APPENDIX. 587 



are said to a malefactor convicted of crime for wliich he has been judicially sentenced 

 to death, and who now, confessing the crime, admits his awful guilt. And I think 

 that the same words which are uttered at the communion-table over bishops, priests, 

 deacons and baptized laity professing to be religious — all presumably known to the 

 minister, and all presumably guiltless of heinous crimes — may properly be left to have 

 whatever meaning the said words have in themselves, or as read by the light of postures 

 prescribed, or by the light of other things existing in connection with them ; while 

 those same words may well be restricted in meaning by a rubric, when said to a male- 

 factor judicially sentenced to death for what may be the most dreadful crime known to 

 laws, both human and divine, which crime he now confesses that, with perhaps num- 

 berless others like it, he has perpetrated. The minister, we must remember, in visit- 

 ing the person under sentence of death, may have never seen or heard of him tintil the 

 morning of the execution, and just before the minister is about to utter over the wretched 

 man the commendatory " prayer for a person at the point of departure." In the sm- 

 cerity of repentance of such a person — a person whose whole life may have been marked 

 by atrocious crimes, and "who may be a most hardened sinner, having, besides, in thehope 

 oT'ar^ardon from the government, a motive to appear repentant when not so in reality 

 — the minister may utterly and rightly disbelieve. The convict, as yet, has not commu- 

 nicated, and he may wish never to cointnunicate. 



The service for the Visitation of Prisoners is not in the English Prayer Book. It 

 comes to us from a form (somewhat altered, I doubt not) set forth by the Convocation 

 and Parliament of Ireland, and first appeared in the Proposed Book. That book oblit- 

 erated the word priest from its rubrics, substituting for it the word minister. This 

 word includes deacons. But as by the practice of the Church of England, deacons do 

 not pronounce " absolution," the Proposed Book characterizes as " a Declaration con- 

 cerning the forgiveness of sins " those same words which the English book calls " The 

 Absolution or Remission of sins." In the Visitation of Prisoners it therefore made its 

 rubric read thus : 



"After his confession the minister shall declare to him the pardoning mercy of God"— 



Adding — 



"in the form which Is used in the Communion Service." 



The Convention of 1789, ignoring very much the Proposed Book, used aS the basis 

 of its work, the English Prayer Book, and generally restored the word priest in the 

 rubrics, or, where it did not, as in the Visitation and Communion of the Sick, guarded 

 .the use of the word " minister " by references — " out." But, as I have said, this service 

 of the Visitation of Prisoners was not in the English Dook, and a service of the sort 

 being thought a most fit one to be in a Prayer Book, the Convention took it from the 

 Proposed Book ; the rubric above quoted, with its word " minister," coming in as part. 



Most other services in our Book of 1789 were referred to committees, were reported 

 on, amended and discussed ; but about this one there vv^as no such advisement. It was 

 adopted on the last day of the Convention's session, "originating," as the minutes tell 

 us, in the House of Bishops, and being " passed " by the Deputies. 



Haste and its usual concomitant, mistake, seems to be shown by what followed 

 as a result in the Prayer Book of 17S9, then made. Those same words which in 

 the daily and evening service that book allows the priest, alone, to say, and to say 

 onlv in a certain posture (that is, standing), and which the people are allowed to hear 

 only in a certain other posture (that is, kneeling), and which in the communion service 



