THIS is the sort of language that traumatised generations. Such graphic injunctions about sin and its consequences (this was the most famous description of hell since Dante's Inferno) terrified countless young men and women, particularly those who were Catholic. Considerable determination, ingenuity and often cruelty went into "protecting" people from their base desires. But such efforts, however well-meaning, made the language of sin itself sinful.

An Anglican Prayer Book (2008) would have benefited from a General Directions for Public Worship section with a note pointing to the attention of users of the book that where a certain posture is particularly appropriate, it is indicated but these directions are suggestions only. Such a note would have helped to give the book the kind of flexibility needed for the wide variety of circumstances in which Anglican Mission congregations are worshiping.

The theology of The St. Andrew's Draft can be seen throughout the document, but it is especially prominent in the introduction which, in the words of the document itself, presents a "fuller theological rationale."(1) That rationale grounds the Anglican Communion in the communion of the three Persons of the Trinity.

"If Israel play the harlot, let not Juda sin." "If it seem evil unto you," saith Josua, "to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods whom your fathers served beyond the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell: but I and mine house will serve the Lord." The indisposition therefore of the Church of Rome to reform herself must be no stay unto us from performing our duty to God; even as desire of retaining conformity with them could be no excuse i