Did Thomas Ken believe in the Immaculate Conception?
The Holy Ghost his Temple in her built,
Cleans’d from congenial, kept from mortal Guilt;
And from the Moment that her Blood was fired
Into her Heart celestial Love inspir’d.
Colin Podmore - the former Director of Forward in Faith and editor of an excellent collection of Roger Greenacre's Marian writings - has stated rather straight-forwardly that Ken is here affirming the Immaculate Conception:
This is poetry, not prose, but surely we have here the doctrine that at the moment of her conception – ‘the Moment that her Blood was fired’ – Mary was cleansed from original sin in order that she might become the mother of Our Lord.
More cautiously, Paul Williams in Mary: The Complete Resource suggests that this "appears to proclaim the immaculate conception". Is this the case?
Some preliminary observations are called for. Firstly, we should not mistake Ken for a proto-Newman. He had no qualms about referring to the Church of England as a "Reformed or Protestant Church", declaring that "we are Protestants". Secondly, his famous dictum likewise urges caution about the likelihood of him affirming a doctrine that was widely identified as a disputed medieval Latin innovation:
I die in the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith, professed by the whole Church, before the disunion of East and West: more particularly I die in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan Innovations.
Thirdly, Ken did indeed have a warm devotion to the Immaculate: but, for him, the Immaculate was our Lord Himself:
both thy Conception and Birth were perfectly immaculate ... O immaculate Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the World.
These preliminary observations should at least give us pause before confidently stating that Ken was, in the extract from 'Sion: or, Philothea', declaring that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without taint of Original Sin. The meaning of the extract is made clearer when we consider words from Ken's hymn written for the feast of the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin:
The womb which Jesus chose, His Godhead to enclose,
From wilful sin we guess was free,
Fit for the God of purity;
And might have rites declined,
Which for impure conceptions were design'd.
Here, in other words, is how "The Holy Ghost his Temple in her built". Grace was given to the Blessed Virgin at her conception which bore fruit in a life free of "wilful sin" (emphasis added). This is, of course, the teaching of Thomas and the 'maculist' tradition. For Thomas, while Mary "was not freed from the guilt to which the whole nature is subject" due to Original Sin, "we ... confess simply that the Blessed Virgin committed no actual sin, neither mortal nor venial" (ST III.27.4). Ken's "we guess" similarly echoes Thomas' insistence "Nothing is handed down in the canonical Scriptures concerning the sanctification of the Blessed Mary as to her being sanctified in the womb" but that "it may be reasonably argued that she was sanctified in the womb" (III.27.1).
Reading Ken's words from 'Sion: or, Philothea' in Thomist fashion coheres with the preliminary observations noted above. It stands within an established stream of thought within Churches of the Reformation. As Diarmaid MacCulloch notes, "the Lutheran and Zurich reformers had managed to sustain" a range of traditional affirmations regarding the Blessed Virgin, including her sanctity. In the words of Zwingli, "God sanctified his mother: for it was fitting that such a holy Son should have a likewise holy mother". The Thomist position also ensured that Ken was not affirming a teaching unknown "before the disunion of East and West", mindful that the Immaculate Conception was one of those "Papal ... Innovations" which he firmly eschewed. Finally, such a 'maculist' stance allows us to understand Ken's praise for the immaculate conception of the Lord, praise which is surely founded on this being uniquely salvific.
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