from the doctrine and rites of the Church of England, as organised under the Elizabethan Settlement, Herbert derived the spiritual nourishment which satisfied his soul and quickened his pious imagination. Born in 1593, when Whitgift was prosecuting the struggle between episcopacy and puritanism, he died in 1632, the year before the translation of Laud from London to Canterbury. Amid the strife of rival parties, he preserved the ideal of the historic position of the Church of England as a true branch of the Catholic Church, claiming its right to hold the essentials of Catholic doctrine, and exercising the ministry of the Word and Sacraments through a properly ordained priesthood, which, through all the vicissitudes which that Church had undergone, has never been lost. The example and teaching of Herbert and of those who shared his convictions, within a century from the breach with Rome, remind us that the Reformation, in spite of the efforts of extremists and the uncertainty of individual aims, did not effect a complete severance from the past. So far as England was concerned, it was a work of reconstruction ...
The position of a national Church, free from external interference, which Parker and Whitgift had used their power to uphold, was defined unmistakably by Laud and his supporters. In such men as Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, and George Herbert the power of that Church to attract and to nurture, through its ministry of Word and Sacraments, the highest type of religious devotion was manifest. Loyal to the Reformation and recognising the protestant attitude of their Church to Rome, they yet proved that such loyalty was consistent with a theology and with forms of worship hallowed by antiquity, and justified the via media taken by the English Church as scriptural, primitive and truly Catholic.
I confess that the romanticism of the last paragraph strikes me as a little too redolent of Anglo-Catholic revisionist notions of the Elizabethan and Stuart Church—"protestant attitude...to Rome" implicitly contrasted with theology and forms of worship (presumably not Protestant?) and that perennial favorite, the "via media"?
ReplyDeleteI am tempted to say that merely because a historical interpretation savours of romanticism, it is not necessarily wrong. Seriously, however, a few points:
Delete1. It is significant that "protestant ... attitude to Rome" is here positively affirmed, mindful of how 'protestant' had, post-Oxford Movement, become a term from which a significant part of the CofE stepped away. It is also preceded by "Loyal to the Reformation".
2. "... such loyalty was consistent with a theology and with forms of worship hallowed by antiquity": the loyalty in question being to the Reformation. I read this as accepting the Reformed claim that Reformation theology was ressourcement not innovation.
3. And while some accounts of the 'via media' are a nonsense, there are ways in which it remains valid. The English Church did take a via media in some ways. This, after all, is seen in Hooker's defence of the CofE's liturgy being closer to Rome than to some other Reformed churches. A via media is also explicitly celebrated in Herbert's 'The British Church'. Dating the emergence of the idea of a via media is difficult, but I think we can say it was certainly evident by the late Elizabethan period, and then began to flourish under James VI/I. It was bound up with an 'ecclesiastical patriotism', a growing sense that the CofE was not merely one of the Reformed churches, but the *best* Reformed church.
4. In terms of doctrine, the determination to avoid controversies over predestination, to keep Dort at arm's length, reject the Lambeth Articles, and not to go beyond Article 17 all again point to a form of via media: a modest Reformed, Augustinian statement - not foreign to some Latin Scholastic accounts of predestination - while avoiding the precision and speculations of some Reformed thought.
Your correction of my failure to take the author's theme of loyalty to the Reformation is appreciated, and your first and second points are well taken.
DeleteRegarding your third and fourth points, I don't argue with your basic assertion, but I wonder whether the phrase "via media" is too much freighted with romanticism to be useful any longer, and if aurea mediocritas ("golden mean") might be more useful as a description of the moderation of the reformed English Church and of Anglicanism, saving us from the ahistorical and even anti-historical assumptions associated with the "myth the English Reformation" (MacCulloch). That word (or phrase) seems to me to capture better the essence of Herbert's poem, or Jewel's defense, or Hooker's theology, or—almost literally so—Sanderson's Preface to the 1662 Prayer Book than the notion of an intentional via media between Rome and Geneva (or between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism more generally).
Granted, "aurea mediocritas" can itself suffer under the weight of romantic assumptions about Anglicanism or even about the general English character.
I certainly agree that any notion of a via media between Rome and Geneva, or Rome and Protestantism more generally, has to be robustly disposed of. The Protestantism of the CofE (and the recognition of this in the original quote in the past was key for me) was definitive. This, however, does not take us very far in some way because it inevitably raises the question 'What sort of Protestantism?'. I have an article coming out on this on another site in the next few days but the basic thrust will be that we should be comparing the CofE to the Lutheran churches of the northern kingdoms: Protestant national churches, retaining many liturgy and ceremonies. With a slightly different emphasis, the Articles of Religion can also be seen as a via media between Wittenberg and Zurich: a significant number of Articles lifted from Augsburg, a clear Reformed approach in other Articles, Articles 26,27,28 combining Reformed and Lutheran perspectives.
DeleteThat said, I am very happy with "aurea mediocritas". It also applies to how the Reformation in England was defined by Conformist and then Laudian apologists: with an emphasis on due order, constitutional means, the respective roles of Convocation and Parliament, disapproval of popular action etc.
The myth of an English Reformation standing alone and apart is, of course, a fantasy. But I do think we need something much nuanced that MacCulloch's portrayal of the CofE as a straight-forwardly Reformed (as in 'Reformed tradition') church until the arrival of pesky, Romanizing avant-garde Conformists and Laudians. That too is a fantasy, not accounting for the clear Protestant identity of the avant-garde and the Laudians, and the fact that so-called 'Laudianism' had deep roots in the CofE. Particularly missing from MacCulloch's portrayal are the similarities with Lutheran Europe - in liturgy, ceremonies, images (noting Elizabeth I's moderating revision of the Homily on Images), and pastoral practices (e.g. acceptance of private baptism).