The High Church tradition and the gift of constitutional order
White's critique of High Church political theology reflects a well-established and still prevalent view that the High Church tradition was defined by an inflated view of monarchy, a fawning over the Crown's use of Prerogative power, intoxicated by the false glories of the claims of divine right.
And yet White's Essay itself might lead us to question this portrayal of the "Extreme of the High-church System". He points, for example, to a range of High Church figures who had set forth a vision of monarchy limited by law and parliament: Lancelot Andrewes, Thomas Sherlock, George Horne, and Thomas Secker.
White's words came to mind when I was reminded that yesterday was the anniversary of the Petition of the Seven Bishops in 1688, challenging James II's Declaration of Indulgence. The Petition was a defence of the mixed constitution, emphasising the constitutional rights and duties of Parliament:
because that declaration is founded upon such a dispensing power as hath often been declared illegal in parliament.
What is more, against this dispensing power used by James, they urge a reliance on the institutions of the settled constitution:
when that matter shall be considered and settled in parliament and Convocation.
For White, however, this was mere political manoeuvre:
their religious Feelings were too strong for their political Theory; & that, in Opposition to the Principles which they had always professed, they set themselves against the Will of their Sovereign.
Again, White's view remains a common interpretation of the actions of the Seven Bishops. This is despite White's admission that there was an enduring High Church tradition which defended the mixed constitution and did not promote monarchical 'absolutism', that is, the Crown's authority not limited by parliament, Convocation, and common law.
Hooker's famous insistence that "Laws they are not therefore which publique approbation hath not made so" was directly related to his affirmation of the rights of Parliament:
As in parliaments, councels, and the like assemblies, although we be no personallie our selves present, notwithstanding our assent is by reason of others agents there in our behalfe. And what we do by others, no reason but that it should stand as our deed, no lesse effectually to binde us then if our selves had done it in person (LEP I.10.8).
We can draw a line from this vision of the mixed constitution to the declaration of Lancelot Andrewes in his 1621 sermon at the opening of Parliament:
that is the proper work of this assembly, to make laws. And that is the properly the work of God.
And, rather startlingly, Andrewes applies his text from Psalm 82:1 to Parliament:
God ... made you a congregation of lawgivers and of gods, both at once.
What, however, of the Laudian era? Even Addleshaw, in his panegyric to the High Church tradition, states that Laud promoted "an illegitimate extension of the royal authority". There can be little doubt that amidst the heightened tensions of the late 1620s and 1630s, with Puritans using Parliament to threaten the Church's order, sideline Convocation, disorder the Realm and undermine its defence, the Laudian temptation was to advocate the personal rule. As Kevin Sharpe has emphasised in his history of the personal rule:
To Charles those parliaments [of 1625 and 1629] failed to meet their responsibility and so undermined his capacity to fulfil his royal obligation to protect the realm ... It was this extraordinary threat to the very existence of the state, and a powerful sense of his duty to defend the commonweal which, more than an autocratic temperament, led Charles to personal rule.
Despite this, we can still detect in Laudian thinkers a respect for the mixed constitution. As Iain MacKenzie notes in his God's Order and Natural Law: The words of the Laudian Divines, a focus on the words of Laudians regarding the divine right of kings obscures a wider vision:
There was, in fact, a Divine Right in every estate and vocation of man throughout all levels of society.
He continues:
This same principle of contingent authority ... was applied by the Caroline Divines to every area of human society and existence. They applied it to monarch, parliament, and those set to execute the laws so made, the magistrates. In all this and in all these, there is stressed the sense of vocation to the decrees of God as fulfilled in Christ.
The similarities between this and Hooker's understanding of order are striking. Against this background, then, we should give more weight to Laud's denial that he promoted views "in which the authority of parliaments, and the force of the laws of this kingdom are denied, and an absolute and unlimited power over the persons and estates of his Majesty's subjects maintained and defended". As he declared:
I have ever been of opinion, and I shall live and die in it, that there can be no true and settled happiness in this or any other kingdom, but by a fair and legal, as well as natural agreement between the King and his people. That according to the course of England this agreement is in a great proportion founded upon Parliaments.
they that do admit no authority above their own to expound Scripture, cannot deny but kings and
parliaments are the makers and proper expounders of our laws.
Note Taylor's "and parliaments": an invocation of the mixed constitution. He goes on to ground this in the Apostolic exhortation to pray "for kings, and for all that are in authority":
For all; for parliaments and for councils, for bishops and for magistrates: it is for all, and for kings above all. Well; to what purpose is all this? That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty. Mark that: "kings and all that are in authority," are by God appointed to be the means of obtaining unity and peace in godliness.
This reading of avant garde and Laudian political theology leads us to see the Petition of the Seven Bishops not as pragmatic high politics and a temporary abandoning of an awkward theology of incipient absolutism but, rather, an outworking of a well established support for the mixed constitution. William J. Bulman has described this as a "historically grounded vision of partnership". For a Hookerian and Laudian view of order, of course, "historically grounded" does not mean 'secular': this was what MacKenzie terms "the oikonomia of God", taking expression in the historical experience of a body politic.
The endurance of this High Church political theology of the mixed constitution is seen when we consider Jonathan Boucher's 1775 sermon 'On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Non-Resistance':
Without some paramount and irresistible power, there can be no government. In our constitution this supremacy is vested in the king and the Parliament; and, subordinate to them, in our provincial legislatures.
Here the mixed constitution is extended to embrace the colonial assemblies, furthering the understanding of High Church political theology as a "historically grounded vision of partnership" rather than an abstract notion of monarchical power.
White's critique of supposed High Church principles "of Civil Government" can thus be seen to be an artificial construct. The Essay itself suggests this in its Addendum: "Of High-churchmen in the offensive sense contemplated, the Writer has known very few". The purpose of White's attack, however, is indicated when he refers to "Episcopalians, few in Number ... seated in the Midst of a large & dominant protestant Society, whose Bigotry & Intolerance may be galling". The "extreme of the High Church System" - what other Protestants identified as a tendency to absolutism, denial of the liberties of the subject, a hostility to representative institutions - would be "very injurious to the episcopal Church". It was, however, a Whig myth.
Rather than rupture, it is continuity that is most striking. Protestant Episcopalians in the new Republic very quickly applied the Old High Church political theology of the mixed constitution to the new constitutional arrangements in the Republic, most notably symbolised by the Prayer for Congress in the BCP 1789 being a very slight revision of the 1662 Prayer for the High Court of Parliament. (Eric Nelson's A Royalist Revolution has something significance on this point.) Similarly, after the 'constitutional revolution' of 1828-32 in the United Kingdom, the political theology of the mixed constitution would - after initial angst - continue to underpin High Church admiration for the British Constitution, even though the Anglican State had ceased to be. A century later, in the newly-independent Southern Ireland and then in the Republic, Southern Irish Anglicans would come to see in new constitutional arrangements the same gift of a mixed constitutional order.
Comments
Post a Comment