THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER I. INTRODUCTORY Τ TH HE Prayer Book, or rather the book described by its title as "The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, . . . together with the Psalter or Psalms of David," really consists of five books, which had never been brought together within one cover until the time of the English Reformation; in fact, it is only in the English Church and those connected with it that the five books are to-day customarily printed and bound together. These constituent parts of our Prayer Book are called in the Anglicized form of their Latin names: the Breviary, the Processional, the Missal, the Manual, and the Psalter. The last named is really a book of the Bible, arranged for use on the successive days of the month, and bound up with the service-books a provision made almost necessary by the fact that it is used in Church in an old translation which is rarely printed elsewhere. In regard |
