and again in the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles II.; but it is worthy of notice that, as to the intention of those who compiled and issued it, two quite different theories are held by two differing sections of the modern High Church party. Until recently, the prevailing view has been that the Prayer Book of 1549 was perfection—that its compilers fully meant it to be final—but that before its successor was published, the Reformation had, so to speak, fallen into bad hands, and that the second Book, consequently, was in direct contradiction to the first, and was all that was uncatholic and bad; that the changes introduced under Elizabeth and Charles II., though not all that could be wished, were still mostly in the right direction, and served to restore the Prayer Book of the Anglican Church to something like a respectable standard of Catholicity.[1] Of late years, however, a more extreme, but, at the same time, a more logical and accurately historical, section of the party, represented by Mr, Pocock, have maintained that there was in Edward's Council 'an avowed intention, from the very first, to proceed further and further, though the alterations were gradually introduced, for fear of shocking the prejudices of those who adhered to the older forms of religion'; and, again, that Edward's first Book 'was never meant to be final, and that the Council, with the Protector at their head, went as far as they dared at the time, leaving future changes to take their chance as occasions for making them might arise.' Now, when we consider that the principal movers and the principal agents were the same throughout, we can hardly doubt that the latter is the real account of the
- ↑ The Principles of the Reformation Shown to he in Contradiction to the Book of Common Prayer, by Nicholas Pocock, M.A. (B. M. Pickering, 1875), pp. 12 and 19. See also Appendix, Note IV.
