'One general chorus of praise to their Almighty Creator': the Benedicite at Matins

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we consider the alternative canticle after the first reading, the Benedicite. Shepherd points to the evidence for its widespread use in East and West:

the fourth council of Toledo enjoined it to be used in the Spanish churches, alleging as a reason, that it was sung all over the world. St. Chrysostom had before made the same observation, describing this as a hymn every where sung throughout the world, and which would continue to be sung by latest posterity. In the Gallic Lectionary, it is appointed to be sung after the reading of the Prophets, much in the same manner, as it is here ordered to be said or sung after the reading of the first Lesson. 

While noting that patristic writers disagreed on the status of the text - "Ruffinus maintains against Jerome, that it is a portion of Holy Writ" - Shepherd, as with his earlier discussion of readings from the Apocrypha, affirms the legitimacy of the use of such texts outside of canonical Scripture, as in Article VII:

Though by our church it is not admitted to be either an inspired composition, or canonical Scripture, yet it is a very pious, as well as ancient form of praise, and well adapted to the purposes of devotion.

In common with a well-established defence in Prayer Book commentaries, Shepherd views the Benedicite as an "amplification" of Psalm 148, a celebration of the cosmos, seen and unseen, rejoicing in the Creator:

The objections made to this hymn, that we address angels, and holy men, and even the inanimate parts of the creation, are frivolous and groundless. Every person, in the smallest degree conversant with the inspired writings, knows, that in them, and particularly in the Psalms, such apostrophes frequently occur. And this very hymn is nothing more than a paraphrase, or amplification of the 148th Psalm, with which it corresponds in substance, and nearly in terms. In both compositions all creatures, in the invisible and visible world, are called upon to unite in one general chorus of praise to their Almighty Creator.

It is this joyful description of the Benedicite which confirms the wisdom of the 1552 revision removing the 1549 rubric restricting this canticle to Lent. A more frequent use is appropriate, as Shepherd indicates:

where the first Lesson treats of the creation, or any extraordinary exercise of God's power or providence, Benedicite might with propriety and advantage be adopted in the place of Te Deum.

There is, therefore, good reason to regularly use the Benedicte at Matins in place of Te Deum, perhaps weekly in the daily office and monthly at Sunday Matins. Its profoundly rich, transfiguring vision of the entire created order sharing in the praise of the Triune Creator has significant contemporary relevance and resonance, bringing us to celebrate in Matins a theological vision which, as C.S. Lewis memorably described, was particularly evident in the thought of Richard Hooker:

Few model universes are more filled–one might say, more drenched–with Deity than his.  'All things that are of God' (and only sin is not) 'have God in them and he them in himself likewise', yet 'their substance and his wholly differeth' (V.56.5). God is unspeakably transcendent; but also unspeakably immanent.  It is this conviction which enables Hooker, with no anxiety, to resist any inaccurate claim that is made for revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular ... We meet on all levels the divine wisdom shining through 'the beautiful variety of all things' in their 'manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude'.