Bull, Sherlock, Beveridge, and other Anglican divines, who belong more to the seventeenth than to the eighteenth century, had expressed much concern at the unfrequency of celebrations of the Eucharist as compared with a former age.  Our Reformers, they said, had regarded it as an ordinary part of Christian worship.[1142] In the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. there had been express directions relating to a daily administration, not only in cathedrals, but in parish churches.  But now, said Beveridge, people have so departed from primitive usage that they think once a week is too often.[1143] It had come to be monthly or perhaps quarterly.  The Puritans, with the idea that the solemnity of the rite was enhanced by its recurring after comparatively lengthened intervals, discouraged frequent communions, and many Low Churchmen of the next generation held the same opinion.[1144] In the country, quarterly communions had become the general rule.  The number of communicants had also very much diminished.  No doubt this was owing in great measure to the general laxity which followed upon the Restoration.  But the cause already mentioned contributed to keep away even religious people.  It must be also remembered that, during the period of the Reformation, and for some time after, stated attendance at the Holy Communion was regarded not only as a religious duty, but as an ordinary sign of membership in the National Church, and of attachment to its principles.  Towards the end of the seventeenth century, although the odious sacramental test was yet to survive for many a long year, that feeling had very generally passed away, and was being gradually superseded in many minds by an opposite idea that this Sacrament was not so much a help to Christian living, as a badge, from which many excellent people shrunk, of decided religious profession.  With the rise of the religious societies there was a change for the better.  The High Church movement of Queen Anne’s time, regarded in its worthiest form and among its best representatives, was one in which the sacramental element was prominently marked.  If a comparison is made between the number of churches in London where the Sacrament was weekly administered in Queen Anne’s reign, and on the other hand, in the period from about the middle of George I.’s reign to the third or fourth decade of the present century, the difference would be strikingly in favour of the earlier date.  In 1741, we find Secker admonishing the clergy of the diocese of Oxford, that they were bound to administer thrice in the year, that there ought to be an administration during the long interval between Whitsuntide and Christmas.  ‘And if,’ he adds somewhat dubiously, ’you can afterwards advance from a quarterly communion to a monthly one, I make no doubt but you will.’[1145] Of course there were many verbal and many practical protests against the prevalent disregard of this central Christian ordinance.  Thus both Wesley from a High Church point of view, and the Broad Church author