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NEW-YORK BIBLE AND COMMON PRAYER BOOK SOCIETY,

COOPER UNION, FOURTH AVENUE.

M.DCCC.LXXI.

FROM

THE BEQUEST OF EVERT JANSEN WENDELE 1918

I

CERTIFICATE.

N pursuance of a joint resolution of the House of Bishops, and the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies, adopted at the General Convention assembled in the city of New York, in October, in the year of our LORD, 1868; We, the subscribers, a Committee appointed for the purpose, do hereby set forth this corrected STANDARD PRAYER BOOK; printed from stereotype plates, the property of the New York Bible and Common Prayer Book Society. And we hereby declare this Prayer Book, so corrected, to be THE STANDARD.

MANTON EASTBURN,

Bishop of the P. E. Church in Massachusetts.

M. A. DE WOLFE HOWE,

Rector of St. Luke's Church, Philadelphia.

BENJ. I. HAIGHT,

An Assistant Minister of Trinity Church, New York.

T. W. COIT,

Rector of St. Paul's Church, Troy, N. Y.

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THE RATIFICATION OF

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.

By the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Convention, the Sixteenth Day of October, in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

THIS HIS Convention having, in their present session, set forth A Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, do hereby establish the said Book: And they declare it to be the Liturgy of this Church: And require that it be received as such by all the members of the same: And this Book shall be in use from and after the First Day of October, in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety,

PREFACE.

IT T is a most invaluable part of that blessed liberty wherewith CHRIST hath made us free, that in his worship, different forms and usages may without offence be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline; and therefore, by common consent and authority, may be altered, abridged, enlarged, amended, or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient for the edification of the people, "according to the various exigencies of times and occasions."

The Church of England, to which the Protestant Episcopal Church in these States is indebted, under GOD, for her first foundation and a long continuance of nursing care and protection, hath, in the Preface of her Book of Common Prayer, laid it down as a rule, that "The particular forms of Divine Worship, and the Rites and Ceremonies appointed to be used therein, being things in their own nature indifferent and alterable, and so acknowledged, it is but reasonable that upon weighty and important considerations, according to the various exigencies of times and occasions, such changes and alterations should be made therein, as to those who are in places of authority should, from time to time, seem either necessary or expedient."

The same Church hath not only in her Preface, but likewise in her Articles and Homilies, declared the necessity and expediency of occasional alterations and amendments in her Forms of Public Worship; and we find accordingly, that, seeking to "keep the happy mean between too much stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness in admitting variations in things once advisedly established, she hath, in the reign of several Princes, since the first compiling of her Liturgy in the time of Edward the Sixth, upon just and weighty considerations her thereunto moving, yielded to make such alterations in some particulars, as in their respective times were thought convenient; yet so as that the main body and essential parts of the same (as well in the chiefest materials, as in the frame and order thereof) have still been continued firm and unshaken."

Her general aim in these different reviews and alterations hath been, as she further declares in her said Preface, "to do that which, according to her best understanding, might most tend to the preservation of peace and unity in the Church; the procuring of reverence, and the exciting of piety and devotion in the worship of GOD; and, finally, the cutting off occasion, from them that seek occasion, of cavil or quarrel against her Liturgy." And although, according to her judgment, there be not "any thing in it contrary to the Word of GOD, or to sound doctrine, or which a godly man may not with a good conscience use and submit unto, or which is not fairly defensible, if allowed such just and favourable construction as in common equity ought to be allowed to all human writings ;" yet upon the principles already laid down, it cannot but be supposed that further alterations would in time be found expedient. Accordingly, a commission for a review was issued in the year 1689: but this great and good work miscarried at that time; and the Civil Authority has not since thought proper to revive it by any new commission.

But when in the course of Divine Providence, these American States became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was

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