1928 BCP and the 1549 Book of Common Prayer

1928 BCP and the 1549 Book of Common Prayer describes the historical and theological relation between the first English Book of Common Prayer and the American Book of Common Prayer of 1928. The relation is clearest in the Holy Communion office: the 1928 American book did not simply reproduce the 1549 rite, but it recovered several 1549 features through the Scottish and American eucharistic tradition, especially the Collect for Purity, offertory action, oblation, invocation, and fuller sacrificial memorial.

Historical Relation

The 1549 book was the first authorized English Prayer Book. Its services gathered the older Latin service books into a single vernacular order and put Scripture, psalmody, sacramental administration, and pastoral offices into a common public form. E. Clowes Chorley, writing shortly after the 1928 American revision, explicitly named the 1549 book as one of the antecedents of the new American standard book:

It is significant that some of the most important changes in the new American Standard Prayer Book of 1928 are taken from the First Prayer Book of Edward VI published in 1549. It is therefore to the Prayer Book of the Church of England and to the preceding Liturgies that we must turn for the antecedents of the American Book.

This connection should not be overstated. The 1928 BCP stands in the American line of 1789 and 1892, with major debts to the Scottish Communion Office and the 1662 English book. Nevertheless, the 1549 book supplied a visible precedent for a richer eucharistic prayer than the 1552 and 1662 English orders preserved. Chorley summarized the 1549 book as a work of reform that retained significant older ceremonial and devotional material:

Such, in broad outline, was the First Prayer Book of the reformed Church of England. We have described it in some detail because though it was subsequently changed, it yet provided the basic foundation on which future Liturgies were built. It was frankly a compromise between the old and the new learning; an endeavor to preserve all that was of proven value in the old and to embrace and embody the new ideas and aspirations.

The Communion Office

The most important comparison is the Communion office. The 1549 rite opened the Communion with the Collect for Purity, a prayer retained in later Anglican use and printed at the beginning of the 1928 Holy Communion office:

ALMIGHTIE God, unto whom all hartes bee open, and all desyres knowen, and from whom no secretes are hid: clense the thoughtes of our hartes, by the inspiracion of thy holy spirite: that we may perfectly love thee, and worthely magnifie thy holy name: through Christ our Lorde. Amen.

The 1928 office prints the same prayer in modernized spelling, and its location before the Decalogue or Summary of the Law gives the same theological movement: the communicant asks God to cleanse the heart before hearing the law, confessing sin, and receiving the Sacrament. More distinctive, however, is the eucharistic prayer. The 1549 consecration prayer included the language of Christ's once-for-all sacrifice and then prayed for the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit:

O God heavenly father, which of thy tender mercie diddest geve thine only sonne Jesu Christ to suffre death upon the crosse for our redempcion, who made there (by his one oblacion once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifyce, oblacion, and satysfaccyon, for the sinnes of the whole worlde, and did institute, and in his holy Gospell commaund us, to celebrate a perpetuall memory of that his precious death, untyll his comming again.

Heare us (O merciful father) we besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to blesse and sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christe.

The 1928 American Prayer of Consecration keeps the once-for-all sacrificial language and places the institution narrative inside a prayer of thanksgiving, memorial, oblation, and invocation. It does not make the 1549 book normative by itself; rather, it receives a line of eucharistic development in which 1549, the Scottish offices, and American revisions are read together.

ALL glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.

WHEREFORE O Lord and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.

AND we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

Offertory and Oblation

The 1928 BCP also restores a visible offertory action before the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ's Church and the Prayer of Consecration. The alms are presented, and the bread and wine are placed upon the Holy Table:

The Deacons, Church-wardens, or other fit persons appointed for that purpose, shall receive the Alms for the Poor, and other Offerings of the People, in a decent Basin to be provided by the Parish; and reverently bring it to the Priest, who shall humbly present and place it upon the Holy Table.

And the Priest shall then offer, and shall place upon the Holy Table, the Bread and the Wine.

Procter and Frere note that the 1662 English revision had already recovered the placing of bread and wine on the Table from 1549 by way of the Scottish book. This is important for the 1928 comparison because American eucharistic revision drew heavily on the Scottish and 1662 trajectories as well as on direct memory of 1549:

In the Communion Service, the commemoration of the departed was added to the prayer for the Church Militant: the rubrics preceding this prayer were now altered on the lines of the Liturgy prepared for Scotland (1637), directing the presentation of the alms, and the placing of the bread and wine upon the Table, this latter being also taken from 1549.

Theological Meaning

The 1549 book matters for classical Anglican theology because it shows early English reform working by ordered conservation as well as correction. It made the services intelligible in English, required common prayer, and placed Scripture and sacramental administration within a single public book. At the same time, it retained a fuller eucharistic shape than the later 1552 book. Procter and Frere describe the 1552 change as a significant rearrangement of the 1549 canon:

In the Communion Office, the Decalogue was added, and the Kyries adapted to it; the Introit was omitted; and the mixture of water with the wine at the Offertory; the new Canon or long prayer of consecration, beginning with the Prayer for the Universal Church, and ending with the Lord's Prayer, which had been composed as an amendment upon the ancient Canon in the Roman Liturgy, was divided into three parts, and became the Prayer for the Church Militant, the Prayer of Consecration, and the first alternative Prayer after Communion.

The 1928 BCP therefore occupies a mediating position. It is not a simple return to 1549: it does not restore every 1549 feature, and it receives later Anglican doctrinal settlement, Articles, rubrics, and American ecclesial history. But in Holy Communion it gives American Anglican worship a eucharistic prayer in which the memorial before the Father, the offering of bread and wine, the invocation of Word and Holy Spirit, and the communicants' self-offering stand together. That is why the 1549 book remains more than an antiquarian reference for readers of the 1928 BCP.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• History of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Offertory Sentences (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Purity (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 U.S. Book of Common Prayer
• The 1549 Book of Common Prayer
• E. Clowes Chorley, The New American Prayer Book
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer