Last year, this column and the world celebrated the 400th
anniversary of the King James Bible. This year brings the 350th
birthday of another magnificent monument of early modern
English—the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP). All who savor the
riches of our common linguistic heritage should rejoice in its
commemoration. For the BCP’s combination of spiritual wisdom and
literary beauty gives it a following far beyond the ecclesiastical
frontiers of Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, and the Church of
England that originally commissioned it.
The BCP was the creation of Thomas Cranmer, a Tudor statesman
blessed with a genius for the writing of prose bordering on poetry.
A court favorite of King Henry VIII, who made him Archbishop of
Canterbury, Cranmer compiled the various prayers, collects, and
orders of worship that eventually emerged as the 1662 prayer book.
However, before it could be published in its final form its
principal author was burned at the stake for his Reformist
sympathies during a period of Catholic repression.
Although these power struggles have long since been forgotten,
Cranmer’s majestic command of the English language lives on. In the
words of his leading biographer, Diarmaid MacCulloch: “Millions who
have never heard of Cranmer or of the muddled heroism of his death
have echoes of his words in their minds.”
These echoes of Cranmer’s gift for language ring down the
centuries because he had a perfect ear for cadences that are both
beautiful and eternal. He wanted “a mere ploughboy” to be able to
remember the BCP’s most powerful phrases. He did not hesitate to
borrow from the finest spiritual writers of his time such as Miles
Coverdale, an early translator of the Psalms, and Archbishop
Reynolds, who authored the prayer of General Thanksgiving. Yet the
most sparkling gems of the BCP were Cranmer’s own compositions such
as:
We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have
followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We
have left undone those things which we ought to have done. And we
have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there
is no health in us. (General Confession)
Or:
Lighten our darkness we beseech thee O Lord; and by thy great
mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. (Collect
for Evening Prayer)
In my own love of the rhythms and resonance of such prayers I am
conscious that I may be one of a dwindling band of English old
fogeys. My familiarity with Cranmer’s language dates back to the
1950s, when hardly any form of liturgy other than the BCP was used
in Britain’s schools and churches—as had been the case for the
previous 300 years. But in the last half-century, evangelicals and
modernists have elbowed out the BCP, replacing it with liturgical
practices whose flexibility is all too often equaled by its
banality.
American worshippers of various denominations may find the
arguments for and against the BCP to be an esoteric British debate
between the cult of quaintness and the pressures of political
correctness. Yet excellence is excellence whatever the current
fashion, and Cranmer’s words, like Shakespeare’s, have survived
because they are “not of an age, but for all time.
A recent reminder of the BCP’s timelessness was provided last
year by the global reaction to the royal wedding when Prince
William and Catherine Middleton chose Cranmer’s “Solemnization of
Matrimony” liturgy for their marriage service in Westminster
Abbey.
As a result a worldwide television audience in excess of 1.5
billion listened to ancient yet spine-tingling spiritual phrases
such as:
To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse,
for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health till death us do
part.
And:
With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with
all my worldly goods I thee endow.
Such sentiments are light years removed from the current
practices of pre-nuptial agreements and quickie divorces. The
promises are couched in a solemnity of language that heightens the
commitment.
As the vows of marriage and many other lines from the BCP
demonstrate, Cranmer had a master’s touch for the sonorities and
structures of an English sentence. He has influenced innumerable
authors over the past 350 years. It is easy to find Cranmerian
echoes in the prose of writers as diverse as Edward Gibbon, John
Milton, William Makepeace Thackeray, the Brontës, T. S. Eliot, P.
G. Wodehouse, John le Carré, and P. D. James. But the literary
heritage of the BCP is surpassed by its spiritual challenges.
The first vernacular prayer books (there were forerunners in
1549 and 1552, also largely authored by Cranmer, from which the
definitive 1662 BCP emerged) were far more original than the “Latin
Mass translated into English,” as has sometimes been asserted.
Although the structure of the Holy Communion service was fairly
close to the Catholic Sarum Rite, even here there was a new “in
your face” power to the BCP liturgy. For example the invitation to
make a confession prior to accepting the sacramental bread and wine
is dramatic:
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, as are
in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new
life following the Commandments of God and walking henceforth in
his holy ways: Draw near with faith and take this holy Sacrament to
your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God
meekly kneeling upon your knees.
Apart from the special exhortations and rubrics in the order of
various services, the key dynamic in the BCP is the interplay
between Scripture, doctrine, devotion, and prayer.
Eighty percent of the 1662 Prayer Book is Scripture. It contains
readings from the King James Bible with Epistles and Gospels
selected for every Sunday of the year. Also central to the BCP are
the Psalms, set for morning and evening readings on each day of the
month. These are in the 16th-century translation of Miles Coverdale
whose vernacular version of the Psalter had become so popular by
the start of the 17th century that Cranmer did not dare replace it
with the King James Version.
Herein lies a vital clue to the BCP’s continuing survival and
perhaps revival. It was always meant to be read aloud. Cranmer’s
genius came from being as good a listener as he was an author. He
had perfect hearing for spiritual language that would season with
the familiarity of repetition and perfect pitch for writing jeweled
miniatures of prayer known as “The Collects.” One such collect, for
the Second Sunday in Advent, captures the oral spirit of the BCP
with its emphasis on reading and memory. Its opening words are
famous:
Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written
for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read,
mark, learn and inwardly digest them…
The inward digestion of Scripture is one of the keys to a
Christian spiritual journey. It is magnificently guided by the Book
of Common Prayer—still going strong after 350 years.
