_The Holy Communion_.
To the few changes proposed in this Office, comparatively slight
exception has been taken in any quarter. It will probably be
wise to leave the language of the Prayer of Consecration wholly
untouched, notwithstanding the alleged grammatical error near the
end of it.
The Rubric which it has been proposed to append to the Office,
touching the number of communicants without which it shall not be
lawful to administer the Sacrament, being of a disciplinary rather
than of a liturgical character, ought not to be urged. The proposal
to transfer the Prayer of Humble Access to a place immediately
before the Communion appears to be very generally acceptable.
It would relieve many worshippers who scruple as Christians at
responding to the Fourth Commandment on the score of its Judaic
character, if the language of the rubric prefixed to the Decalogue
could contain, as did the corresponding rubric in Laud's Book for
Scotland, a clause indicative of the mystical and spiritual sense
in which the Law should be interpreted by those who live under the
Gospel. But such a proposal would probably be accounted "of
doctrine," and so be self-condemned.
Of the desirability of allowing a week-day use of the BEATITUDES
in the room of the COMMANDMENTS enough has been already said.