Schooled in a lifelong education in prayer

Prior to the addition of the 1662 Preface, the first and second editions of the Prayer-Book of Edward VI of 1549 and 1552 respectively open with a critical claim: 'There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised or so surely established, which (in continuance of time) hath not been corrupted'. That, of course, is an important part of the rationale for the Prayer-Book's commissioning. The Preface implies that the work is a critical repair of the available traditions of leitourgia or 'divine service'. What is meant by that is suggested by succeeding appeals to the reading of the Bible and to 'a great advancement of godliness', 'wholesome doctrine', and the confutation of 'them that were adversaries of the truth'. We might connect these by speaking of the faithful formation in the knowing of God - in other words, of a form of Christian education