The Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity both in The Book of Common Prayer (1662 & USA 1928) and in Common Worship (2000, England) is based upon the original Latin Collect from the Sacramentary of Gregory, via the Sarum Missal.
The original Collect may be translated:
"O God, the protector of all that hope in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide we may so pass through the good things of time that we lose not the good things of eternity; through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Archbishop Cranmer translated & edited as follows:
"O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, though being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord."
Cranmer changed "hope" to "trust", added the verb "increase", and changed "the good things of time" to "things temporal [=things of time]". Thereby he gave the prayer a somewhat different emphasis. Passing through the "good things of time" is a more restricted reference than all the things of time. The original Latin presupposed that there are specific temptations in the enjoyment of the good things of time, temptations which may cause us to stumble and thus lose the gifts of forgiveness of sins, eternal salvation and life in the presence of the Lord with the beatific vision. Cranmer included good things and bad things by his "things temporal" and thus widened the reference of the petition greatly.
The editors of Common Worship generally followed The Book of Common Prayer but made their own additions/changes and in these substantially changed the meaning of the Prayer.
"O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake."
Instead of "we finally lose not things eternal" [eternal life, eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision, eternal fellowship with the angels and saints, and so on] this prayer has "we lose not our hold on things eternal". The idea seems to be that we are grasping by our own power, or hanging on to by our own energy, the things of eternity and that there is the real possibility that due to the pressures of living in this [sinful] world we shall lose our grasp of, and be unable to hang on to, them now. That is we shall lose our hold on our union, communion, and relation to God the Father in the present.
Further, the deletion of "finally" removes the reference to the Last Judgment and makes the reference to be primarily in this world. Thus the problem with this rendering is that it makes too specific the human side of holding on to God and at the same time does not allow for God's holding on to us; further, it takes out of the whole prayer the sense that we all have to appear before the judgment seat of God to give an account.
If the editors of Common Worship wanted to change the Cranmerian rendering why did they not provide a good translation of the original Latin Collect?
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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