In the Church of England, however, it was retained among the episcopal ornaments prescribed by the first Prayerbook of Edward VI., and, though omitted in the second Prayerbook, its use seemed once more to be enjoined under the Ornaments Rubric of Elizabeth's Prayer-book.
It becomes, then, a question whether the present-day practice of many of the clergy, ostensibly based on the rubric of 1549, is in fact covered by this.
This judgment, founded as was afterwards admitted on insufficient knowledge, produced no effect; and, in the absence of any authoritative pronouncement, advantage was taken of the ambiguous language of the Ornaments Rubric to introduce into many churches practically the whole ceremonial use of lights as practised in the pre-Reformation Church.
Thus, to take only one prominent example, the profound speculations of Meister Eckhart (q.v.) are always treated under the head of Mysticism, but they might with equal right appear under the rubric Theosophy.
Leo of Rome, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Theophylactus, Cyril of Jerusalem and others, trine immersion was regarded as being symbolic of the three days' entombment of Christ; and in the Armenian baptismal rubric this interpretation is enjoined, as also in an epistle of Macarius of Jerusalem addressed to the Armenians (c. 330).
Tomlinson, The Prayer Book, Articles and Homilies (1897), a polemical work from the Protestant point of view, but scholarly and based on a mass of contemporary authorities to which references are given; the bishop of Exeter, The Ornaments Rubric (London, 1901), a pamphlet.
The York rubric directed him to do it immediately after the first saying of the Introit, which in England was thrice said.
In baptism the rubric ordains that the baptized be plunged three times in the font in commemoration of the entombment during three days of the Lord.
The rubric of the mass for this feast actually runs: In fine Missae Sacerdos versus ad populum vice, Ite missa est, Hinhannabit: populus vero vice, Deo Gratias, ter respondebit Hinham, Hinham, Hinham (At the close of the mass the priest turning to the people instead of saying, Ite missa est, shall bray thrice: the people, instead of Deo gratias, shall thrice respond Hee-haw, Hee-haw, Hee-haw).
C. i, and, without admitting that the canons of the church, which are not binding on the laity, could specify a lawful cause for rejection, held that no lawful cause within the meaning of either the canons or the rubric had been shown.