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Untitled Article
we are ready to assign the reasons why we think it Is scarcely in any respect a model of pure devotional composition . Passages here and there occur of unrivalled beauty in the simplicity and purity of their style ; some of the collects are truly models of unaffected and affecting devotion . But as a whole , in our esteem ,
it contains blemishes which good taste would fain reject , inappropriate petitions and confessions which sincerity must mourn to be compelled to utter , redundancy and repetition which devotion would wish to escape , and inconsistencies which piety would willingly cast out . And yet if we can defend these charges ,
what must we think of bishops seated on their thrones , richly beneficed vicars and rectors reclining in thjeir pews , and intelligent and pious curates reading all this with no emendation , with no thought of the necessity of a change , with no effort to adapt a service , which the church must repeat for ever , to the taste , the
wants , the circumstances of the people who have no other public means of rising to the devotion which religion requires from all who are sincerely attached to its sacred duties ? I . That which is of the least importance and yet far from being insignificant , especially in these times of general improvement , the bad taste which occasionally offends , we shall here exhibit * In addresses to the Deity good taste selects such names , epithets ,
titles , or descriptions , as are appropriate ; or their effect is bad and weak , and there is danger of its being ludicrous , —the most unhappy consequence that on such a sacred occasion could occur . The second collect for peace begins ' O God , who art the author of peace and lover of concord , ' and then invokes this holy being to fight for his supplicants , —* defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies . ' So also the priest says , * Give peace in our time , O Lord . * Answer—• Because there is none other that
fighteth for us but only thou , O God / In the prayer for the clergy we read , i Almighty and everlasting God , who alone workest great marvels '—Work what ? Why this : ' Send down upon our bishops and curates the healthful spirit of thy grace . ' We are not so uncharitable as to think that this reflection on the
clergy is universally deserved . The collect for St . Thomas is equally inconsequential in the preamble and the petition : ( Almighty and everlasting God , who , for the more confirmation of the faith , didst suffer thy holy Apostle Thomas to be doubtful—grant us so perfectly and without all doubt to believe . In the Litany , which is intended for a general supplication , in which part of prayer the greatest simplicity is certainl y most consonant to pure taste , the artificial structure of the whole displeases us much . The consecutive forms * from all' this and all that—* Good Lord
deliver us f then by this and by that—Good Lord deliver us ;' then to the close € That it may please thee '—and the response , * We beseech thee to hear us , good Lord ; ' and the concluding passages which one could scarcel y expect to find uttered any
Untitled Article
800 The Liturgy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 300, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/12/
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