'She only followed the example of the primitive church': Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures on the rights and liberties of the ecclesia Anglicana

In the fourth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism, Le Mesurier reaffirms the Old High conviction that the Reformation in England was a legitimate restoration of the rights and liberties of a national church, rooted in patristic experience.

Such a confident, positive assertion by the Old High tradition of the Reformation of the ecclesia Anglicana contrasts with the (at best) unease about the Reformation increasingly evident in Tractarianism and, also, later progressive Anglican distaste for the Royal Supremacy, failing to recognise its vital historic significance in offering the alternative to papal supremacy:

At the reformation, therefore, the church of England did only reassert that independence which belonged to her in the beginning, and which, neither to her nor to any national church can be denied. Again, in recognizing the king of this realm for her head, as supreme in ecclesiastical as well as temporal causes, she only followed the example of the primitive church, which, from the moment that it pleased God to give her Christian emperors, submitted herself to their authority, and owned them for her sovereigns. And this lasted for several centuries, without any pretence to the contrary advanced by any one pope,

There will appear no doubt of this, if we take ever so cursory a survey of what was the practice of the first ages, in which we shall find the absolute independency of bishops established in the first instance, and afterwards only limited by their being made subject to the superintendence of patriarchs or metropolitans within their several provinces, and to the emperor as the head of all. Their independency was so absolute at the beginning, that it extended to all matters whatever, relating to the internal economy of the church, to rites and ceremonies, to the form of prayer which was used, nay, to the particular terms of the creeds, with all that was necessary in order to enforce and to preserve

uniformity.

According to the practice then pursued and approved by all the orthodox, every Christian was bound to join in communion with the particular church within whose limits he was resident, and to conform to all her ordinances, under the penalty of being considered as a schismatic. Such was the state of every church within herself, and such her constitution with respect to individual members. As far as this goes; therefore, it is clear that the church of England was fully authorized in the claims which she made for herself at the reformation, and in the manner in which she established and gave effect to those claims.

We might note that Le Mesurier's robust, confident understanding that the Reformation rejection of the papal supremacy, and the restoration of the rights and liberties of a national church under the Royal Supremacy, was a return to an earlier patristic vision of the Church catholic, finds contemporary expression in the view of the late John Hughes:

The rediscovery of the dignity of the laity at the Reformation and the suspicion of the clericalism which had developed in the medieval West from the Hildebrandine reforms of the eleventh century onwards, meant a return in the Church of England to the more non-dualist, integralist ecclesiology of the first millennium, combined with a more Byzantine or Carolinian view of the priestly nature of 'secular' authority, which was recovered in the Reformation.

In other words, the Old High view expressed by Le Mesurier, rather than being the stance of a redundant pre-1833 Anglicanism , no longer relevant to contemporary Anglicans, turns out to have enduring significance, a version of what Hughes termed "the integral humanism that shaped the whole of Christendom".

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

Search This Blog