Perhaps I shall best succeed in giving with brevity some idea of the origin of the Common Prayer, and other offices of the Church of England, if I take the Morning Service, the Communion, and the Order for performing Baptism, as they were found in the Book used before the revision under Charles II., and point out, in a general way, the sources from which those forms were derived. Morning prayer is in the main drawn from the Matins, Lauds, and Prime of the Sarum Breviary. That which may be called the introduction--extending from the opening sentence to the end of the Absolution--was a new feature in the Prayer Book of 1552. The materials of it may be found in mediæval Lent services, the old Office for the Visitation of the Sick, and certain portions of a homily by Pope Leo. Some have supposed that some hints for this introduction were gathered from the reformed Strasburg Liturgy, published by Pollanus (or Pullain).[283] The idea embodied was that of substituting public confession, awakened by the reading of Holy Scripture, for private confession made to a priest; and, on the same principle, the using of a public form of absolution for a secret one. The object was to make that congregational and common which had previously been individual or monastic. [Sidenote: 1661.] The second portion or main substance of the Morning Service, from the Lord's Prayer to the three collects, is derived obviously from different sources. The Versicles are taken from the Sarum Use, and other old offices. The version of the Psalter is that of Cranmer's Bible, 1539. The Lessons were substituted for the numerous, but brief Scripture sections of the Breviary, the Apocrypha being occasionally used. The Te Deum is an old canticle of Gallic origin;[284] the Benedicite is the Song of the Three Children, a Greek addition to the third chapter of Daniel; the Apostles' Creed is taken from the Anglo-Saxon office of Prime; and, as to the other creeds, we may add, that the Nicene was sung at Mass, after the Gallican Use; the Athanasian was sung in the Matin offices.[285] The Litany may be regarded as a distinct service. It is a very old form of devotion, differing somewhat in different countries. The Invocation of Saints was removed by the Reformers; and in the compilation of its numerous sentences, along with the Sarum ritual, the _Consultation_ of Hermann, the reforming Archbishop of Cologne (1543), was extensively employed.[286] The collects and short prayers come from various sources; many of them from the _Sacramentary_ of Gregory, and some from that of Gelasius; others were drawn from ancient models, but much altered; several were new. The few Occasional Prayers in the books of 1552 and 1559 were, like those added in the revision of 1661-2, new compositions arising out of existing circumstances. [Sidenote: CONVOCATION.]