secure; keeping all the words, original and corrupt, alike. English was becoming most copious.
It is to the ripe and mellow wisdom of Cranmer that we owe the English Prayer Book almost as it now stands. It is his best monument; he had no vulgar wish to sweep away what was old, unless the sacrifice were called for by the cause of Truth. We have seen that some of the Book's formularies date from Wickliffe's day; others, such as the Bidding prayer, betoken a wish to yoke together the Teutonic and the Romance in pairs, like acknowledge and confess, humble and lowly, goodness and mercy, assemble and meet, pray and beseech,[1] Even so the Law talks of yielding and paying. In the Collects, the proportion of French to English is much the same as in Chaucer's prose earlier, and as Addison was to write later. Lord Macaulay long ago contrasted our English prayers, compiled when our language was full of sap and vigour, with the older Latin forms translated by Cranmer, the work of an age of third-rate Latinity. Yet the Archbishop's work was held cheap by some of his flock. The stalwart peasantry of our Western shires, the men who rose against his system, called this new Prayer Book nothing but ‘a Christmas game.’
It is well known how great an influence Luther and Calvin have had upon their respective tongues; in like manner, one effect of the Reformation was to keep England steady to her old speech. As we have always had the voices of Tyndale and Cranmer ringing in our ears
- ↑ Compare the prayers of Cranmer's compilation with those now and then put forth by authority in our own time. The art of compiling prayers seems to be lost.
