'  It  is  very  singular  that  Burtou  had  alleged,  in  his  '*  Tryall  of
Private  Devotions/'  that  there  was  *'in  the  great  printing  house
at  Loudon  a  Common  Prayer  Book/'  altered  with  Cosin's  liand,
to  show  "  how  he  would  have  it  altered."  Prynne  asserts  some-
thing similar  in  his  criticism  of  Cosin's  Devotions,  printed  in


1626  and  1627.  [Brief  Censure  of  Mr.  Cozens  and  his  Cozeninr
Devotions,  pp.  92.  104.]  These  anticipations  of  Cosin's  influence
show  that  he  was  marked  out  for  a  leader  in  the  work  of  revision.
2  State  Papers,  Dom.,  Ch.  11.,  Iviii.  12.    »  Ibid.  l.\i.  144;  lxiii.42.
*  Printed  for  the  House  of  Commons,  June  2ml,  1851.
e  2


x]i»  AN  HISTORICAL  INTRODUCTION

§  National  Versions  of  the  Prai/er  Book.
The  English  system  of  Divine  Service  was  adopted  by  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  the  seventeenth
century,  and  by  that  of  the  United  States  of  America  in  the  eighteenth :  and  although  the  Churches  of
botli  countries  are  but  small  bodies,  when  compared  with  the  numbers  of  the  population,  the  versions  of  the
Book  of  Common  Prayer  adopted  by  them  have  an  historical  claim  to  be  called  national  versions, — that
of  Scotland  having  been  adopted  under  royal  and  ecclesiastical  authority,  while  that  of  America  was
adopted  imder  the  most  authoritative  sanction  of  the  ecclesiastical  body  to  which  the  original  English
colonists  of  the  continent  belonged.
