(1.) The Use of Sarum was certainly rich in Legends, and that to the exclusion of Scripture. On such a subject we surely cannot have a better authority than the preface to that First Book of Edward VI., which is now so strongly recommended. In that Preface it is said: “These many years past this godly and decent order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected by planting in uncertain stories, legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals, that commonly, when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four chapters are read out, all the rest were unread.” And of these Legends, etc., the same preface adds, “Some be untrue, some uncertain, some vain and superstitious.” If it is the omission of such Legends as these that makes our Prayer Book “meagre,” all I can say is, Let us thank God for its meagreness. (2.) Then, again, the Use of Sarum was rich in complicated and senseless ceremonial. The Preface already quoted says of these ceremonies: “Some at the first were of godly intent and purpose devised, and yet, at length, turned to vanity and superstition; some . . . because they were winked at in the beginning, they grew daily to more and more abuses, which, not only for their unprofitableness, but also because they have much blinded the people and obscured the glory of God, are worthy to be cut away and clean rejected.” It may be well, perhaps, to give one illustration from the Sarum Missal: “Here let the priest uncover the cup, and make the sign of the cross with the host five times—first beyond the cup on every side, secondly even with the cup, thirdly within the cup, fourthly as the first, fifthly before the cup.” This is given simply as a specimen, and some may say that there is no harm in it. But I can scarcely believe it possible that anyone will hesitate to apply to it the language of the Preface, “This excessive multitude of ceremonies was so great, and many of them so dark, that, they did more confound and darken than declare and set forth Christ’s benefits unto us.”