d property_
in the Occasional Prayers: _Prevent us, O Lord_ at the end of the
Communion Service.

II. The Sacramentary of Gelasius (who was Pope of Rome 492 to 496) had
provided much material which Gregory adopted. From this ancient source
we have our _Second Collect, for Peace_ in the Morning Service; and the
_Third Collect, for Grace_: the _Second Collect, for Peace_ in the
Evening Service: the _Third Collect, for Aid_: the Collect _for the
Clergy and People: Assist us mercifully_, at the end of the Communion
Service: the Confirmation Collect, _Almighty and everlasting God_: a
Collect in the Visitation Service: _O Lord we beseech thee_, in the
Commination: and 21 of those which are placed with the Epistles and
Gospels.

III. We go back still further for seven of the Sunday Collects, which
are taken from the Sacramentary of Leo the Great (Pope of Rome, 440 to
461).

Thus, five-sixths of our Sunday Collects are from these three
Service-books: although we do not purpose here to say much of the
Collects used in the Communion Service, and ranking as the "First
Collects" of Morning and Evening Prayer, we think it useful to note
their derivation from the 5th and 6th centuries. Even those which are
not so derived owe their form and manner to the same models.

This last remark applies to all the prayers which have the Collect
form. We may suppose that, in the years which preceded Leo the Great,
the Collects were being made. Perhaps the dignity of their {137}
diction grew by the survival of the simplest and best; by the falling
away of superfluous words; and of words of effort: in any case the
absence of small auxiliary words, in Latin sentences, contributed much
to their tone of modest dependence on God, as well as to their poetic
force.

To take an illustration, our Second Collect at Mattins is translated
from the following Gelasian Collect: _Deus auctor pacis et amator, Quem
nosse vivere, Cui servire regnare est, protege ab omnibus
impugnationibus supplices tuos; ut qui defensione tua fidimus, nullius
hostilitatis arma timeamus: Per &c_.

These 27 Latin words are equivalent to the 51 English words which we
use. We do not, however, suggest that the tone has been altered in the
translation. On the contrary, our Translators had so learnt the right
tone of the old prayers, that they not only translated them and the
tone, into a language of a very different sort; they also composed new
prayers, in English, which ra