COMMON PRAYER

  "When the disciples came to Jesus begging him that he would teach them how to pray, he gave them, not twelve several forms, though doubtless James' special needs differed from John’s and Simon’s from Jude’s—he gave them, not twelve, but one. “When ye pray,” was his answer, “say Our Father.” That was the beginning of Christian Common Prayer."

  "The very earliest monuments of Christian worship that we possess are rituals of thanksgiving, having direct reference to the sacrifice of the death of Christ. Going back from these to the New Testament we find there the narrative of the institution of the Holy Communion by Christ himself, and in connection with it the command, “This do in remembrance of me.” It is, I submit, a reasonable inference that the liturgies in the main fairly represent what it was in the mind of the apostle to recognize and establish as proper Christian worship".

The quotes above are from "A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer" by Rev. William Reed Huntington, 1893. The book is available online.