'A declaring of the glad tidings of salvation, not mixed with human imperfection': William White's 'Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination'

Will you diligently read the same unto the people assembled in the Church where you shall be appointed to serve?

Answer. I will.

Addressing the fourth question in the Ordering of Deacons, William White's Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination (1833) points to how patristic accounts regularly emphasise the significance of the public reading of holy Scripture in the liturgies "of the primitive Church":

Of the many marks manifested by this Church, of her being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, there may be considered the importance which she gives to the public reading of the Holy Scriptures, as not one of the least. There is no branch of the service of the primitive Church more demonstrative than this. In the apology of Justin Martyr, edited within half a century of the decease of the last of the apostles; and in the account which the apologists gives of the worship of the Christian assemblies of his day, this is distinctly noticed, as a part of it. Of similar testimonies from other fathers, there might be produced very many; proving also, that the same reading took up a considerable proportion of the time.

The practice of "this Church" - that is, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, descended from the Church of England - was a restoration of patristic practice, contrasting with both the Roman Communion and some Dissenting traditions. The latter are particularly critiqued by White, in Hookerian fashion, for a failure to give due place to the public reading of Scripture:

When England threw off the yoke of Rome, the importance of restoring the old and edifying practice was distinctly seen and acted on by her reformers. But when there seceded from that Church persons, who formed new communions, partly on the professed principle that her liturgy was lifeless, and that piety was to be promoted by the abandonment of forms of prayer; this was accompanied, and it would seem naturally, with some, by an entire exclusion of the reading of the Scriptures; and with others, by a very limited exercise of this sort. The truth is, it does not harmonize with that degree of animal fervour which has been affected in the separations here alluded to. The same has happened, in others of a more recent date. Concerning all these societies, it is not unnatural to conceive, as to what may be deemed error in their systems, that the continuance of it has been in a great measure owing to the dropping of the reading of the Scriptures, or else to the reading of them in a very scanty measure.

While Hooker's Disciplinarian opponents regarded this practice as "bare readinge" (LEP V.22.1), Hooker regarded it as preaching: "The Church as a wittnesse preacheth his meere revealed truth by reading publiquely the sacred scripture" (V.19.1). It is this which is reflected in White's description of the deacon's ministry - and that of the presbyter - in publicly reading Scripture in divine service:

There shall be concluded this article by remarking, of both deacons and the other orders of the ministry, the propriety of their perceiving in the exercise here the subject, that it is a declaring of the glad tidings of salvation, not mixed, as sometimes happens in their own discourses, with human imperfection. They may be assured, that the Gospel, so read, is often brought home to the consciences and the affections of the hearers, by the same holy Spirit which inspired it. And hence there arises a strong inducement in those less showy departments of administration, to aim at that gravity and that correctness which are likely to aid in the impressing of important truths and lessons, delivered to the people from their un- adulterated source.

As Hooker said of his opponents on this matter:

That which offendith us is, first the greate disgrace which they offer unto our custome of bare readinge the word of God, and to his gracious Spirit, the principall vertue whereof thereby manifestinge it selfe for the endlesse good and mens souls, even the vertue which it hath to convert, to edifie, to save soules, this they mightelie strive to obscure (V.22.1).

Public reading of the holy Scriptures in divine service may indeed by "less showy" than ministry from the pulpit, but it certainly is not any less important. To read the Scriptures in divine service is, as White so powerfully stated, "a declaring of the glad tidings of salvation ... not mixed with human imperfection". Thus, those about to receive the Order of Deacon are rightly required to "diligently read the same", such is the significance of this aspect of ordained ministry.