"Too bold and too busy"

In his Whitsunday sermon 1619, "preached before the King's Majesty", Lancelot Andrewes equated the pronouncements on predestination by Calvinist school-authors with the authority claimed by the See of Rome:

I speak it for this, that even some that are far enough from Rome, yet with their new perspective they think they perceive all God's secret decrees, the number and order of them clearly; are indeed too bold and too busy with them. Luther said well that every one of us hath by nature a Pope in his belly, and thinks he perceives great matters. Even they that believe it not of Rome, are easily brought to believe it of themselves.

This comparison with papal pretensions exemplifies how avant-garde Conformists regarded those advocating a definition of predestination beyond the terms of Article XVII as threatening the peace and unity of the ecclesia Anglicana, being "too bold and too busy".

It is important to note how Andrewes explicitly gives voice to Augustinian concerns in the sermon. He quotes Augustine: "that thus it is, it is no weight or worth of man's merit, it is but the very order and course of God's dealing". He echoes Thomist insights when he declares, "there is no necessity that God accept us", as "the Schoolmen express it well". And a Reformed emphasis is evident in his insistence that "our work is this, our labour this, this is all in all, to get men to do well, and yet not ween well of their well-doing".

That sets all safe, that brings all to God, and there leaves it.

The critique of the Calvinist school-authors articulated by Andrewes, therefore, represents no retreat from an Augustinian vision.

How the sermon concludes is also significant. In contrast to the "too bold and too busy" speculations regarding "God's secret decrees", and the sectarianism to which this gave rise, Andrewes points to the simplicity of the Table, the practice which embodied the generosity and inclusion of the parish in the ecclesia Anglicana:

For this is indeed the true receiving, when one is received to the table, to eat and drink, to take his repast there; yes ... to take, and take into him 'that body, by the oblation whereof we are all sanctified,' and that blood 'in which we have all remission of sins.' In that ended they, in this let us end.

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