'Obligatory upon us Christians': the Commandments in the Communion Office

They made no part of any ancient Liturgy, neither, if my information be correct, are they read in the Communion office of any of the reformed Churches, except our own: And in ours they were first inserted at the review of Edward's Liturgy in 1552.

When John Shepherd - in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - refers in this manner to the reading of the Commandments in the Communion Office, we might assume he is being critical of the provision. Those of us who are devotees of the Cranmerian Communion Office, however, have no need to fear: Shepherd offers a robust defence of this distinctive provision. He declares that "the order for the rehearsal of [the Commandments] here, requires neither vindication, nor apology":

When the Commandments are read, we should remember that they are not the words of the minister, but of God himself, and we should hear them with the same humility, the same reverence, and the same determination to obey them, with which they were heard by the people of Israel, when they were first announced from Mount Sinai. For the moral precepts of the Decalogue are as obligatory upon us Christians, as they were upon the Jews, to whom they were originally delivered. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments," is the precept of our Lord himself. At our baptism a solemn stipulation was made in our names, that we should "learn the Commandments and keep them." At our Confirmation we renewed with our own mouths the vows and promises made in our baptism, acknowledging ourselves bound to believe and do all what was then promised for us.

Shepherd's defence of the place of the Commandments in the Communion Office illustrates the significance of the provision. The reading and hearing of the Commandments at the outset of the rite is a way of setting before us the place of the Commandments in the Christian moral life, as expressed in dominical teaching and reflected in the covenant of Baptism, reiterated at Confirmation. This emphasises what has been lost by the near universal removal of the Commandments from contemporary Anglican liturgy. The use of the Summary of the Law in their place is, of course, of great value, but makes little sense without a knowledge of the Commandments which they interpret. A fundamental means of shaping the Christian moral life has almost entirely disappeared, not only from Anglican liturgy, but also from Anglican moral teaching. We might, therefore, hear the voice of Shepherd echoed in Rowan William's account of the significance of the Commandments: