I came across the following inscription in the front of a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, it was written in an elegant hand, as so often people wrote in the past,
Hudswell Church
1952
Not to be taken away.
At the time I was in Marske Church for a service of Evensong and so this reminder of the limits of the efficacy of official edicts made me smile. No doubt there was a perfectly good and reasonable explanation for the book having been “taken away” from Hudswell Church, perhaps it was just for that evening to supplement the stock of Prayer Books at Marske as there was quite a crowd in to hear the choir. Whatever occasioned the taking away, I suspect it was a circumstance the writers of that edict had not foreseen or approved of, especially as they were probably no longer around. I couldn’t help imagining a meeting of the Parochial Church Council of Hudswell Church back in 1951 or thereabouts wherein the gradual loss of their Prayers Books was lamented and condemned, but what was to be done?
In my experience people over estimate the efficacy of official edicts, especially people in a position of power. When something must be done issuing an edict and having it posted up can feel remarkably like something has been done, the difficulty is that an edict can be misunderstood even if those who issue it think their meaning to be quite clear, it also can of course be ignored either through ignorance or belligerence, and unforeseen circumstances can confound the original intent.
I smiled later on in the service too when we came to the second saying of the Lord’s Prayer, which in the Book of Common Prayer is prefaced by this rubric,
“Then the Minister, Clerks, and people shall say the Lord's Prayer with a loud voice.”
I smiled because I find it overly directive, and once more I was imagining a church meeting, this time Cranmer and his Bishops working on the text of the Prayer Book. I seem to recall that this exhortation to speak in “a loud voice” was not added until the 1552 edition, there had been two editions before that, so what caused Cranmer to add that line? Had congregations been afraid to speak up? Something must be done to remedy the matter!
I would probably have forgotten this little Evensong byway in my thoughts had that line not come up again when later I was tucked up in bed. Not pillow talk, as one may perhaps assume, but in the book I was reading, Thomas Hardy’s ‘Jude the Obscure.’ The “aged widow Mrs Edlin” had come to stay with Jude and Sue,
“She was allotted the spare room in Jude's house, whither she retired early,
and where they could hear her through the ceiling below, honestly saying
the Lord's Prayer in a loud voice, as the Rubric directed.”
I doubt it was Cranmer’s intention that aged widows should at bed time say the Lord’s Prayer in a loud voice, even if this particular widow’s faithfulness is quaintly commendable. Here then is another difficulty in relying on edicts, they can be interpreted too literally. Overly directive rules can also leave you open to being satirised, as Hardy is doing in ‘Jude the Obscure.’
Hardy prefaces ‘Jude the Obscure’ with words from the bible, "the letter killeth." The full quote is from 2 Corinthians 3:6 and reads " Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
Rules are usually thought up to mitigate our failings as human beings, or our perceived failings in the case of ill-conceived rules, but that does not mean rules are not then subject to our failings as human beings. The rule is meant to help, if it does not then a rethink is in order. It is the spirit or meaning that potentially gives life, not the rule. Jesus was often to be found in debate with the Pharisees on this matter, saying to them that ‘the Sabbath was made for man. Not man for the Sabbath.’ Given that Christ preferred telling stories to making up rules, and summarised the whole law in love of God and love of each other, it seems a pity that those in authority in the Christian religion have been so keen on issuing edicts and subsequently enforcing them.
If I could issue an edict myself I might tell them to stop it forthwith.
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