588 APPENDIX. 



a Bishop (if a Bishop is present) alone may say, we here allowed a deacon to say, in 

 any posture, to a malefactor under sentence of death in any posture, the same or other; 

 the posture before the " declaration " of both parties having been, according to proba- 

 bilities, that of sitting. Indeed Bishop White himself tells us that the use of the word 

 "minister," in the book of 17S9, instead of the word "priest," must have been from 

 "oversight" (Brownell's Family Prayer Book, Ed. of 1875, p. 493). 



This inconsistency was too great to be left, and in the standard Prayer Book of 1838 

 the rul^ric was changed by putting the word priest in the place of the word 7)iinisier. 

 This change of the word mmister to the word priest may perhaps of itself "tone up" 

 the word " declare " from a low meaning (as ex.gr,: "state" or "make known"), 

 to a higher one (as ex. gr. : " declare officially; " that is, "pronounce.") If it does 

 not do this, why was the change made ? 



The Proposed Book prescribed " the form which s used in the communion service," 

 instead of the form in the morning and evening service of the same book (the form of 

 the English book, and the first of the two forms in our book of 1789), from the impro- 

 priety, I suppose, of making a convict who is on the point of being executed praying 

 that " the rest " of his life ^^ hereafter " may be pure and holy, " so that at the last" he 

 may come to God's eternal joy. 



The change made by the standard of 1838 leaves the rubric defective and awkwardly 

 mended. Is the " priest " alone, under it, to " visit " persons under sentence of death ? 

 Is "absolution," of any kind, to be given to one who has been confessedly a hemous 

 malefactor, and who has not communicated ? II no " absolution " is intended, why, as 

 I have already asked, do we not allow the thing to be said by a " minister," as of old? 

 I recognize, of course, the old distinction of absolutions declarative, precatory and ju- 

 dicial. But, under it, the form in the communion is not the declarative one. 



The fact is that the committee who issued the standard of 1838 had a difficulty too 

 great for any committee not havii;j larger power than it had to manage. They were 

 trying to raise by the change of one word the tone of a rubric improvidently imported 

 from a book of a low plane of churchmanship throughout (the Proposed Book), and 

 with whose other rubrics this one was in unison, to a pitch which should accord with 

 the better considered rubrics of a book of a much higher plane of churchmanship (our 

 Book of Common Prayer of 1789), and with whose rubrics this rubric was not in uni- 

 son. If I remember, the committee had but power to change errors in typography. 

 I am not sure about this. But I am sure that in their present state, matters are not 

 fully enough stated to be clear. The thing, however, was a dangerous one to handle. 



On the whole case, neither the old rubric nor the new one can be looked on as inter- 

 preting "the form which is used in the communion service" anywhere but in the ser- 

 vice of the Visitation of Prisoners itself, if, indeed, it interprets that form even there. 



I may add, that even in the Proposed Book, except as this rubric there may so char- 

 acterize it, this form — the form, I mean, used in the communion service — is not char- 

 acterized as a "Declaration" of any sort, although another form, in language truly 

 declarative — though with an entreaty appended — and which other form the Church of 

 England calls " the Absolution, or Remission of Sins " — is. 



For Dr. Smith's private declarations that the Proposed Book — which 

 went further in the way of reform of the English Prayer Book than does 

 our Prayer Book of 1789 — did not proceed on the idea that the Church 

 of England was in anything erroneous, see supra, p. 178. 



