Advent Meditation 2: Book of Common Prayer Prefaces
This is the second of two Advent Meditations on the Book of Common Prayer Prefaces. The first meditation is posted here.
“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away”
The prefaces to the Book(s) of Common Prayer are intriguing and instructive. They have a certain quality of restraint about them that is remarkable given the turmoil and controversies about theology and polity in the 16th and 17th centuries. They advance modestly and firmly a spiritual ideal and purpose. The Original Preface of 1549 Concerning the Service of the Church, altered slightly in 1552 and again in 1662, identifies what was a common concern for both Roman Catholics and Reformers; namely, a sense of the primacy of Scripture and the desire to provide a clear and easy method of reading through the whole Bible “or the greatest part thereof” in the course of a year. Cranmer quotes the Spanish Cardinal Francis Quignonez almost verbatim in describing the problem and in advocating the solution.
The only difference between them was about whether that method would be in principle for all people or just the clergy and about translation from Latin to the vernacular. Even on that point there was some common ground. While the Roman Catholic liturgy would remain in Latin, there would be translations of the Scriptures authorized by the Roman Catholic Church and preaching would be largely in the vernacular tongues of the emerging national states.
What the Prayer Book Original Preface by Cranmer discloses, however, is a central and essential principle that underlies the idea of Common Prayer. It has to do with an attitude and outlook towards the reading of the Scriptures as ‘a doctrinal instrument of salvation’ wonderfully expressed in Cranmer’s homily on A Fruitful Exhortation Unto the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture as well as in the beautiful Collect for The Second Sunday in Advent. “He that keepeth the word of Christ is promised the love and favour of God and that he shall be the dwelling-place, or temple, of the blessed Trinity.” That means attending to the Scriptures. “The Scripture of God,” he says, “is the heavenly meat of our souls; the hearing and keeping of it maketh us blessed, sanctifieth us, and maketh us holy. It turneth our souls; it is a light lantern unto our feet. It is a sure, steadfast, and everlasting instrument of salvation.” Scripture is a doctrinal instrument of salvation because it is written for our learning. It turns our souls to God “that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”