In reference to the Prayer Book, suggestions to the number of thirty-five occur, of which the following may be mentioned: expunging the names of some departed saints from the calendar; the disuse of apocryphal lessons; omitting the Benedicite; the making some discreet rubric to take away the scandal of signing the cross in baptism, or the abolition of that sign altogether; the enlargement of the Catechism; and certain changes in the Marriage[158] and Burial Services, and also in that for the Visitation of the Sick,--changes of a kind such as have been commonly proposed by those who advocate a revision of the Prayer Book.[159] A proposal for reforming the Episcopate which was volunteered by Williams, and was submitted by him on his own responsibility, without success, to the House of Lords,[160] does not belong to the schemes of the Committee. It went no further than to propose that bishops should preach every Sunday under penalty for default; that none should be justices of the peace except the Dean of Westminster; and that prelates should have twelve assistants besides Deans and Chapters. Four of these assistants were to be appointed by the King, four by the Lords, and four by the Commons; and in the case of a see being vacant, they were to present three able divines to His Majesty, who was to nominate one of them to the Episcopal chair; no Dean or Prebendary was to absent himself from his cathedral above sixty days. [Sidenote: _Lords' Committee on Innovations._] Other plans were drawn up by different persons with a view to the reconciliation of opposite parties, and there were moderate men who believed that, "but for some hot spirits who would abate nothing of episcopal power and profit," a compromise might have been effected. Perhaps it might; yet supposing some likelihood of peace through mutual concession at an earlier period, it admits of a question whether any possibility of it remained, now that the pent-up animosities of many years had burst out like the fires of a volcano. Theologians of a spirit like that of Ussher and others might have discovered grounds of union in spite of different views on some subjects; but a large majority of the divines who formed the two parties which then divided the Church, had reached conclusions irreconcilably opposed to each other. At all events, the semi-Puritan scheme of accommodation came to nothing. By the middle of May, the Committee had broken up, and when the reader reflects upon the crisis which affairs had reached, he will not wonder that the members abandoned the project in despair. [Sidenote: 1641, April.]