Ending 'the late unhappy confusions': St. Bartholomew's Day 1662 and the Book of Common Prayer
In this week in which the feast of St. Bartholomew is celebrated, laudable Practice will consider the Act of Uniformity 1662, its provisions coming into force on 24th August of that year. Each year the anniversary is often met with either awkward embarrassment or explicit criticism from many Anglican commentators. I have previously suggested that St. Bartholomew's Day 1662 should instead be a cause for Anglican thanksgiving, as it provided the foundations for the unity and accord of 18th century Anglicanism.
This week, rather than looking forward from 1662, across the 'long 18th century', I want to encourage us to look back, to the decades which preceded 1662, "the late unhappy confusions". The Act of Uniformity put an end to those confusions, restoring peace and order to the Churches of England and Ireland.
Clergy assenting to the Book of Common Prayer, its rites and ceremonies, was a crucial part of that restoration of peace and good order. The peace of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline Church has been continually disturbed by factious spirits who refused to conform, despite the provisions of the 1559 Act of Uniformity and, as in the Canons of 1604, the subscription given at ordination:
That the Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God, and that it may lawfully so be used, and that he himself will use the Form in the said Book prescribed in publick Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and none other.
The agitation against the Prayer Book consistently failed to convince successive Supreme Governors, as seen in the 1604 Proclamation issued by James after the Hampton Court conference:
we found mighty and vehement informations supported with so weak and slender proofs, as it appeared unto us and our council, that there was no cause why any change should have been at all in that which was most impugned, the Book of Common Prayer, containing the form of the public service of God here established, neither in the doctrine which appeared to be sincere, nor in the forms and rites which were justified out of the practice of the primitive Church.
Furthermore, this was a case of King and bishops defending popular piety against the ideological vision of the 'godly'. As Judith Maltby notes, "a generation past the Settlement of 1559" laity had clearly formed a significant "attachment" to the Prayer Book, with the records of church courts showing that "parishioners also demanded that their ministers not tamper with the set order of the Prayer Book".
The agitation of the 'godly' against the Prayer Book, however, continued, disturbing the peace of the Church of England. It culminated, amidst civil war, with the Prayer Book prohibited by Parliamentarian authorities in 1645, the Westminster Directory being devised a replacement, and the direction that all copies of the Prayer Book be destroyed.
The consequences of this are set out in John Morrill's essay 'The Church in England, 1642-9'. Unlike the Prayer Book which it sought to replace, the Directory "did not even require the use of basic formularies like the Nicene or Apostles' creeds". This, no doubt, contributed to the prohibited Prayer Book being "widely used", and "less than 25%" of parishes purchasing the Directory". The Directory's rejection of the observance of the great feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun, did not prevent 43% of parishes as late as 1650 celebrating the Communion on these days, with an alternative pattern recommended by the Directory "recorded in only 20% of parishes". No provision was made in the Directory for the use of the font, leading to examples of conflict between ministers appointed by Parliamentarian authorities and parents seeking their child baptised at the parish font. (The font was explicitly mentioned in opening rubric of the 1559 rite.) The Directory also "barred any formal liturgy for the dead".
The Directory, in other words, was an abject failure as a liturgy, bringing disharmony and confusion in the place of common prayer.
Such disharmony and confusion had been predicted by Jeremy Taylor. In his An Apologie for the Liturgie (1649), Taylor reviewed the Directory and lamented the consequences for common prayer:
there must needs be infinite difformity in the publique Worship, and all the benefits which before were the consequents of Conformity and Unity will be lost, and if they be not valuable, I leave it to all them to consider, who know the inconveniences of Publick disunion, and the Publick disunion that is certainly consequent to them, who doe not communicate in any common Formes of Worship. And to think that the Directory will bring Conformity, is as if one should say, that all who are under the same Hemisphere are joyned in communi patriâ, and will love like Country-men. For under the Directory there will be as different religions, and as different desires, and as differing formes, as there are severall varieties of Men and Manners under the one half of Heaven, who yet breathe under the same half of the Globe.
The 1662 Act of Uniformity brought these confusions to an end. The agitation which had disturbed the peace of the Church of England over decades, the noisy disobedience of a minority of ministers, and the refusal to conform to the decent rites and ceremonies of the Prayer Book ceased with the requirement that all clergy give "unfaigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by" the Book of Common Prayer.
In his sermon, Durel demonstrated how a refusal to conform to the Prayer Book was a rejection not just of the peace of the Church of England but also of "the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas" and the ordering of their public worship:
For to say nothing at present of the Primitive Christian Church, after whose model our Church hath so Religiously endeavoured to conform herself in her Reformation, it is certain that there is not any one of the things which these people condemn as evil in our Church, which is not practised in one or other of the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas: or which they do not either approve of as good and necessary, or at least bear with as indifferent ... I may venture to tell you by the way, that the Churches of Hungary, Transylvania, Lithuania, Poland, the great and the less, and the remainders of the Church of the Brethren of Bohemia (who of all Christians were the first Reformers in these latter times) have not onely their Liturgies very like unto ours both in matter and form, but that they use them also after our manner.
There the people repeat aloud the Prayers after the Minister. They stand up at the rehearsal of the Confession of the Christian Faith, and they bear their part in certain places at Divine Service as is practised among us, namely in their great Litany, which is the same with ours: for they have many others, especially in Lithuania, and in Poland. In the Bohemian Churches, and in those of Poland which follow the same Confession, they receive the Sacrament kneeling.
They observe the Festival days of Christ, of the Virgin, and of the Apostles. And the same is also practised in those Churches of Poland and Lithuania that are of the Helvetian Confession. And in all these Churches, and in many more which I could name, they bury their dead with certain Forms.
Rejection of the Prayer Book's rites and ceremonies, therefore, was a sectarian rejection of a liturgical order known to many of the Reformed Churches. Durel then pointed to a practice in the Communion liturgy of the French Reformed Church, in which, after reception of the Sacrament, communicants knelt to sing the Nunc Dimittis:
it is the custom in. the Reformed Churches of that Kingdom, at the close of the Communion to sing the Song of Simeon kneeling. And it would puzzle any one to bring a reason why the Canticle of Simeon should be sung in that posture, rather then the Psalmes of David, many of which are Prayers throughout as well as this. But it is enough to satisfie any rational person, to alleadge custom in [this], as in all other things of the same nature. And more then this is not required to bind men to conform to what others do, unless they mean, not onely to be reputed contentious, superstitious, and ridiculous, but really to be such ... the custom of every particular Church [is] alone is sufficient to oblige to a Conformity therewith, not its members onely, but even all who upon occasion happen to meet with them.
Respecting and conforming to such a godly custom of the French Reformed Church, when in that kingdom, likewise necessitated respecting and conforming to the godly customs of the English Church. This included kneeling to receive the holy Sacrament, invoked by Non-conformists as a key reason for refusing conformity to the Prayer Book. Durel, by contrast, placed it in the context of a legitimate diversity of postures used by the Reformed Churches:
It was by vertue of this priviledge that the Church when she reformed the superstitions which were crept into Religion in most of the States of Europe, ordered that the holy Communion should in some places be received sitting at the Table, in others standing, and in some kneeling. Out of these three different manners she hath made choice of the last to be observed in this Countrey, and in some others, as the most humble; and ... the most suitable to wretched sinners, who come into the presence of the great and dreadful Judge of all the world, to receive by the hands of his Ministers the seal of the remission of their sins, not thinking it possible that any upon such an occasion should ever shew too much humility, too much reverence, too much fear, and too much of an holy trembling. And it hath been so generally approved of by all Reformed Christians of other Countries, especially by those of France, that there never were any that did make any scruple to conform thereunto when they were amongst us, before our late unhappy Confusions.
To reject conformity to the rites and ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer was, Durel convincingly argued, to also reject the peace and good order of "the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas". Non-conformity was, therefore, the sickly fruit of contentious spirit, contrary to the apostolic exhortation which was the text for Durel's sermon: "But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God". Such was the spirit which resulted in "the late unhappy confusions". Rejoicing that, by means of the Restoration, "Church and State" had "been brought back" to "Peace, Safety, and good Order", Durel set forth how conformity secured these blessings:
as you tender the edifying of God's Church, you would wholly strip yourselves of the Spirit of contention. And considering that it is an effect of the wiles of Satan, who seeing that we (through the grace of God) agree in all things which are necessary unto Salvation, drives to divide, and to incense us one against the other about Vestments, or colours or musick Notes, and for Ceremonies, which in their natures are indifferent and innocent; submit your selves with all humility unto that publick order which you find established in the Church of God in this Kingdome while you live in it, and when the providence of God shall lead you into another Countrey, do the like there.
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