laudable Practice

It is not uncommon in the Church of Ireland for The Preamble and Declaration of 1870 to be invoked by evangelicals as a 'low church' document, almost as if it is a confessional expression of evangelical Anglicanism. The reality, however, is that The Preamble and Declaration is robustly Laudian in character. To illustrate this, I set out below the key statements from The Preamble and Declaration alongside excerpts from a 1630 sermon by the Laudian divine Giles Widdowes . The sermon was, according to its title, " concerning the lawfulnesse of church-authority, for ordaining, and commanding of rites, and ceremonies, to beautifie the Church ": it was, in other words, a thoroughly Laudian statement. The prominent Puritan polemicist William Prynne felt compelled to attempt to answer it, an indication of its significance as a Laudian statement. Setting The Preamble and Declaration alongside Widdowes' sermon not only reveals the character of this foundational document of...

Addressing how critics of the Articles of Perth condemned kneeling to receive the Sacrament as 'popish', David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , summarised how those critics viewed the practice as contrary to the laws of the King and the Estates of Parliament: I come to consider the ordinances made, as ye alledge, against kneeling: where first yee alledge an Act made in the Assembly 1591, that an Article should bee formed, and presented vnto his Maiesty, and the Estates, for order to be taken with them, who giue or receiue the Sacraments after the Papistical manner; but by Papistical maner is meante, the giuing of the Sacrament by a Masse Priest, and the receiuing the same after the order of the Romane Church ...  Lindsay, however, points out that the purpose of such laws was to prevent conversion to the Roman obedience: The tenor wherof is those Perso...

But from the beginning the mystery of the sacrament hath been with wonder marvelled at, how Christ made bread his body, and wine his blood, and under the figure of those visible creatures, gave invisibly his precious body and blood presently there.  Gardiner's critique of Cranmer's sacramental theology is familiar. In Anglicanism, it was increasingly voiced by Tractarians as they parted ways with the Old High tradition. In the 20th century, Gregory Dix became is chief proponent - aided, ironically, by evangelicals such as Colin Buchanan, who shared an interest in denying the rich and vibrant sacramental vision of the founder of the Prayer Book tradition. Gardiner's view of Cranmer is still to be heard amongst those who regard the 1662 Holy Communion as insufficiently 'catholic'.  Cranmer's response, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551) powerfully sets forth why such impoverished readings of his sacramental theology should be banished. The sacraments are indeed ...

In the debates surrounding  Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685), Nelson - in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull - points to two very contrasting critics amongst Church of England divines. The first was Samuel Clarke, author of the anti-Trinitarian The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712). Against Bull, that "learned defender of the Nicene Faith", Clarke attempted to show that the pre-Nicene Fathers denied the eternity and consubstantiality of the Son. Nelson was thoroughly unimpressed by Clarke's attempts: the greatest part of the Testimonies by [Clarke] produced, do appear in quite another Light, as they are cited by the judicious Mr. Bull, than as they are applied by Dr. Clarke for illustrating his Propositions.  It was, however, Clarke's use of Bull's work to defend an anti-Trinitarian, anti-Nicene stance that was most significant. Nelson expresses his anger at Clarke's misuse of an extract from Bull's famous work: Everyone that reads it as i...

Having previously indicated how unconvincing I find Lake's assessment of the general characteristics of the Elizabethan and Jacobean - that is, pre-Laudian Church of England - I now turn to his account of Laudian "ceremonial conformity", "the ceremonial and liturgical aspects of divine worship" (p.139). What is particularly striking about Lake's analysis is its incoherence and inconsistency. On the one hand, we are informed that the Laudian view of cathedrals as the ideal of their ceremonial agenda "has been refuted": the claim that something like the Laudian style had been preserved in the cathedrals since the reformation was entirely untrue (p.136). This rather explicit statement, however, sits rather uneasily - to say the least - alongside an account from James' reign, provided only a few pages later: a cognate story from the start of James' reign about the French ambassador's 'viewing of our church orders, first at the cathed...

On this 30th January, we turn to a 1660 sermon delivered on the anniversary of the day - as its title states - "on which that Sacred Martyr, King Charles the First was murdered". The preacher was John King, who, as Dean of Tuam (the office to which he was appointed in 1638), ministered to and served the interests of King Charles II in exile. (He is found in Bosher's 'A List of Clergy in Exile'.) From January 1660, it was increasingly evident that opinion in the political nation was moving in the direction of the restoration of the monarchy. That said (as Henry Reece has superbly explored in his The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic ), restoration was by no means a foregone conclusion during the days of January 1660. The ending of King's sermon certainly speaks of uncertainty, albeit with a recognition that, unlike even as late as 1659, restoration was now a realistic possibility: The Lord in mercy look upon us, and wipe away these tears from our eyes, ...