either in ancient or modern language, which
breathes more of a solid scriptural rational piety,
than the Common Prayer of the Church of England."
John Wesley, 1703-1791
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About This Website
COMFORTABLE WORDS is a celebration of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which was the exclusive service book of the Church of England from the Restoration of the Monarchy (after the English Civil War) until new worship books were introduced in the 1970s.
Whatever the Church of England has since become, for hundreds of years its leading Bishops and parish clergy stood for traditional family values, the dignity and awe of common worship, and a determination to restore English Christianity to the practice and vision of the early Church.
Nothing in modern worship or secularised religion compares to the Prayer Book. In its pages you will find beauty, and you will find holiness. The Prayer Book encourages complete and confident respect for God, for your neighbours, and for yourself. It is to pray, and to live, as the saints of the primitive Church did.
THE Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace, both now and evermore. Amen.
Get started with Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer, or with my personal favourite, The Litany.
About Traditional Anglicanism
The best way of telling you what real Anglicanism is, and what this site is about, is to give you SIX great quotations from our tradition.
1.
Ancient
"One Canon of
Scripture which we refer to God, two Testaments, three Creeds,
the first four Councils, five centuries and the succession of the Fathers in these centuries,
three centuries before Constantine, two centuries after Constantine, draw the rule of our
religion."
Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, 1555-1626
2.
Scriptural & Traditional
"The Preachers
chiefly shall take heed that they teach nothing in their preaching,
which they would have the people religiously to observe and believe, but that which is agreeable to
the Doctrine of the Old Testament and the New, and that which the Catholick Fathers and Ancient
Bishops have gathered out of that Doctrine."
The Elizabethan Canons, 1571
3.
Orthodox
"As for my religion,
I dye in the holy catholic and apostolic faith
professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West, more particularly in
the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan
innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross."
Bishop Thomas Ken, 1637-1711
4.
Liturgical
"I BELIEVE
there is no LITURGY in the world, either in ancient or modern language,
which breathes more of a solid scriptural rational piety than the COMMON PRAYER of the CHURCH of
ENGLAND. And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet
is the language of it not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree."
Revd Dr John Wesley, 1703-1791
5.
Conservative
"[Politicians]
are employed in framing laws and statutes for preventing crimes,
and keeping the disorderly multitude within bounds; and at the same time, by personally
discountenancing public worship, they are weakening, they are even abolishing, among the
multitude, that moral restraint which is of more general influence upon manners than all
the laws they frame."
Revd Dr Hugh Blair, 1718-1800
Church of Scotland
6.
Independent
"NO, SIR,
we cannot pin our Faith upon the sleeve of any particular man: as one used to say, We love no nisms, neither Calvinism,
nor Lutheranism, nor Jansenianism, but only one that we derive from Antioch, that is, Christianism.
Archbishop John Bramhall, 1594-1663
The Prayer Book Society
The Prayer Book Society (England)
"The Prayer Book Society exists to promote and preserve the use of the Book of Common Prayer (1662). The 1662 Prayer
Book is the traditional service book of the Church of England, and it contains the Church's historic beliefs.
"In practice, however, the Book of Common Prayer is increasingly endangered by indifference and undermined by neglect.
In many churches, it is not used at all, whilst in others it is marginalised to "off-peak" times such as Evensong and
8.00 a.m. Holy Communion. Too often, new clergy emerge from ordination training with little or no knowledge of the Book
of Common Prayer, and most younger churchgoers and newcomers to the church have barely even heard of it.
"The Prayer Book Society works to ensure that the Book of Common Prayer will continue to be available to future generations."
NB This website and accompanying blog strongly support the Prayer Book Society, but they have no official connection with it. All the views expressed here are my own, and aren't necessarily shared by the society. The same goes, you won't be surprised to hear, for the Church of England.
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