doctrine in the grand nave of the Duomo. Would that we could see any prospect of the day when in England our large churches may be used in this way; when with pews and all their concomitant evils swept away, we may see a vast crowd standing and sitting, leaving no passageway and no waste room, anxious only that they may, by pressing near, hear every word of warning and of advice. The nave of Westminster, so thronged, would soon show how great has been our mistake in leaving our large churches so long unused."

Our limited space will not permit us to extract several other passages we had marked for quotation, or to add much to former remarks, save strongly recommending to the attention of our readers a work which is certainly one of the most valuable additions to architectural literature that has lately issued from the press. In type and printing, as well as in style of illustration ;-the fullpage wood-cuts, by Mr. Jewitt, at pages 36, 53, 92, 134, 153, and 196 are most unrivalled specimens of his art;-the book quite equals anything that has been produced in this country.1

In parting with Mr. Street who has done so much as a practical architect, and who, we trust, may enjoy a yet wider field for his talents, we have only to say that we sincerely trust he may be able, at some future day, to continue his inquiries among the churches and domestic buildings of Central Italy; and to impress upon our ecclesiastical architects the great advantages which must arise from the adoption of principles, like those enunciated in the last chapter of the volume before us, and specially to commend to their careful attention the able, just, and vigorous sentiments put forward in the three final paragraphs.

1 There is, unfortunately, as it seems to us, a vagueness in the chronology which cannot but be regretted in a work of this nature, illustrative of the earlier Pointed style of the Lombardo-Venetian territory. The subject is certainly one for archæological treatment.

BISHOP COSIN ON THE PRAYER BOOK.

Bishop Cosin's Notes on the Book of Common Prayer. Anglo-Catholic Library. London: J. H. and J. Parker.

1855.

THE ratification of the proceedings of the Savoy Conference by the Convocation and Parliament of 1662, may be justly considered a reformation of the Reformation. The great movement of the sixteenth century had, like all mighty upheavings of the human mind, a strong tendency to run riot. On the Continent it was suffered to do so, and if it displaced some gross practical corruptions, or protested against the adoption of new articles of faith, it nevertheless invented for itself dogmas as wild, unscriptural, and unknown to primitive antiquity as any of those articles of Pope Pius' confession, which it rejected. For all we can see, Calvinism does as much dishonour to GOD by its definitions and secret decrees as the undue exaltation of S. Mary and the Saints; whilst surely the denial of objective truth, and the total ignoring the sacramental system is as unscriptural, as uncatholic, as fatal to a healthy tone of personal religion, as any theory of indulgences or purgatory.

If in this country we have escaped running into such excesses, and are still connected with the Catholic Church of CHRIST by apostolic succession, apostolic faith, and sacraments rightly administered, it has not been without much labour, toil, and blood. We have been "saved, yet so as by fire," and the scars are still in many places upon us. Nevertheless we have been saved, and the instruments of that salvation were first the martyr Laud, and secondly those noble-hearted confessors, who endured hardness for the truth's sake, and who in GoD's own good time were called back from prison-houses, and exile in foreign lands, to bear rule in His Church newly re-established in these realms. The English Reformation had indeed started on plain and intelligible principles. It professed a wish to reproduce the Christianity of the purest and best times. Of this desire the first Prayer Book of King Edward was the embodiment. But such a position neither suited the views of many who had authority here, nor the intentions of foreign bodies who wished to drag all other reformed communions down to their own level. Ultra-Protestantism won its "spolia opima" in the alterations of the first Book, and its march was one of triumph, till Laud met and confronted it. His archiepiscopate saved the English Church. And though the work which he had reared was for a time overwhelmed in the ruin which overtook himself, the event proved that that far-seeing prelate had laid his foundations deep. A school of real theologians had been formed by his exertions, and to them, within a quarter of a century after his death, was committed

the great task of bringing the Book of Common Prayer into closer harmony with the ancient liturgies of the Catholic Church. The Savoy Conference was therefore the turning point of our Church's history. Granted to please the Presbyterians, and under a general impression that it would issue in sacrificing parts of the existing ritual for the sake of conciliation, it resulted, to quote the words of one upon whom in our own day the mantle of Laud's intrepidity and fearlessness has descended, "in the reformation of our Church from corruption of more than one description-Puritan no less than Popish." It is sufficient to mention the restoration of the oblation, and the formal decision against the so-called Orders of the foreign consistories, as proof of this.

Among the divines who bore a hand in this blessed work of rectifying some of the worst excesses of the Reformation, and checking some of its worst tendencies, and in the still more blessed one of restoring to the Church some of the jewels which the confusion of the preceding century had shaken from her crown, Bishop Cosin occupies a conspicuous place. He had already been active in the great Laudian movement; and the "Devotions" which bear his name, testify to the powers he possessed of satisfying the deeper religious feelings of the sons and daughters of the Church of England. Marked out for special persecution by the Parliament, he had escaped their malice, and tended the spiritual wants of the English residents at the foreign court of Charles. The palatine throne of Durham rewarded his fidelity to the Church, and upon him devolved no inconsiderable portion of the revision of the Book of Common Prayer at the Restoration. Probably the collects for the third Sunday in Advent, the sixth after Epiphany, for Easter Eve, and our first Ember Prayer are from his hand. And considering the further alterations he suggested in the Communion Office, and his wish to alter the arrangement of the prayers of Consecration and Oblation (which he was not however able to effect, though he was successful in procuring the formal oblation of the Elements,) we shall probably not be far wrong in attributing to him the further improvement in the Prayer for the Church Militant, with regard to the commemoration of the faithful departed.

In the volume before us we have a collection of notes made by him on certain passages in the Book of Common Prayer from different sources and at different times. They slightly vary in tone and feeling, though they are harmonious in all essential matters, -at one time his mind dwelling rather on the substantial points of agreement between England and Rome, at another (after the reaction in Rome's favour which succeeded the troubles and the numerous secessions, among them that of Cosin's own son,) on the differences—a mental process, not perhaps without its parallel, in later days. From these notes we purpose to give a few extracts, 1 Bishop of Exeter to Dr. Lushington, page 9.

as showing what doctrines and practices were considered compatible with true allegiance to the English Church, by one of her most learned doctors and restorers two hundred years ago. There are many points on which we should like to dwell, and illustrate from these notes the truly Catholic character of Cosin's mind. The respect with which he speaks of the first book of Edward, his reverence for ecclesiastical traditions, his interest in the history of those holy men and women whose names are retained in our calendar, his use of the title "Our Blessed Lady," &c., all evidence a mind trained and disciplined in a truly Catholic school. But we must confine ourselves to higher matters, and purpose to lay before our readers Church of England doctrine two hundred years ago on the Holy Eucharist, hoping by the way to elucidate some questions which are being agitated at the present day.

I. Take then the following extract on the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

"That there is to be a certain form of words wherewith the Sacrament is to be made and consecrated, we make no doubt; and therefore it is but a calumny of theirs that say we do nothing else but recitare historiam, tell the story of CHRIST'S Institution, and so go to it. For we have first the recitation of CHRIST's command to have His Death and Passion remembered; and then we have prayer to perform it as we ought to do. After that we have the words of consecration, as fully and amply as any priest whatsoever can or may use them. The Massbook hath no more than we have here; so that to make a controversy here betwixt us, where none is, sounds more of the evil spirit-the desire of contradiction than of the good Spirit-the desire of peace and unity.

"Sufficient sacrifice... of that His precious Blood.-This word [that] refers to the sacrifice mentioned before, for we still continue and commemorate that sacrifice which CHRIST once made upon the Cross: And this sacrifice which the Church makes, as a sacrifice is taken pro mactatione et occisione victimæ, is only commemorative and sacramental; for in that sense CHRIST only offered it really upon the Cross by His own death; and so likewise, as it is taken for a visible sacrifice, CHRIST only offered it; for here it is invisible: but as it is taken for a sufficient sacrifice to take away the sins of the world, so indeed it was offered upon the Cross, as having power in itself to abolish all sin whatsoever; but doth not abolish any man's sins for all that, unless it be applied. And the ways to apply it are divers. By faith, by good works, by the unbloody offering up of the same sacrifice, by the receiving of His most precious Body and Blood. So if we compare the Eucharist with the sacrifice once made upon the Cross, with reference to the killing or destroying of the sacrifice, or with reference to the visibility of it, in that sense, we call it only a commemorative sacrifice, as the fathers do. Chrys. Hom. contr. Jud. part 2. Sentent. lib. iv. dis. 12. But if we compare the Eucharist with CHRIST's sacrifice made once upon the Cross, as concerning the effect of it, we say that that was a sufficient sacrifice; but withal that this is a true, real,

and efficient sacrifice, and both of them propitiatory for the sins of the whole world.' And therefore in the oblation following we pray that it may prevail so with GOD, as that we and all the whole Church of CHRIST (which consists of more than those that are upon the earth) may receive the benefit of it. Neither do we call this sacrifice of the Eucharist an efficient sacrifice, as if that upon the Cross wanted efficacy; but because the force and virtue of that sacrifice could not be profitable unto us, unless it were applied and brought into effect by this eucharistical sacrifice, and other the holy sacraments and means appointed by GOD for that end. But we call it propitiatory, both this and that, because they have both force and virtue in them, to appease GOD's wrath against this sinful world.' Read Mald. de Sac., p. 323. "Therefore this is no new sacrifice, but the same which was once offered, and which is every day offered to GOD by CHRIST in heaven, and continueth here still on earth by a mystical representation of it in the Eucharist. And the Church intends not to have any new propitiation, or new remission of sins obtained, but to make that effectual, and in act applied unto us, which was once obtained by the sacrifice of CHRIST upon the Cross. Neither is the sacrifice of the Cross, as it was once offered up there modo cruento, so much remembered in the Eucharist, though it be commemorated, as regard is had to the perpetual and daily offering of it by CHRIST now in heaven in His everlasting Priesthood, and thereupon was and should be still the Juge sacrificium observed here on earth, as it is in heaven.' The reason which the ancient fathers had for their daily sacrifice. S. Chrysost. in 10 ad Hebr. In Christo semel oblata est hostia, ad salutem potens. Quid ergo nos? Nonne per singulos dies offerimus? Et si quotidie offerimus, ad recordationem ejus oblationis fit. S. Aug. de Civ. Dei, lib. x. cap. 20. Ipse sacerdos, et ipse oblatio, cujus rei sacramentum quotidianum esse voluit Ecclesia sacrificium." Pp. 106–108.

Again, on the words " that we and all Thy whole Church,"

"Where by all the whole Church,' is to be understood, as well those that have been heretofore, and those that shall be hereafter, as those that are now the present members of it. (And hereupon my Lord of Winchester, Bishop Andrewes, grounded his answer to Cardinal Perron, when he said, 'We have and offer this sacrifice both for the living and the dead, as well for them that are absent, as those that be present;' or words to this purpose, for I have not the book now by me.) And by all other benefits of His Passion,' is intended no less the victory we shall all have over death and sin at the last day, that is, the resurrection of our bodies from the grave, and the public acquittal which will then be given us from all our sins, (when CHRIST shall pronounce His final sentence, and say, 'Come, ye blessed,' &c.,) than the remission of sins past to be now given us. So that the virtue of this sacrifice (which is here in this prayer of oblation commemorated and represented) doth not only extend itself to the living, and those that are present, but likewise to them that are absent, and them that be already departed, or shall in time to come live and die in the faith of CHRIST." P. 351.