by Francis C. Eeles
o.b.e., d.litt., f.s.a.scot., f.r.hist.s.

THE following notes are an attempt to assess the Communion Service in the English Book of Common Prayer of 1662; the revised service of 1928 is mentioned only incidentally. No attempt is made to discuss other parts of the Prayer Book, or to suggest desirable future revisions. The English clergy have solemnly promised to use this form, and none other except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority. Many do not do this. What follows here is an attempt to explain why the rite should be loyally and faithfully followed, by applying the principle of strict liturgical interpretation.

the present situation

It is a commonplace that for a long time many of the English clergy have not been using the Communion Service in the Book of Common Prayer in the normal way; they have gradually been assimilating it to the corresponding service of the Roman rite; they have progressed from clothing it with an imitation of Roman externals to changing its order, to adding to and subtracting from it, until a few have discarded it altogether in favour of the Latin service in the Roman missal. This process began in the nineteenth century, when a much needed reaction from a Puritan tradition sought to exhibit the Prayer Book Liturgy as one of external richness and beauty. It was claimed that this was intended by the rubric which ordered the ancient ornaments of church and minister, and that it was therefore right to bring back as much of the historical ceremonial as applied to the present service. Thus, the original idea of the men of the Oxford Movement was to obey the Prayer Book and its rubrics, and to treat the rite as being itself within what is called the Catholic tradition. There was no intention gradually to destroy a Puritan service in order to supplement it with one of another kind. Some attempts were made to improve it by adding matter secretly from other rites, including the First Prayer Book of 1549, or the Sarum or the Roman missal; but still the Prayer Book text remained. Then some began to imitate Roman externals and to treat the Roman rules as authoritative sources for improvements.
At first, and indeed for some time, this attitude sprang from lack of knowledge of the details of what one calls the English ceremonial—that native background out of which the rite had emerged—and the difficulty of finding out about it. There was a hasty adaptation of continental usages seen abroad, some of them French or Belgian, coupled with a certain freedom and exuberance in their use, a process differing considerably from the attempts to follow closely the Roman rules in the Italian manner that came later. During this period, however, weighty liturgical scholarship was developing in England and became highly respected all over Europe. Recognizing the deficiencies of the Prayer Book, our liturgical scholars supported the High Church interpretation as against the Puritan one, but also insisted that the English rite was sufficient and that it was a mistake to blend it with the Roman.
At the time that this position became clarified and generally understood—at the turn of the century—the bishops gave no help to the claims of English liturgical scholarship, nor did they support the proper ceremonial treatment of the Prayer Book, because the Low Church party would at once have made an outcry against the regulation of those externals which they regarded as illegal. In the absence of authoritative guidance, a Romanizing party, by skilful propaganda, became dominant; with the result that the view that the Prayer Book rite is Puritan, and the Roman rite the model to be copied, became widely entrenched. Altar books containing ingenious combinations of the Prayer Book text with that of the Roman service were prepared, and are used, though destitute of any authority—a liturgical anomaly unprecedented in Christendom: But more recently, when a revised Communion Service was prepared on lines approved by competent scholars and on the principles followed by other Anglican revisions, it might have been expected that those who valued Catholic tradition would have welcomed it, as the Caroline Divines, the Nonjurors, the Tractarians, or most of the historic High Churchmen would have done. But they joined their traditional opponents to overthrow it. One side attacked it because they thought it High Church or Catholic, the other because they felt it would stand in the way of assimilation to the Roman rite. So in the years of confusion following the Parliamentary refusal to assent to the use of the Revised Prayer Book of 1928, the denigration of the English rite and the idealizing of the Roman have increased. This has led to the great bewilderment and alienation of ordinary worshippers in church, while interested members of other Churches have been unable to comprehend a state of things which amounted to liturgical chaos. There is much evidence, too, that scholarly and interested Roman Catholics have not been impressed by uncritical Anglican imitation of their practice.
There has undoubtedly been a decline in the prestige of the Church of England in some parts of the country in the sphere of public worship, and quite recently there has been a genuine reaction on the part of some who had drifted away, to get back to the Prayer Book rite.
But a difficulty now to be confronted is that the idealization and imitation of the Roman rite have filled many minds in such a way that they seem unable to realize the vast content of the liturgical treasure of the Church Universal. Nor do they seem to recognize that on Catholic principles it is possible for the Prayer Book and the rest of the Anglican rites, if properly understood, to be used and respected (whatever the defects) in the same way as their respective rites are used by members of other communions, including Roman Catholics.
It is therefore useful to recall much that is either forgotten or unrecognized. The present writer is no blind admirer of the form of service embodied in 1662. Brought up under a Liturgy more ancient in character and fuller in form, he is quite conscious of its defects; what follows, therefore, is not the work of one who is merely swayed by old associations, or is without the practical experience of other rites.
Full recognition must be accorded to those criticisms of the defects of 1662 which led to the provision of the revised rite of 1928. But it is not these which are in the forefront of recent attacks, so much as that dissatisfaction with 1662 which has resulted in various methods of breaking it up, of supplementing it with matter from the Roman rite, or even of substituting the latter for it. No doubt the last is exceptional; but even among many who adhere fairly closely to the English form, it is felt that the rite is only just tolerable, only just authoritative, while the Roman rite is the ideal. So when 1662 is used, it seems to be increasingly regarded as outside the pale of Catholic Liturgies, or to be made usable only by secret additions and by being clothed with the ceremonial familiar in the Roman rite of to-day. Hence action by authority designed to restore the 1662 service, or requests by puzzled lay people, are resented as attempts to substitute what is considered Protestant for that which has come to be regarded as of Catholic obligation.

method of interpretation

It is notorious that the English rite bears abundant traces of the controversies of the Reformation period. One element in it after another can be related to them, and some were deliberately provided from a desire to express the views of the more extreme foreign reformers. Some forms were taken or adapted from German reformed rites, though elements of this kind were occasionally themselves derived from the older continental rites. But if Cranmer's writings exhibit Zwinglianism or Calvinism, we know that he had before him Eastern Orthodox Liturgies, and the ancient Mozarabic rite of Spain, and that he made use of them.
It is not claimed that the interpretation here given would be that of the extreme reformers. But the claim is made that the rite must be interpreted according to its conformity with the older rites of the Church, whether intended by the compilers or not, and that such interpretation is indicated by the very title-page of the Prayer Book. It must also be remembered that reformers whose writings were Zwinglian, Lutheran, or Calvinist, always had the remoter intention of doing what the ancient Church did, though their knowledge of the early periods was scanty, and issued in many mistakes.
But if, as has recently been suggested, we are to assess the Prayer Book rite of the Holy Communion by the known opinion of some of its compilers or reformers, we must do the same thing with that of the ordinal. With what result? The Roman Catholic controversialist may speak about that: he will tell us that, though possibly valid in themselves if read in the light of older practice, the revised forms, taken in the meaning attached to them by their compilers, indicate an intention so to change doctrine that they are not valid for us, and do not really confer the orders they claim to do. If, of course, the Roman Church is regarded as either (a) having authority over us, or (b) as being the safest guide, it does not seem possible to resist the conclusion that what applies to the missal applies also to the ordinal.
But if we reject Roman methods of interpreting the ordinal, we reject them equally in interpreting the missal. Indeed, Fr. Gregory Dix points out: 'It is a commonplace of all theology, Roman or Anglican, that no public formulary of the Church can be or ought to be interpreted by the private sense attached to it by the compilers. Its own contents and any official authoritative comment made upon it by the Church corporately are alone what determine its meaning.'
First, let us consider the title of the Prayer Book. It runs: 'The Book of Common Prayer, and administration of the Sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the Church of England.'
The claim made here is that which has been traditionally made in the case of most of the rites of the Church. These are essentially the same everywhere; they are of the Church. But inasmuch as there is no one universal form, but many forms varying locally, they are according to one use (that is, the variety of form) of some particular area or diocese. Before the Reformation in most parts of England the service books were 'according to the use of Salisbury', the cathedral church with the greatest reputation for liturgical accuracy; or in some places according to some other use. The reformed rites were to be for the whole country. We find parallels outside Anglican practice. Thus the Aberdeen breviary of 1509 was to be the use of all Scotland, and the Trondhjem missal of 1519 was for the whole kingdom of Norway. Further on in the Prayer Book the revisers appeal to ancient and to Catholic or universal practice.
Therefore the Prayer Book services must be interpreted in accordance with general or Catholic practice, and not according to new ideas of the sixteenth century, whether the innovations of foreign reformers or the legislation of the Council of Trent.
Thus, in considering the Prayer Book service in detail we are entitled to ask, not the meaning some individual reformer might attach to a phrase, a section, or a rubric, but how far such forms agree with older and more general or Catholic practice.
Now, once more, the writer does not suggest that the Prayer Book rite is free from faults. No one with any liturgical knowledge would now talk of it as 'our incomparable Liturgy'. Far from it. It undoubtedly has defects. It is perfectly possible to recognize this, yet to see its excellencies, and to use it, not merely with a grudging, but with a generous and appreciative loyalty. So with the Roman missal as used by Roman Catholics. Roman Catholic scholars are fully sensible of its defects and openly discuss them. But they are proud of their rite; it is venerable; they admire its excellences, they obey its rules as authoritative, and treat its text as sacrosanct. The reactions of the most friendly and scholarly Roman Catholics to Anglican imitations of their service are the reverse of what the imitators expected. Such views are not so well known as they ought to be. In particular, the liturgical movement in the Roman Church has as one of its objects that of making the Mass and its actions as intelligible as possible to the laity.

1662 in outline

Let us first examine the general outline of the service. Is it reasonably in conformity with the general outline of the Eucharistic rite as known to the Church at large?
That classical outline is as follows:

A Preliminary matter, often long and frequently with a litany element.
B In the West, collects.
C Epistle or Old Testament lesson, or both.
D Gospel.
E Offertory: setting elements on altar, with Creed before or after.
F Various prayers, usually intercessions.
G Preface.
H Sanctus.
I Consecration, including three elements: (1) recital of institution, (2) offering or anamnesis, (3) invocation or epiclesis, usually, but not always, of the Holy Spirit.
K Lord's Prayer.
L Fraction (breaking of bread).
M Pax (kiss of peace). In Eastern rites this follows E.
N Communion.
O Thanksgiving.
P Dismissal or blessing.

All these elements are in 1662, save the kiss of peace, and they are all in this order, save that the Lord's Prayer is after the Communion, and the Fraction within the Prayer of Consecration. This prayer, however, is abnormally condensed and unusually arranged, so that (2) and (3) in section I above are greatly obscured.
There are other elements, such as the Confession and the Prayer of Humble Access.
There is a unique feature: the Gloria in excelsis is placed in 1662 after the Communion instead of early in the service as in the Latin rites.
There are also the exhortations, which form no part of the rite itself.

1662 considered in detail

The Lord's Prayer and Collect, Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, represent and are derived from the preparatory prayers of the Latin rite, once much longer.
The Ten Commandments and Lord, have mercy are a fusion of an Old Testament lesson with the Kyries of the older rites. On certain days in the Sarum missal there was an Old Testament lesson before the Epistle, and at the first Mass of Christmas such a lesson was what was called 'farsed' or interlarded with other matter. There is thus ample precedent for this combination of lesson and Kyries, even if it be not desirable for everyday use.
The Collect for the King was put before that of the day for the sake of convenience: in actual fact it is not always the first collect that is the most important, as may be seen in the Ember Day Masses of the Latin rites.
The series of collects is substantially that in Sarum and the older books, but a few new ones were provided, some of which are an improvement on the rather duller ones for which they are substituted.
The Epistles and Gospels are also the old ones for the most part, as in the Sarum missal; if we look at Advent and Trinity Sunday we see the Sarum selection maintained and not the Roman, though the Sundays after Epiphany are reckoned as in the Roman and certain monastic rites, and not as being after the octave of the Epiphany as at Sarum. That the revisers had some monastic rites before them is also clear from their selection of the Epistle for the Circumcision, which was probably suggested by the Westminster missal.
The ancient musical portions of the rite, for example, between the Epistle and Gospel (called the Grail, Alleluia with its verse, and later the Sequence), are not provided, either there or elsewhere. It is difficult to think the omission was intended to be permanent, though there is the precedent of the Mozarabic rite for reading the Gospel immediately after the Epistle. Much later the flood of hymns, which the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries introduced, have gained a position by common consent and are so universally accepted in all Anglican churches that they or the old liturgical chants themselves are properly and naturally used at points where singing was traditional.
The Creed follows the Gospel as of old. The Anglican tradition of treating it as a fixed part of the service is in line with the Eastern rites and with the Mozarabic rite in the West.
The notices, official statements, and sermon traditionally belong to this part of the service. In the Roman rite the sermon is supposed to follow the Gospel; in our mediaeval services it came a little later.
The collection of alms at this point has ancient authority, and they represent the offerings of the people in kind, from which at one period the elements to be consecrated were taken. Hence the soundness of the order first to receive the alms and then to place the elements on the altar. In 1552 there was no rubric for this, but in 1662 one was added very like that of 1549.
There is no order for non-communicants to go out: this strange but common practice is without Prayer Book authority, which later on supposes that they will be there, as the invitation to the confession is to be addressed to the communicants, assuming that others will be present to whom it is not addressed.
The Prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church is the intercessory part of the common or central section of the service, placed here, as in the Mozarabic rite, instead of later. The words 'militant here in earth' often formerly interpreted as excluding prayers for the dead, come from a Sarum book of hours of 1514 which of course includes such prayers, so that it is wrong to interpret it as excluding them. The passage which contains the reference to the departed is an addition made in 1662 to the 1552 text.
The penitential part of the service follows—Invitation, Confession, Absolution, Comfortable words. Essentially this is the same element that is found in Latin rites at the beginning of the service and before the Communion. It is generally reckoned to have been a mistake to place it in this position, for it breaks the sequence of the more solemn parts of the service. The forms themselves date from before the abolition of the Latin books. They first appeared in The Order of the Communion of 1548, for use with the Latin rite, and are largely derived from the Consultatio of Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne.
The direction for the celebrant to turn to the people for the absolution is in accordance with some of the Latin rites though not (among others) with those of Sarum or Rome.
We now reach the consecratory section of the service. It begins with a solemn Preface such as has been universal in the Church since the fourth century, and the language of that Preface is very close to that of the Roman group of rites. The omission of 'The Lord be with you; And with thy spirit' before 'Lift up your hearts' is to be regretted, and so is the limited number of Proper Prefaces. The punctuation, 'O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God', is often regarded as a mistake for 'O Lord Holy, Father Almighty, Everlasting God'. But this is not certainly the case as there appears to be a little precedent for it. The omission of 'Blessed is he that cometh' after the Sanctus is a return to very early practice.
The Prayer of Humble Access breaks the sequence of thought where interruption is least happy, though something similar is found in a private prayer for the priest in a Spanish missal between the Preface and Te igitur. It is more relevant to the penitential section.
The Prayer of Consecration must be admitted to be one of the least fortunate features of the English rite. Its form corresponds ill with the Anglican appeal to antiquity or to the whole Catholic Church. It is meagre and out of line with the classical tradition. In its origin it admittedly shows the influence of the extreme reforming party in 1552. But while its wording is capable of interpretation on Protestant lines, it by no means follows the more extreme forms of that kind; to such an extent is this the case that it is difficult to believe that care was not taken so to compile it that it could also be interpreted in the traditional manner. Such an interpretation is definitely indicated by subsequent history, and by the other formularies in the Prayer Book, including the title-page. We remember that it was revised in 1559, and comes to us as revised again in 1662.
But there are positive advantages. We see that this form is called the Prayer of Consecration. Note that the use of the word 'prayer' excludes the notion of a mere reading of an account of the institution, after the manner of some of the other 'reformed' rites, even the Swedish; and it is evident that the prayer hinges on the two verbs 'hear' and 'grant'. The word 'consecration' the equivalent of the old 'sacring' is retained, to the exclusion of such phrases as 'setting apart'. The legalistic word 'satisfaction' is something of an innovation. The words of our Lord are approached by the clause, 'Hear us, O merciful Father … grant that we receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.' Here we have a definite prayer for an effect which is immediately defined by our Lord's own words; this contains the intention of an epiclesis or invocation, combined with an abnormally brief anamnesis or offering in the clause 'in remembrance of his death and passion'. The account of the institution is very close to the Mozarabic form and to the Orthodox Eastern, as well as to a Lutheran Brandenburg form, thus departing from the Roman canon, but in no uncatholic direction. It was Dr. Brightman's view that this form is due to aiming at 'the fullest possible combined record of our Lord's acts and words, and one which might quite naturally have been arrived at by two persons independently.'
It is the character of the prayer as a whole to include several elements comprised in a few lines; there is, as it were, a certain telescoping. However brief and jejune as the form must appear to any one familiar with the other Liturgies, it contains one widespread feature that is not in the Roman rite; namely, the brief reference to our Lord's coming again. It contains also a feature which, though not without some late mediaeval precedent, comes by all ancient precedent between the Consecration and the Communion; that is, the Fraction.
The direction to consecrate on the paten is a return to earlier practice, and corresponds to what is done throughout the East and is still ordered in the Mozarabic rite in the West. Consecrating on the corporal, though very ancient in the Roman rite, did not spread all over the West till the Middle Ages. So we find the form for consecrating a paten in the pontificals was changed from ad conficiendum in ea in the earlier ones to ad confringendum in the later. At the Reformation the mediaeval use of consecrating on the linen cloth appears to have continued, but the High Churchmen of the seventeenth century restored the older practice, and ordered it by rubric in 1662. In fact, many patens came to be made with stems, like these of the Orthodox Church.
The form for the delivery of the sacred elements, 'preserve thy body and soul' and not merely 'preserve thy soul' as in the Roman rite, is the same that was ordered in the Sarum manual. This form, it should be remembered, was restored in 1559 after being omitted in 1552, and has been used ever since.
The direction to deliver the sacred elements (including the chalice) into the hands of the communicants, is in accordance with very ancient practice. The use of the word 'hands' excludes the Low Church practice of the communicant using the fingers only for receiving the first species.
The placing of the Lord's Prayer and the Prayer of Oblation after the Communion is difficult to defend in view of the general practice of the Church. But it is widely thought that in the Roman rite before the time of St. Gregory there was no Lord's Prayer at the end of the canon. As for the two following prayers, they are definitely a product of their time, and cannot be traced further back. Yet what is wrong with them? There is nothing unorthodox about them. Even if they are not ancient there is no reasonable case for objecting to them on this ground. It is sometimes forgotten that it ought to be possible when necessary to construct new liturgical forms which are not based on precedent, but which are nevertheless perfectly sound and good. Nor can it be said that the widespread desire to place the Prayer of Oblation at the end of the canon is wrong. Even if this alone be not an ideal revision it would be an improvement on the present arrangement.
One of the most notable features of the rite is the position of Gloria in excelsis in the latter part of the service as part of the thanksgiving instead of at the beginning of the service between the Kyries and the Collect, the position it occupies in the Latin rites. (In the Eastern rites it is not in the Liturgy properly so called, but in what we should call mattins.) This change in the position of the Gloria has frequently been criticized and quite unreasonably condemned; and apparently only owing to its not being in the Latin place. Viewed apart from this concentration on the Roman rite, the change is a good one, giving a better balance to the service and providing the most striking conclusion in Christendom. At one time this was recognized. Now, because it is not Roman, it is condemned. In actual fact, it has been treated as a constant part of the rite, in contrast with the Latin rites where it is used only on festivals. And if only the matter could be viewed impartially the transfer might properly be regarded (as pointed out by Dr. Frere) as a stroke of genius.
The long form of blessing is also an innovation, but here again it is a good one, so long as it is remembered that the first part is not a misplaced kiss of peace formula. The first part is scriptural; the last part was in common use in mediaeval times.
The rubrics clearly contemplate the Eucharistic elements remaining on the altar till the end of the service, and then being disposed of. Therefore the ablutions must not be taken, as in the Latin rites in later times, immediately after the Communion. This has been represented as an innovation but it is actually a return to earlier practice, and is the same as that of the Orthodox Eastern Church when no deacon is present.

the external presentation of the service

This exposition of the 1662 rite will no doubt mean little to the evangelical: it is not specially intended for him: he claims to be satisfied with the service, and as far as its text goes he generally follows it, though he often seems at a loss how to handle the sacred vessels and their adjuncts with any consistency. There are numerous Anglican churches where the service is loyally and reasonably rendered, even if there is a lack of liturgical knowledge about the external settings and the minimum required with regard to them.
It is when a degree of elaboration is desired that, if the critical faculty be not applied, there is a risk of adopting customs which in effect undermine the principle of Anglican authority; yet these notes are not a plea for a Puritan or even an exclusively 'moderate' or 'central' rendering of the rite. Those who wish to use the widespread adjuncts of vestments, lights, and incense, have every right to do so. The Prayer Book itself follows the Catholic or universal judgment of Christendom in assuming at ordinations and consecrations of bishops that the normal complement of three sacred ministers will be employed. And the rubrics for the Creed and the Sanctus order these to be sung or said—an indication that the service will normally be a choral one.
In connexion with this assessment of the meaning and use to-day of the Prayer Book service, it is impossible to ignore the ceremonial with which it is rendered, especially if at all full. In many such churches, whether designedly or not, this ceremonial is now borrowed, in defiance of the English precedents which underlie the Prayer Book, from the Roman rite. Much of the latter was never used here in ancient times with the Latin rites of Sarum and the rest, but belongs to the counter-reformation tradition abroad. We have become so used to this now that it is hard to see the incongruity in due perspective. The truth is that it was perilous in the extreme to pursue such a path, for it implied that the rite was so contemptible that it must be clothed with the ceremonial of another form of service. On the other hand, the average Englishman is anti-Roman, often mistakenly, and at times absurdly. Yet when it is desired to teach him to value and understand the general or 'Catholic' externals, too often they are forced on him in a system which includes some specially fussy actions and forms that, rightly or wrongly, he regards as 'Roman Catholic'. What is more, friendly Roman Catholics will probably tell him how silly they think it is to import things which they regard either as unessential, or as bad practice to be avoided.
Within the limits of available space and without illustrations it is impossible adequately to describe the Prayer Book rite as rendered with the full ceremonial which goes with it. Under the most authoritative conditions and with the best surroundings and the authentic ornaments it may be seen in greater or less degree, but with accuracy as far as it goes, at several of our cathedrals—with a maximum of enrichment including the use of incense in at least two, and with only slightly less degree in some other cathedral and abbey churches; in some the full use of vestments is not in use, although the full complement of ministers is normal, but the major part of the action, even with legitimate variation, falls within the English tradition.
There is, however, the reduced type of service where the celebrant cannot be assisted by a deacon and sub-deacon, corresponding to the Roman missa cantata sine ministris sacris, therefore of necessity less ornate. But here, too, the same principles apply. Whatever is done should carry out the precise requirements of the English rite and in a manner that reflects English precedent, not Roman. Simple direction upon what this involves may be found in the Alcuin Club leaflet, Eucharistic Ceremonial in One-Priest Parishes.
While referring to the external presentation of the rite, it is proper to express a hope for a diligent avoidance of over-elaborate detail or 'Italianization' in general; austerity of detail is nevertheless compatible with great richness at such focal points as the Gospel and the Offertory.
With regard to the Prayer of Consecration in particular, it is believed that great and lasting gain would flow from a general agreement to recite the prayer without prominent ceremonial until after it is ended: on such lines settlement might be achieved among all parties without sacrifice of doctrine. Nothing could do more to promote a feeling of unity. The rite of 1662, despite its rubric for re-consecration, binds on us no theory of a moment of consecration. Consecration is granted; but to impose by ceremonial act the theory of a precise moment may be to assume a heavy responsibility. To quote Dr. Srawley:

'It would greatly conduce to edification if this old controversy between East and West as to the “moment of consecration” were dismissed from our minds, and recognition were generally given to the fact that the Eucharistic prayer as a whole, and no one “moment” in it, constitutes the true consecration of the sacrament.'

Most important is the psychological effect. While authorities may comfort themselves by assuming that externals do not matter, the effect of substituting Roman authority for English is to induce hostility both to the rite itself and to English traditions. It has also undermined liturgical study (except when used to support the Roman rite) and leads to the dislike and even mishandling of our ancient church buildings.

There now follows in briefest outline a description of a service in a well-appointed parish church in which the Prayer Book text is scrupulously followed together with full ceremonial as used here in England of old in so far as that is consistent with the present rite. All the actions described here can be defended without recourse to foreign authority. All are local forms of what is general in the church, east and west, early and late.
While the choir is singing the introit or a hymn the sacred ministers and their attendants proceed to the altar, first the verger, then servers with cross, lights, and incense, then the sub-deacon with the Gospel book, then the deacon, and lastly the celebrant. Arrived at the altar the celebrant censes it in a simple manner with few and long swings, and is censed by the deacon on handing back the censer to him. The ministers stand one behind the other for the preparation at the north side of the altar; the deacon and sub-deacon move aside as the celebrant turns for the decalogue or summary of the law. Proceeding to the south side of the altar the ministers stand behind each other for the collects. All sit in the sedilia (the celebrant in the eastern seat) while the sub-deacon advances westward and reads the Epistle facing the people. After his return to the sedilia, while the gradual or hymn is being sung, the deacon spreads the corporal and censes the midst of the altar; preceded by cross, lights, incense, and sub-deacon, he goes to the place where he sings or reads the Gospel, during which the thurifer slowly swings the censer behind him. The ministers stand abreast at the altar for the Creed. They sit for the sermon. The preacher prefaces it with the Bidding Prayer and concludes with the ascription of praise to the holy Trinity. The alms are collected and taken to the altar. Then the sacred elements are solemnly brought to the celebrant who sets them on the altar, censes them with crosses and circles, and is himself censed by the deacon. The ministers are then censed by the thurifer, and others in choir may also be censed. The celebrant says the Prayer for the Church with the deacon and sub-deacon behind him. At 'Ye that do truly …' they turn aside and kneel for the confession, etc. At Sursum corda all stand; at 'It is very meet …' the assistants fall in behind the celebrant and they go up beside him at the Sanctus. At the Prayer of Humble Access they go aside and kneel again, while at the consecration they stand, the sub-deacon behind, the deacon beside or behind the celebrant. The canon is said in solemn stillness but aloud. The ministers bow deeply after it. The celebrant communicates the ministers if they receive; he and the deacon then administer to the people. When all have communicated the deacon spreads the upper corporal over the vessels on the altar. He and the sub-deacon then stand behind the celebrant for the Lord's Prayer and Thanksgiving, standing beside him for the Gloria, behind him for the Post-communion if said, and kneeling for the blessing. The sub-deacon goes to the south side and administers the ablutions to the celebrant, while the deacon folds the corporals, wipes the chalice, and gives the vessels to the clerk to remove from the altar. The sub-deacon takes up the Gospel book, the ministers bow to the altar, and their procession returns in the same order in which it came, while the choir conclude the hymn.
Such in outline is the service with the full ceremonial. The description appears more elaborate than it really is. More details would be confusing unless they were set out in length in the form of instructions for actual use. The positions of the ministers are really very simple and based on the system of standing in queue at the prayers; abreast for the great acts of praise; in open position with assistants on either side when the celebrant turns to the people. They kneel only when the Prayer Book orders it.

We have now done two things. We have examined the text of the rite in the light of precedents set by the ancient liturgical forms of the Church. We have said a little about the service as it is when rendered with full ceremonial, based on a strict following of the Ornaments Rubric, with the use of the ornaments of church and ministers at all times of their ministration as they were at the time referred to, and the actions that went with them, so far as these fit the present rite.
The service so understood and so rendered is of such a kind that we may be proud of it, although in some ways it is not ideal.
None who see it thus presented in its native fullness can doubt its 'Catholic' character in contrast with the rites of the more extreme reformers. If Catholic, it is also reformed; if many of its elements have come from afar, it is manifestly English. It has its defects, some conspicuous; but so has the Roman rite. Yet when treated as indicated here, the 1662 service can be defended and explained, whether to our own people or to strangers, and members of other churches will understand and respect it, because it is what it is, and is not disguised as something else and mutilated and altered in an attempt to make it into another rite.

Eeles, Francis C. “The Rite of 1662 Re-Examined.” Thoughts on the Shape of the Liturgy. XXIV. London: A. R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd., 1946. 33–56. Print. Alcuin Club Tracts.