"A white alb plain with a vestment": an Old High Church apologia for the chasuble
I know: it is not to be. Uniformity and conformity in rites and ceremonies has been lost. And many more Anglicans now experience the priest at Holy Communion wearing a chasuble than a surplice.
While the wearing of the chasuble was a product of the late 19th century Ritualist movement, the wider acceptance of that vestment and its approval by ecclesiastical authority did not occur on the basis of Anglo-papalist eucharistic theology.
The 1906 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline provides a fascinating insight into this process.
The Report notes that the wearing of the chasuble as a distinctly liturgical vestment dates to the 7th century, thus predating later innovation in eucharistic practice and theology:
Thus the Eucharistic vestments were adopted some centuries before A.D. 1215, when the doctrine of Transubstantiation was defined. Both before and after the definition of that doctrine the chasuble was associated with the conception of an Eucharistic sacrifice.
That association with "an Eucharistic sacrifice", however, is not judged to contradict Anglican norms as there is a long and noble history of Anglican divines affirming the Eucharist, in patristic terms, to have a sacrifical character:
It is well known, however, that by many divines of eminence the word 'sacrifice' has been applied to the Lord's supper, in the sense not of a true propitiatory or atoning Sacrifice, effectual as a satisfaction for sin, but of a rite which calls to remembrance and represents before God that one true Sacrifice.
The report goes on to quote Bishop Bull describing the Eucharist:
In the Eucharist, then, Christ is Offered, not hypostatically, as the Trent Fathers have determined, for so He was but once offered, but commemoratively only.
It is not noted by the Report, but it is likely that Bull took this language from Taylor:
For as it is a commemoration and representation of Christ's death, so it is a commemorative sacrifice - The Great Exemplar III.XV.7.
This was also the understanding to be found in Saepius Officio:
we truly teach the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice ... we plead and represent before the Father the sacrifice of the cross.
The Report thus rightly states that such an understanding of eucharistic sacrifice is compatible with Anglican Formularies:
To apply the word 'sacrifice' in the sense in which Bishop Bull has used it to the Ordinance of the Lord's supper ... does not appear to be a contravention of any proposition legitimately deducible from the 31st Article.
This then means that the wearing of the chasuble can be legitimate because it represents a doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice quite different to Tridentine teaching:
there can be no doubt that at least a great many of those who support their use connect them with the doctrine of a commemorative sacrifice in the Eucharist, to which we have already referred; and it is clear that the use of a special dress for the celebration of Holy Communion does not necessarily involve the acceptance of the Roman doctrine as to the nature of that service.
So the chasuble both pre-dates the innovations in eucharistic practice and teaching rejected at the Reformation, and represents an understanding of eucharistic sacrifice long present in the Anglican tradition and compatible with the Formularies.
The Report then turns in a Hooker-like fashion to two other aspects of the use of the chasuble. The first is that it had become a settled part of Church's life:
What was then a complete and startling novelty has become a practice condemned by the law, but for thirty years unrepressed in more than 1,500 English churches; and thousands of middle-aged persons now living have been accustomed to see those vestments worn as long as they can remember.
That the chasuble had become settled custom is in itself an argument for acceptance of its use, not least when this use is not inherently connected to doctrines contradicting the Formularies. The Report continues:
It is urged that, unless the teaching of the clergy who wear these vestments be Roman, such persons may not see any necessary approximation to Rome in the use of vestments which even in Western Europe are not exclusively Roman.
Where clergy abide by the teaching of the Formularies, laity will have no reason to connect the chasuble with Roman teaching. Added to which is the fact that Lutherans also use the chasuble: it is not an "exclusively Roman" vestment.
I describe these two aspects as Hooker-like as they reflect two characteristics present in Hooker's defence of the Elizabethan Settlement. When defending the use of the surplice, he points to the "reasonable continewance" (LEP V.29.5) of use of vestments in the Church's worship. Vestments, he says, are not matters of doctrine but are for "comlines sake" (V.29.1), "dignitie" (V.29.3), and "decencie" (V.29.7). What Hooker urges in defence of the custom of the surplice could thus also apply to the custom of wearing a chasuble:
Were it not better that the love which men beare to God should make the least things that are imployed in his service amiable, then that theire over scrupulous dislike of so meane a thinge as a vestment should from the verie service of God withdrawe theire hartes and affections? - V.29.4.
Against the Puritan focus on Geneva, Hooker also urges wider consideration of the churches of the Reformation. In his discussion of confession and absolution, therefore, he invokes the example of "the Churches of Germany, as well as the rest of the Lutherans" (VI.4.14).
Something of Hooker's respect for custom and for wider Protestant practice elsewhere in Europe can be detected in the Report, important reminders that Anglican use of the chasuble is not dependent on an incoherent Anglo-papalist acceptance of Tridentine doctrine but, rather, can cohere with classical Anglican teaching and piety.
Here, then, is an Old High Church apologia for the use of the chasuble ... even if, for some of us, the "decent and comely Surplice" might be preferable.
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