otherwise. As the Rubric is the law on the subject, and it contains no restrictive clause, the only question to decide, a question of very easy solution, is, what is intended by a pious and charitable use.[1]
Considerable light is reflected on the whole subject of the Offertory, by the forms of prayer for special days of fasting and thanksgiving, which, from the period of the Reformation, were set forth at intervals.
It was the custom in these Forms to print the entire Service, at least to the period of the Revolution, even the Lessons, in order that the Clergy might use only one Book on such occasions. They prove, that the practice of reading the Daily Morning Service, the Litany, and the Communion Service, never varied from the days of Queen Elizabeth: for all of them are precisely similar in this respect, closing with the Prayer for the Church Militant. If then such a practice prevailed on these occasional days, there can be no doubt, that it was just the same on Sundays and other holy-days: for the directions in these special
- ↑ When Archbishop Wake was appointed to the See of Lincoln, in the year 1707, he published the Farewell Sermon, which he had preached at James's, Westminster: and with the sermon is a curious folding 1 sheet with an account of the expenditure of the Offertory money. "An account of the Offertory money in the parish of St James's, Westminster, as it stands upon our books for every year since I came to the parish." It comprehends the various years from 1694 to 1706 inclusive. The money was appropriated under the following items: "Apprentices bound out yearly: Clothing the poor: Coals for the poor: For the poor at the Hospitals, chirurgeons and apothecaries: Disposed of in visiting the sick: The master for teaching the Offertory boys; The minister for reading the six o'clock prayers morning and evening." In this case the money was not all given to the poor. It is stated in the paper that certain sums were given to the poor at each public Sacrament, from which I infer, that the collection was made at other times, or on Sundays and other holy-days.
