The Ornaments Rubrics of the 1552 and 1662 Book of Common Prayer

 

One has to wonder where all the revisionism comes from? I mean anyone with any common sense at all can understand that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was a reformer who gradually brought in the changes he could as best he could. I find it particularly amusing that the Anglo-Papists of various colors, including the so-called old high churchmen, wish to distort the Ornaments Rubric from the Order for Morning Prayer in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer so that it endorses a pre-reformed situation of the first year and half of King Edward VI's reign rather than what it so obviously intends, being the second half of Edward's reign until Bloody Mary took over.

The appropriate part of the rubric for the Morning Prayer service reads:

And here is to be noted, that such Ornaments of the Church, and of the Ministers thereof, at all Times of their Ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the Authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth.

Cranmer in fact gave his life in martyrdom to bring about these reforms yet the revisionist dissimulation would have us believe that Cranmer was actually in favor of the vestments prior to his own reforms! It would indeed be amazing if the 1662 Prayer Book intended to allow papist vestments and ornaments especially since Matthew Parker was for all practical purposes a supporter of Cranmer's theological views. This is the problem with both the Anglo-Papists and the high churchmen. Both want to lie, dissimulate and distort so that they can have their own way. Their agenda is essentially to reverse the English Reformation gradually so that the frog in the kettle does not notice when the water begins to boil. Next thing you know you're back in Rome.

Cranmer's 1552 reform of the Prayer Book makes it clear that the Anglo-Papists and the High Churchmen are out of line with the English Reformation:

And here is to be noted, that the minister at the tyme of the Communion and all other tymes in his ministracion, shall use neither albe, vestment, nor cope: but being archbishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a rochet; and being a preest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice onely.

It is questionable that Elizabeth's settlement would have re-instituted the papist vestments and ornaments that Cranmer specifically disenfranchised. There are precious few written publications on the internet against the vestments because only the papists are concerned to argue for vestments and medieval ornaments. Such things are unnecessary to Reformed and Evangelical Anglicans, particularly since they understand the 1552 rubric and the 1662 rubric to mean that high church vestments are forbidden. The Puritans were obviously not satisfied with either the 1552 prohibition or the 1662 prohibition.

Charlie

  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
    Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.

 

http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/

 

www.reasonablechristian.blogspot.com