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ART. II.-Ancient Collects and other Prayers, for the Use of Clergy and Laity; selected from various Rituals. By WILLIAM BRIGHT, M.A., Fellow of University College, Oxford, Theological Tutor of Trinity College, Glenalmond. Oxford and London: J. H. and James Parker.

'I HAVE been studying,' said General Paoli to Dr. Johnson, 'the ecclesiastical writers of the Middle Ages.' 'Why, sir,' replied Johnson, 'they are very curious.' The one and the other spoke of the pursuit as of something which might occupy some six or eight weeks of a busy man's leisure time: and that was about the idea which the last century had formed of the various Church works and Church sciences of the Middle Ages. Notice how completely such books even as Wheatley's ignore all liturgical writers previous to the Reformation; how to him, and to such as him, the Millennium, which elapsed between the time of Justinian to that of Luther, is a pure blank. How little could the men of that generation, so wise in their own conceit, so contentedly and equally anathematizing Rome on the one hand, and Methodism on the other, form an idea of the distinct and separate sciences, each of them not to be acquired but by the labour of a life, which the narrowest boundary of the term Ecclesiology must needs embrace! Art on the one side, Antiquarianism on the other. Art, with her separate divisions of architecture, music, painting, and the crafts and mechanical studies that minister to all these; the precious works of the needle, in which England by the consent of all stood first; the various schools of glass painting, the work of the potter, the enamels of Limoges, the manipulation which could raise a Quentin Matsys to the very first rank of artists, and endue the flowers of the field with the cold metallic life of iron and brass;—all this on the one side: on the other, the gradual compilation of Liturgy, Office, Sacramentary, the living kernel of devotion enshrined in its art-shell, the breath of life, animating the otherwise worthless, though glorious, forms of medieval skill. On which of these subjects might not volumes on volumes be written? On Hagiology? Let those patient Fathers of Brussels, now in the third century of their labour, toiling on with the Bollandist October, answer the question. Then we need a history of the Missal, tracing it out in its various European families. We want the wealth that can first amass a library full of those invaluable Incunabula, printed according to the use of all the more celebrated Churches of Europe; from those which Norway gave us, the Missale Nidrosiense and Upsalense, to those

of Seville and Evora in the far south, and those of Dantzic, Strigonia, and Cracow, on the confines of the Eastern Church; glorious tomes bound in half-inch oak or chesnut, armed, and nobbed, and studded with wrought brass or silver, scaled, tortoisefashion, with metallic lappets, and bound together by the hogskin back, relic of boars that had fattened themselves plentifully in great forests of beech; those volumes that have initials of such marvellous splendour, with flowers and fruitage curling down the side of the page, or symbolising in their very pattern the meaning of the Epistle or Gospel which they prelude. All these books have to be collected, divided according to their families, need their histories related, their various developments and corruptions set forth, till the outbreak of the Reformation on the one side, or the all-grasping, all-levelling interference of Rome on the other, drove them from the cathedral choir into the royal or municipal library. And if the Missal needs this history, equally so does the Breviary. Let the reader try, as the writer has done, for nearly twenty years, and he will find that scarcely a third-rate town in France or Germany but will yield him, in its library, some ancient Breviary of a family hitherto unknown to him. We could specify, at the present moment, between three and four hundred of a date anterior to the Reformation; and, in all probability, that amount is not the half that diligent examination could produce. What further are we to say of Hymnology, the history of which remains still to be written? What of the endless varieties of Antiphons and Responses? What of Antiphonaries, Sequentiaries, Graduals, Processionals, Benedictionals, and their countless varieties? Surely this, that the science of Ecclesiology is truly infinite. Well may that noble description in the Wisdom of Solomon, consequent on the command to build a temple upon "Thy holy mount, and an altar in the city wherein Thou dwellest, 'a resemblance of the holy tabernacle which Thou hast prepared 'from the beginning,' be applied to the treasures of art and learning laid up in the storehouse of the Catholic Church.

Of one small division of this great shrine it is our purpose now to speak. We have in various preceding papers given some account of the general arrangement of Missals and Breviaries, have endeavoured to show the grand distinctive features of the various liturgical families of East and West, while no long time since we offered some remarks on the basis of all Catholic rituals, the Psalter. From the Lex Psallendi, we naturally turn to the Lex Orandi; and we now propose to say something as to the character, history, and various modifications of actual prayers, whether Collects or Litanies, both in the East and West. The subject is entirely new; and we must

therefore entreat the reader's pardon if, in endeavouring to untwist a somewhat tangled skein, we should sometimes ourselves become confused; if, where we have scarcely a guide to precede us, we should be guilty of occasional mistakes.

The prayers to which we are about to direct the reader's attention, may conveniently be divided into six classes:1. Collects, properly so called.

2. Longer prayers, such as have no distinctive name, but are the Euchai of the Eastern Church.

3. Litanies.

4. Illations.

5. Exhortations.

6. Responsory Prayers; the Preces of Lauds, Prime, and Vespers.

7. Benedictions.

Each of these we will by turns consider, and we will commence with the Collect. The derivation of the word is uncertain. It may be because the substance of the prayer is collected from the Epistle and Gospel which it accompanies; or much more probably, because into that prayer the priest collects the wishes and supplications of the by-standing faithful. much better agrees with the Greek synonym, Synapte.

This

A Collect, then, is (1) a liturgical prayer; (2) must be short; (3) embraces but one main petition; (4) consists but of one sentence; (5) asks through the merits of our Lord; and (6) ends properly with an ascription of praise to the Blessed Trinity. It is a composition belonging to the Western Church; for, as is well known, the Eastern Church has nothing resembling it. In the East, 1. There is no varying Collect for Sunday_and Festival. 2. The prayers are almost all lengthy. 3. They form various sentences, and embrace a variety of particulars; and 4, they do not, in so many words, base their request on our Lord's merits.

There is nothing more wonderful than the immense variety of the Collects said, or that have been said, in the Western Church. Numerous as those are which the Latin Communion still possesses, a still larger number have probably perished in the destruction and desolation of Diocesan Missals. Our own Prayer-book contains less than a hundred. It might not be difficult to find, without searching very far, a thousand of equal beauty; and Mr. Bright, in the little book which stands at the head of our article, has done good service in familiarizing the English reader with a few of these.

The construction of Collects is on a plan which is tolerably unvarying. When fully developed, it consists of five parts. 1. The Invocation.

2. The Antecedent Reason of the Petition.

3. The Petition itself.

4. The benefit which, if it be granted, we hope to obtain. 5. The Conclusion.

Take an example.

1. Almighty GOD.

2. Who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.

3. Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.

4. That we may be defended. . . . hurt the soul.

5. Through JESUS CHRIST Our LORD.

This, as we have said, is the fullest version of a Collect, though the Petition may sometimes consist of two or more inembers. Frequently the fourth clause is omitted: still more frequently the second: rarely both.

Let us now, by way of understanding better these Collects, go through the more interesting half of the Church's year,--from Advent to Trinity, with a comparison of the Collect for the day in various uses. We must remember that the one English Collect supplies the place of the Collect, the Secreta, and the Post Communio, of the Roman Church; all of them in like manner varying with the Festival: although the Collect, the Maxima Collecta, (the Oratio Supersindonem of the Ambrosian rite,) is almost always the fullest and richest. We will take as a specimen of the rites of various Churches-1. The Roman; 2. The Sarum; 3. Our own English Prayer-book; 4. As an example of a Medieval German rite, the Liège; 5. The Aquilæan; and 6. The Modern Paris. To these we will add as an example of that reform which it was intended at the revolution to carry out, the amended Collects proposed in the Royal Commission, but which were never presented to Convocation, and which lay buried in the library at Lambeth till a Parliamentary vote the other day dragged them out to light. A diligent comparison of documents so various and yet all so illustrative of the times and circumstances under which they were composed, cannot be without its advantage.

It has always appeared to us that in beginning the arrangement of the yearly Collects, the English Reformers had intended to deviate far more widely from the Sarum use, than they afterwards found it convenient to do. The Collects for the three first Sundays in Advent have no resemblance in the Missal and in the Prayer-book. The ancient Missals to which we have referred give it thus (and we may observe once for all that, where we quote the Roman alone, it is because the Sarum, Liège, and Aquilæan agree with it) :

'Raise up, we beseech Thee, O LORD, Thy power, and cause that from the imminent perils of our sins we may merit through Thy protection to be delivered, and through Thy liberation to be saved.'

Our Reformers, dismissing the ancient form, composed a fresh one from the Epistle; not without its own beauty, but at the same time containing an awkwardness in its arrangement which would at once prove it of later date.

That for the Second Sunday in Advent is as follows:

'Stir up, O LORD, our hearts to prepare the ways of Thy Only-Begotten Son, that, through His Advent, we may merit to serve Thee with purified minds.'

Here, again, our Reformers have formed their Collect from the Epistle.

In like manner with the third.

'We beseech Thee, O LORD, to bow down Thine ears to our prayers, and enlighten the darkness of our minds by the grace of Thy visitation.'

So here, once more, our Reformers compounded their Collect from the Epistle, though with a glance here and there at the more ancient form.

In the fourth Sunday we find them for the first time translating from the old Collect, but so translating as to lose almost wholly its true spirit and emphasis. In the original it is addressed to GOD the SON; and with the dramatic effect which permeates every ecclesiastical office, calls upon Him,-as if the work of our redemption were not yet begun,-to raise up His power and succour us, to be born, as it were, for our sakes. In our version, this beautiful realization of the approaching festival is lost: the silver is become dross, the wine is mixed with water; the prayer is now addressed to 'GOD the FATHER,' and ends, through the satisfaction of Thy SON, our LORD,' &c. In these Advent Collects, then, our Prayer-book falls short of its original; we shall find in many that succeed, that this is far from being the case. King William's Divines still further injured this Collect, merely transcribing the Epistle :-' O LORD, Who hast given us cause of perpetual joy by the coming of Thy Son, our Saviour, among us, raise up Thy power, we pray Thee, and possess us with a mighty sense of Thy wonderful love, (!) that whereas through the cares of this life we are sore let and hindered in running the race,' &c.

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On Christmas-day it has usually been thought that our Prayer-book had adopted an original Collect. The Collect 'for this day,' says Palmer, is not directly translated from the 'ancient Offices of the Church.' It is true that the Roman and Sarum uses give a perfectly different prayer:- Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the new birth of Thine 'Only-Begotten SoN in the flesh, may liberate us whom ancient