§ 161.8. =The Apocrypha Controversy= (§ 136, 4).--In A.D. 1520 Carlstadt raised the question of the books found only in the LXX., and answered it in the style of Jerome (§ 59, 1). Luther gave them in his translation as an appendix to the O.T. with the title “Apocrypha, _i.e._ Books, not indeed of Holy Scripture, but useful and worthy to be read.” Reformed confessions took up the same position. The Belgic Confession agreed indeed that these books should be read in church, and proof passages taken from them, in so far as they were in accord with the canonical Scriptures. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer gives readings from these books. On the other hand, although at the Synod of Dort the proposal to remove at least the apocryphal books of Ezra or Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Bel and the Dragon, was indeed rejected, it was ordered that in future all apocryphal books should be printed in smaller type than the canonical books, should be separately paged, with a special title, and with a preface and marginal notes where necessary. Their exclusion from all editions of the Bible was first insisted on by English and Scotch Puritans. This example was followed by the French, but not by the German, Swiss, and Dutch Reformed churches.--Continuation, § 182, 4.
The religious life in the Reformed church is characterized generally by harsh legalism, rigorous renunciation of the world, and a thorough earnestness, coupled with decision and energy of will, which nothing in the world can break or bend. It is the spirit of Calvin which impresses on it this character, and determines its doctrine. Only where Calvin’s influence was less potent, _e.g._ in the Lutheranized German Reformed, the catholicized Anglican Episcopal Church, and among the Cocceians, is this tendency less apparent or altogether wanting. On the other hand, often carried to the utmost extreme, it appears among the English Puritans (§§ 143, 3; 155, 1) and the French Huguenots (§ 153, 4), where it was fostered by persecution and oppression.
