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There was no preparation for the Holy Communion that day, and I had deputed the clerk to select the hymns, for I was far too ill to attend to anything myself. The psalms and hymns were especially applicable to my case, and seemed to help me, so that I thought I would go on and read the ante-communion service, and then dismiss the people.
Chrysostom in the morning service, the first prayer in the ante-communion service, the prayer "for the whole state of Christ's church militant," and some of the collects had become, as it were, part of me; so much the more disappointed and disgusted was I, then, to hear prayer made in what seemed to me a sickly, unmanly whine.
The frequent repetition seemed to reduce it to little more than the 'fashionable nod. The introit was one of the psalms of the Psalter. While it was being chanted, the priests returned, and with lowly bowings, even to the knee, passed within the chancel and advanced to the front of the altar. The Ante-Communion was then said, the Epistle and Gospel being read by different persons.
An elderly Vicar, in a parish in the adjoining county, Gloucestershire, found the morning service with a sermon very fatiguing, and the patron, the Squire, suggested that the ante-Communion service would be less tiring in place of the latter. He was not a very interesting preacher, and the Squire was quite as well pleased as the Vicar when he agreed.
When what a Boston worthy once termed "a holy alacrity" is observed, on the part of both minister and singers, even the aggregated services of Morning Prayer, Litany, and "Ante-Communion," together with a sermon five-and-twenty minutes long, can easily be brought within the compass of an hour and a half a measure of time not unreasonably large to be given to the principal occasion of worship on the Lord's Day.
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