more import and stead you than any external or worldly ones, wherewith too you are abundantly provided. The celsitude of your descent only enrols your name in the catalogue of the great, is secular and transitory, calculated for this world: but it is your grace and virtue that writes it in the Book of Life. Beauty is fading, grandeur is fugitive, the wreaths of civil honour are withering; but your godliness is a crown that shall not fade away, gloriously set off with a diffusive charity, a great humility, and an exemplary devotion; to the improvement of which your Highness hath made me proud to say, that these devotionals have not a little contributed. As to the Meditations subsequent to them, they were written by a reverend person of this Church, a true lover of souls, (as some eminent persons about this Court have abundantly experienced,) and you have professed yourself delighted with them, and benefited by them. God Almighty make them all effectual to the furtherance of your spiritual good, and eternal blessedness! And may that good God still multiply upon you His blessings; may your soul be still precious in His sight, as the apple of His eye, as the

signet upon His right hand! May He preserve you steadfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, in the constant exercises of your holy religion (wherein you have been happily educated), amidst all the gaudy divertisements of this vain and transitory world, which is the no less hearty than dutiful prayer of,

Madam,

Your Highness's most humble, most devoted, and most faithful Servant and Chaplain,

E. LAKE.

ST. JAMES'S, June 3rd, 1677.

+

To the Reader.

GOOD READER,

THIS little manual of directions and prayers for the Holy Communion first designed for a private use, now shews itself in public, on presumption it may help thee in thy closetretirements towards a pious preparation thereto, and a worthy reception thereof.

I will not be tedious in prefacing it; only I cannot say it is mine, but a collection; and recommends itself unto thee clothed in the language, not of any private conception, (of such the world is already full enough,) but of primitive Liturgies; of that of our holy Church and some of the most devout Fathers of it, Bishop Andrewes, Bishop Cosin, and that great and good man, Archbishop Laud, who lived a Patron of it, and died a Martyr for it.

The collector is not curious, or solicitous to think, how it may go down with a sort of people, whose unwieldy zeal hath transported them under a pretence of spewing out Popery, to disrelish and traduce any thing that is primitive: but the sober and devout Christian, who lives in the communion of this Church, he is secure of. And that it may further thee in the attainment of our common salvation, is his sincere and hearty desire; in return to which, he begs thee nothing, but to recommend him now and then in these thy private addresses to the Throne of Grace.

[Requiescat in Pace.]

A

PREPARATORY OFFICE

FOR THE

HOLY COMMUNION.

3

THE nearest and most solemn intimacy and communion we have with God in this world is exhibited to us in the blessed Eucharist; that is to say, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper; wherein (according to our Church Catechism) the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful; and hence it is called by St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 16. the Communion of His Body and the Communion of His Blood; so that by a due and worthy par

B