Commenting on the books of the Apocrypha (“Deutero-canon”), we read the following from Article VI of the Articles of the Church of England (taken from the 1801 American revision):
And the other Books (as Hierome
saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners: but
yet doth it not apply to them to establish any doctrine: such as these
following:
The Third Book of Esdras,
The Fourth Book of Esdras,
The Book of Tobias,
The Book of Judith,
The rest of the Book of Esther,
The Book of Wisdom,
Jesus the Son of Sirach,
Baruch the Prophet,
The Song of the Three Children,
The Story of Susanna,
Of Bel and the Dragon,
The Prayer of Manasses,
The First Book of Maccabees,
The Second Book of Maccabees.
All the Books of the New
Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them
Canonical.
Interestingly, while not used to establish or prove doctrine, they have been used in the prayer and devotion of Anglicans. Commenting on the positive use of the Apocrypha in their prayer books, Anglican William Daubney (Vicar of Harlington, Bedfordshire, and Rector of Leasingham, Lincolnshire) noted that:
The Great use made of the
Apocrypha in our Prayer-Book is thoroughly in accordance with Bp Coverdale’s
opinion. The reformers of our public offices of devotion evidently thought very
highly of it, when they accorded to it, or rather retained it in, the position
in which we find it. In our Lectionary at the present moment there are no less
than forty-four apocryphal first lessons, forty for ordinary, and four for holy
days; but as it left the hands of our reformers there were a still larger
number. For in the Prayer-Book of 1549 there were 108 apocryphal daily lessons,
which number was increased in the Prayer-Book of 1552 by two proper lessons,
and again in 1558 by 25 further proper lessons. This reading of the Apocrypha
in place of the Old Testament, advisedly continued in our Church on the model of
the earliest times, marks it out as treated by them with distinguished honour,
and raised above all other religious writings (In the revised Lectionary,
substituted in 1561 for that in Elizabeth’s Prayer-Book of 1558, Wisd. i.
replaces Deut. xxiii. As the first lesson at evensong on Whitsunday, and so
continued in our Lectionary reached its maximum).
The American Church, which had
removed all apocryphal lessons form her Lectionary, has recently re-introduced
a considerable number of them.
Then there is one entire Canticle
at Morning Prayer, the beautiful Benedicite, taken from the Song of the Three
Holy Children (Even so temperate a writer as the Rev. F. Procter betrays a
lurking prejudice against the devotional use of the Apocrypha, when he says
that “Although the Benedicite may be thought suitable to the first lessons of
some particular days, or as a substitute . . . during Lent, yet the general and
safe practice is always to use the Te Deum, at least on Sundays.” [History
of Common Prayer, 10th ed., p. 226.] In his Elementary Introduction [ed.
1894], written jointly with Dr G. F. Maclear, the Benedicite is spoken of
without any sign of disparagement. The word ‘safe’ may however only refer to
strict liturgical propriety); and there are the two offertory sentences from
Tobi in the Communion Service. These are all acknowledged extracts from the
Apocrypha, given as such in the Prayer-Book: a considerable proportion,
especially when we remember that the whole Apocrypha in bulk is less than
three-quarters of the New Testament, the former standing to the latter in the
ratio of 176:240.
But beside these obvious places in
which the Prayer-Book avails itself of the devotional treasures of the
Apocrypha, there are many others which are not to universally and necessarily
known.
The phrase in the Litany, “Spare Thy
people, and be not angry with us for ever,” is adapted from II. Esdras viii. 45;
while the earlier part of the same prayer, “Remember, not, Lord, our offences,
nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take Thou vengeance of our sins,”
is borrowed word for word from the Vulgate of Tobit iii. 3, part of the prayer
of Tobias: thus the whole of that suffrage of our Litany, with the exception of
one clause, is traceable to apocryphal sources. The greater part, too, of this suffrage
from the Litany is used again at the commencement of the Visitation of the
Sick, so that it was evidently deemed a worthy one.
Nor is this the only service of
the Prayer-Book which is indebted to the Book of Tobit. In the exhortation
which opens the Solemnization of Matrimony the phrase “to satisfy men’s carnal
lusts and appetites like brute beasts that have no understanding” is based upon
the Vulgate of Tobi vi. 17, being part of the advice which the angel Raphael
gives to Tobias concerning his marriage to Sarah; the question, too, about
giving away the woman, and the rubrics which direct the pair to take one
another’s right hands, take their origin from Tobit vii. 15 (13); and the
phrase in the first blessing, “fill you with all spiritual benediction and
grace,” is derived from the same quarter. In the Prayer-Book of 1549 there was
an explicit mention of “Raphael, Thobie, and Sara the daughter of Raguel,” in
the prayer after the Versicles. The present mention of Abraham and Sarah was
substituted in 1552.
Moreover, the Apocrypha supplies
some of the excellent expressions which are embodied in our Collects. For
example, the familiar words, “who hatest nothing that Thou hast made” are taken
from Wisd. xi. 254. (Cf. Ecclus. Xv. 11, Heb.) These words have been great favourites
with the Collect-writers, especially for Lenten use, for they occur in the invocations
of three distinct Collects for that season, viz. those for Ash-Wednesday, the
third for Good Friday, and the last in the Commination. The two former were new
compositions of the reformers in 1549: thus they were not merely continuing
apocryphal phrases which they considered harmless, but they were deliberately
introducing them where they had not occurred before. The same is the case with
the ancient Collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, the invocation of
which Cranmer altered when he translated it, from “God of hosts” to “Lord of
all power and might,” a clause which he culled from the closing words of Judith’s
prayer before starting for Holofernes’ camp (ix. 14)” (The reference to Wisd.
xii. 16 supposed by Canon Bright [S.P.C.K. Student’s P.B. art, ‘Collects’]
to exist in the XIth Sun. after Trin. Collect seems very doubtful). The phrase “Who
knowest our necessities,” in the 5th Collect (Composed in 1549) at the end of
the Communion Service, appears to have been suggested by the words of Esther’s
prayer, xiv. 6, “Tu scis necessitatem meam,” in the Vulgate. An expression in
the Collect after a Victory at Sea, “in whose hand is power and might,” appears
to come from the same source; and there are probably many others which have
escaped observation from our being, to our loss, insufficiently conversant with
the terms of the Apocrypha (E.g. the phrases in the long Commination Address “too
late to cry for mercy when it is the time of justice. O terrible voice of most
just judgment,” may well have been suggested by II. Esd. vii. 34, 35, where for
‘misery’ in the A.V. [v. 33] the best Latin text would give ‘mercy’ [misericordiae].
So R.V. [v. 33] substitutes ‘compassion’ for ‘misery]).
In the old service for King Charles
the Martyr, four verses from Wisd. v. were incorporated in the canticles to be
sung instead of the Venite. It may have been to these, but it was more probably
to the reappearance of the apocryphal lessons, that Sir Walter Scott, in Peveril
of the Peak, makes Sir Geoffrey refer immediately after the Restoration,
when he takes, in the course of conversation, a simile from Judith and
thereupon expresses “his joy at hearing the holy Apocrypha once more read in
churches” (chap vi. P. 79 centenary edition).
The expression “crown her with
immortality in the life to come,” in the 1st collect of the Accession Services,
is probably based upon the beautiful words of Wisd. iv. 2, “εν τω αιωνι στεφανηφορουσα πομπευει.” (William Heaford Daubney, The
Use of the Apocrypha in the Christian Church [London: C. J. Clay and Sons,
1900], 63-67)
