given at the Offertory to be applied "to such pious and charitable uses as the Minister and churchwardens shall think fit:" but they, we should remember, were "the keepers of the keys" of the "poor man's box." At this time, too, the words "and oblations" were added in the prayer for the Church Militant. In former liturgies the offerings to which some of the sentences expressly refer, were directed to be paid to the Curate on the offering-days, and therefore were not noticed in this prayer, intended for other days also: Oblations, then, some say, means the offering the bread and wine, placing them on the Lord's Table, (whether from another part of it, or from a credence, surely matters not,) placing them reverently on the table, for the purpose of consecration. If this be so, it follows that the letter of the Rubric now is against the use of this prayer for alms when there is no Communion; it leaves no discretionary power; it directs us to pray for the acceptance of our alms and oblations, or to omit both; but the truth is, not the bread and wine alone are here called oblations, but the alms also, as being also placed by the Priest on the Lord's Table: alms as given to the poor, oblations as so given to Christ: in fact, what the people put into the chest for their poor neighbours, is called "their oblation and alms," in the Injunctions of Edward VI, 1547.

In the proceedings of the House of Lords' committee in 1641, it is suggested that the Rubric "be mended, where the churchwardens are strictly:

charged to gather alms for the poor before the Communion begins; for by experience it is proved to be done better when the people depart." The Communion' here is evidently that part of the Service more properly so called: but as the Rubric has not

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In the Order of the Communion, 1547, after the Exhortation, 'Dearly beloved in the Lord, ye that mind to come to the Holy Communion," &c. the Priest thus addressed the Congregation; "If any man here be an open blasphemer, adulterer, in malice or envy or any other notable crime, and be not truly sorry therefore and earnestly minded to leave the same vices, or that doth not trust himself to be reconciled to Almighty God and in charity with all the world, let him yet a while bewail his sins and not come to this holy table, lest after the taking of this most blessed bread, the devil enter into him, as he did into Judas, to fulfil in him all iniquity, and to bring him to destruction both of body and soul." Then the Priest was to " pause a while, to see if any man would withdraw himself," before he proceeded with the service "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent," &c. The harshness of this proceeding was somewhat softened in the Prayerbook of 1549, by inserting the above sentence in the Exhortation and placing it just before the Offertory; after which all "that minded not to receive the Holy Communion" were directed by a Rubric to "depart out of the quire." In all subsequent Prayer-books this Rubric has been omitted, and the Exhortation placed where it now stands, with the sentence so inserted almost in the very words in which it was removed in 1661 into the warning for the celebration of the Holy Communion. Since 1552, then, there has been no instruction by Rubric, at what time they who do not receive the Communion, are to depart. From the above remonstrance one would infer it had been attempted at that day to fix upon the existing Rubrics on the Offertory the sense of those in the Prayer-book of 1549.

been altered in this respect, the remonstrance seems to have been levelled against some forced interpretation put upon it at that day: the practice, however, of persons, who did not receive the Communion, departing before the Offertory, exactly agrees with the practice of closing the Morning Service with the sermon, of which we have such unquestionable proof in the extract from South's sermon.

But the State-day services having been mentioned as authorized examples of what the Church designed, it may be thought they clearly point out the use of the prayer for the Church Militant, &c., as the proper duty on every holy-day. They, of course, set out the service in full for all places where it is to be so performed, but they do not require the three services (Morning Prayer, Litany, and Communion Service,) to be read at the same time; and in considering them we ought to consider also the evidence of "the use of the Church," afforded by South's sermon, contemporary with at least two of them. And let it not in the teeth of this evidence be supposed, that they assume the three services to be read at the same time, because a Rubric directs notice of these days to be given on the previous Sunday at Morning Prayer, immediately after the Nicene Creed. Morning Prayer is evidently here used loosely for the principal service of the day the Nicene Creed is no part of Morning Prayer, strictly so called. The letter of the Rubric in two of these services would be exceedingly inconvenient to follow, as it directs an Act of Parlia

ment to be read after the Nicene Creed on the Sunday before the 29th of May, after preaching on that before the 5th of November; a difference as to the time appointed for reading the Act, which arose from a change in a Rubric of the Communion Service at the last revision, very important in its bearing on the question before us.

In the former Prayer-books, the second of Edward VI and that of James I, a Rubric directed notice of holy-days and fasts in the week to be given after the sermon or homily; then followed after the Offertory and prayer for the Church Militant, one or other of the two Exhortations to the people on the Holy Communion; but there was not in these Prayer-books any form of notice on a previous day of an intention to administer it. In 1661, a change was made in this Rubric. Immediately after the Nicene Creed, the Curate is now directed to give notice of holy-days and fasts, and also (if occasion be) of the Communion. And yet the notice of purpose to administer it, which was at this time prefixed to one of the Exhortations, this warning for the celebration of the Holy Communion is directed to be read after the sermon or homily ended. A distinguished lawyer once told me that these two Rubrics are consistent with each other, taking a distinction between notice and warning, as if the notice, in any words the Curate chose, was to be given before, the warning, after the sermon, in the prescribed form. No Clergyman will believe such an useless repetition

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of notice can have been intended here. The inconsistency stands as a monument of party struggle: the one party probably thought they had secured the warning, as of old appointed for other notices, after the sermon, since where this was to be done, there could be no occasion of notice before it: the other was satisfied to have obtained a Rubric directing notice of the Sacrament to be given before the sermon, as the general practice of so closing the Morning Service evidently required.

And here we see why the first sentence, and no more, of what now stands first of the two Exhortations, (for in 1661 they were transposed,) is commonly read as notice of the Holy Communion. It is often asked what authority there is for reading so much and no more. The first sentences of these two Exhortations are the only authorized forms of notice; and the whole first sentence of the first of these was brought back again in 1661, being slightly altered from that in the Order of the Communion, 1547, and was prefixed, as I said, to the old Exhortation. This newly restored sentence, then, was especially the authorized form, a fact, which at once shows the authority for, and the antiquity of, the practice.

The sentence in the Order of the Communion, and in the Prayer-book which came out two years afterwards, is as follows: "Dear friends, and you especially upon whose souls I have care and charge, upon day next, I do intend, by God's grace, to offer to all such as shall be then godly disposed, the most com