'God carried men up': Gloria in excelsis in the Prayer Book Holy Communion

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In addressing the place of the Gloria in excelsis in the Prayer Book Holy Communion, John Shepherd, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), offers a confident understanding of this characteristic of the 1662 rite. This contrasts with with a de rigueur assumption for Anglican liturgical revision, that the 1662 post-communion place of the Gloria in excelsis must be inappropriate. 

Shepherd, however, is typical of 17th and 18th century Church of England liturgists. Sparrow in his Rational, for example, invokes Chrysostom exposition of the singing of a hymn after the Lord's Institution of the Sacrament to show the meaning of the post-communion place of the Gloria in excelsis: 

Hear this, as many as wait not again for the last prayer of the mysteries, for this is a symbol of that. He gave thanks before He gave it to His disciples, that we also may give thanks. He gave thanks, and sang an hymn after the giving, that we also may do this selfsame thing.

Sparrow goes on to comment:

And when can a Psalm or Hymn of thanksgiving be more seasonable and necessary, than after we have received this heavenly nourishment? Is it possible to hear these words, This is my Body, take and eat it; Drink ye all of this, This is my Blood: and not be filled, as with a kind of fearful admiration, so with a sea of joy and comfort for the Heaven which they see in themselves? Can any man receive this Cup of Salvation, and not praise and bless God with his utmost strength of soul and body? 

Shepherd likewise turns to Chrysostom to understand the post-communion Gloria in excelsis, seeing this as reflecting the Sacrament's relationship to the economy of salvation:

it is frequently mentioned by Chrysostom, as a part of the Communion Service. God, he says, first brought down Angels hither, and then carried men up to them. 

The rich meaning of Gloria in excelsis in the context of the Sacrament is for Shepherd, as for Sparrow, central to understanding its liturgical purpose and place. Again, Chrysostom is used by Shepherd to expound this:

When we celebrate the Eucharist we say, Glory be to God on high, &c. He likewise specifies the time of using it in the Communion Service. "The communicants know what hymn is sung by the Spirits above, what the Cherubim say above, what the Angels said above, Glory be to God, Glory be to God on high. Therefore our hymns come after our psalmody as something more perfect." 

The meaning that Chrysostom here attaches to this canticle in following after the congregation's singing of the Psalms is, of course, lost in contemporary Anglican rites, in which the psalm follows the Gloria in excelsis. Shepherd continues by drawing out an implication of Chrysostom's description:

This means that the psalms were sung in the Ante-communion Service, while the catechumens were permitted to be present. But the Trisagion, or Cherubic Hymn, and the Gloria in Excelsis, or Angelic Hymn, were more particularly appropriated to the Communion Service. 

This is an example of how the 1662 rite, while structured differently from what is known about patristic rites, can yet better capture the meaning of those rites. The post-communion placing of the Gloria in excelsis, therefore, reflects the meaning Chrysostom attributes to this canticle in the Eucharist, a meaning not easily seen in contemporary rites having it at the outset of Parish Communion. The rich sacramental significance of the canticle, as emphasised by Chrysostom, is much more evident in its post-communion use in 1662.

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