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Of ornaments, except those absolutely essential to liturgy and devotion, there were none.
The copyists had introduced countless variations, but these acquired a fresh unity and unanimity from the very fact of their publication in such a form. The Slavonic liturgy of Russia seemed in a state of hopeless corruption when, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, the patriarch Nikon determined upon a measure of reform.
This was done at Frankfort on the Oder, where the English Church had many friends among the professors. Frederick then directed Ursinus to consult further with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and suggested that, if the plan was encouraged in England, the Liturgy should be introduced into the King's Chapel and the Cathedral Church on the 1st Sunday in Advent, 1706.
That these Churches have confined their efforts to a revision of the Directory, and have in this asserted their approval of a Directory of Worship rather than of a liturgy, is in itself an instructive fact. In the revised Directory of the Presbyterian Church of England some changes are made in the direction of securing for the people a larger part in audible worship.
The spirit of Presbyterian worship has been consistently and persistently non-liturgical and anti-ritualistic, and to advocate the adoption of liturgy and ritual to-day is to depart completely from that historic attitude. A few words on the subject of liturgies in general may not inappropriately close this sketch of the history of Presbyterian worship since the Reformation.
Other authors say that the word is derived from the ancient practice of chanting twice or in repetition the complete responses and versicles. It is often asked why are there different grades of feasts. Three reasons are given by writers on liturgy. First, to mark the diversity of merit in God's saints, their sanctity and their different degrees of service to His Church.
The walls of this neglected temple were two feet thick, and its high ceiling was kept from falling down by ten rude wooden props of recent rough carpentry; the pews were stately, high-fenced things, numbered in white letters on a black ground, and each four-sided, to contain ten persons; the rotting damask cushions in many of them told of a former aristocracy, while now all the congregation could be assembled in a single pew, and worship was unknown but once a year, when the bishop came to read his liturgy to dust and desolation.
An established Church with a Liturgy is a sufficient solution of the problem 'de jure magistratus'. Articles of faith are in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm before his Maker!
I opened the great Bible of the church, and found it to be a French version, printed at Lille some fifty years ago. There was also a liturgy, adapted, probably, to the Lutheran form of worship.
"Or, to be more exact, it would be better to say that part of the Liturgy which is more particularly concerned with prayer; for that part of it which relates to forms, and injunctions as to worship, is itself symbolism, symbolism is the soul of it.
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