laudable Practice

In a number of posts on Peter Lake's On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics During the Personal Rule of Charles I (2023), I have been deeply critical of Lake's depiction of the pre-Caroline Church of England , his failure to account for the continuities in Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline ceremonial conformity , and his entirely unconvincing depiction of 'Laudianism' as an 'Arminian' movement.  All this said, I do have to credit Lake's book with deeply influencing my thought about the Church of England in the 1630s. Having read and reflected upon Lake's 600 pages, I am now convinced that 'Laudianism' should cease to be used as a meaningful term. Put bluntly, Lakes's work - contrary, of course, to his intention - has led me to the view that there was no such thing as 'Laudianism'.  To begin with, Lake offers a profoundly weak case for describing those who supported the ecclesiastical policies of the Personal Rule as 'Laudi...

Henry Hammond preached his sermon ' The Christian's Obligations to Peace and Charity ' at Carisbrooke Castle before an imprisoned Charles I, on the Third Sunday in Advent, 1647, in the midst of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.  Hammond evoked the Advent hope in the face of the turmoil and blood-letting experienced in these Islands during those years, a powerful example of the significance of Advent observance in the Caroline Church. Isaiah 2.4. They shall beat their Swords into Plough-shares, and their Spears into Pruning-hooks. The day is the Third of Advent, designed by the Church for the Celebration of the closer and nearer approach of the Majesty of Heaven to this lowly sinful Earth of ours ... And the Text is a piece of an Advent Chapter, the very Contents bespeak it so, Isaiah prophesying the coming, i.e. Advent, of Christ's Kingdom. All the unhappiness of it is, that this part of the Prophecy about transforming of Swords, seems not yet to be fulfilled in our ears...