Thomas Cranmer is remembered chiefly because his work as a liturgist during the reign of Edward VI was recovered in the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion and over time became the standard form of Christian worship for the English-speaking world. As a result he must be viewed, after the translators of the English Bible, as the most influential prose stylist in English letters. Having overcome Roman resistance to the use of English in worship and survived Reformed Church opposition to written prayers, Cranmer's liturgical texts in his Book of Common Prayer have entered the realm of oral culture. It now seems inevitable that a Christian wedding service of whatever tradition should begin "Dearly beloved," or that a burial service should summarize human life as a passage from "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." On a more literary level the tone and rhythm of Cranmer's prayers and...