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time the monks of his own house owed him canonical obedience, he set at nought the prepossessions of his Chapter, and thrust the Fécamp mode of chanting upon them by his own authority. The monks sturdily declining to use it, the abbot introduced an armed force of Normans into the Chapter House, and there was scandalous tumult and massacre in the Abbey Church. The issue of this fray was that the king, seeing that the temper of the monks had made Glastonbury a place too hot to hold Thurstan, was obliged to recall and send him back to Normandy. The incident scandalized, as well it might, the more devout and learned ecclesiastics of the court. One of these was Osmund, the son of the Conqueror's sister, a fact which, without any disparagement to his real excellence, may partly account for his high preferments, and for the general currency throughout the kingdom which his "Use" obtained.1 He had been Count of Séez in Normandy, had fought at Hastings, and was, in requital of his services, created Earl of Dorset, and entrusted with the great seal, in succession to Maurice, Bishop of London, and restorer after a destructive fire of St. Paul's Cathedral. In 1078 Osmund was appointed Bishop of Salisbury, the see which Herman, his predecessor, had recently translated from Wilton to Old Sarum. Being a man of learning, and versed also in Church song, he conceived the idea of settling the Ritual of the English Church, and thus of putting an end to that diversity of practice, which had given rise to such profane and disastrous contentions. He endeavoured to ascertain the true text of the various Rubrics, and to rule in one way points which hitherto had been left to the discretion of the minister. The result of his labour was the "Use of the illustrious and

1 His father was one Lucillus, and his mother Margaret, the sister of Duke William. [See Rev. H. T. Armfield's "Legend of Christian Art," P. 137, note*, Salisbury and London, 1869.j

renowned Church of Sarum," first adopted for the diocese of Sarum in 1085, and used in the new cathedral of Old Sarum in 1087, but which eventually" became and continued for four centuries and a half the principal devotional rule of the Church of England." 1 In several of its features it differs materially from the Roman Liturgy, one of these being the Collect for Purity, which stands at the beginning of our Communion Office, and strikes the first note of that noble service, but which is not found, at least in that connexion, in the Roman rite.

In order to form a fair estimate of Osmund's goodness and greatness, we must consider his surroundings, and the state of society upon which he was thrown He had been a soldier, and a brave one, and had won the earldom of Dorset by his gallant behaviour in the field under the banner of the Norman duke. The military captains of those days were for the most part armed plunderers, who recognised no right save that which was given by the sword, and filled their castles with spoil gathered by the oppression of the weak; but Osmund was a soldier of high chivalry, one of those who thought that the only legitimate use of arms was to defend and establish the right. Many of the Norman nobles were stained with those vices which it is a shame even to speak of; but Osmund, amidst the prevailing immorality, kept himself pure. All classes, with the exception of the clergy, were grossly ignorant; but Osmund, notwithstanding the hindrances which the life of a soldier and a courtier had thrown in his way, had made himself a man of learning, and even of accomplishments. He had the greatest reverence for books, those repositories of wisdom, transcribing and binding them with his own hands, and providing his Cathedral Church at

1 Blunt's "Annotated Book of Common Prayer."

Old Sarum with a magnificent library. A trace of his musical abilities, and his devotion to Church song, still lingers among us in the fact that the Bishop of Salisbury is ex officio Precentor of the Province of Canterbury. Finally, though he was a courtier, and a nobleman of high degree, he seems to have escaped the manifold snares attaching to those positions, being proof against luxury, insincerity, and hollow flattery of princes. Once indeed, at Rockingham, in the year 1095, he took the part of William Rufus against Anselm; but soon afterwards, discovering that right and truth were on the Archbishop's side, Osmund sought his absolution, and joined him in his opposition to the greed and encroachments of the king. A man pure in time of licence, learned in time of ignorance, just in time of social disorder, devout in time of impiety and profaneness, must have been a burning and shining light in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Such a light can only be kindled, and, when kindled, only kept burning, by Divine grace. Daniel, the self-denying and gifted Hebrew youth, "made ruler over the whole province of Babylon" by Nebuchadnezzar, made first president of the kingdom by Darius, and yet true to his God against his king, when the king issued an unrighteous decree; 2 Daniel, who "in all matters of wisdom and understanding was "found ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers," and who, though himself endowed with prophetic insight, yet "understood by books" the counsels of God in regard to the future; the Ethiopian nobleman in the Acts, who had charge of all Queen Candace's treasure, and yet sought for the treasures of the heavenly exchequer by going up to Jerusalem to worship, and

1 See Dan. vi. 2.

8 See Dan. i. 20.

1

4

2 See Dan. vi. 9, 10.
4 See Dan. ix. 2.

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studying Isaiah the prophet as he returned; the saints in Cæsar's household (the Cæsar being Nero) who sent their greetings to the Philippian Christians by the pen of St. Paul;2-these are the Scriptural types of such men as Osmund, and it is only by the grace of God that such men were what they were. Never has the night of ignorance and superstition been so dark in the Church, either under the Old or New Dispensation, that God has not had His glow-worms to illuminate the darkness. Never has vice been so rampant but that some voice has been raised to protest against and reprove it in God's name"his holy prophets have been since the world began.' Never have the foundations of all social order been so subverted, that there have been no nurseries of piety and homes of devotion, where God has been served with prayer, and meditation, and study of His word. And if now, under totally different social and political conditions, Religion exhibits itself in shapes of another kind, and is certainly more widely spread over the surface of society, that is no reason for undervaluing, much less disparaging, either the institutions or the men who represented it in uncivilised times, and, after exhibiting to their own generation its heroic self-denial and brave defiance of the world, have bequeathed to us its records, its ordinances, and its worship, illustrated by their own example.

1 See Acts viii. 27, 28.

2 See Phil. iv. 22.

3 St. Luke i. 70.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE COLLECTS

MADE BY THE REFORMERS, AND OF
ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.

Thy words were found, and I did eat them.-JER. xv. 16.

OUR Reformers made an original contribution to the stock of old Collects which they found in the Missal of Sarum. They were not only translators and compilers, but composers also. Six of the Sunday Collects came from their pen; and these six are certainly not the least grand and edifying of the whole collection-the two first in Advent, the first in Lent, the two first after Easter, and that for Quinquagesima Sunday. Very much larger was their contribution to the Saints' Day Collects. For here, in the old Offices, were to be encountered more of the unscriptural superstitions, which had utterly to be pruned away in order to fit the Prayer Book for the use of the Reformed Church. The gangrene of invocation of saints, and of confidence in their prayers and merits, had, as was to be expected, eaten much deeper into these than into the Sunday Collects. And it is observable how the Collect for All Saints' Day, which is one of those composed by the Reformers, and which acts as a sort of keystone, holding together the whole group of Saints' Day Collects, sketches briefly, but very exhaustively, the whole doctrine of the regard in which saints are to be held. We are to think of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus as

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