Omitting readings from the Apocrypha: a low church, Latitudinarian rupture with 1662?

In revising the Table of Lessons, we have judged it convenient to follow generally the new Table which the Church of England has lately adopted, with these principal exceptions, that whereas in that Table some Lessons are still taken out of the Books called Apocryphal, we have so arranged ours as that all the Lessons shall be taken out of the Canonical Scriptures ...

So declared the Preface to the Church of Ireland's 1878 Prayer Book revision. For Anglo-Catholic and, indeed, High Church critics, it was a significant rupture with 1662, placing the 1878 revision in succession to the dastardly Latitudinarian influences of the 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension and PECUSA's 1789 revision. Both of these, of course, had omitted readings from the Apocrypha. The Church of Ireland, then, had followed in such lamentable low church paths.

This account, however, entirely fails to recognise a much more complex, diverse, and interesting approach to the public reading of the Apocrypha found in both the Prayer Book tradition and amongst divines of the Church of England.

Firstly, let us consider those Latitudinarian influences. While the 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension did reflect the concerns and aspirations of those deemed by their opponents 'Latitude men', the matter of how such divines approached the Apocrypha is rather more nuanced. As I have shown elsewhere, the preaching of Tillotson - who was the leading figure in the 1689 revision - abounded with references to the wisdom books of the Apocrypha. 

Likewise, Hoadly - that most Latitudinarian of Latitudinarians - robustly defended, in his in The Reasonabless of Conformity to the Church of England (1707), the edifying nature of the appointed lessons from the Apocrypha, while noting that "no Chapter out of these Books is appointed to be read in the Service for Sundays". Latitudinarian attitudes towards the Apocrypha, therefore, were very clearly not characterised by straightforward rejection. When the1689 Liturgy of Comprehension proposed removing the Apocrypha from the Table of Lessons, it was not a matter of ideological hostility to these books but, rather, a recognition that the Church's peace was better served by all readings being from the Canonical Scriptures.

A similar non-ideological approach is also seen in the proposed PECUSA revision of 1786 (that is, the initial proposed revision that was itself altered by the 1789 General Convention). In addressing the Table of Lessons, the 1786 preface first raised practical questions concerning the length and division of the readings, and only then added to these considerations the question as to whether "apocryphal lessons [should be] included among the number?" The readings from the Apocrypha, therefore, were hardly the most pressing matter regarding the Table of Lessons.

Secondly, we can also place both the PECUSA 1789 and Irish 1878 revisions in a wider non-Latitudinarian context in their decision to remove the Apocrypha. The 1637 Scottish Book of Common Prayer, while it retained reading from the Apocrypha on six saints' days, removed such readings entirely from the ordinary cycle of readings: this was a dramatic reduction when compared with the 1559 provision. As John Shepherd stated of the Scottish liturgy in his 1796 Prayer Book commentary:

No apocryphal Lesson is found in the Kalendar, though a very few are admitted among the proper lessons for Holidays.

Mindful that the 1637 Book is often described and perceived as 'Laudian', this is a significant example of how distinctly non-Latitudinarian sources can be invoked to support removal of readings from the Apocrypha.

Likewise, John Wesley's The Sunday Service of the Methodists (1788) had no readings from the Apocrypha, reflecting the fact that the Apocrypha had no place in the 1662 Sunday readings. Here, then, is another definitively non-Latitudinarian revision of the Prayer Book which had no place for readings from the Apocrypha. Related to this, it is worth noting that in John Wesley's sermons there are 58 references to the Apocrypha, with Wisdom 9:15 being his favourite verse from these books. As with Tillotson, therefore, we see that a desire to omit the Apocrypha from the liturgy does not at all equate to not referencing it in preaching. 

Thirdly, there is the caution and reserve expressed by 18th century Church of England divines regarding readings from the Apocrypha. Archdeacon Thomas Sharp (d.1758), son of the High Church Archbishop of York, John Sharp, pointed to how, when a saint's day with a reading from the Apocrypha fell on Sunday, clergy could replace such a reading with one from the Canonical Scriptures appointed for the Sunday:

It is well known to what uncertainties the clergy are left in the use of this Table of Proper Lessons, and in the appointment of Epistles and Gospels, when Sundays and holydays coincide. The consequence is, that they differ in their practice, and use the service appropriate to that festival, to which in their private opinion they give the preference. Some there are who choose to intermix them, using the collects appointed to each, and preferring the first Lesson that is taken out of a canonical book, if the other first Lesson happens to be appointed in the Apocrypha.

Thomas Secker, High Church Archbishop of Canterbury 1758-68, emphasised that with 1662 only appointing readings from the Apocrypha for some daily lessons, they were very unlikely to be widely heard by congregations:

and they are never appointed for the Lord's Day: by which Means, it may be, there are many Persons in every Parish, who scarce ever heard an Apocryphal Lesson in their Lives.

The High Church Wheatley's A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England - a standard Church of England text, first published in 1710 and reprinted many times across the 18th century - describes why, even where daily services were observed, it was unlikely that many people would encounter readings from the Apocrypha:

Nor is there any one Sunday in the whole year, that has any of its Lessons taken out of the Apocrypha. For as the greatest assemblies of Christians are upon those days, it is wisely order'd that they should then be instructed out of the undisputed word of God. The Lessons out of the Apocrypha (except such of them as are assign'd to the Festivals of the Saints) being all reserv'd to the week-days in Autumn, when, by reason of the harvest in the country, and the absence of those, who have most leisure, in the town, the Congregations are generally the thinnest.

In Sharp, Secker, and Wheatley we see a recognition that the limited place of the Apocrypha in the Prayer Book lectionary was not at all significant for the broad High Church tradition of the 18th century: the vast majority of those attending divine service would never have encountered a reading from the Apocrypha. Placed alongside the willingness of Latitudinarians to cite the Apocrypha in their preaching, while yet supporting the Liturgy of Comprehension omitting such readings, and non-Latitudinarian texts in the Prayer Book tradition also removing readings from the Apocrypha, it demonstrates that the PECUSA 1789 and Irish 1878 revisions stand within a much more diverse tradition in their approach to the Apocrypha. In omitting readings from the Apocrypha, these revisions certainly cannot be straightforwardly dismissed as 'low church' rupture with 1662. Rather, they reflect a broader and well-established understanding that, put simply, readings from the Apocrypha had an entirely insignificant place in the 1662 Table of Lessons.

In 1833, the Orthodox (the term preferred by the pre-1833 High Church tradition) periodical The British Critic carried a wise, modest acknowledgement that removing the readings from the Apocrypha could be appropriate:

The compilers of our Liturgy were of opinion that the Apocrypha might be read with advantage on the weekdays, and on holy days. Good and pious men in more modern times have thought otherwise, and the question is open to fair and temperate discussion. Upon the whole, it might perhaps be best to exclude the Apocrypha from being read in our churches, since the lessons taken from it seem objectionable to some persons: whereas there are none who object to the reading of canonical scripture.

This is what occurred in the Irish revision of 1878, echoing the PECUSA 1789 revision. It was not at all a matter of great controversy. It had little, if any, significance and certainly would not have been noticed by the vast majority of those participating in Prayer Book worship in the respective jurisdictions. It was not a rupture with 1662, merely a change in a very minor provision. And, after all, who would want to "object to the reading of canonical scripture"?