The Arrow's Path

Continuing on through the first paragraph of the original preface to the Book of Common Prayer, we read (emphasis mine): "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things, it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and  especially such as were Ministers of the congregation, should (by often reading, and  meditation of God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort  others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were ...

I have been promising for some weeks to do a series on the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer. I have been researching that topic, but then I hit vacation and &c., and have not gotten around to posting on this yet. I am about to remedy that now.  Before I get into that, a little preface on the Preface might be in order. We, Episcopalians, take the Book of Common Prayer for granted. As is common in most Church life, the things we do, we often do without really stopping to think why we do things a certain way. "We've always done it this way!" In some ways, this is actually a true statement, at least as it pertains to how worship came to be governed in what became the Church of England via the English Reformation and the Church of England's theological descendants like the Episcopal Church in the USA. The Book of Common Prayer was the brainchild of a man named Thomas Cranmer. I have written on this before at some length. (I was halfway through seminary b...

I have gotten some interesting feedback for idea topics from my query yesterday on what to do for a new series of blog entries, now that I have finished my 39 Articles in 39 days series. A commentary on the "Tracts for the Times" which spawned the Tractarian movement in the early 1800's was suggested on Facebook. Other suggestions were to compare and contrast the Canons of the Mass between the BCP and the Novus Ordo. Both of those ideas interested me, but both are some heavier duty academic lifting that I do not have time to engage in at the moment.  My wife also suggested doing a Saint of the Week commentary, which I may do in addition to a longer series.  I have to figure out what saint to pick from. I, personally, refuse to use that new Holy Women, Holy Men monstrosity (or as I refer to it, Holy Women, Holy Weirdos ) that General Convention is trying to foist on us because it is just any and every "saint" that someone somewhere wanted to add to the calend...