laudable Practice

Following on from yesterday's post on the Laudian Bramhall's agreement with Cranmer on ceremonies, an extract from a 1627 Donne sermon  at St. Paul's Cross, indicating how the Laudian understanding was also rooted in the pre-Laudian Jacobean Conformity exemplified by Donne: Ritual, and ceremonial things move not God, but they exalt that devotion, and they conserve that order, which does move him ... though they be not of God's revenue, yet they are of his subsidies, and though they be not the soul, yet are the breath of religion.

The Laudians, says Diarmaid MacCulloch stood "aloof from most Protestants as well as from the Church of Rome".  It is a statement which summarises MacCulloch's view of Laudianism as rupture, a fundamental break with the Protestantism of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana . He continues: Thus in July 1624 one of the most uninhibited spokesmen of the movement, Richard Montague, said that he sought a Church of England that would 'stand in the gapp against Puritanisme and Popery, the Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety'.  This was the beginning of the via media discussion, which would have a major future in the Anglican tradition. This, to say the least, seriously misunderstands Laudianism.  To begin with, Montague's famous A New Gagg (1624) was, as the text makes abundantly clear throughout, an explicit defence of Protestantism: Against Protestants your Gag is directed, not Puritans: and yet all your addresses, well-neer, are against Puritan Positions, malitious...

From Donne's Sermon CXXI , on 2 Corinthians 5:20, a deeply Laudian account of the orders of the ecclesia Anglicana,  stressing succession, the sacramental nature of holy orders, and the power of the ministerial priesthood. And no less like the Laudians, Donne explicitly states that this view of Anglican orders is "not to disparage, or draw in question any other of our neighbour churches", the non-episcopal Churches of the Reformation.  It is an important example of how the Laudian view of episcopacy, order, and the non-episcopal Churches stood in continuity with with earlier Conformity. When our adversaries do so violently, so impetuously cry out, that we have no church, no sacrament, no priesthood, because none are sent, that is, none have a right calling, for internal calling, who are called by the Spirit of God, they can be no judges, and for external calling, we admit them for judges, and are content to be tried by their own canons, and their own evidences, for our mi...

The earlier post exploring the use of 'Table' in 1662 sought to emphasise that such usage was not an expression of a 'low' eucharistic theology.  What, however, of the absence of 'Altar' from 1662? Surely this suggests a 'low' understanding of eucharistic sacrifice? The absence of 'Altar' from 1662 needs to be set alongside its consistent use in the post-Reformation Church of England.  Eamon Duffy notes that the parson of Morebath - who conformed and ministered faithfully under the Elizabethan Settlement - continued, in parish documentation, to refer to his parish's new Communion Table as the 'Altar'.  As Duffy comments: The combination of the old sacral language of altars ... is instructive, and full of significance for the future.  Already, however unwittingly, however tentatively, a new ceremonial sensibility was in formation. Such "a new ceremonial sensibility" was not the avant garde and Laudianism: it was already e...

Many thanks to the North American Anglican for publishing my essay '"I quarrel not the making of images": The theology and practice of images in the Jacobean and Caroline Church' . The essay points to the Elizabethan Settlement creating space for a modest but real iconography, which flourished in the Jacobean and Caroline Church.  This was the case not just with avant garde and Laudian opinion but also in mainstream Conformity. --- This is reinforced by the fact that the defence of imagery was not the preserve of avant garde and Laudian opinion. Most obviously, this was seen in the words of another Supreme Governor, James VI/I : I am no Iconomachus, I quarrel not the making of Images, either for public decoration, or for men’s private uses: But that they should be worshipped, be prayed to, or any holiness attributed unto them, was never known of the Ancients: and the Scriptures are so directly, vehemently and punctually against it. Mindful that James’ care for cons...

When the Holy Supper was administered according to the Reformed rites and doctrine of the Church of England, a true transubstantiation occurred: to us they [i.e. "those consecrated elements"] are thereby made such instruments as mystically yet truly, invisibly yet really, work our communion or fellowship with the person of Jesus Christ as well in that he is man as God, our participation also in the fruit, grace and efficacy of his body and blood, whereupon there ensues a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration from death to life. Richard Hooker,  Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity  V.67.11. There is the true transubstantiation, that when I have received it worthily, it becomes my very soul; that is, my soul grows up into a better state, and habitude by it, and I have the more soul for it, the more sanctified, the more deified soul by that sacrament. John Donne Sermon LXVIII

From Donne's Sermon CLV (1622), praising the memory of Queen Elizabeth for preventing the peace of the ecclesia Anglicana from being disturbed by the Lambeth Articles : And, because ordinarily, we settle ourselves best in the actions, and precedents of the late queen of blessed and everlasting memory, I may have leave to remember them that know, and to tell them that know not, one act of her power and her wisdom, to this purpose. When some articles concerning the falling away from justifying grace, and other points that beat upon that haunt, had been ventilated, in conventicles, and in pulpits too, and preaching on both sides past, and that some persons of great place and estimation in our church, together with him who was the greatest of all, amongst our clergy, had upon mature deliberation, established a resolution what should be thought and taught, held and preached in those points, and had thereupon sent down that resolution to be published in the university, not vulgarly nei...

In respect of, and with relation to that blessed state, according to the doctrine, and practice of our church, we do pray for the dead; for the militant church upon earth, and the triumphant church in heaven, and the whole Catholic church in heaven, and earth; we do pray that God will be pleased to hasten that kingdom, that we with all others departed in the true faith of his holy name, may have this perfect consummation, both of body and soul, in his everlasting glory, Amen. In his Sermon XII (preached in 1621), John Donne asserted that the Reformed ecclesia Anglicana prayed for the faithful departed.   He did so by quoting the prayer at the graveside from the Burial of the Dead in BCP 1559 : beseching the that it may please the of thy gracious goodnes, shortelye to accomplishe the numbre of thyne electe, and to haste thy kyngedome, that we with thys oure brother, and all other departed in the true fayth of thy holy name, may have our perfect consummacion and blisse, both i...

From Donne's Sermon XLV , preached upon All Saints' Day.  Donne here exemplifies the quiet joy with which Anglicanism celebrates the parish church participating in the Communion of Saints. So that it is truly a festival, grounded upon that Article of the Creed, The Communion of Saints, and unites in our devout contemplation, The Head of the Church, God himself, and those two noble constitutive parts thereof, The Triumphant, and the Militant. And, accordingly, hath the Church applied this part of Scripture, to be read for the Epistle of this day, to shew, that All-Saints day hath relation to all Saints, both living and dead; for those servants of God, which are here in this text, sealed in their foreheads, are such (without all question) as receive that Seal here, here in the militant Church. And therefore, as these words, so this festival, in their intendiment, that applied these words to this festival, is also of Saints upon Earth ... The servants of God being sealed in their ...