'A most Profoundly Reverend Esteem of Her': the Marian piety of the Restoration Church
Sparrow's commentary, in other words, pointed to the Prayer Book's observance of the feast of the Annunciation as embodying a patristic Marian belief. Another example of this was to be found in William Nicholls' Comment on the Book of Common Prayer (quoted in Mant's Notes). Although the book was published in 1710, Nicholls had been ordained in 1688 and thus stands in personal continuity with the late Restoration Church. Noting of the feast of the Annunciation that "This day is appointed by the Church in memory of the blessed Virgin", he goes on to contrast it with the premier Marian feast in the Roman tradition:
a strange story about her assumption into heaven, and that with great variety in their relations; some affirming her to be conveyed thither alive like Enoch and Elias; others, that, after her death, she arose again, and was carried triumphantly into heaven. But, as all the legendary history of this translation is taken out of apocryphal books, it deserves not much credit.
The Prayer Book's feast of the Annunciation, therefore, was regarded as providing a recognition of the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in our salvation, rooted in Scripture and the witness of the Primitive Church, and thus avoiding the errors of an inflated Marian devotion alien to both Scripture and patristic theologies. Jeremy Taylor had pointed to the significance of the feast in his 1661 Rules and Advices to the clergy of his diocese:
Let every Preacher in his Parish take care to explicate to the people the Mysteries of the great Festivals, as of Christmas, Easter, Ascension-day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary; because these Feasts containing in them the great Fundamentals of our Faith, will with most advantage convey the mysteries to the people, and fix them in their memories, by the solemnity and circumstances of the day.
This is seen in a 1676 Annunciation sermon (by John Mill, given at St Martin-in-the-Fields), in which the feast day is regarded as rebutting those who refuse a Scriptural and patristic dignity and honour to the Blessed Virgin:
And I know very well there are a sort of ill-natur'd Fanatical Spirits, who will not allow this Holy Woman any Extraordinary Grace, nay indeed not any Civil Respect upon the account of this her Honourable Relation. She was, say they, beloved meerly gratis, without the least respect had to any peculiar Graces and Qualifications she could pretend to. An Assertion so far true indeed, that her Piety could not challenge either This, or any other Divine Favour, strictly and by way of Merit; but if so extended as to exclude the Singular Eye or Respect God had to her Vertues and Graces in so grand an Affair as this was, is an absurd and unworthy Doctrine.
At the same time, the feast of the Annunciation was understood as offering a critique of Roman Marian theology and piety:
What odd Metaphysical Notions are these! And yet a World of such Insignificant and Non-sensical Trash we meet with in the School-men: Who in their Discourses relating to the Holy Virgin, thought they could never be Romantic enough in describing the Praises, and advancing (after their dull rugged fashion) the Merits of a Saint, whom the Church of Rome had in so singular a manner made the Object of a Religious Adoration ...
We are not to express the great Esteem we have of Her by a Religious Worship, or such a sort of Adoration as we pay unto God. We are not to ascribe to her such Perfections as are proper to the Deity, nor pray to, or call upon her in any case or exigency whatsoever ...
Now if the Worship of the Blessed Virgin had been a thing in practise from the beginning, can it with any colour of reason be imagin'd, that our Saviour and his Apostles would have been silent in so considerable a part of Religion? The truth is, 'tis so far from Apostolic or Primitive, that neither the Scriptures, nor the Christian Writers for the first three hundred years, give any countenance at all to this sort of Devotion.
Against both errors, those who will not give her any honour and those who give her excessive honour, the Annunciation pointed to the honour given by Scripture to "the Holy Mother of our Lord":
the Celebration of her Memory, or in expressing to her upon account of her eminent Vertue and Goodness, all due Respect and Veneration. The blessed Angel, you see, did this in his Address to her; Hail, Thou that art highly favour'd, the Lord is with Thee: Blessed art Thou among Women. Blessed art Thou; i. e. Let all Men Honour Thee, as an ever blessed Saint. Indeed, who can seriously reflect upon her wonderful Relation to God, who can truly love our Lord Iesus Christ and not entertain a most Profoundly Reverend Esteem of Her ... If we affectionately Celebrate her Memory, Praise and Admire her Graces, and endeavour to transcribe them in our Lives and Actions, we do her as much Honour as is possible.
The sermon concluded in fine Augustinian fashion - and, indeed, echoing Jewel - by emphasising that in Christ we share in the graces experienced by the Blessed Virgin, rather than her being set apart from us:
What shall I say more? In everything wherein we find her excellent, let us tread her Steps; and this will be indeed to Celebrate This Festival. We may Imitate her even in this Mysterious Conception of our Saviour. We are capable of the Honour of having Christ formed in us. Of being Partakers of the Divine Life and Nature. Of having Christ dwell in our Hearts. Of being the Temples of the Holy Ghost. In fine, we are capable, in our Saviours account, of greater Blessedness than that which accrew'd to the Holy Virgin upon the score of her being the Lords Mother: Blessed is the Womb that bare Him, and the Paps which He sucked: But rather blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it. He that doth the Will of my Father, the same, says Christ, is my Brother, and Sister, and MOTHER.
It also reflects the prayer Taylor provided for the feasts of the Annunciation and the Purification in Holy Living (1650):
O holy and ever-blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow the holy Virgin-mother of our Lord, and caused her to conceive by a miraculous and mysterious manner, be pleased to overshadow my soul, and enlighten my spirit, that I may conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may bear him in my mind, and may grow up to the fulness of the stature of Christ, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen.
A similar pattern can be seen in Thomas Ken's hymn for the Annunciation. While this was to be found in his Christian Year, published when he was a Non-juror in 1710, it clearly gives expression to the spirituality of Restoration Anglicanism, as befits one who received orders in 1662. We should note how Ken avoids use of the term 'Mother of God', despite the 1676 sermon freely using it. Indeed, her refers to Mary as 'Saint', indicative of an older Latin tendency to avoid the exalted terminology of the East. Similarly, while he uses poetic licence as the character of Elisabeth to address the Blessed Virgin , she is not invoked: her prayers are not asked for. And yet, there is a warmth evident in Ken's words.
Here Mary is the "best of mortal race", "God's handmaid", "God's high favourite". Again, there is an unembarrassed, fulsome joy in the grace bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin. What, however, principally moves us to this joy is the recognition that this is also the grace bestowed upon, that we too might bear Christ and so sing God's praise in our Magnificat:
The Virgin then to Nazareth went,
Her ecstasies in hymn to vent;
As in her womb God took repose,
O may my heart my God enclose.
In Heaven shall centre my desire.
And in perpetual hymn aspire.
Our joy in the Blessed Virgin is a rejoicing in the grace in which we also share. Mary, then, is the exemplar of the redeemed:
We offer up our hymn this day,
And beg that all our lives we may
Tread in Thy Mother's steps divine.
As she devoutly trod in Thine.
This all follows the pattern enshrined in the collect of the Annunciation, in which we petition that grace may be poured "into our hearts", that walking in the way of the Lord's Cross, "we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection". To give expression to a 'reverend esteem of her' is, then, to celebrate the work of grace in humanity. This underpins the via media pursued by this Restoration Laudian Marian piety. To refuse to reverence the Blessed Virgin is to fail to rejoice in God's grace poured upon her and us, "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory". To exaggerate reverence for her, with what the 1676 Annunciation sermon termed "inconsiderate zeal", is to risk idolatry, for "We are not to express the great Esteem we have of Her by a Religious Worship, or such a sort of Adoration as we pay unto God".
Here the Restoration Church, following Laudian precedent and conforming to Reformation teaching, demonstrated a Marian piety for Protestants, deeply rooted in sola gratia and "the profound Reverence and Honour which Antiquity paid Her".
(The picture is of the Annunciation window in the chapel of Trinity College, Oxford.)
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