To one other example of the practice of the Church of Rome I must refer.  The rubric in our Book of Common Prayer directs that “at the end of every Psalm throughout the year, shall be repeated, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost:  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.”  In the Roman Breviary also we find this rubric:  “This verse, Gloria, is always said in the end of all psalms, EXCEPT IT BE OTHERWISE {344} NOTED.” [AEst. 3.] Such notifications occur at the end of various psalms.  On the Feast of the Assumption [AEst. 595.], fourteen psalms are appointed to be used.  At the close of every one of these psalms, without however any note that the Gloria is not to be said, there is appended an anthem to the Virgin.  In some cases, so intimately is the anthem interwoven with the closing words of the psalm, as that under other circumstances it would induce us to infer that the Gloria was intended to be left out, especially as in the Parvum Officium of the Virgin [AEst. clv.], though to the various psalms anthems in the same manner have been annexed, yet the words “Gloria Patri et Filio” are inserted in each case between the psalm and the anthem.  Be this as it may, the annexation of the anthem has a lamentable tendency to withdraw the thoughts of the worshippers from the truths contained in the inspired psalm, and to fix them upon Mary and her Assumption; changing the Church’s address from the Eternal Being, alone invoked by the Psalmist, to one, who though a virgin blessed among women, is a creature of God’s hand.  Thus, at the conclusion of the 8th psalm; “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the world,” we find immediately annexed these two anthems, “The holy mother of God is exalted above the choirs of angels to the heavenly realms.  The gates of paradise are opened to us by thee, [by thee, O Virgin [Quae gloriosa]] who glorious triumphest with the angels.”  Thus again, an anthem is attached to the last verse of the 95th (in the Hebrew and English versions the 96th).  “He shall judge the earth in equity, and the people with his truth.  Rejoice, {345} O Virgin Mary; thou alone hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.  Deem me worthy to praise thee, hallowed Virgin:  Give me strength against thy enemies.”  To the 96th (97th), the latter clause of that address is repeated, with the addition of the following:  “After the birth thou didst remain a virgin inviolate.  Mother of God, intercede for us.”

An instance of the anthem being so intimately interwoven with the psalm, as to render the insertion of the “Gloria,” between the two, to say the least, forced and unnatural, occurs at the close of the 86th (87th) psalm.  The vulgate translation of the last verse, differing entirely from the English, is this:  “As the habitation of all who rejoice is in thee.”  This sentence of the Psalmist is thus taken up in the Roman Ritual:  “As the habitation of all us who rejoice is in THEE, Holy Mother of God.”