"Yet necessary": Donne on the need for conformity

A previous post has pointed to the continuity in the defence of conformity from Cranmer, through Hooker, to Laud.  That particular instance referred to kneeling to receive the Sacrament.  Another example of this can be found in Donne (Sermon X, on Candlemas Day), emphasising again that the Laudian understanding of conformity was no innovation but, rather, a continuation of a well-established, theologically coherent defence of the need to conform in matters of rites and ceremonies as necessary for the good and well-being of the Church.

In Donne we see the same defence of kneeling to receive the Sacrament as was evident in the works of Cranmer and Hooker, manifesting the roots of the Laudian vision of conformity and its fundamental continuity with earlier Conformist thought.

Key to the Conformist case was the rejection of the notion that the Church's life is regulated alone by positive commands in Scripture.  As Donne puts it:

Why then will such men, as in all actions of divine service, pretend to limit everything precisely to the pattern of Christ himself, to do just as he did, and no otherwise, why will they admit any other position of the body, in preaching, than sitting, since, at least for the most part, Christ did preach sitting? Or if Christ did both sit, and stand, why will they not acknowledge, that all positions of the body, that are reverent, are indifferent in themselves, in the service of God; and being so, why will they not admit that position of the body, which being indifferent in itself, is by the just command of lawful authority, made necessary to them, that is, kneeling at the sacrament.

Donne also ridiculed the suggestion that the original context for the institution of the Lord's Supper provides a pattern for the Church's administration of the Sacrament:

neither could that position of body, which they used at the table, for their civil supper, and natural refection, be properly called a sitting, for it was rather a lying, a reclining, a leaning upon a bed; and let it be exactly a sitting, and let that sitting run through all the three suppers.

Like Cranmer and Hooker, he emphasised the appropriate piety of kneeling to receive:

Much less is there in our kneeling, who, as we acknowledge, that God is present everywhere, yet otherwise present to us, when we throw ourselves down before him in devotion, and prayer in our chamber, than he is in the market, or in the street, and otherwise in the congregation, at public prayer, than at private prayer in our chamber; so we acknowledge, that he is otherwise present at the sacrament, than at any other act of Divine service.

And, finally, he explained that while gestures and ceremonies may in themselves be things indifferent, acceptance of lawful authority in the Church's life (the means of securing the peace and good order of the Church) is not:

That which Christ's example left indifferent, the authority of that church, in which God hath given thee thy station, may make necessary to thee; though not absolutely necessary, and that none can be saved that do not kneel at the sacrament, therefore because they do not kneel, yet necessary as it is enjoined by lawful authority, and to resist lawful authority, is a disobedience, that may endanger any man's salvation. 

Donne's defence of kneeling to receive the Sacrament replicates the defence mounted by Cranmer and Hooker, not least in understanding that the practice of conformity is not merely a matter of adiaphora.  This was the conviction at the heart of the Laudian vision, that to reject the rites and ceremonies established by the lawful authority disturbs the peace and disorders the life of the Church.  In Donne's words, conformity is "yet necessary".