at the head of whom were Ridley and Cranmer. But it was not until the follow ing year that the ordination service was added. Great care was taken to change as little as pos sible the form of the services of public worship to which the people had become accustomed. Therefore this first attempt did not satisfy the more radical of the Reformers. So a new re vision of the prayer book took place in 1552. In this, owing to the reform influences at work, numerous of the ancient Catholic ceremonies retained in the first revision were cut out. The modern ritualistic party appeals for sanction to the first revision of the reign of Edward VI, with all its ceremonies, forms and vestments. Among the changes made in this second re vision was the omission of prayers for the dead, which the reformers looked upon as pagan. Other changes were introduced in the Book of Common Prayer in the reign of Elizabeth (1559). The Queen threw her influence in the scale for a return to the ceremonies admitted in the first revision, and a return to some of these was the result. Some more of these were
restored under James I (1604). Under the Commonwealth the Book of Common Prayer was not only not used as a part of the state re ligion, but its use was strictly prohibited. The restoration of the monarchy saw another re vision in the prayer book in 1662, which the Anglican party showed little disposition to pla cate the Puritans or to heal the divisions that separated the Protestant bodies in England. To this revision dates the present form of the Book of Common Prayer, which has under gone some minor changes since then. Many Puritans and people with Puritan sympathies left the Established Church sooner than accept the prayer book in its new form and the prac tices exacted therein. Nevertheless this revised work was used in Scotland and Ireland sub stantially as in England. But in 1878 the Irish Church made some changes which accentuated the anti-Catholic feeling which has ever dis tinguished the Protestant party there. The prayer book in use in the Episcopal Church of the United States is practically that adopted by the General Convention of 1789, which was a unit in its determination to preserve the doc trine, discipline and worship of the Church of England. The Athanasian creed was omitted, certain prayers were added and the use of the cross in baptism was made optional. A very careful revision of the prayer book was made in 1892. Consult Dix, 'Lectures on the First Prayer Book of Edward VI' (New York i:- 1) ; Maskell, William, 'Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England' (1882) ; Garrison, J. H., (The American Prayer Book' (1887) ; Huntington, W. R., 'Short History of the Book of Common Prayer' (1893) ; Benton, J. H., of Common Prayer and Books Con nected with its Origin and Growth' (1914).