Yale Apostasy Day: an Irish Bishop's defence of the Prayer Book and New England Anglicanism
Central to the 'Yale Apostasy' was Samuel Johnson. Having previously taught at Yale, he became minister of a nearby Congregationalist church in 1720. Influencing his thinking was a significant figure in the late 17th/early 18th century Church of Ireland, William King, Bishop of Derry 1691-1703 and Archbishop of Dunlin 1703-29. In his Life of Samuel Johnson, Thomas Bradbury Chandler - a protege of Johnson and a Church of England minister in New Jersey - describes how experience of student prayer meetings at Yale had made Johnson uneasy and led him to question a reliance on extemporary prayer:
Mr. Johnson also could not help frequently observing many familiar, impertinent, and indecent, and sometimes almost blasphemous expressions, that were uttered on these occasions, which were shocking to him, and gave him an early dislike to extempore praying. From such observations he could not avoid making the conclusion, that it would be much better to have our prayers pre-composed, with due care and attention.
It is here that William King enters the story. Intriguingly, we are not told by Chandler how Johnson came across King's 1694 work, Of the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God. Its critique of a reliance on extemporary prayer for divine service caught Johnson's attention:
In 1715 he happened to meet with Archbishop King's discourse 'Of the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God', which confirmed him in his opinion. That excellent writer proved, with an evidence that Mr. Johnson thought but little short of demonstration, that public worship carried on in the extempore way, was wrong and unscriptural: and that pre-conceived, well-composed forms of prayer were infinitely preferable. They show a much greater reverence to the Divine Majesty; and in the use of them there is no occasion to rack our invention in finding what to say, or to exercise our minds in ascertaining the meaning and propriety of what is said, as is necessarily the case in extempore prayers. When a form of prayer is used, we have nothing else to do than to offer up our hearts with our words, which, indeed, is the only proper business of prayer.
He had been educated under strong prejudices against the Church of England, of which he knew but very little; but the next year, (1716) the Book of Common Prayer was, for the first time, put into his hands, by one Mr. Smithson a pious member of the church, who had lately settled in Guilford. On perusing the Liturgy, he found that it chiefly consisted of a very judicious collection of sentiments and expressions out of the Holy Scriptures; and these he had always reverenced and loved. This inspection, together with Dr. King's book before-mentioned, caused all his prejudices against the Liturgy of the Church of England entirely to vanish.
While the declaration of the intention to pursue episcopal orders was act which defined the Yale Apostasy, the significance of Johnson's turn towards the Book of Common Prayer cannot be overlooked. Episcopal ordination - in far off London - was essential to the due ordering of Church of England congregations in New England. It was the use of the Book of Common Prayer, however, which defined these congregations amidst their Congregationalist neighbours.
The fact that Johnson turned to King's work, rather than numerous other Episcopalian defences of the Prayer Book, might be explained by its context. King wrote this work when he was Bishop of Derry, a part of Ireland with a large Presbyterian settlement. He was not addressing historic objections to the Prayer Book or the small and contained Dissenting congregations of early 18th century England. This evident throughout the work as King addresses the large Dissenting presence in his diocese: "And now as to you my Friends and Brethren, who dissent from this Worship of ours ... who Dissent from Our Worship ... my Friends, who Dissent from Us". At the work's conclusion, when addressing "the Conforming Laity" of his diocese, he refers to "your Dissenting Neighbours" and "their Numerousness". In other words, the context of Of the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God was closer to that experienced by Johnson in New England.
Also relevant for Johnson is that, while certainly not a unique characteristic of this work (almost all Episcopalian defences of the Prayer Book had the same approach), King interpreted the liturgical debate between Episcopalians and Dissenters as standing alongside broad doctrinal agreement. The debate was about rites and ceremonies, not the substance of the Reformed faith. Thus King expressed his hope that his defence of Prayer Book would enable Episcopalians and Dissenters to "concur in our Practice, as well as we do in our Opinions", for both Communions shared "our common Christianity against Papists, Socinians, Deists and Atheists". As I explored in last year's Yale Apostasy Day post, this would be a feature of the Church of England in New England. Episcopalian congregations in New England shared a "common Protestant theological framework shared with Congregationalists".
This was also aided by King's reminder that the Prayer Book was a product of the Reformation and, what is more, that use of such liturgies was commonplace amongst the Churches of the Reformation:
It is plain you have brought them into practice against the opinion and constitution of the Church Governours, and of the First Reformers, who all did settle Lyturgies in the Churches which they Reformed: This Knox did in Scotland, whose Lyturgy we have ready to produce, to the Conviction of those who pretend to be his Successors, and yet condemn Forms of Prayer as Unlawful. This Luther did for Germany, and Calvin for Geneva, and for the French Church, whose Liturgyes are still used by them.
It was, then, Church of England congregations in New England using the Book of Common Prayer which would stand in the Reformation mainstream, not the extemporary prayer of the New England Way.
Finally, the Prayer Book offered to New Englanders a modest, reasonable alternative to ridiculously exalted jure divino claims for extemporary prayer. In King's words:
Nay, as there is no Promise for such extraordinary Assistance to all the Children of God to conceive prayer, so neither is there any Command in Scripture, requiring us to worship or pray to God in a conceiv'd extemporary or unpremeditated prayer; or so much as an Example in a settled ordinary Congregation where it was practised. If then you can shew none of these in the holy Scriptures, neither Promise nor Command, 'tis a plain case, that this Doctrine is a meer Invention of Men, and the Worship built on it a Vanity, in the sence of our Saviour, Mark vii.7.
The Prayer Book, King declared, was a form of worship "warranted by the Holy Scriptures", in which "the people ... join their voices with the Minister in some of the prayers", and "the people are allowed to bear their part" in the praises of God, with "certain solemn times" of the year in which to "inculcate the great Mysteries of our Faith the better". King's work also gives us something of an insight into why the use of the Prayer Book could attract New Englanders dissatisfied with the service of the Congregational meeting house. Here was a form of divine service which could foster and aid devotion in a quite different manner to reliance on the minister's extemporary prayers.
It can be seen, therefore, why King's Of the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God had a particular relevance for Johnson. King's measured, scriptural defence of the Prayer Book, addressed to a large, neighbouring Dissenting community, and placed in the context of wider doctrinal agreement, offered to Johnson and the other Yale Apostates a pattern for commending the liturgy rejected by the Pilgrim Fathers. As for Johnson's unease with extemporary prayer, King overturned the assumptions of the New England Way by pointing to the spiritual advantages of liturgical prayer:
For can any one wonder that a prayer which people never heard before, and is adapted to the Fancies and Humours of a Party, with all the Advantages which Novelty gives, shou'd gratifie carnal and itching Ears, more than the fixt and settled prayers of a Church, or that Form dictated by Christ himself? To joyn in these with Devotion, requires us duly to prepare our Hearts, to strain and lift up our minds with much seriousness and attention, or we cannot be affected by them, whereas there is a pleasure, and a kind of sensual delight, in the novelty of the other Prayers; and the tone with which they are sometimes delivered, makes the Hearers imaginarily Devout; tho' they come to them without taking pains to strain their minds to true Devotion.
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