GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

THE approbation bestowed on the RELIQUIA LITURGICA has led to the publication of the FRAGMENTA LITURGICA, as a sequel. Of the former, two editions (amounting altogether to 750 copies) are quite exhausted: and of the latter, an edition of 500 copies is all but all bespoken a month before the issue can take place among Subscribers. The difficulties, however, which attended the reprinting of the RELIQUIA, compel the Editor to state that, whatever may be the demand for copies, he has resolved on limiting the publication of the FRAGMENTA to the edition now preparing for delivery.

Delays, alike beyond expectation or avoidance, have occurred; chiefly attributable to a

serious accident which befel the Editor last summer, followed by a succession of illnesses, which have left him incapable except of slow and cautious returns to labour. Though writing now towards the middle of February, 1849, he still preserves the date of 1848 on the titlepage, (corresponding with the date of 1847 in both editions of the RELIQUIE,) merely to avoid the confusion that might otherwise attach to an annual succession of publications, presenting the volumes that belong to one year under the date of another.

As the RELIQUIA consisted entirely of Forms of Common Prayer and Sacraments, proposed but rejected; so the FRAGMENTA consists chiefly of a compilation of Formularies, proposed under peculiar circumstances, and partially adopted, at one time or another, into Congregations connected with the English or Scottish Churches. By way of general distinction between the issues of the past and present years, this may serve well enough: though the object really is, to produce as many Liturgies, coming within a

certain range of time and subject, as seemed worth preserving, and in the order of arrangement that might prove, all things considered, most convenient.

Having alluded to the approval that attended the circulation of the RELIQUIA among Subscribers, the Editor feels it but an act of honesty to state that in another quarter he encountered a somewhat different treatment. The British Magazine of February last admitted an anonymous Letter attacking the RELIQUIA, many thought unjustly, and probably all agreed uncourteously. The Editor replied the ensuing month; and the discussion continued through the Numbers for April, May, June, September, October, November, and December, and terminated only with the Number for January just past. The writer (whoever he may be) was, no doubt, a man of sagacity and industry, and capable of better things. But if the engagements of an Editor involve responsibilities which ought to make him diligent and careful, the pretensions of a Critic

demand a combination of knowledge and research, of patience in enquiring, and forbearance in judging, which fall to the lot of few. Among many faults imputed, the Editor has endeavoured in vain to take advantage of a single correction of error, or omission of fact, supplied by his antagonist. But while content with observing that he freely forgives the zeal and energy employed against him, and as freely desires forgiveness (if need be) for his own, he thus records the controversy as having, at least, afforded occasion for the publication of the Formulary which takes precedence in the following pages.

I. THE PURITAN PRAYER-BOOK.

The Correspondent of the British Magazine had charged the Editor of the RELIQUIE with taking his reprint of the Middleburgh Book of Prayer from a wrong edition; adding that the copies published in the Low Countries varied so far from the original printed in England, as

to leave the earlier a distinct and different book, standing quite alone.

Now, the facts are these. The edition by Waldegrave, of London, bears no date the editions by Schilders, of Middleburgh, bear date respectively 1586, 1587, and 1602. The edition of 1602 contains additions, which the Editor considered he ought to insert: but these additions he could not insert in the edition of Waldegrave, because the order of the parts stood differently in the editions of Schilders. He therefore printed from the first (collated with the second) edition of Schilders, and inserted the additions from the third.

But the Editor denied, in reply, that the alterations made from the London edition were as substantial or extensive as his reprover had asserted. Perhaps both spoke rather in extremes; perhaps both fought more about words than things. However, the result is, that the writer in the Magazine for June has printed the variations of the two editions (that of London without date, and that of Mid