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'The best defenders, the boldest champions': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and the defence of the Church of England during the reign of King James II

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If the Tory idyll of 1685 was threatened by Non-Conformists in Avening , much darker clouds were also gathering. The reign of James II, which had been joyfully welcomed by High Churchmen and Tories as a reaffirmation of the constitutional order, and of the Church of England's place in that order, took on a character which profoundly disturbed the bastions of Tory support for James: parsons and country gentlemen. Contrary to the assurances James had given at his accession, he was determined to undermine the position of the Church of England and to overturn the Church of Ireland.  The response of parsons across the kingdoms was almost unanimous. Their pulpits began to echo with warnings of 'Popery'. This, as Nelson states in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull ,  was no less so with Parson Bull: During the Reign of King James the II when our Apprehensions of the increase of Popery were no ways groundless, but founded in those Measures, which we apparently saw were taken to adva...
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'That faith which is a worthy preparatory to the holy communion': reading Taylor's 'Worthy Communicant' in Lent

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Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort ... The Prayer Book's invitation to communicants culminates with this call to approach the Sacrament "with faith". This, of course, gives liturgical expression to Article XXIX, a statement of a distinctive of Reformed eucharistic theology: The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing. The doctrine is also central to the Catechism's understanding of what is required of communicants: What is required of them who come to the Lord's Supper? To ... have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his death. What, however, does it mean to "Draw near with faith ", to receive the holy ...
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'A conjunction between his Body and the Elements': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and the sacramental union

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... in reverence of God, and in due regard of so divine a mystery, and in remembrance of so mystical a union as we are made partakers of, the assembly thinketh good, that the blessed Sacrament be celebrated hereafter, meekly and reverently upon their knees. For the Articles of Perth , kneeling to receive the Sacrament was testimony to what Cranmer had termed "our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of Christ therein, given to all worthy Receivers". In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), highlighted how opponents of the practice placed themselves outside of the Continental Reformed mainstream by dramatically exaggerating the case against kneeling to receive. Lindsay quotes an opponent who contrasted the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper with signs of God's presence under the Old Covenant, noting how those signs were accompanied by...
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'To the worthy receivers Christ himself': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner' and BCP 1549 as a Reformed text

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Heare us (O merciful father) we besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to blesse and sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christe. This invocation from BCP 1549 provided another opportunity for Gardiner to mischievously use the text of Cranmer's liturgy to argue against its author's eucharistic theology. According to Gardiner: The body of Christ is by God's omnipotency, who so worketh in his word, made present unto us at such time as the Church prayeth it may please him so to do, which prayer is ordered to be made in the Book of Common Prayer now set forth. Wherein we require of God the creatures of bread and wine to be sanctified, and to be to us the body and blood of Christ, which they cannot be, unless God worketh it, and make them so to be ... by the conversion of the substance of bread into his precious body. One can imagine Cranmer's...
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'Among the modern doctors of the Anglican Church': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and orthodoxy in the post-1662 Church of England

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1686 was a momentous year for George Bull. On 20th June, he was installed Archdeacon of Llandaff. Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull describes the significant circumstances of the appointment: This considerable Post in the Church was bestowed upon him by Archbishop Sancroft, being his whose Option it was; and purely in consideration of the great and eminent Services he had done the Church of God, by his learned and judicious Works, as Dr. Bately, his Grace's Chaplain expressed it, in a Letter writ to Mr. Bull, by the order of his Lord. The manner of Mr. Bull's receiving this honourable Station in the Church, added very much to his Reputation, because it was conferred upon him by an Archbishop, who had a particular Regard to the Merit of those he advanced, without any Solicitation or Application made by Mr. Bull himself. The author of  Harmonia Apostolica (1669) and Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685) was, then, rewarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  1686 was also the...
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Responding to Lake's 'On Laudianism': the illusion of 'Arminianism'

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The False and Erroneous doctrine of the Calvinists On Predestination and the Providence of God. 1] That Christ did not die for all men, but only for the elect. 2] That God created the greater part of mankind for eternal damnation, and wills not that the greater part should be converted and live. 3] That the elected and regenerated can not lose faith and the Holy Spirit, or be damned, though they commit great sins and crimes of every kind. 4] That those who are not elect are necessarily damned, and can not arrive at salvation, though they be baptized a thousand times, and receive the Eucharist every day, and lead as blameless a life as ever can be led. Reading Peter Lake's On Laudianism (2024), we might assume that these are words from a Laudian publication of the 1630s, for "Arminian assumptions were absolutely central to the Laudians' own position" (p.425). 'Laudianism', after all, was "an attempt gradually to Arminianise the culture, to disseminate  .....
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'Let us without excuses examine ourselves': reading Taylor's 'The Worthy Communicant' in Lent

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He that comes to the holy communion, must examine himself concerning his passions ... A searching self-examination regarding our hearts and interior life are urged as necessary by Taylor in The Worthy Communicant . This, he emphasises, is not " the consideration of single actions", which "will do but little". Rather: See, therefore, what you are from head to foot, from the beginning to the end, from the first entry to your last progression: and although it be not necessary that we always actually consider all; yet it will be necessary that we always truly know it all, that our relative duties, and our imperfect actions, and our collateral obligations, and the direct measures of the increase of grace, may be justly discerned and understood. Such a self-examination is, of course, demanding and challenging. For the vast majority of us, it will be painful and humbling. Not least is this so because it is an examination of the heart, of our desires and passions: Are your ...
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