Splendid isolation? The cosmopolitanism of the Laudian and High Church traditions
Thus did W.J. Tighe - in his ground-breaking 1987 article on Laudian encouragement for a Grotian vision of a "Union of the Churches of the Northern Kingdoms" - summarise a criticism of not only routinely levelled at Laud but also at the wider Old High Church tradition. Ecclesiastical nationalism and 'splendid isolation', it is often suggested, characterised (and, the charge implies, continues to characterise) the High Church - as opposed to Anglo-catholic - tradition.
Tighe's research pointed to a significant rebuttal of this charge in the Laudian openness to a union with Scandinavian Lutheranism. What is more, the affinity with Lutheranism indicated in the proposal of a 'Union of the Churches of the Northern Kingdoms' was not merely a passing feature but, rather, represented an enduring characteristic of the High Church tradition at the Restoration and throughout the long 18th century.
We might also, however, point in another direction in order to challenge the allegation that the High Church tradition was (and is) insular.
In his recent study Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions (2018), Thomas Palmer explores how the 'holy living' tradition in the Church of England drew on Jansenist teaching and spirituality. Jeremy Taylor's Unum Necessarium is a particularly significant example of this, explicitly citing and approving of the writing of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld:
Mounſieur Arnauld of the Sorbon hath appeared publickly in reproof of a frequent and easie Communion, without the just and long preparations of Repentance, and its proper exercises and Ministery. Petavius the Jesuit hath oppos'd him; the one cries, 'The present Church', the other, 'The Ancient Church'; and as Petavius is too hard for his adversary in the present Authority, so Mounsieur Arnauld hath the clearest advantage in the pretensions of Antiquity and the Arguments of Truth.
This, of course, also draws attention to the similarities between High Church and Jansenist eucharistic spirituality, with the consistent High Church emphasis on serious preparation for reception comparable to Jansenist practice.
Another point of contact between Laudians/High Church and the Jansenists is the emphasis on liturgical prayer. Consider Richard Yoder's revisionist reading of Jansenism:
we should be hesitant about insisting too heavily on Jansenist anti-devotionalism. Their piety did not look like that of their enemies, the Jesuits - visionary, imaginative, optimistic, emotive, and centered symbolically on the Sacred Heart. But that does not mean that the Jansenists were bereft of spirituality. Gazaignes’s manual captures the hallmark of Jansenist devotion: liturgical prayer.
Mindful of this comparison, we might mischievously suggest that if the Laudians were akin to the Jansenists in their liturgical spirituality, then the emotive devotions of the Puritans shared a Jesuit emphasis.
Related to this, it is also worth noting the similarities in the Laudian and Jansenist approach to liturgy. As Calvin Lane has stated of the Jansenists:
They wanted more vernacular elements in worship, including exposition of Scripture; they wanted to end the multiplicity of altars in churches and to have instead only one table; they wanted a pruning back of candles and relics on that one altar, which could distract from the eucharistic action.
Here is something of what Old High Churchman Richard Mant would later describe as "the simplicity, decency, and suitableness" of the Laudian liturgical style, ensuring that prayer, Word, and Sacrament are not obscured by the gaudy and the superstitious.
Finally, the Jansenist opposition to ultramontane ambitions and encouragement of Gallicanism cohered with the Laudian and High Church vision of the liberties of national churches. Such coherence with Gallicanism had been anticipated in the call of James VI/I for the unity of Christendom:
Patriarchs I know were in the time of the Primitive Church, and I likewise reverence that institution for order sake; and amongst them was a contention for the first place. And for myself (if that were yet the question) I would with all my heart give my consent that the Bishop of Rome should have the first seat; I being a Western King would go with the Patriarch of the West. And for his temporal principality over the Signory of Rome, I do not quarrel it either. Let him in God His Name be Primus Episcopus inter omnes Episcopos.
Cosin had similarly defined a role for the bishop of Rome as patriarch:
In acknowledgment of the Bishop of Rome if he would rule and be ruled by the ancient canons of the Church to be the Patriarch of the West by right of ecclesiastical and imperial constitution in such places where the kings and governors of those places had received him and found it be hooveful for them to make use of his jurisdiction without any necessary dependence upon him by divine right.
Such an understanding found a parallel in the 1683 Declaration of the Clergy of France, with its assertion that the authority of the bishop of Rome must be "moderated by the canons" of the primitive Church and "the bounds fixed by the Fathers". The Declaration also set forth a vision akin to the High Church understanding of the Royal Supremacy, with its insistence that papal authority did not embrace "things Civil and Temporal", continuing with a statement which could easily have been penned by a High Church author:
Kings and Princes are not, by the Command of God, subject in things Temporal, to any Ecclesiastical Power, neither can they directly, or indirectly, be Deposed by the power of the Keys of the Church, nor their Subjects be freed from their Duty and Obedience, and Oath of Allegiance. And that this Opinion necessary for the publick Peace, and no less useful to the Church than the State, is to be Maintained as altogether agreeable to the Word of God, the Tradition of the Fathers, and the Examples of the Saints.
It is little wonder, then, that - as Tighe noted - Laud's ambitions for a 'Union of the Churches of the Northern Kingdoms' were extended to include the Gallican Church. What is more, this embrace of Gallicanism became commonplace in Anglicanism during the late 18th, finding its apogee in William Wake's (Archbishop of Canterbury 1716-1737) 1718 'Plan of Union'. As a late 19th century history of the Plan stated of Wake's correspondence with the Jansenist and Gallican Louis Ellies du Pin:
We have now seen, so far as the means at our disposal allowed, what was the deliberate judgment of one of the most learned men of the Gallican Church in those days on the doctrines of the Church of England. Even in our Articles, to which the Puritan feels himself nearer than he does to our Liturgy, there has been shown to be but little to which Du Pin took serious exception. More than that, his calm, un-dogmatizing temper, and his true catholicity of spirit, enabled him to allow for what might be good in what was unfamiliar to him, and to distinguish between trifles and essentials. Wake met him in the same liberal spirit ...
It is difficult to refrain from the belief, that had the matter rested with Du Pin and Archbishop Wake alone, the differences left to separate the Gallican and Anglican Churches would have all but disappeared. The union they both sought after was denied them, at least in outward form, on this side the grave. But their work has not been lost. It has shown, more convincingly than ever, that, in Du Pin's own words, "the controversy between us may easily be settled, if only the fairer Theologians are heard on both sides, if dictating is avoided, and we are led, not by party spirit, but by love of seeking the truth".
(The illustrations are depictions of the Jansenist centre of the Abbey of Port Royal.)
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