to read also the first Lesson appropriated to that day *.

From the first establishment of the Book of Common Prayer to the end of Edward's reign, there was an order of proper Lessons for some of the Saints' Days †, but no proper Lessons were then appointed for Sundays; the Sunday Lesson, like the Lessons for ordinary days, being read in course, and varying every year. Does it not from this regulation appear, that a decided preference was given to the

* This remark I have heard made by Dr. Porteus the late Lord Bishop of London.

+ The proper Lessons were not originally arranged in a table, but the Order for proper Lessons at Matins was prefixed, and that for those at Evensong, annexed to the appropriate Service at the Communion. An example extracted from Edward's Book will illustrate my meaning.

"The first Lesson. SAPI. iii. unto Blessed is rather the barren." "The second Lesson, Hebre. xi. xii. Saints by faith subdued, unto "If ye endure chastising.”

66 AT THE COMMUNION."

"Cantate domino, Psalm 149. Sing unto the Lord a new song, "&c." This was the Introit, after which were printed the Collect, Epistle and Gospel, as in our modern books. After the Gospel stood

66 PROPER LESSONS AT EVENSONG."

"The

"The first Lesson. Sap. v. (unto) His jealousy also." "second Lesson. Apoc. xix. (unto) and I saw an angel stand." And thus all the other proper Lessons, then appointed, were ordered; those for the Morning being noticed before the Introit, and those for the Evening after the Gospel.

Saint's Day by the original Compilers of our Liturgy? By the Act of Uniformity (Prim: Eliz.) Edward's Book was revived, with one alteration or addition of certain Lessons to be used on every Sunday in the year; meaning the proper Lessons then first appointed for Sundays: But that, when a Sunday and a Saint's Day coincide, the Sunday Lesson was intended to supersede the Lesson appertaining to the Saint's Day, I have no where been able to discover,

OF THE SECOND LESSONS.

The Second Lesson at Morning and Evening Prayer, is uniformly taken out of the New Testament. The Lessons of the New Testament are in general all of them every where proper *. When every part is highly interesting and instructive, a selection of Lessons must be unnecessary. The Church therefore

*It has already been remarked of the writings of St. Paul, that, had they primarily been designed for the age in which we live, it is not easy to conceive how they could have afforded us much more general instruction. Yet small parts of one or two of them might be dismissed from the Calendar, without detriment to religion. In 1 Cor. vii. he advises the members of the Church of Corinth to refrain from marriage, upon the principle, that in those days, wives and families might have obstructed the spreading of the Gospel. The last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, was no doubt highly interesting to the persons there mentioned, and to the Church at Rome in General. comparatively little beyond a list of names, it structive to a modern congregation of Christians. Dr. Wheeler's Lectures at Oxon.

But as it contains cannot be

very inMemorand. of

on all the Sundays of the year, except four; viz. the Sunday before Easter, Easter-day, Whitsunday and Trinity Sunday, which have proper Second Lessons, adopts the same method that she pursues on ordinary days.

Proper second Lessons are appointed for somewhat the greater number of the Holidays. But these Lessons, which either relate the circumstances, or apply the example, which gave occasion to the festival, are not numerous; and they seldom interrupt, except for the day, the orderly course of reading the New Testament. For all festivals that are fixed and immoveable, and have proper second Lessons appointed, have no second Lesson assigned to them in the Calendar.

In the morning we read the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and in the evening the Epistles. We begin the year with the first of Matthew and the first of Romans; so that exclusively of the Epistles and Gospels used in the Communion Service, the New Testament is read over orderly three times a year in our daily Common Prayer.

*

APOCRYPHAL LESSONS.

From the cursory investigation that was made into the contents of the chapters of the Old Testament, which are omitted in the Calendar, we have seen that

* Excepting the greater part of the book of Revelation, of which, on account of its mysterious obscurity, three chapters only are read in the Church, viz. i. xix. and xxii.

once a year, our Church reads in her daily Service the whole, or nearly the whole, of the canonical Scripture that is calculated to edify a mixed 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. Though this regulation has been repeatedly objected to by those who dissent from us, yet much may be said in its defence *

The method taken by the Church has not the remotest tendency to abate that peculiar veneration which is due to the canonical books. In her Articles she explicitly declares the distinction, that is to be made between Apocryphal and Canonical Scripture, and no Apocryphal Lesson is appointed to be read in the Service for Sundays. Again many of the Apocryphal chapters are better calculated to inform the mind and to excite devotion, in a popular congregation, than some of the canonical chapters; which, because they are less important to Christians, or less intelligible to persons of ordinary capacities, are omitted in the Calendar.

By the ancients these books were sometimes styled Ecclesiastical, as having been compiled, and published for the edification of the pious, and being commonly read in the Church. Sometimes they were called Apocryphal, and sometimes Canonical, Scrip

* On this subject the English reader may consult with advantage Hooker's Ecc. Polity, b. v., with Bp. Hoadly's Reasonableness of Conformity, and his Defence.

ture: But the former term, when applied to these writings is to be understood, not as declaring them to be spurious; and the latter must be taken, not in its strict and technical, but in a lax extended sense; for their best advocates allow them no authority in matters of faith *.

That they were read in the ancient western Church as works of religious and moral instruction, Jerom,

ATокρupоç signifies hidden, secret. Whether these books were called Apocryphal, from the writers of them being unknown, from the authority of the books being uncertain, or from their not being read in all places in public, and being thus as it were, concealed; or for any of these reasons, is not, I apprehend, determined.Ruffinus (in Expos. Symb.) distinguishes between Canonical, Ecclesiastical and Apocryphal books. He calls those Ecclesiastical, which, as well as the Canonical, are read in the Church, but are not produced to establish any article of faith. By Apocryphal, he and others mean those which were spurious, or composed by heretics, and were not to be read by Christians. Others mention only Canonical and Apocryphal books; some mean, by the latter term, human compositions proper to be read for public instruction. Others apply the word Apocryphal, as Ruffinus did, to dangerous forgeries and heretical productions. In this sense the ancients are commonly to be understood, when they say that Apocryphal (i. e. spurious and heretical) books are not to be read.

The third council of Carthage (A. D. 397) calls Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, &c., Canonical Scripture. Austin and other writers of the west do the same. But few of them meant Canonical to be understood in the strictest sense of the term. The books were Canonical or regular, so far as they were read for the edification of the people; but they were not esteemed to be of Canonical authority in adjusting articles of faith. See Bingham, b. xiv and Suicerus, words αποκρυφος, γραφη, and the respective titles of the Apocryphal Books.