fered to retain the exorcism of the evil spirit, or the white
vesture, or the unction; and there were other items of less
important change. Those mentioned reveal plainly enough what was
the animus of the revisers. Most evidently the intention was to
produce a liturgy more thoroughly reformed, more in harmony with
the new tone and temper which the religious thought of the times
was taking on.

We come to the Third Book of Common Prayer. Bloody Mary was dead,
and Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne.

During the Roman reaction proclamation had been made that all the
Reformed service-books should be given up to the ecclesiastical
authorities within fifteen days to be burned. This is doubtless
the reason why copies of the liturgical books of Edward's reign
are now so exceedingly rare. Reprints of them abound, but the
originals exist only as costly curiosities.

Soon after Elizabeth's accession a committee of divines assembled
under her authority for the purpose of again revising the
formularies.

The queen was personally a High-Churchwoman, and her own judgment
is said to have been favorable to taking the first of Edward's two
books as the basis of the revision, but a contrary preference
swayed the committee, and the lines followed were those of 1552
and not those of 1549.

The new features distinctive of the Prayer Book of Elizabeth,
otherwise known as the Prayer Book of 1559, are not numerous.
A table of Proper Lessons for Sundays was introduced. The old
vestments recognized in the earlier part of King Edward's reign
were again legalized. The petition for deliverance from the tyranny
of the Pope was struck out of the Litany, and by a compromise
peculiarly English in its character, and, as experience has shown,
exceedingly well judged, the two forms of words that had been used
in the delivery of the elements in the Holy Communion were welded
together into the shape in which we have them still.

Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book continued in use for five-and-forty
years. Nothing was more natural than that when she died there should
come with the accession of a new dynasty a demand for fresh revision.
King James, who was not afflicted with any want of confidence in
his own judgment, invited certain representatives of the disaffected
party to meet, under his presidency, the Churchmen in council with
a view to the settlement of differences. The Puritans had been
gaining in strength during Elizabeth's reign, and they fel