laudable Practice

In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a good sermon by a stranger, but no Common Prayer yet - 1st July 1660. After dinner to St. Margaret’s, where the first time I ever heard Common Prayer in that Church - 5th August 1660. In the morn to our own church, where Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by saying 'Glory be to the Father, &c.' after he had read the two psalms; but the people had been so little used to it, that they could not tell what to answer  - 4th November 1660. This day also did Mr. Mills begin to read all the Common Prayer, which I was glad of - 11th November 1660. Pepys' diary entries for 1660 provide an insight into how the return of the Book of Common Prayer was, in many places, approached with a prudent caution in the aftermath of the Restoration. It was, of course, the case that, as the Preface to the 1662 revision would declare, in constitutional terms, the legal requirement to use to the Prayer Book had not been legitimately repeale...

But this emphasis [in Restoration Episcopalian accounts] on martyrdom, ejection and exile has obscured the extent to which prominent episcopalian conformists were subsequently prepared to defend their Interregnum careers, presenting their ministries in these years as evidence of steadfast commitment to both the Church of England and the king. By staying within the Church, ministers had acted as a bulwark against heresy and error, the last bastions of ‘true Protestantism’, and thereby worked to protect and to ‘undeceive’ the distracted laity - (re)shaping attitudes towards liturgy, episcopacy and even monarchy. William White, in ' Remembering Episcopalian Conformity in Restoration England ', thus reminds us that alongside the narrative of persecution and martyrdom promoted by formerly non-conformist Episcopalians at the Restoration, there was another narrative to be told, that of the Episcopalian Conformists in the Cromwellian Church. As we saw last week , George Bull was amongs...

After recounting how Bull received holy orders from Skinner, the deprived Bishop of Oxford, Robert Nelson - in his The Life of Dr. George Bull - tells of how the newly-ordained Bull began to minister in a parish: When he was furnished with those Sacerdotal Powers, which are the Characteristick of a Presbyter, he embraced the first Opportunity the Providence of God offered for the exercising of them according to his Commission. A small Living near Bristol, called St. George's, presenting itself, he the rather accepted it, because the Income was very inconsiderable; it being very likely, that upon that account he would be suffered to reside without Disturbance from the Men of those Times, who would not think it worth their pains to persecute and dispossess him for 301. a Year. Now this, to say the least, is rather interesting, because Bull was now ministering within the Cromwellian state church. Two matters are not mentioned by Nelson. Firstly, we are not told how the living was se...

I hope it will so happen to us, that it will be verified here, what was once said of the catholics, under the fury of Justina: "Sed tanta fuit perseverantia fidelium populorum, ut animas prius amittere, quàm episcopum mallent;" if it were put to our choice, rather to die, (to wit, the death of martyrs, not rebels) than to lose the sacred order and offices of episcopacy, without which no priest, no ordination, no consecration of the sacrament, no absolution, no rite, or sacrament, legitimately can be performed, in order to eternity. Jeremy Taylor's declaration in his 1642 work Episcopacy Asserted was a statement of Laudian maximalism that would, as we have seen , be later repeated in the very different circumstances of his sermon at the 1661 consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops for the restored Church of Ireland. As previously suggested in the post regarding that sermon, however, there are grounds for understanding this maximalist Laudian claim as fundamentally...

The young George Bull, having completed his studies with the Puritan Mr. Thomas - and having read those books by "Hooker, Hammond, Taylor, Grotius, Episcopius, &c" provided by the younger Thomas -  now sought ordination. According to Nelson's The Life of Dr. George Bull , this was a moment when Bull's theological allegiances were demonstrated: Soon after that he left Mr. Thomas, he entertained Thoughts of going into Holy Orders; he had read enough to convince him, that meer Presbyters had no Power to give him a Commission to exercise the Sacred Function, especially when the plausible Plea of Necessity could not be urged. In this Case Mr. Bull fought out for an unexceptionable Hand, that his Mission might be valid, according to the Practice of the Christian Church for Fifteen hundred Years, which affordeth not one Instance of Presbyterian Ordination, but what was condemned by the universal Voice of the Catholick Church.  This, of course, was in a context in which e...

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant.  To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

We left Robert Nelson's account in The Life of Dr. George Bull with the young Bull being required to leave Oxford, upon refusing to take the Engagement, the oath of loyalty to the institutions of the Commonwealth. Bull's family was aware of his desire to be ordained and - with Oxford now closed to him - considered who should act as his tutor: The Times being very distracted when under the Mr. Bull was advised, as I said, to put himself under the Direction of some eminent Divine; his Guardians and Relations were very much divided in their Opinions, as to the Choice of the Person under whose Care he was to be placed. His Uncle William Bull, Esq., of Shapwick, and some others, inclined to Dr. Hammond, a most eminent Episcopal Divine, whose Name will always be mentioned with Honour and Respect, by those who are true Friends to the Church of England; for he adhered to her when her Condition was most deplorable, defended her Doctrines and Discipline by his learned and judicious Pen,...

On this day in 1661, Jeremy Taylor entered the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin to preach at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops (one of whom was Taylor himself) for the restored Church of Ireland. There was something of an understandable atmosphere of Episcopalian and Royalist triumphalism on the day, captured in the anthem written for the occasion: Now, that the Lord hath re-advanced the crown, Which thirst of spoyle and frantick zeal threw down. Now, that the Lord the miter hath restor'd, Which with the crown lay in dust abhor'd ... Taylor's sermon was very well-received. Dudley Loftus , a canny political operator during the Commonwealth and at the Restoration, noted in his account of the proceedings : The Bishop of Downes Sermon was such as gave great and general satisfaction, being elegantly, religiously, and prudently composed, and so convincingly satisfying the judgments of those who have opposed the order and jurisdiction of Episcopacy, ...

I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords. This was The Engagement, the oath of allegiance required by the Parliamentarian authorities after the execution of the Royal Martyr in January 1649. In his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , Robert Nelson provides an account of the young Bull - then an undergraduate in Exeter College, Oxford - refusing to take The Engagement: Mr. Bull had not been admitted two in Exeter College before the Engagement was imposed upon the Nation by a pretended Act of Parliament, which passed in January, 1649. The Kingly Office being abolished upon the Murder of an excellent Prince, it was declared, that for the time to come England should be governed as a Commonwealth by Parliament; that was, by that handful of Men who by their Art and Power, and Villainy, had wrought that wonderful Alteration. And that they might secure their new Government, and have some Obl...

In the second of his two sermons - both entitled ' The Minister's Duty in Life and Doctrine ' - delivered at his 1661 primary visitation of the Diocese of Down and Connor, at Lisburn, Jeremy Taylor called his clergy to focus their preaching upon building up congregations in confession of the faith and holy living. This was a characteristic Episcopalian response to the experience of the preaching associated with the ecclesiastical confusion of the Interregnum. As Taylor had stated in his preface to The Golden Grove (1655): the people are fallen under the harrows and saws of impertinent and ignorant Preachers, who think all Religion is a Sermon, and all Sermons ought to be libels against Truth and old Governours, and expound Chapters that the meaning may never be understood, and pray, that they may be thought able to talk, but not to hold their peace. For Episcopalians, the sermon during Interregnum had often been a cause of strife and divisive controversy, provoking sectari...

I A. B do declare that it is not lawfull upon any pretence whatsoever to take Armes against the King and that I do abhorr that traiterous Position of taking Armes by His Authority against His Person or against those that are commissionated by him ... And I do declare that I do hold there lies no Obligacion upon me or on any other person from the Oath comonly called the Solemne League and Covenant to endeavour any change or alteration of Government either in Church or State And that the same was in it selfe an unlawfull Oath and imposed upon the Subjects of this Realme against the knowne Lawes and Liberties of this Kingdome. The requirement of the 1662 Act of Uniformity that clergy openly rejected the Solemn League and Covenant as "an unlawfull Oath", contrary to the "Lawes and Liberties" of the realm, was - despite now being usually overlooked by many Anglican commentators - a crucial provision of the Act. The Solemn League and Covenant had its roots in the 1638 N...