laudable Practice

Of all the descriptions I have read of Cranmer, it is Diarmaid MacCulloch's, in his essay ' Tolerant Cranmer? ', which I find most attractive: "a cautious, well-read humanist". Elsewhere, discussing the biographers of Cranmer, MacCulloch suggests that it is in Cranmer that we see something of what Anglicanism should be: which forces the individual to undertake a good deal of hard thinking in order to make sense of the world around, rather than reaching for some simple model in a book. Not mentioned by MacCulloch amongst Cranmer's biographers, but, I think, an account which points in this direction, evoking the spirit of  "a cautious, well-read humanist", is William Gilpin's 1784  The life of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury . Gilpin was a representative of Georgian England's enlightened clergy and in Cranmer he sees an Erasmian humanist who embodied "wisdom, prudence, learning, moderation" - a precursor, then, of 18th centur...

... and are in love and charity with your neighbours. The absence of these words from contemporary Anglican eucharistic rites is striking from the perspective of Jeremy Taylor's The Worthy Communicant (1667). Taylor regards reconciliation with our neighbours as fundamental and necessary to our partaking of the holy Sacrament. If we are not "in love and charity" with our neighbours, we should not approach the Sacrament , the love feast: It was love that first made societies, and love that must continue our communions: and God, who made all things by his power, does preserve them by his love, and by union and society of parts every creature, is preserved ... when God, in this holy sacrament, pours forth the greatest effusion of his love, peace in all capacities, and in all dimensions, and to all purposes, he will not endure that they should come to these love-feasts who are unkind to their brethren, quarrelsome with their neighbours, implacable to their enemies, apt to con...

The Lutheran Churches do acknowledge reall presence by way of Consubstantiation: it is no wonder therefore, that they approue kneeling. The Reformed Churches, as they damned bodily presence, so haue they reiected the gesture of kneeling in the act of receiuing. For the critics of the Articles of Perth , as the above words indicate, the matter was very straightforward. Of course the Lutherans knelt to receive the Sacrament, for they are Ubiquists. By contrast, the Reformed, who reject "bodily presence", denounce kneeling.  In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), pointed to a much richer, diverse Protestant landscape. To begin, he invoked a broader understanding of 'Reformed' to include the Lutherans. While obvoiusly rejecting Consubstantation, he emphasises that Lutheran sacramental teaching does share important characteristics with the Reforme...

In the debate with Cranmer, Gardiner turned to the Lord's Words of Institution and the teaching of Cyprian to support the understanding of the Eucharist as "a sacrifice propitiatory", fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi: We read in St. Cyprian how Christ offered himself in his  supper, fulfilling the figure of Melchisedech, who by the offering of  bread and wine, signified that high mystery of Christ's supper, in  which Christ under the form of bread and wine, gave his very  body and blood to be eaten and drunken ...  Now when we have Christ's body thus present in the celebration of the holy Supper, and by Christ's mouth present unto us, saying, This is my body which is betrayed for you; then have we Christ's body recommended unto us as our sacrifice, and a sacrifice propitiatory for all the sins of the world, being the only sacrifice of Christ's Church, the pure and clean sacrifice, whereof the prophet Malachie spake, and whereof the fathers in Christ...

In many Church of Ireland parish churches, you will notice something about stained glass depictions of Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick, contrasting with much of his traditional iconography, is not wearing a mitre.  Nor is he wearing eucharistic vestments. His attire is simple, plain robes. He is identified as a bishop solely by the fact that he holds a pastoral staff. Many of these stained glass windows date from around 1932, marking the 1,500th anniversary of Saint Patrick's arrival in Ireland. It was a time of heightened tensions between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The triumphalist nature of the centenary celebrations of Catholic Emancipation in 1929 had led the Irish Times to note "too frequent suggestions" that the Church of Ireland represented "an alien creed, an alien culture and alien aspirations".  In late 1931 , the Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Joseph MacRory, publicly declared that the Church of Ireland had not exi...

If the Tory idyll of 1685 was threatened by Non-Conformists in Avening , much darker clouds were also gathering. The reign of James II, which had been joyfully welcomed by High Churchmen and Tories as a reaffirmation of the constitutional order, and of the Church of England's place in that order, took on a character which profoundly disturbed the bastions of Tory support for James: parsons and country gentlemen. Contrary to the assurances James had given at his accession, he was determined to undermine the position of the Church of England and to overturn the Church of Ireland.  The response of parsons across the kingdoms was almost unanimous. Their pulpits began to echo with warnings of 'Popery'. This, as Nelson states in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull ,  was no less so with Parson Bull: During the Reign of King James the II when our Apprehensions of the increase of Popery were no ways groundless, but founded in those Measures, which we apparently saw were taken to adva...