"The star was a spark of Christ's own kindling": a Laudian Epiphany sermon, nature, grace, and Anglican piety
The sermon also demonstrated how Laudians were promoting an attractive alternative soteriology to a rather rigid expression of Calvinistic scholasticism. As Gardyner expounded in the sermon, the feast of the Epiphany was particularly suited to giving voice to this alternative vision, with natural theology, reason, and a natural piety used by the Triune God to draw the Magi to the Incarnate Word:
I will not affirme, as some doe, that the holy Spirit himselfe assum'd the figure, and forme of this starre, but I may safely say that by vertue of his spirit, who is the Morning Starre of the East, which guides Arcturus, and his Sonnes, as Job speakes, they attain'd the knowledge how this starre did fore-tell the birth of the Messiah, which should smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Seth. The Eternall word, that light of truth did illuminate their soules to understand what Balam their Countreyman had divulged. The starre was a spark of Christ's owne kindling; A torch which himselfe lighted to direct these Wisemens footsteps. For they say not wee have seen a new starre in the ayre, strange, and miraculous, but they adde the particle, the starre, thereby intimating they had seene a starre expected, and formerly reveal'd. Certainly, saith Leo the great, he, which guided their Eye outwardly inspir'd their heart inwardly.
And here from bringing the Magi to a new Sunne on Earth by a new starre in heaven we may observe how sweetly, and favourably the Lord dealts in that hee wins men by those meanes, which are suteable, and correspondent to their dispositions. These Astrologers were studious, and diligent to seeke after God in his coelestiall works, & therefore he teacheth them out of their own book, a starre from heaven shall lead them to the place where divine knowledge is to be had. God is never deficient to him that is not so to himselfe. Indeed our inbred corruption infects whatsoever is infus'd into us, and so no goodnesse in us of it selfe is a fit mover of the good graces of God, yet his voluntary favour, his frank, & free affection regards the small sparkes, and beginnings of light, which himselfe hath set up in our soules, and though it burnes dimme, yet if we let it not goe out, but doe our best to cleare that obscure, faint light, he will make us capable of a greater light. The weake, waxen wings of nature are not sufficient to raise us to our of eternall happinesse, yet if her faculties, by grace enabled, be well husbanded, rightly managed, they will not hinder an ascending a degree, or two towards it. They cannot save us, they may some way profit us, if wee doe not sit downe in the beginnings of knowledge, but with a willing minde goe on, and travell for more ...
I suppose none will conceave the liberall intentions, & bountifull actions of Morall honest men to be evill formally, in the very Essence, though they are so, being taken circumstantially, in respect they ayme not at the right end, Christ's glory, which makes them ineffectuall. For as trueth is truth wheresoever we finde it, so good ceaseth not to be good in whomsoever it resideth. If the subject shall alter the very nature of a quality, then the misplacing of a vertue will prove its losse, & destruction; vertue shall degenerate into vice, and so two opposites may not onely agree, but grow into an inseparable union, and be entirely one ...
The Ancients then who hop'd well of morall honest men are not too uncharitably to be censurd, for, as they urge, though God tyes us to the ordinary means, yet he hath not tyed himselfe ... ingenuity of nature, and other morall excellencies are not opposite, but subordinate to grace: Grace destroyes not, nor abolisheth them, but heales, and perfects them. The Wisemen desir'd to improve their piety, and God sublimates it, sending his starre as a Harbinger to draw them closer to him, & that out of the East, which is the place of the starre's first appearing. Where is he which is borne King of the Iewes? We have seen his starre in the East.
This extract from the sermon is a significant expression of what John Hughes described as "a particular piety and sensibility which could be seen as characteristically Anglican", a piety and sensibility which rejects - and here he quotes Rowan Williams on George Herbert - the view that "God can only be honoured by a kind of dishonouring of the human". At the core of this, as Hughes stated, is the affirmation at the heart of the Hookerian vision, that "grace does not destroy nature but fulfils and perfects it". Or, in the words of Gardyner:
ingenuity of nature, and other morall excellencies are not opposite, but subordinate to grace: Grace destroyes not, nor abolisheth them, but heales, and perfects them.
Gardyner's sermon is a significant example of the non-Calvinistic tradition of soteriology in the late 16th and early 17th century Church of England (and recall how both Elizabeth I and James I/VI rejected the Lambeth Articles). The sermon points to key aspects of this non-Calvinistic soteriology: a more restrained reading of Article 13 (the reading later found in Burnet's influential commentary on the Articles); a less radical understanding of Original Sin, as expounded by Taylor; and a generous affirmation of what Gardyner called "morall excellencies".
This tradition of soteriology would profoundly shape Anglican thought and piety throughout the long 18th century. It also perhaps hints at why the feast of the Epiphany has proven to be a rich source for sermons, poetry, and hymnody in the Anglican tradition. This is the feast in which we joyfully behold that the grace of the Triune God does not destroy nature - or natural religion - but gathers it up in the Incarnate Word, healing and fulfilling it.
(The picture is of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.)
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