Once again I want to make the same point - there is as yet only one English language/idiom/dialect/register of prayer. Experiments to create a new one since the 1960s are still in process and are far from conclusive.
I want to emphasize that the prose language of Thomas Cranmer in The Book of the Common Prayer (1549 & 1552) is emphatically not the street language of the sixteenth century. And it is not the normal prose of that period. It was special and formal from the beginning because it was created for a unique task.
In fact the language of The Book of Common Prayer was already formal in 1600, old fashioned in terms of colloquial speech by 1662 and not more obscure in 2000 than it was in 1800.
Cranmer's prose may be said to be unique in that it was prose designed for worship from the very beginning. It was meant to be the English equivalent of the liturgical Latin (rather than the Latin of academia) of divine worship. He sought to provide in English what had been the norm for centuries in Latin.
Each human activity has its own type/style/form of language and it fell to Cranmer (with others) to produce the particular one for religious worship. (The linguistic concept of register is very important here.)
In this language of worship the THOU for the human singular is NOT doctrinally important, though of course it does make a sensitive distinction between address to worshippers collectively ("lift up your hearts") and individually ( thus "which was given for thee"). But for the DIVINE PRONOUNS (thou, thee, thy, thine with their special verb endings) the language of worship quickly acquired and has kept a special note of reverence before God along with a sense of intimacy through communion with God. So it was that children were taught: "We say 'Thou' to God and 'you' to man." And this was maintained in all branches of English-speaking Christendom until the 1960s when the practice began (influenced by the radicalism of the 1960s) of saying: "We say 'you' to God and to man."
But retracting our steps to the sixteenth century, it can be said that by the middle of the sixteenth century (when Cranmer did his fine creative writing) the distinction was growing between YOU as the normative form (for singular and plural) with THOU as the singular only in specific situations - for speech between intimates and for speech of the superior to the inferior in the social class system. (Compare TU in French.) This situation was marked by the end of the century but less marked a century later for YOU had become more universally used of singular and plural in most situations.
The reason why Cranmer used the old system of THOU for singular in all circumstances for both God and man was that this was the usage of TU/TE in his Latin originals (and of course in the Vulgate Bible). He used YOU only once in the singular in the BCP and that was in the Catechism and was meant to indicate that the relation to God through godparents is indirect not intimate (thus "you") but personally and by faith is direct (thus "thou")- thus totally in line with the usage of his day.
The translators of the KJV followed the same principle that Cranmer followed for in both the Greek and Hebrew there are distinctly different words for 2nd singular and 2nd plural. So in the KJV we have THOU and YOU used appropriately. But God who is ONE is never "YOU"; he is always and only the THOU-God.
However, in sermons and addresses to people in churches in the 17th century and afterwards, people were addressed both as individuals and as a plurality as YOU.
Thus in asking that this unique and much used and loved language of worship be available and be used in the 21st century is merely asking that the one and only language of worship known in English before the 1960s be still available for use today in churches and homes. For it is neither more archaic nor antiquarian in 2002 than it was in 1702, 1802, 1902 or 1959. It is simply the specific English language of prayer and worship that had no competitor before the revolutionary 1960s.
August 24th 2002 The Revd Dr Peter Toon
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