'To repeat the Apostles' Creed': the Creed at Matins and Evensong

Having considered John Shepherd's reflections on the canticles at Matins and Evensong in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we now turn to the Apostles' Creed. Many contemporary Anglican versions of the daily office, of course, omit the Creed as unnecessary or perhaps even as a distraction from the purpose of daily prayer. Shepherd robustly demonstrates otherwise, pointing to the Creed as shaping our response to the reading of holy Scripture and providing the basis for our prayers to the Triune God:

That the place in which the Creed stands in our Morning and Evening Prayer, is the most proper that could be chosen, will be evident, if we consider, what precedes, and what follows it.

1. Before it, are the Lessons taken out of the Holy Scriptures. "Faith comes by hearing," and we having heard the word of God, profess our belief of it ... We trust it will profit us, who immediately after hearing it, individually make open profession of our belief.

2. After the Creed follow the Collects and Prayers, and on the days appointed, the Litany. Our belief is the basis of our supplications. "Faith is the fountain of prayer," says Augustine, and "how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?" asks an inspired apostle. That we may call upon him properly, and effectually, we first declare our belief by reciting the Creed.

With strict propriety therefore have the compilers of our Liturgy directed us to repeat the Apostles' Creed, after we have heard "God's holy word," and before we proceed "to ask those things that are requisite and necessary, as well as for the body as the soul".

Shepherd's account recalls us to recognise the importance of the Creed at Cranmerian Morning and Evening Prayer, and what is lost by its absence from contemporary versions of the daily office. It sets before us the faith to which the Scriptures call us: not an undefined, vague spirituality, but the deposit of faith, the apostolic tradition, the Trinitarian and Christological confession. And it is this confession which is the ground for our petitions, which draws us to pray to the Father, through the Son, in the communion of the Spirit.

On the basis of Shepherd's explanation, we have good cause to regard the place of the Creed at Matins and Evensong as one of the enduring strengths of the Cranmerian daily office.

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