"A certain charitable judgement": Calvin, predestination, and the Prayer Book's pastoral generosity

The Book of Common Prayer is defined by a generous pastoral approach, a charitable assumption that all participating in its rites partake of the spiritual benefits in Christ.  We see this generosity in the assumption that we are those who "truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel"; that we feed upon "the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son" (and, thus, per Article 29, are not "void of a lively faith"); that "we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son"; that we are "regenerate, and grafted into the body of Christ's Church"; that we are those whom God "hast vouchsafed to regenerate ... by Water and the Holy Ghost"; and that we die "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life".  

For the Puritans, such pastoral generosity quickly became a focus of criticism.  Regarding, for example, the BCP burial rite, Judith Maltby notes that for Puritans, "the rite was offensive, because it implied that any deceased person might be 'asleep in the Lord'.  The Prayer Book liturgy was simply too inclusive for the godly".  Similarly, Puritan clergy regularly sought to restrict reception of Holy Communion to 'the godly', excluding the inevitable majority of parishioners who refused to submit to an examination not required by the Book of Common Prayer.  As the rubric in BCP 1559 made clear, it was assumed that reception of Holy Communion would be the norm for all parishioners, not merely for a few who had received approval from a Puritan parson:

note that every Parishioner shall communicate, at the leaste thre tymes in the yere, of whiche Easter to be one: and shall also receyve the sacramentes, and other rytes, accordinge to the order in this boke appoincted.

Similarly, Thomas Brown's Conformist commentary on the Articles of Religion made a point of accusing Puritans of contravening Article XXVII's that infant Baptism was "most agreeable with the institution of Christ":

Others refuse to baptize not all, but some infants . So denied is baptism by the Barrowists unto the seed of whores and witches; by the Brownists, unto the children of open sinners; by the Disciplinarians, unto their children which subject not themselves ... unto the discipline of the church, or obey not the presbyterial decrees.

Underpinning such 'godly discipline' was an assumption that membership of the invisible Church - the elect - could be tested and determined. Against this, Hooker emphasised the nature "of the visible Church of Christ in this present world" (V.68.6), in which membership was defined by outward profession of Christian belief and participation in the sacraments.  To seek a more exact conformity or discipline was, he warned, dangerous, on two grounds.  Firstly, it required windows into hearts:

in imposing upon the Church a burden to enter farther into men's hearts and to make a deeper search of their consciences than any Law of God or reason of mean enforceth (V68.9).

Secondly, it demonstrated a lack of pastoral wisdom: 

according to the merciful examples and precepts whereby the gospel of Christ hath taught us towards such to show compassion, to receive them with all lenity and meekness ... to build wheresoever there is any foundation, to add perfection unto slender beginnings.

Against 'the godly' and their 'discipline', Hooker thus urged "the charitable order of the Church wherein we live" (V.68.12), an effective summary of the generosity that has defined Anglican pastoral practice over centuries.

That this generosity is rooted in Prayer Book and Hooker should, of course, lead us to dismiss any notion that it is the product of a worldly, compromising Latitudinarianism.  We may, however, add one further - rather surprising - source for such pastoral generosity: Calvin's teaching on predestination.   As Matthew Myer Boulton states, because for Calvin the decree of predestination is entirely within the secret counsel of God, there can be no human knowledge of the consequence of this decree for others:

As a practical matter, then, Calvin counsels us to treat one another with "a certain charitable judgment whereby we recognize as members of the church those who, by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us" (4.1.8).  Of course, our neighbor's confession may be secretly insincere, his example secretly corrupt, or his sacramental life little more than a masquerade, but we are in no position to judge these matters, one way or the other.  In fact, we are in no position to pursue or speculate about them at all.  The true church, that is, the church comprised of the elect, is invisible to us; it is "a church beyond our ken" (4.1.3).  Our role is decidedly not to ferret out and reveal its membership.  Rather, our role is to recognize, with "charitable judgment," our ecclesial neighbors as members of the church, treating them as if they actually belong to Christ's body and therefore to the ranks of the rescued.  Indeed, Calvin goes so far as to say that within ecclesial precincts, "we ought to treat like brothers and count as believers those whom we think unworthy of the fellowship of the godly" (4.1.9).

Traditional and conventional Anglican pastoral generosity, then, can also be rooted in the robustly Augustinian vision of Calvin.  This is another reason to both value and defend this pastoral ethos and practice, recognising its doctrinal basis.