It must be clear, therefore, to the most superficial observer, that the attraction of the First Book does not consist in its richness. If our own Prayer Book is “meagre,” the First Book is much more so. The changes subsequently made have been chiefly in the direction of addition, and there must be some other reason which renders it so attractive. And what is that reason? There is an expression in § 743 of Bishop Short’s “History of the Church of England,” which answers the question. The Bishop there says: “On the whole, this book forms a connecting link between the Missal and the Prayer Book.” Now, if this be the case, it is no wonder if those who prefer the Missal desire the substitution of this book for our present Prayer Book. The time may not be come for the introduction of the Missal itself; but that may follow in time, if they can now secure the connecting link. If this be the case, the reasons which lead men now to desire it are precisely those which led the Reformers to reform it. It is nearer Rome than our English Prayer Book. Therefore it was that the Reformers reformed it, and therefore it is that they who prefer “the unreformed liturgies” desire to return to it. This may be seen very clearly in Mr. Wood’s address. He enumerates several of the advantages that he considers would be gained by a return to it, such is a closer conformity to the order of “the canon” of the Mass; the omission of the Ten Commandments, and the “Dearly Beloved;” “the reservation for the sick;” “the unction of the sick;” and prayer for the dead.
To these he might have added the restoration of an altar in place of “the table” with its “fair white linen cloth;” and of the name “The Mass” in addition to the “Holy Communion;” the sanction for auricular confession in the Communion Service, combined with the omission of the General Confession in the Morning and Evening Prayer; the omission from the words of administration of the clause, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thine heart by faith with thanksgiving” and the presence of certain other expressions which it was just possible for “mistakers” to understand as teaching the localization in the consecrated elements of the actual human person of our blessed Redeemer now seated at the right hand of God.