The Book of Common Prayer
Posts in Comfortable Words credited to ‘The Book of Common Prayer’
The Creed is a tissue of Biblical quotations first compiled in 325, and recited at every communion service to this day.
In 325, bishops assembled at Nicaea, near Constantinople, and compiled a declaration of faith. It was enlarged at Constantinople in 381, and fifty years later the world’s bishops gathered at Ephesus and agreed never to change one word of it. It is recited to this day at every service of holy communion, and was consequently known to the Anglo-Saxons as ‘the Mass Creed’.
A list of fundamental rules for God’s covenant people to keep, delivered to Moses on Sinai.
The Ten Commandments were given to Israel shortly after their escape from slavery in Egypt, probably in the thirteenth-century BC. The following translation comes from the Catechism in the English Book of Common Prayer (1549), intended for young children.
A prayer that has been sung daily at Mattins since the fourth century.
This prayer, which comes from the Eastern churches, became part of daily Matins in the fourth century. The text given here is based on the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, a translation from the Latin of St Hilary of Poitiers (?300-368). Hilary spent time in the East in 359-360, and may have come across the prayer then. The Latin differs slightly from the Greek, but the differences are not particularly significant.
Jesus Christ’s own example of how to pray, in English translations going back beyond the Norman Conquest.
The Lord’s Prayer is an ancient compilation from two Biblical prayers given by Jesus Christ, in the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. The translation below is from the Book of Common Prayer of 1662. Beneath it, there is a translation into Old English given by Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham (955-1010), which he read out in the course of a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer.