In the General Convention of 1877, where the topic under its American aspects was for the first time thoroughly discussed, the two Houses came to a deadlock. The deputies on the one hand, almost to a man, voted in favor of giving the desired relief by rubric, thus postponing for three years' time the fruition of their wish; while the bishops with a unanimity understood to have been equally striking insisted that a simple canon, such as could be passed at once, would suffice. And so the subject dropped. At the late Convention of 1880 an eirenicon was discovered. The quick eye of one of the legal members of the House of Deputies detected on the fourth page of the Prayer Book, just opposite the Preface, a loophole of escape, to wit, _The Ratification of the Book of Common Prayer_. Here was the very _tertium quid_ whereby the common wish of both parties to the dispute might be effected without injury to the sensibilities of either. The _Ratification_ certainly did not look like a canon; neither could anybody with his eyes open call it a rubric--why not amend that, and say no more about it? The suggestion prevailed, and by a vote of both Houses, the following extraordinary document is hereafter to stand (the next General Convention consenting) in the very fore-front of the Prayer Book: THE RATIFICATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. _By the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in General Convention assembled_. The General Convention of the Church having heretofore, to wit: on the sixteenth day of October in the year A. D. 1789, set forth a _Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church_, and thereby established the said book, and declared it to be the Liturgy of said Church, and required that it be received as such by all the members of the same and be in use from and after the first day of October in the year of our Lord 1790; the same book is hereby ratified and confirmed, and ordered to be the use of this Church from this time forth. "But note, however, that on days other than Sundays, Christmas-day, the Epiphany, Ash-Wednesday, Good Friday, and Ascension Day, it shall suffice if the Minister begins Morning or Evening Prayer at the General Confession or the Lord's Prayer preceded by one or more of the Sentences appointed at the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer, and end after the Collect for Grace or the Collect for Aid against Perils, with 2 Cor. xiii. 14, using so much of the Lessons appointed for the day and so much of the Psalter as he shall judge to be for edification.