Saturday 20 October 2012

THE ANGLICAN BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER: ITS VIRTUES & VICES (Part 9)

THE ANGLICAN BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER:
ITS VIRTUES & VICES

OR

THE ALTERNATIVE WESTMINSTER DIRECTORY OF PUBLIC
WORSHIP (1645) CONSIDERED

Being the substance of a paper first presented to the
1989 Westminster Conference in London

by Dr Alan C. Clifford

PART 9

The Pastor and the People

The Directory urges that the people prepare their hearts before assembling for worship, and that they meet 'not irreverently, but in a grave and seeming manner, taking their seats or places without adoration. or bowing themselves towards one place or another'. If the divines were anxious to discourage idolatrous genuflections in worship, they were equally concerned to prevent casual familiarity. Hence there were to be no 'private whisperings, conferences, salutations, or doing reverence to any person present, or coming in'. Likewise, there should be no 'gazing, sleeping, and other indecent behaviour, which may disturb the minister or people' in 'the service of God'.

The Scriptures are only to be read by 'pastors and teachers', and occasionally by ministerial students. Thus the office of reader, tracing its ancestry from an earlier Reformed tradition back to the synagogue,49 was  with doubtful necessity  laid aside. Indeed, do the Scriptures support the Directory at this point? Unlike the Prayer Book lectionary, readings from the Apocrypha are forbidden, but 'all the canonical books' are to 'read over in order, that the people may be better acquainted with the whole body of the scriptures'. Occasionally, part of what is read may be expounded, after the reading, for clarification. However, 'regard is always to be had unto the time' so that the rest of the service, and especially the preaching is not 'rendered tedious'.

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