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The Reformation · 1549; revised 1552 and 1662
The Book of Common Prayer
Thomas Cranmer · 1489–1556
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What it is
One book putting the whole worship of a church — daily prayer, communion, baptism, marriage, burial — into the language of the people, with a lectionary that walks a congregation through most of the Bible in a year.
Why it lasted
The most consequential piece of English prose after the King James Bible, and the reason phrases written for a Tudor liturgy still surface in ordinary speech.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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