EXPLANATION O F THE CONSTRUCTION, FURNITURE AND ORNAMENTS OF A CHURCH OF THE VESTMENTS OF THE CLERGY AND OF THE NATURE AND CEREMONIES OF THE MASS. BY THE Rt. REV. JOHN ENGLAND D. D. ROME 1833. BY FRANCIS BOURLIE Printed for the Foreign Catholic Library. TO HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL WELD etc. etc. MY LORD CARDINAL Had I written a book worth dedicating to your Eminence, I should be gratified in having your permission to inscribe it to you. These few sheets are yours by a better title; and when I offer them, I can only express my regret at their unavoidable imperfection. Your Eminence felt very properly the great inconvenience to themselves and the serious injury to our holy religion, that continually arose from the want of any sufficient mode by which those numerous and respectable strangers, whose most familiar language was English, could be made acquainted with the nature and object of that ceremonial which they had perpetually before them in this city. The weighty numerous and important avvocations that engrossed your attention, preven ted your Eminence from executing a task that you were desirous of performing; the other clergymen in this city who were qualified for such an undertaking, were too much occupied by their ordinary duties; and the business which I had at the Holy See not appearing then to be in so forward a state as to require my immediate and continued attention, you suggested to me the utility of preparing such an explanation as would be of service for the holy week that was approaching, and might form the basis for a more perfect work. Entering fully into the views of your Eminence I undertook the task; and during the last three or four weeks, have at such intervals as I could devote to it, compiled this explanation of the Mass. From the manner in which it has been composed, and drawn, as it were, from my pen to the press, with scarcely a moment for reading, what had been witten it must neces |