The Comfortable Words and the Strasbourg Connection

Strasbourg, Cologne, and the Book of Common Prayer

One of my favorite parts of the Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion service is the Comfortable Words following the confession and absolution. After the minister and people together confess their sins and and the minister pronounces the absolution, s/he says (here, in the 1662 version):¹

Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him:

Come unto me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. St. Matt. 11:28.

So God loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. St. John 3:16.

Hear also what Saint Paul saith:

This is a true saying and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. 1 Tim. 1:15.

Hear also what Saint John saith:

If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 2:1.

This has been a part of Anglican liturgy since the first authorized English-language communion service, the 1548 Order of the Holy Communion; and has become an important part of the Prayer Book tradition till the present day (indeed, it even survived some of the transformations of the liturgical movement; for example, it shows up as optional in the Church of England’s 1980 Alternative Service Book and the Rite I of the Episcopal Church’s 1979 BCP). I have come to love both hearing it said to me and saying it while officiating; it is so powerful to follow my ministerial pronouncement of absolution with its basis in the very Word of God itself!

This might seem like a characteristically Anglican piece of the liturgy. And so it is: I know of no other liturgy in contemporary use that uses the ‘Comfortable Words’ in this way. But Anglican though it may be, it is not actually English in origin at all! Rather, this portion of the service originates in the very first vernacular German service celebrated in Strasbourg, which finds its way to England via the great Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer and the liturgical order he worked on for the Protestant Archbishop Hermann von Wied of Cologne.²

On February 16, 1524, Theobold Schwarz, an assistant of Matthäus Zell, cathedral preacher and first leader of the reformation in Strasbourg, celebrated the first vernacular liturgy in the city using an order which he drew up, adapted from the old Mass. In this service, after a confession of sins, the priest responds, “Das ist ein gewiβ vnd theur wort, das Christus Jesus komen ist in die welt, die sünder selig zu machen, deren ich der erst binn, das glaub ich, herr, hilff meynem vnglauben vnd mach mich selig. Amen.” That is, “This is a certain and valuable word, that Christ Jesus came into the world, to save sinners, of whom I am the first. This I believe; Lord, help my unbelief and save me. Amen.” Schwarz, combining 1 Timothy 1:15 and Matthew 9:24, declares the Gospel basis of forgiveness and has the priest pray for faith. The priest then says (some editions make clear that he says this facing the people) “Gott begnade vnd erbarme sich über uns alle,” that is, “May God bless and have mercy upon us all!”

As the Strasbourg liturgy developed from these humble beginnings through the 1520s and 1530s (increasingly influenced by Martin Bucer, who became the most important Strasbourg reformer), this absolution remained fairly stable as a declaration of forgiveness based on 1 Timothy 1:15. There were a few changes - the prayer for faith quickly dropped out and later printings emphasized more strongly the ministerial office of pronouncing forgiveness - but the basic idea of using Scripture along with a ministerial statement in absolution remained. More importantly for later Anglican developments, already in 1525 the minister was allowed to substitute other passages for 1 Tim. 1:15, and in 1537, a set of alternative options were provided for what was called “Ein absolution oder trostspruch” (An absolution or comforting saying). The liturgy invites the use of John 3:16, John 3:35-36a, Acts 10:43, and 1 John 2:1b-2a as alternatives to 1 Tim. 1:15; the minister was to choose and read one of these. So, by 1537 in Strasbourg, we find the idea of combining Scripture quotations with a pronouncement of forgiveness and three of the four passages the prayer book tradition will use (along with two passages that will not be taken up in the prayer book Comfortable Words). What’s more, this is called a “Trostspruch,” a comforting saying, language very reminiscent of the Prayer Book’s “comfortable words.”

However, in this case the route of liturgical transmission does not seem to go directly from Strasbourg to England. Rather, we need to discuss the reformation in Cologne. There, the Archbishop, Hermann von Wied, became a committed Protestant and commissioned a group of Protestant luminaries, most importantly Martin Bucer (who had become his court preacher) and Philip Melanchthon, to produce a compendium of doctrine and a liturgical order to be used by the church there. Bucer is generally taken to be the primary author of the liturgical parts of the text. The result was the 1543 einfaltigs Bedencken, published in Latin in 1545 as the Simplex et pia deliberatio and translated into English in 1547 as A simple and religious consultation. This text - often referred to in English scholarship as von Wied’s Consultation - was a significant source for Cranmer in drafting the 1548 communion order and the Books of Common Prayer of 1549 and 1552.³

This debt is quite clear when it comes to Comfortable Words. After the confession, the einfaltigs Bedencken has the minister say “Hoeret den Euangelischen trost”, that is, “Hear the evangelical comfort,” and invites the minister to read one of the five passages we’ve already seen in the 1537 Strasbourg liturgy (John 3:16, 1 Tim. 1:15, John 3:35-36a, Acts 10:43, and 1 John 2:1b-2a); once again, a pronouncement of absolution follows. (The same command is rendered “Audite euangelium” in the Latin version, and “Hear the Gospel” in the English translation; the English text as a whole seems upon fairly brief examination to be based on the Latin rather than the German, so this is no surprise).

And having examined the liturgical work done at the behest of von Wied, we can finally turn to English-language liturgy proper with a look at the first communion order of 1548. The order is switched (the absolution comes first, then the Comfortable Words), and the minister says multiple passages rather than just choosing one, but the idea is the same. The priest, standing and facing the people, says “Here what confortable woordes our sauiour Christ saith to all that trulye turne to him…”, and then recites the well-known four passages of Scripture, three of which are shared with the Bedencken (and, before it, the Strasbourg liturgy; Matthew 11:28 is the passage not found in the Strasbourg or Cologne texts).⁴

So, the next time that you say or hear the Comfortable Words, remember that this well-loved text shows the clear connection between the Church of England and the Reformation on the Continent. This use of Comfortable Words as part of the absolution come to us from Cologne, from a Roman Catholic archbishop’s ultimately failed attempt to move his entire archdiocese to embrace the Reformation, and before that from Strasbourg, from the work of Martin Bucer and, ultimately, from the very first German vernacular liturgy celebrated back in 1524. When you hear or say the Comfortable Words, you are connected to a largely unknown Strasbourg reformer, Theobold Schwarz, and his first attempt to provide an evangelical, vernacular liturgy in the city of Strasbourg. And this matters not just as a matter of historical trivia (although as a church historian, historical trivia are rather my stock in trade!) but because of the broader point about English theology and liturgy to which it points. In the sixteenth century, the Church of England was united with the Reformation churches of the Continent in a commitment to set forth ‘den euangelischen Trost’, the comfort of the Gospel, in both preaching and liturgy: the good news that in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus God has freely forgiven us our sins and given us the gift of new life. This is what the church seeks to convey every time one of its ministers says “Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him…”

1. I’ve written about the prayer book Holy Communion service and its evangelical logic, including the Comfortable Words, here:

2. I hasten to add that this is not a controversial claim, but I think it is much better known among scholars of Anglican liturgy than lay Anglicans - hence this Substack!

3. Brightman’s The English Rite, while old and I suspect overly confident about the irrelevance of Swiss liturgy to understanding English liturgical development, remains a very helpful text for exploring the sources of the prayer book.

4. The priest’s imperative address to the people “Heere the confortable woordes” suggests strongly to me that the einfaltigs Bedencken is the means by which the Strasbourg use of Scripture in absolution is mediated to English liturgy, because the einfaltigs Bedencken has a similar imperative introduction to the reading of Scripture passages (“Hoeret den Euangelischen trost”). The Strasbourg liturgy, by contrast, calls the reading of a comforting Scripture passage and declaration of forgiveness “Ein absolution oder trostspruch”, but does not have the same introductory phrase. However, it seems that Cranmer also had direct access to the Strasbourg liturgy; for example, the place of the Ten Commandments in the 1552 prayer book is likely based on a prayer of confession using the Decalogue in the Strasbourg liturgy, a prayer which has no equivalent in the einfaltigs Bedencken.