ossibly the modern mind fails to
do full justice to the conception of worship on which this system
was based. Those principles of devotion of which the rosary is the
visible symbol do not easily commend themselves to us. They have
about them a suggestion of mechanism. They remind us of the
Buddhist praying wheel, and seem to put the Church in the attitude
of expecting to be heard for her "much speaking."

Doubtless many a pure, courageous spirit fought the good fight
of faith successfully in spite of all this weight of outward
observances; but in the judgment of the wiser heads among English
churchmen, the time had come, by the middle of the sixteenth
century, when this complicated armor must either be greatly
lightened or else run the risk of being cast aside altogether.
Let Cranmer tell his own story. This is what he says in the
Preface to the First Book of Edward VI. as to the ritual grievances
of the times. The passage is worth listening to if only for the
quaintness of its strong and wholesome English:

"There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised or so
surely established which, in continuance of time, hath not been
corrupted, as, among other things, it may plainly appear by the
common prayer, in the Church, commonly called divine service. The
first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by
the ancient fathers, he shall find that the same was not ordained
but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness, for
they so ordered the matter that all the whole Bible, or the greatest
part thereof, should be read over once in the year . . . But these
many years past this godly and decent order of the ancient fathers
hath been so altered, broken, and neglected by planting in
uncertain stories, legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions,
commemorations, and synodals that commonly, when any book of the
Bible was begun, before three or four chapters were read out all
the rest were unread. And in this sort the Book of Esaie was begun
in Advent, and the Book of Genesis in Septuagesima, but they were
only begun and never read through . . . And moreover, whereas St.
Paul would have such language spoken to the people in the Church
as they might understand and have profit by hearing the same, the
service in this Church of England (these many years) hath been
read in Latin to the people, which they understood not, so that
they have heard with their ears only, and their hearts, spirit,