PRAYER BOOK REVISION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 130, 2 June 1923, Page 14

PRAYER BOOK REVISION.

FORMER BISHOP OF MANCHESTER'S. FIVE POINTS. >"Rom Our Sner-inl Correspondent.) LONDON, April 16. The question of prayer book revision continues to be provocative of heart burning in Church circles. The Rev. Dr. Knox, formerly Bishop of Manchester, one of the bishoais engaged on the revision until his retirement, has just issued an open letter on the subject. He urges the following five considerations on the bishops of the Church. "(1) Not to have any alternative Book of Common Prayer. Enrichments may find their place in a supplement or appendix, but alternatives should be embodied in the text. You will thus avoid the painful suggestion that the English Prayer Book, dear to devout souls, is a kind of back number retained only till a few Protestant fossils have departed this life. "(2) Not to tamper with the text of the Bible, but where scholarship demands retranslation or the omission of words clearly inadmissible by MSS evidence, to introduce such changes and such only into the text. By alternatives provision can be made for jnissages which sonic consider unsuitable for congregational use. "(3) To admit no alternative of prayers, ornaments, or ceremonies that raise controversial issues, but resolutely to banish controversy from a book of devotion. "(4) Steadily to keep in mind that public prayers can only be written lor the devout and to provide only what may assist their devotions. "(5) To purge the calendar of some 50 saints unknown to any but historical scholars, some of those saints whose teaching was vitally opposed to Scripture." In conclusion Dr. Knox says: — "Your aim has apparently been to provide such a number of alternatives as to legitimise the various and conflicting uses that have grown up in the Church of England. As the clergy will not fit themselves to the rubrics of the Church, i-ou have tried to devise rubrics that will fit them. In so doing you have overlooked the very reasonable plea of many of the laity that the confusion of uses does not help but disturbs their devotions. Your desire to include as many variations as possible has led you to tamper, at several points, witlut'he doctrine of the Church, a work for which neither you nor the National Assembly have any authority. "But, so far as the counter-reforma-tion party is concerned, your labour has been in vain. They tell you plainly that your concessions are insufficient. The question here submitted for your consideration is whether you -will not imperil the Prayer-book 'enrichment and revision by doctrinal changes distasteful to two considerable sections of the Church of England, to the Evangelicals and the Ritualists, as well as to many sober Church folk not comprised in either of these sections. "Further, to go hack on the doctrinal settlement in 1662 must necessarily raise the most serious questions as to the status of the National Church. Some Churchmen may regret or dislike that settlement, but if the Church of EngunoL m the e8 R a, J ° ffiCial demand t0 SO back 2°" the Reformation in a Romeward direction it must not be surprised at eve,, ~, the Sacrament with which our blessed Lord sealed His new r- ' , r menu It would be a strange the Prayer f or Unity ■ « /,' ," ' ° Revisers oi 1662." " y the