laudable Practice

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 ...

In the conclusion of his sermon ' Of a Future Judgement ', Samuel Clarke provides three applications of the scriptural proclamation of the Last Judgement. Reflecting a key concern of 18th century Church of England preaching, Clarke again emphasises that this teaching calls us to holy living: "then let us continually be aware, that all Other expectations whatsoever, are mere Deceits". To reject this as 'moralism' is, quite frankly, to entirely ignore vast swathes of the New Testament, as Clarke's references illustrate.  Also noteworthy is Clarke's use of words from II Maccabees, a reminder that references to the Apocrypha were standard in the preaching of all three divines quoted in this short series. The fact that we see this in Tillotson and Clarke evidences the fact that this was by no means a 'high church' characteristic: it was a standard Church of England practice, in accordance with Article VI. Finally, the preaching of these three divine...

In the final extract from Bishop Bull's sermon ' The Vanity of this Life, the Eternity of the next ', he summarises how - in the words of Article VII - "both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ". This insistence on the unity of the covenants grounds the Christian hope in God's enduring purposes, "the old catholic faith" stretching back to patriarchs and prophets.  We can detect here, I think, an affirmation of a Reformed approach to reading of the Scriptures of the Old Covenant, a refusal to stand the New Testament against the Old, declaring the same hope in both, "the doctrine of a future life and judgment". As the Advent season begins again for us the cycle of feasts and observances which lead from Incarnation, to Cross, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, Bull's sermon is a call to read and hear the Scriptures of the Old Testament as a proclamation of our salvation in Christ, in expectation...

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), having considered the lessons from the Canonical Scriptures, Shepherd turns to the matter of lessons from the books of the Apocrypha. He first indicates a practical reason for such lessons, mindful of the fact that not all of the Canonical Scriptures were considered appropriate for public reading in the congregation : To supply what is wanting to complete the year, we read a part of Scripture which we acknowledge not to be canonical, out of the Apocrypha, or Apocryphal Books. Such acknowledgement of practicalities, however, does not prevent Shepherd from recognising that public reading of the Apocrypha was a patristic practice: By the ancients, these were sometimes styled ecclesiastical books, having been compiled, and published for the edification of the pious, and being commonly read in the church ... as works of religious and mora...

Many thanks to the North American Anglican for publishing my essay ' Listening to the wise son of Sirach: the significance of the use of the Apocrypha in Tillotson's preaching '.  The essay suggests that his use of the Apocrypha points to Tillotson standing within a tradition of sapiential theology inherited from Hooker and the Cambridge Platonists. It is also a call for contemporary Anglicans to deepen their use of the Apocrypha as a means of renewing a sapiential preaching which can resonate with a contemporary culture seeking a meaningful, enduring wisdom. ------ Rather than explicitly locating Tillotson within a 'Latitudinarian' tradition – mindful that the meaningfulness of the category ‘Latitudinarian’ has increasingly been convincingly challenged – we might suggest that Tillotson’s use of the Apocrypha, with its emphasis on the Wisdom books, stands within a tradition of sapiential theology in the post-Reformation Church of England, derived from Hooker, sus...