The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prayer Book Explained, by Percival Jackson

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Title: The Prayer Book Explained

Author: Percival Jackson

Release Date: May 8, 2007 [EBook #21351]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAYER BOOK EXPLAINED ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE PRAYER BOOK EXPLAINED

BY THE

REV. PERCIVAL JACKSON, M.A.,

JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

PART I.

THE DAILY OFFICES AND THE LITANY.

CAMBRIDGE:

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

1901

"_The book requireth but orderly reading._"

HOOKER, v. xxxi. 3.

{v}

PREFACE.

To those who believe in One Holy Catholic Church wherein dwelleth the
Holy Spirit, it will always be difficult to distrust the Service Book
of any Branch of it. The old claim made at Jerusalem with regard to
the vexed questions of the Church's infancy, _It seemed good to the
Holy Ghost, and to us_ (Acts xv. 28), rested not on the presence there
of the good and wise, on the prudence or self-sacrifice of those who
had hazarded their lives for the Name, but on the reality of the Lord's
promised Presence. Not because there were Apostles there, but because
those there were the Catholic and Apostolic Church, they asked and
received the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It was a living and lasting Presence, touching with saving grace the
treatment of such questions as the observance of Mosaic precepts, {vi}
the eating of bought meat, as well as Purity of Life. We cannot doubt,
then, that many Services which have been criticised on afterthoughts
were essentially constructed in accordance with the Faith once for all
delivered to the Church.

To renounce this conviction with regard to our own Church of England is
to surrender its inheritance. Men of various tastes may prefer diverse
rites: reasonable sequence may suggest one method, and glowing impulse
another, fear of misunderstanding a third; but that which has seemed
good to the Holy Ghost and His Temple, the Church, demands that we
shall endeavour to believe it to be good, and use it in the temper of
faith.

The critical spirit, as we now use criticism, is not the spi