case of persons of advanced years, when a certain prayer is ordered to be omitted, and the reference to what is called the first end of marriage is altogether inappropriate. The allusion to the gift of continency is more worthy of the Romish doctrine of celibacy, than of any view of marriage maintained in a Protestant Church, or exhibited in the Scriptures, in which the apostle speaks only of an actual state of incontinence, for which he recommends the remedy of marriage, which he would otherwise have discountenanced as unsuitable to the circumstances of the age in which he wrote; and it is a just argument against the Romanists that marriage was ordained in the state of innocence, and can therefore be only casually, not primarily, intended as a remedy against sin. The general assertion of the remedial use of marriage is founded in an inveterate misconception of the words of the apostle' in referring to the case of the heathen who had been married before their conversion to the truth, and whom he instructs not to take wives to themselves, but to have, to retain, and keep possession of the respective consorts to whom they had been previously married. The Freethinking Christians have put their opinions upon the indelicacy of the service upon record, and the truth of their representation is but too strongly confirmed by the conduct of many clergymen, who blush to recite the whole of the introductory sentences, which they take upon themselves to omit. It is a very critical situation in which the clergy are placed, when they cannot use the public offices of

the Church without offence, without exciting, even where it might be least expected, a blush or a smile, and when they are tempted to avoid the offence, to resort to practices which are unlawful and cannot be defended. The frequent omission of certain passages in the Office for the Solemnization of Matrimony, the general misapprehension or neglect of the instructions of the rubric, in respect of the different places of the church in which the different parts of the office should be performed, and the occasional disuse of the concluding sentences, are all matters of common notoriety, and offer a strong argument for the public and authoritative revision of the office, without which they suggest and seem to justify the claim for private omissions and compliances. If the indelicate passages are omitted in deference to the feelings of one party, it is argued, that the doctrine may be compromised to the scruples of another, and thus the offices of the Church will be varied in accommodation to the arbitrary humours of individuals. The order in which the causes of matrimony are arranged in the public ritual is singularly inverted. The mutual society, help, and comfort, which is unquestionably the primary motive of marriage, is stated to be the third; and the religious education of children, which is dependent on the matrimonial union of the parents, is described to be the first. The casual benefit occupies the intermediate place.

In the American liturgy, the Gordian knot is cut by the omission of the objectionable passages : if any revision of the English formulary should be

* See Appendix, No. III.

judged expedient, it is suggested that a compilation might be formed of the principal sentences of Scripture which relate to the ends and duties of marriage, on the model of the admirable exhortation in the Commination Office, in the use of which all objections would be suppressed, and the recitation of the final sentences, which in their present form are subject to the charge of redundance, would be unnecessary, and might be superseded.

Another objection, on the ground of indelicacy, is commonly made to the second prayer after the psalm, in which the allusion is more distinct than the occasion may seem to require. This This prayer is also omitted in the American liturgy, and not unfrequently abridged or disused in the administrations of the Church of England. It is a cause of deep regret, that the attention of the Reformers of the Office was not in this respect directed to the Greek liturgy, in which an elegant and unexceptionable allusion is made to Psalm cxxvii. 3,' and the end is adequately prayed for without any reference to the means. Might not the difficulty be removed by an alteration, in the form of invocation, founded on Malachi ii. 15, and Psalm cxxvii. 3, with a brief omission; O God, who hast ordained matrimony for the continuance of a godly seed, and of whom children and the fruit of the womb are the gift and heritage, grant to these thy servants that they may live together, &c.

A second ground of objections to the existing

Χαριται αυτοίς καρπον κοιλίας, ευτεκνίας απολαυσιν. See Appendix, No. III.

Office of Matrimony is the obscurity of the terms which the man is directed to use in giving the ring to the woman. In the old Romish missals of Sarum and of York, which were anciently in use in the northern and southern parts of the kingdom, the mutual stipulation of the parties, and the words used in giving the ring, were in English, while all the rest of the service was in Latin. There cannot be a clearer proof of the acknowledged expedience of giving the utmost perspicuity to the vow of marriage; and from these missals, with the omission of various superstitions, our present forms are collected. With the exception of the word troth, commonly mistaken for truth, the form of interrogation by the curate, and of mutual stipulation between the parties, is perfectly clear and unexceptionable. The words of the man in giving the ring are liable to various objections. The form of the ancient missal of York was, "With this ring I wedde the: and with this gold and silver I honour the: and with this gift I honour the: In the name," &c. In the Salisbury missal, which is the principal model of our own, the form was, "With this ring I the wed: and this gold and silver I the give: and with my body I the worshipe and with all my worldly chatel I the endowe: In the name," &c. With the exception of the omission of the words, And this gold and silver I the give, which were appropriated to the gift of "other tokens of spousage" beside the ring, of the substitution of the word goods for chattel, and the disuse of various crossings, this ancient formulary, as it was revised in the books of Edward VI. is retained in the present day.

The first objection applies to the words, "With my body I thee worship." Worship, as in other writings of the age", is unquestionably used in the sense, not of religious adoration, but of civil honour and respect. It retains the same sense in the familiar phrases of Your Worship, the Right Worshipful, in the use of which no man entertains, or is suspected of entertaining, an idea of religious apostacy, or of detracting from the worship which is due to the only God. The objection is nevertheless as old as the revision of the liturgy at the Restoration, when it was agreed, but the agreement was not fulfilled, that the word honour should be substituted for worship. Still even under this interpretation it is not easy to conceive, what meaning ever was or ever can be attached to the words, "With my body I thee worship, or honour:" and the general ignorance of the people and the objections of the adversary are hardly counteracted by the subtle exposition of ritualists. It cannot be meant, that the man accompanies the words with an inclination of the head, or that, in a

Shepherd notices the old version of 1 Sam. ii. 30, "Him that worships me I will worship." So in the authorized version, Luke xiv. 10, Then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. In the Bishops' Bible, Psalm viii. 5, Thou shalt crown him with glory and worship, is changed in the authorized version into glory and honour. So "I, according to the word of God, will worship, honour, maintain, and govern thee," as Godwin translates the Bill of dowry. Moses and Aaron, 1. vi. c. 4. Can it then be in mere ignorance that it is objected, that "the man is required to worship the woman, though the divine Founder of Christianity has declared, that God is the only object for the Christian to worship?"