OF THE ABSOLUTION. Almighty God, the Father, &c. God having committed to his ambassadors the ministry of reconciliation, the Church calls upon them to exercise it now, when the congregation have been humbled by the preceding Confession. The Priest, therefore, rises from his knees, and standing up, declares and pronounces, for their comfort and support, that God pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his Holy Gospel. Whether this is to be considered, as only a declaration of the condition, or terms of pardon; or whether it is an actual conveyance of pardon to all, that come within the terms, has been made a question. Those, who understand it in the latter sense, namely, that it conveys, as well as declares, an actual pardon, observe, that it is intitled in the Rubric The Absolution, which would not be, if it was only a declaration of Absolution; again, it is to be pronounced, which word gives the idea of a sentence, and not merely of a declaration. Further, that if it amounted to a mere declaration to this effect, namely, that all penitent sinners are pardoned by God on their Repentance, there seems no reason for placing it just after the Confession, for the same had been said before it, in the first sentence, When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, &c. It was a comfort to be told before, that pardon would follow upon repentance; and such hope had been, no doubt, a strong inducement to confession, but after such confession, the penitent may be allowed to look for the promised fruit of it. Those who consider the office here performed by the Minister, merely as a declaration, seem to reason rather upon their notion of the character, and authority of the priestly office, than upon the sense and wording of the service in question. In the present attempt to shew the method and plan of our prayers, we pretend not to speak further than the very wording of them enables us; it is to understand the service, formed for us by our Church, and not to decide upon questions of Theology. Instead of straining our understandings to comprehend the effect of this Absolution, pronounced by the Minister, it is enough for us to perform our own part, which, with God's grace, we still may at least endeavour at, and which we know to be indispensable, namely, truely to repent and unfeignedly to believe his holy Gospel. As the Absolution is directed to be pronounced by the Priest standing; while the other Rubrics speak of a Minister only, it should seem, that no Deacon is authorised to perform this part of the service. The word Amen, here subjoined, is a Hebrew word, which has more than one sense. In this place, it signifies so be it: At the end of Prayers and Collects, it signifies so be it, O Lord, as in our Prayers we have expressed. But at the end of the Exhortations, Absolutions, and Creeds, it means either, so be it, this is our sense and meaning; or, so be it, we entirely assent to, and approve of what has been said. At the end of Collects and Prayers, the Amen is printed in Italics, to denote, that the Minister is to stop, and leave the Amen for the people to respond; but at the end of the Lord's Prayer, Confession, Creeds, &c. and wheresoever the people are to join aloud with the Minister, it is printed in Roman, as a hint to the Minister, that he is still to go on. As the people are directed by the Rubric, to answer here, and at the end of all the other Prayers, Amen, they are to understand, that during the prayers, they are expected to be silent, and only to accompany the Minister in their minds. The Minister is the intercessor for the people, and it is his office to offer up their prayers and praises, in their behalf. OF THE LORD'S PRAYER. According to what has been already said, the part of the service hitherto performed, has been rather a preparation for Prayer, than Prayer itself; now comes the Lord's Prayer, with which the service began in the first Prayer Book of King Edward. After the preparation by confession and repentance, we are more qualified for pronouncing, Our Father, than in the unprepared state, in which we were called upon to address him in the former office? The Doxology was added to the Prayer at the last Review, probably for this reason, because this is an office of praise, as it comes immediately after the benefit we have received from Absolution. Here, and wherever this prayer is used, the congregation are to join with the Minister in an "audible voice;" but before the last Review of the Common Prayer, the Minister used, in most of the offices, to say the Lord's Prayer alone; and the poople answered at the end of it, by way of response, deliver us from evil. To give notice, and prepare the people for this response, the Minister used to elevate his voice, when he came to the Petition, lead us not into temptation; in the same manner as is done by the Priest, in the Romish Church; who, at the conclusion of every prayer raises his voice louder than ordinary, that the people may know when to subjoin their Amen. OF THE RESPONSES. O Lord open thou our Lips, &c. The design of responses is, by a grateful variety, to quicken the devotion of the congregation, and engage their attention: they having thus a share in the service must keep themselves prepared for their turn: if the Minister did the whole, the people might grow heedless, and become unconcerned. Hence we find, in the ancient Jewish Church,, they sung hymns and prayers by courses; and, in all the old Christian Liturgies, there are, in imitation thereof, short sentences like these, which, from the people answering the priests, are called Responses. The two first of these versicles, with their Responses, O Lord open thou, &c. O God make speed, &c. are of a penitential nature, and are taken from the Psalms of David. The first from the penitential Psalm li. the second from Psalm lxxviii. 1. After these have been pronounced, we have a confidence like David, Psalm vi. 9. Psalm cxxx. 7. that our pardon is obtained, and here turn our petitions to praises, standing, to denote the elevation of our hearts, and repeating the Gloria Patri, &c. The Penitential Office thus concluded, we begin the Office of Praise. Praise ye the Lord, The Lord's name be praised. The first of these versicles is no other than a translation of the word Hallelujah, which word was once held so sacred, that the Church scrupled to translate it; in King Edward's first Book, it was retained after these versicles, and appointed to be always so used between Easter and Trinity Sunday. Though the Prayers are thus divided between the Priest and the people, they should be considered but as one continued form; for both Minister and people ought mentally to offer up and speak to God, what is vocally offered up, and spoken by each of them respectively. OF THE 95TH PSALM. O come let us sing unto the Lord, &c. This Psalm is placed here, as a proper preparative to the Psalms of the day, the Lessons, and the Collects. For it exhorts us to praise God, to pray to him, to hear his word, and warns us not to harden our hearts; for which warning we bless the Holy Trinity, saying Glory be to the Father, &c. This Psalm is in the Latin service called The Invitatory, and was the beginning of some services. OF THE PSALMS. Having confessed humbly, begged forgiveness earnestly, and received the news of our Absolution thankfully, we shall be naturally filled with lowliness and gratitude, and be in a temper to sing the Psalms of David with his own spirit; after prayer came Psalmody, in all the ancient Liturgies. Nothing can be so proper an assistant to the performance of this service, as the Book of Psalms, which is a collection of prayers and praises endited by the Holy Spirit, composed by devout men, on various occasions, and so suited to public worship, that they have long been so used by Christians, no less than by Jews. They contain great variety of devotions, agreeable to all degrees and conditions of men, insomuch that without great difficulty, every man may directly, or by way of accommodation, apply most of them to his own case. For which cause, the Church uses these oftner, than any other part of Scripture. Such as do not admit of being applied to individuals, may be nevertheless thought very proper for recital, when it is considered, that what we say, or sing, is meant by the Psalmist to be the voice of the Universal Church. There is no reason to doubt, but that David in some of his Psalms, spoke as the representative of the Church; in others, he expresses himself in the person of the Messiah. A devout person may, with the same reference, repeat these Psalms, either in the church or in his closet. The custom of repeating or singing the Psalms alternately, or verse by verse, seems to be as old as the Psalms themselves, and to have been practised by Christians as well as Jews. The practice is continued by our Church, though there is no particular Rubric to enjoin it. It was seen, that the Minister would have in vain exhorted the congregation to praise the Lord, as he had done in the foregoing versicles, if they were not permitted to take their part in repeating the Psalms; neither would they keep the promise they had just made, that their mouths should shew forth his praise; further, what would become of the Invitatory placed before the Psalms; O come let us sing unto the Lord, &c. if the people were to have no share in the Psalms that follow? As it appears by the title to many of the Psalms, that they were sung to music, and it is evident, such was the practice among the primitive Christians, there seems the best authority for continuing such usage in our Cathedral service. While we repeat the Psalms and Hymns, we stand, conformably to what we read, that while the Priests and Levites were offering up praises to God, all Israel stood, 2 Chron. vii. 6. Most of the Psalms contain some matter addressed to the Almighty, which makes it convenient and proper, that the whole of them should be repeated by us standing. At the end of every Psalm, it has been the usage in several foreign Churches, as well as our own, to repeat the Gloria Patri; which is to signify, that the same God is worshipped by Christians, as by Jews: the same God, that is glorified in the Psalms, having been from the beginning, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as well as now. So the Gloria Patri is used as an expedient to turn the Jewish Psalms into Christian Hymns, and fit them for the use of the Church amongst us, as they were before for the use of the Temple. There have been several methods of apportioning the Psalms, so as they might be repeated periodically, in the Church service; one division was into seven portions, called Nocturns; in the Latin Church, they were all repeated once every week; in the Greek Church, they are divided into twenty portions, and so are repeated in twenty days. With us, they are divided into thirty portions; and by such means are repeated once every month. The Psalms in our Common Prayer, as well those in the services, as those in the Psalter, are taken from the Great English Bible, called Cranmer's; being the same that were referred to in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. and that of Queen Elizabeth. This translation being less close to the original, than the last translation, has fewer Hebraisms in the stile, and the language is thought, on that account, to be plainer and smoother. OF THE LESSONS. When our hearts have been raised up to God, in praising and magnifying him, as we do in the Psalms, we are then in a fit disposition to hear, what he shall speak to us by his |