laudable Practice

Today we resume our weekly readings from Robert Nelson's 1713 The Life of Dr. George Bull , one of the particularly significant divines of the 18th Church of England. Prior to Lent, we had left Bull in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration, in a nation reeling from the political and religious divisions of the past few decades, his preaching already indicating the wisdom and moderation of the Arminian Conformity central to the Church of England during the long 18th century. We now move to 1662, when Nelson was presented to a new cure: In the Year 1662, Mr. Bull was presented to the Vicaridge of Suddington St. Peter, by the then Lord Chancellor the Earl of Clarendon, at the Request and Application of his constant Patron, and worthy Diocesan, Dr. Nicholson, who was made Bishop of Gloucester upon the Restoration, and who had all that Merit which was necessary to fill so great a Station in the Church to the best Advantage, if his Steddiness to her Doctrines and Discipline, in ...

From a 1773 speech by Burke in the House of Commons, in which he points to the gracious and generous latitude in the 18th century Church of England regarding the Articles of Religion, with particular reference to Article 17.  There are those of the Dissenters who think more rigidly of the doctrine of the Articles relative to Predestination than others do. They sign the Article relative to it ex animo, and literally. Others allow a latitude of construction. These two parties are in the Church, as well as among the Dissenters; yet in the Church we live quietly under the same roof. I do not see why, as long as Providence gives us no further light into this great mystery, we should not leave things as the Divine Wisdom has left them. We see here a Burkean wisdom for Anglicanism; a gracious, wise, rational latitude, after Burnet , regarding the Articles of Religion (clerical subscription to which, we must recall, was robustly defended by Burke); a recognition that probing beyond that w...

The May Day holiday - a gentle but joyous celebration of Spring - is now a yearly opportunity for laudable Practice to reflect on the correspondence between Prayer Book piety and the quiet, plain, sober interior of a Georgian parish church. This year the church is Old St. Stephen's, Whitby, Yorkshire : it provides our setting for Matins on a Sunday morning in Spring. For an accompanying text to guide our thoughts, we turn to Timothy Puller's 1677 work The Moderation of the Church of England . Puller was priested in 1664. His work rejoices in the latitude of the Church of England, seeing therein a reflection of the "mild Oeconomy of the Gospel": Which cannot but afford a rare and serious pleasure as well as use; as it must be very delightful to behold any imitation of the Divine Wisdom, which hath made all things in number, weight, and measure; which governs the World and all his Creatures, according to unsearchable measures of Righteousness and Equity, who dispenseth...

From Bramhall's address 'To the Christian Reader' (at the outset of a work rejecting a Roman apologist's contention that the Church of England was schismatical and not part of the Church Catholic), a characteristically Laudian statement combining gratitude for the Church of England with an expression of what it is to be - to use a term from Richard Baxter much more appropriate for a Laudian than for Baxter - "a Catholick Christian". Also present is the generosity of the Laudian desire for the re-union of Christendom. And finally, there is the Laudian rejection of any notion that confessional precision and absolute doctrinal uniformity are more important than the Church's peace. No man can justly blame me for honouring my spiritual mother the Church of England; in whose womb I was conceived, at whose breasts I was nourished, and in whose bosom I hope to die. Bees, by the instinct of nature, do love their hives, and birds their nests ... My desire hath been ...

The ten-volume 1820 Works of Tillotson opens with the 1753 ' Life of Tillotson ' by Thomas Birch.  Praising Tillotson as a leader amongst "those divines, who were stigmatized with the name of Latitudinarians, by persons of very opposite characters", Birch offered an apologia for the "moderation" represented by this school: Moderation in churchmen and church-governors must be allowed to be a great virtue, as well as in other Christians. This might be shewed from the example of our Saviour ... His government is compared to the meek and gentle conduct of a shepherd, which imports great moderation; his kingdom is typified in the peaceable kingdom of Solomon, which was predicted and deciphered Psal. lxxii . He came to ease the church of those heavy burdens which Moses had laid upon it, to remove the ceremonial law, and moderate the rigour even of the moral law itself, and turn it into the royal law of liberty. He proposed himself as a pattern of great gentleness...

Minimising Cranmer's influence on Anglicanism has been, since the mid-19th century, a rather common phenomenon.  This is usually rooted in an embarrassment over his clearly Reformed convictions and the implications of this for Anglicanism.  When it comes to Hooker, while denials of any 'Hookerian school' also tend to be commonplace, an acceptance of his influence on what would become Anglicanism is less controversial.  Rowan Williams , for example, identifies "Hooker's legacy" as contributing to what is "distinctively Anglican". What, however, if shared Cranmerian and Hookerian themes - themes dependent on shared theological sources - have profoundly shaped the Anglican experience?  Diarmaid MacCulloch's essay ' Tolerant Cranmer? ' immediately suggests one feature of the Cranmerian influence on Anglicanism.  The essay begins by referring to Cranmer as a "cautious, well-read humanist".  This itself might put us in mind of Hooker ...