Cranmer’s Prayer Book, and God’s Immeasurable Love
It is impossible to overemphasize the impact the Book of Common Prayer has had on church and society in England and around the world. Its introduction was a tsunami: a night-and-day change from the Medieval Roman Catholic worship and theology to Protestantism (to a distinctly law/gospel Lutheran theology, with a Reformed understanding of the sacraments). The first Book of Common Prayer, called “Archbishop Cranmer’s Immortal Bequest,” was enacted and mandated by Parliament January 21, 1549. This first Prayer Book immediately proved too accommodating to old Catholic understandings, forcing Thomas Cranmer to write a much more unashamed Protestant Prayer Book in 1552. The 1552 Book of Common Prayer became (verbatim, with a few minor changes) the 1662 edition - the standard for all future Prayer Book revisions in the Church of England. In the words of the (Gafcon) Jerusalem Declaration: “We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.”
Cranmer’s Prayer Book removed all suggestions of Eucharistic sacrifice, transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and purgatory. Stone altars, which suggested that Jesus was re-sacrificed in every mass, were replaced by wooden communion tables. The Word of God (God’s promised presence) replaced the priest as the instrument by which grace is offered in the sacrament. Other sacerdotal priestly actions were summarily removed: the lifting-up (elevation) and adoration of the sacrament, sanctus bells, and the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit (the “epiclesis”). Whereas in the Middle Ages the wine of Holy Communion was considered too holy for non-clergy, the new Prayer Book ordered that everyone, lay and clergy alike, were to receive both the bread and wine. Private confession to a priest was offered as a pastoral option for some who might find it helpful, but it was no longer a requirement for receiving Holy Communion.
What was Cranmer trying to do? To teach and affectively persuade people (and society) towards loving God and loving one another. Week-after-week Anglican worship rehearses the saving actions of Jesus Christ for unworthy recipients: the gospel of God's grace. “What he [Cranmer] wants us to see is that Prayer Book worship is, first to last, justification by faith set forth in liturgy so that it might be reapprehended and reexperienced in regular acts of devotion" (J.I. Packer). Dom Gregory Dix famously said that the 1552 Book of Common Prayer is “the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of ‘justification by faith alone’.”
Zac Hicks says it better than anyone I know: “What overwhelmed Cranmer was God’s love for him in Christ, and once that love seized him, the Archbishop became fiercely committed to the clear proclamation of that good news. In other words, Cranmer’s vision for liturgical renewal was intensely fixated on the gospel. His evangelical convictions drove his liturgical decisions.”