THE PRAYER BOOK

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21506, 22 June 1935, Page 17

THE PRAYER BOOK

The Truth About the Prayer Book. By A. 11. Baverslock and Donald Hole. Williams and Norgatc. 81 pp. (3/- net.) The contention of this book is that the Anglican Book of Common Prayer ought to have no authority in the Church of England. The first prayer book of King Edward VI. was forced upon an unwilling Church .by the iron hand of that "Italian" tyrant, Henry VIII. In the course of the several revisions of the Prayer Book, the ecclesiastical authority was never given freedom to act canonically. For this reason, the pre-Reformation rites and ceremonies and their legitimate and lawful developments in the Church of Rome should have greater authority for Anglicans than the Caroline Prayer Book now in use. All this is very interesting and is supported with genuine, though | somewhat uncritical, historical knowj ledge. If this book had been written by Roman Catholics there would be nothing very remarkable in this thesis. The authors, however, are priests of the Anglican Communion, and at one stage of their clerical careers must have signed ex animo a declaration, quoted by themselves, that they would "use the form in the said book (of Common Prayer) and none other, except so far "as shall be ordered by lawful authority." The mentality which argues that this declaration means that the said book shall not be used but some other is beyond the understanding of many.