Gunpowder treason and plot: raging against the mellow light

And why? their communing is not for peace : but they imagine deceitful words against them that are quiet in the land - Ps.35:20. Psalm 35 is one of the proper Psalms appointed in 'A Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving to be used yearly on the Fifth day of November'.

"Mellow light". It is the phrase Eamon Duffy uses to describe "the church of George Herbert". Herbert was ordained in 1629, early in the reign of Charles I. He was, in other words, ordained into a Church profoundly shaped by James VI/I, in which the influence of Jacobean Anglicanism was pronounced. The "mellow light", then, of Herbert's Church was Jacobean light.

It was in the Jacobean Church that, in the words of Diarmaid MacCulloch, "the obscure and slightly controversial figure of Hooker was being transformed into an iconic ... authority". It was in the Jacobean Church that the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes were heard. And so, as T.S. Eliot put it:

The intellectual achievement and the prose style of Hooker and Andrewes came to complete the structure of the English Church ... the achievement of Hooker and Andrewes was to make the English Church more worthy of intellectual assent.

The Jacobean Church was also the arena for the sermons of John Donne, demonstrating a native piety at once rational and deeply heart-felt, learned and popular, catholic and reformed, by which - as Donne stated in one of his sermons - "papistry was driven out, and puritanism kept out".

That native piety, contra both papal and puritan ambitions, was protected by James VI/I when at the Hampton Court conference he rejected what his subsequent proclamation (16th July 1604) would describe as those motivated by "pretended zeal of reformation":

no apparent or grounded reason was shown why either the Book of Common Prayer or the church discipline here by law established should be changed ... we have thought good once again to give notice thereof to all our subjects ... there appeareth no cause why the form of the Service of God wherein they have been nourished so many years should be changed.

The Canons of 1604 embodied this defence of the worship and good order of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana. Royal Supremacy, Prayer Book, the wearing of "a decent and comely surplice", copes in cathedrals, sign of the Cross in Baptism, bowing at the Lord's Name, were all maintained, with the affirmation that the ecclesia Anglicana was "a true and apostolical church".

This mellow light of the Jacobean Church was to find at least part of its fulfilment in the place "Where prayer has been valid":

So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel ...

Nicholas Ferrar was ordained deacon (by Laud) and established the community at Little Gidding in 1626, the year after the death of James VI/I. Here was the outworking of Jacobean piety: decent, comely, reverent, ordered, celebrated by Herbert in his 'The British Church'.

A fine aspect in fit array,
Neither too mean nor yet too gay,
Shows who is best.

It was this "mellow light" which the Gunpowder conspirators sought to extinguish. Or, as one of the collects for 5th November puts it, "the ruin of thy Church among us". Their failure should be a cause of thanksgiving. The Church of Hooker, Andrewes, and Donne was delivered, its rich patrimony of wisdom secured for the generations; the decent rites and ceremonies of the Prayer Book continued to minister to souls, shaping them in a native piety; and parish churches on winter afternoons even now, centuries later, echo with "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord".

To give thanks for the failure of Gunpowder treason and plot is to give thanks for the mellow light of the ecclesia Anglicana.

(The second picture is of a November sunset at Little Gidding.)

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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