Page:The Parson's Handbook - 2nd ed.djvu/30

14 the censorious Protestantism with which we are familiar.

4. From the prefaces the Prayer Book takes us to the Calendar, where we find, as we should expect, a simplification indeed, but a simplification which contains all the main features of the old,—the great feasts, and the seasons, the saints’ days (which are broadly classified into two divisions only). Hidden away under the ‘Lessons proper for Holy-Days,’ as if specially to secure them against Puritan attacks, we find the old phrase the ‘Annunciation of our Lady,’ and the old names for the services of ‘Mattins’ and ‘Evensong.’ Passing through the Calendar, with its careful provision for a continuous reading of the Holy Bible, we come upon a list of the ‘Vigils, Fasts and Days of Abstinence’ which are ‘to be observed,’ as of old time.

From this we come to the rubric as to the ‘accustomed place’ in which Morning and Evening Prayer are to be said, a rubric that was revised in 1559 by the significant omission of the provision of the Second