The Comfortable Words
Four short passages from the New Testament appointed to be read aloud in the English Book of Common Prayer of 1549.
Four short passages from the New Testament appointed to be read aloud in the English Book of Common Prayer of 1549.
In the Prayer Book of 1549, four Scriptural passages were appointed to be read out aloud as reassurance for those presenting themselves at the rail to receive Holy Communion. These are the Comfortable Words.
Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith to all that truly turn to him.
Come unto me all that travail, and be heavy laden, and I shall refresh you.* So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have life everlasting.*
Hear also what Saint Paul saith.
This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners.*
Hear also what Saint John saith.
If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins.*
* Matthew 11:28. The Prayer Book was first made in 1549, when the currently authorized translation was the Great Bible of 1539. For the Prayer Book, however, Archbishop of Canterbury and supervising editor Thomas Cranmer went his own way: the Great Bible has ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are laden, and I will ease you’. The word ‘travail’ harks back to the Tyndale Bible of 1523-35.
* John 3:16.
* 1 John 2:1-2.