Raging against a Church catholic and reformed: why we give thanks for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot

The never enough wondered at and abhorred Powder-Treason ...

The words are those of James I in his 1616 Premonition, addressed to the princes of Christendom, a preamble to the re-printing of his 1609 Apology for the Oath of Allegiance.  The Premonition contains an account by James of his faith as "a Catholic Christian".  It is a significant statement from the Supreme Governor of the Jacobean Church, the Church the Gunpowder plotters sought to overthrow and extirpate. In many ways, it answers the question 'why should we give thanks for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot?'. We should do so because the failure of the plotters secured the future of the catholic and reformed faith of "our Church", a faith given expression by James in this work.

In James's account of the faith of the ecclesia Anglicana we see how the Church of Laud and of 1662 has continuity with the Church of the Elizabethan Settlement and Hooker's Lawes; we see the roots of the belief of Anglicanism in the long 18th century and beyond that it embodied a generous patristic orthodoxy; and we see the attractiveness of a Church catholic and reformed, open to the healing of the divisions of the 16th century.  The question, then, is not so much 'why should we give thanks for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot?' but 'how can we not give thanks for the failure of the Gunpowder treason?'.

I am such a CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN as believeth the three Creeds, that of the Apostles, that of the Council of Nice, and that of Athanasius, the two latter being paraphrases to the former. And I believe them in that sense as the ancient Fathers and Councils that made them did understand them, to which three Creeds all the ministers of England do subscribe at their Ordination ...

I reverence and admit the Four First General Councils as Catholic and Orthodox. And the said Four General Councils are acknowledged by our Acts of Parliament, and received for orthodox by our Church.

As for the Fathers, I reverence them as much and more than the Jesuits do, and as much as themselves ever craved. For whatever the Fathers for the first five hundred years did with an unanimous consent agree upon, to be believed as a necessary point of salvation, I either will believe it also, or at least will be humbly silent, not taking upon me to condemn the same ...

As for the Scriptures, no man doubteth I will believe them. But even for the Apocrypha, I hold them in the same accompt that the Ancients did. They are still printed and bound with our Bibles, and publicly read in our churches. I reverence them as the writings of holy and good men ...

As for the Saints departed, I honour their memory, and in honour of them do we in our Church observe the days of so many of them as the Scripture doth canonize for saints ...

And first for the Blessed Virgin Mary, I yield her that which the Angel Gabriel pronounced of her, and which in her Canticle she prophesied of herself, that is, That she is blessed among women, and That all generations shall call her blessed. I reverence her as the Mother of Christ, of whom our Saviour took His flesh, and so the Mother of God, since the Divinity and Humanity of Christ are inseparable. And I freely confess that she is in glory both above angels and men, her own Son (that is both God and man) only excepted ...

I am no Iconomachus. I quarrel not with the making of images, either for public decoration or for men's private uses. But that they should be worshipped, be prayed to, or any holiness attributed unto them, was never known of the ancients ...

That Bishops ought to be in the Church, I ever maintained it as an Apostolic institution and so the ordinance of God, contrary to the Puritans, and likewise to Bellarmine, who denies that Bishops have their jurisdiction immediately from God ...

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 ...

Thus have I now made a free Confession of my Faith. And, I hope, I have fully cleared myself from being an Apostate; and, as far from being an heretic as one may be, that believeth the Scriptures, and the three Creeds, and acknowledgeth the four first General Councils ... closing up this head with the maxim of Vincentius Lirinensis, that I will never refuse to embrace any opinion in divinity necessary to salvation which the whole Catholic Church with an unanimous consent have constantly taught and believed even from the Apostles' days, for the space of many ages thereafter without any interruption.