Cranmerian, Hookerian, Laudian: the gift of conformity

Cranmer's response to the Privy Council, following Knox's attack on the rubric in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer directing kneeling to receive the Sacrament, is striking in how Hooker-like it sounds.  Or, more accurately, it shows how Hooker's defence of both the idea and practices of conformity stood in profound continuity with that articulated by Cranmer.

In condemning Knox's agitation:

I trust ye will not be moved with these glorious and unquiet spirits which can like nothing but that is after their own fantasy and cease not to make trouble and disquiet when things be most quiet and in good order - Cranmer.

Herein lieth the greatest danger of all.  For whereas the name of divine authority is used to countenance these things, which are not the commandments of God, but your own erroneous collections; on him ye must father whatsoever ye shall afterwards be led, either to do in withstanding the adversaries of your cause, or to think in maintenance of your doings - Hooker, Preface 8.5.

In responding to the insistence that the life of Church and realm be regulated only by positive commands in Scripture:

But say they it is not commanded in the scripture to kneel and whatsoever is not commanded in the scripture, is against the scripture and utterly & unlawful and ungodly.  But this saying is the chief foundation of the error of the Anabaptists and of divers other sects. This saying is a subversion of all order as well in religion as in common policy. If this saying be true, take away the whole book of service.  For what should men travel to set an order in the form of service, if no order can be set, but that is already prescribed by the scripture? - Cranmer.

We cannot hereupon yield, we cannot grant, that hereby is made manifest the argument of Scripture negatively to be force, not only in doctrine and ecclesiastical discipline, but even in matters arbitrary ... Many things there are which concern the discipline of the Church and the duties of men, which to abrogate and take away the Scriptures negatively urged may not in any case persuade us, but they must be observed, yea, although no Scripture be found which requireth any such thing - Hooker II.5.7.

It is a loose and licentious opinion which the Anabaptists have embraced, holding that a Christian man’s liberty is lost, and the soul which Christ hath redeemed unto himself injuriously drawn into servitude under the yoke of human power, if any law be now imposed besides the Gospel of Jesus Christ - Hooker III.9.3.

In defending the practice of kneeling to receive the Sacrament as a decent order:

If the kneeling of the people should be discontinued for the time of the receiving of the sacrament so that at the receipt there of they should rise up and stand or sit, and then immediately kneel down again, it should rather import a contemptuous then a reverent receiving of the sacrament - Cranmer.

Our kneeling at communions is the gesture of piety ... what doth better beseem our bodies at hour than to be sensible witnesses of minds unfeignedly humbled - Hooker V.68.3.

In rejecting the suggestion that the circumstances surrounding the Last Supper can determine how the Church administers the Sacrament:

Nor they find it not expressly in scripture that he ministered it standing or sitting but if we will follow the plain words of scripture, we shall rather receive it lying down on the ground ... And the words of the Evangelists import the same, which be [quotes Greek] which signify properly to lie down upon the floor or ground and not to sit upon a form [bench] or stool - Cranmer.

If we did there present ourselves but to make some show or dumb resemblance of a spiritual feast, it may be that sitting were the fitter ceremony, but coming as receivers of inestimable grace at the hands of God ... - Hooker V.68.3.

What this demonstrates is the depth of the roots of the defence of, and the coherence of the case for, conformity.  Rather than being a mere unthinking, unreflective pragmatism, conformity was the outworking of a theological vision of both Church and realm.  What is more, as Torrance Kirby has brilliantly shown, it reflected a wider stream of Reformed thought, too often overlooked because of a focus on Geneva's concerns and practices.

This also, however, leads us to question those too prevalent interpretations of Laudianism which overlook, dismiss, or minimise its emphasis on conformity as actually standing in profound continuity with the conformist apologetic of the Reformation era and the Elizabethan Settlement.  Against this background, we can see the Cranmerian and Hookerian roots of the Laudian vision of conformity, as described by historian Kevin Sharpe:

Attendance at the parish church and participation in a common service conducted according to the canons and Book of Common Prayer were for him the hallmarks of membership of the Church of England.

One final point.  The contemporary Anglican experience is one of the breakdown of conformity.  It has been accompanied - as Cranmer, Hooker, and Laud warned - by a disordering of the Church's life and communion, the loss of a shared "decent order ... quiet discipline" ('Concerning Ceremonies') to shape and sustain the life of prayer and sacrament in the parish.  In other words, we might do well to retrieve a Cranmerian, Hookerian, Laudian understanding of the gift of conformity.