Note 172 — EPILOGUE.
Reading edition
The only explanation ever offered for this exuberant wordiness is that if worshipers did not understand one term they would the other, and in some cases, in the Exhortation and elsewhere, one word is of Latin and the other of Saxon derivation.[1] But this is surely a very feeble excuse for bad composition. Of a very different kind is that beautiful climax which is reached in the three admirably chosen pairs of words in the Prayer for the Parliament, "peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety."—F. A. M.
(Note 1: The repetition of synonymous terms is of very frequent occurrence in sixteenth century writing, as "for ever and aye," "Time and the hour run through the roughest day" (Macbeth, i. 3).)