The Lutheran minister of the present day in Sweden and Denmark is described as wearing an ample cassock, or black gown, and a white frilled ruff, or collar, both in his outdoor life and at morning and evening prayer. At the Communion Service he assumes an alb, or, rather, surplice—a white, ungirded garment, open down the front—over which is placed a chasuble with a large cross on the back. The Swedish Kyrko-Handbog recognises these vestments: the _chorkappa_, _messhake_ and _messe-sjorta_—answering to the cope, chasuble, and surplice, respectively. § II. THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. The history of vestments and their usage in England subsequent to the reformation is not lacking in complexity, and is rendered harder to unravel by the heated discussions carried on, and the contradictory assertions brought forward, at the present day by the various parties within the English church. It is no part of our duty here to give an account of the different recensions of the liturgy published and approved in the years after the reformation; we are here only concerned with the rubrical directions which they contain to regulate the use of vestments permitted in the English church. The first English Prayer-Book, published in 1549, contained the following injunction: 'Upon the day and at the time appointed for the ministration of the Holy Communion, the Priest that shall execute the holy ministry shall put upon him the vesture appointed for that ministration, that is to say, a white alb plain with a vestment or cope. And where there be many Priests or Deacons there so many shall be ready to help the Priest in the ministrations as shall be requisite; and shall have upon them likewise the vestures appointed for their ministry, that is to say, albes with tunicles.' It is quite clear, even without the documentary evidence which is forthcoming, that this was merely intended as temporary, as, indeed, was the whole 1549 Prayer-Book. In a letter which Fagius and Bucer addressed to their Strassburg friends, describing their reception by Archbishop Cranmer, there is given a short account of the ceremonies then in use. In the course of this letter, they say, 'We hear that some concessions have been made both to a respect for antiquity and to the infirmity of the present age, such, for instance, as the vestments commonly used in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.'