THE SARUM MASS VERSUS EDWARD VITH”S “FIRST” PRAYER BOOK
Church Association Tract 113
BY J. T. TOMLINSON
SIR ROBERT PHILLIMORE, when Dean of the Arches, said,1 “The whole Prayer Book in fact, with very inconsiderable exceptions, consists of a translation of the Ancient Liturgies, and especially of that liturgy used by the Western Church.” Hallam said, (Const. Hist. I, 68.) “The liturgy was essentially the same with the Mass book.” The editor employed by Messrs. Griffith and Farran to write a preface to their cheap edition of the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, says, “The first liturgy of King Edward followed closely the ancient Canon, only it was in English.”
On the other hand Prebendary Sadler tells us, “The Eucharistic service of the Church of England is substantially a new service. If we take even the Communion Office of 1549 and compare it with the Canon according to the Use of Sarum, we find that by far the greater part of it is new.” “The office of 1549 occupies twenty-three closely-printed pages at the end of Mr. Maskellʼs ʻAncient Liturgies of the Church of England,ʼ and of these not above two pages are to be found in the Sarum Missal.” (The Church and the Age, p. 305.)
Canon Estcourt has placed this beyond controversy by printing side by side in parallel columns the Liturgy of 1549 and the Canon of Sarum, with the result of showing that “every expression which implied a real and proper sacrifice had been weeded out. The canon is so mutilated that only here and there do the words in the two books agree.” (Dogmatic Teaching of the Book of Common Prayer on the Eucharist, pp. 16, 40.)
Such variations are of comparatively small importance in the Ante-Communion, though the
Confession to “the Blessed Mary, all Saints, and you;” and the “praying holy Mary, all the Saints of God, and you” of Sarum (like the “Holy Mary, Mother of God, intercede for us” of the Hereford Missal) were struck out of this part of the Reformed Anglican rite. It is interesting to note that the absolution given to the Priest by the choir was, in 1549, put into the mouth of the Protestant Minister, while the distinctively sacerdotal absolution of the Sarum Use was omitted altogether.
For the full article: see:
publications/documents/CAT113_SarumMassvPrayerBook.pdf
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