er, to show what could be done in the way of
making a better manual of worship than the Book of Common Prayer.

Baxter, a truly great man and wise in a way, though scarcely in the
liturgical way, was guilty of the incredible folly of undertaking
to construct a Prayer Book within a fortnight.

Of this liturgy it is probably safe to say that no denomination of
Christians, however anti-prelatical or eccentric, would for a
moment dream of adopting it, if, indeed, there be a single local
congregation anywhere that could be persuaded to employ it. The
characteristic of the devotions is lengthiness. The opening sentence
of the prayer with which the book begins contains by actual count
eighty-three words. It is probable that Baxter by his rash act did
more to injure the cause of intelligent and reverential liturgical
revision than any ten men have done before or since. In every
discussion of the subject he is almost sure to be brought forward
as "the awful example."

A document much more to the point than Baxter's Liturgy was the
formal catalogue of faults and blemishes alleged against the Prayer
Book, which the Puritan members of the conference in due time
brought in. This indictment, for it may fairly be called such,
since it was drawn up in separate counts, is very interesting
reading. Of the "exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer,"
as the Puritans named their list of liturgical grievances, some
must strike almost any reader of the present day as trivial and
unworthy. Others again there are that draw a sympathetic Amen from
many quarters to-day. To an American Episcopalian the catalogue
is chiefly interesting as showing how ready and even eager were
our colonial ancestors of a hundred years ago to remove out of the
way such known rocks of offence as they could. An attentive student
of the American Prayer Book cannot fail to be struck with the number
of instances in which the text gives evidence of the influence
exerted over the minds of our revisers by what had been urged, more
than a hundred years before, by the Puritan members of the Savoy
Conference. The defeat of 1661 was, in a measure at least, avenged
in 1789. It is encouraging to those who cast their bread upon
liturgical waters to notice after how many days the return may come.
But the conference, to all outward seeming, was a failure. Baxter's
unhappy Prayer Book was its own sufficient refutation, and as for
the list of special grievances it was met by th