'In the Greek Church': Looking East with Ussher
Add hereunto the prayer of Damascen, which is still used in the Greek Church before the receiving of the Communion: "Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who alone hast power to forgive sins, in thy goodness and loving-kindness pass by all the offences of thy servant, whether done of knowledge or of ignorance, voluntary or involuntary, in deed or word, or thought; and that which is used after, in the Liturgy ascribed to St James, wherewith the priest shutteth up the whole service: "I beseech thee, Lord God, hear my prayer in the behalf of thy servants, and as a forgetter of injuries pass over all their offences. Forgive them all their excess, both voluntary and involuntary: deliver them from everlasting punishment. For thou art he who didst command us, saying, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven. Forasmuch as thou art our God, a God who art able to shew mercy and save and forgive sins: and glory becometh thee, together with the Father who is without beginning, and the Spirit, the Author of life, now and ever, and world without end. Amen."
This invocation of the liturgies from the East is found throughout Ussher's Answer to a Jesuit (1622). He refers to "the Liturgy of the church of Constantinople, ascribed to St Chrysostom", "the Liturgies of the churches of Egypt, which carry the title of St Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Cyril of Alexandria", "the Greek Liturgy attributed to St James, the brother of our Lord", and "the Liturgy of the Church of Alexandria, ascribed to St Mark". In other words, pointing to the Orthodox Communion rite and the Liturgy of Saint James in discussing of the power to forgive sins was no mere tactical act: it was part of a deeper knowledge of the East's liturgies and an obvious respect for those liturgies and their churches.
Also significant is that we see exactly the same reverent approach to the liturgies of the East in Jeremy Taylor. In Clerus Domini (1651), he pointed to "the Liturgy reported to be made by S. James, which is of the most ancient use in the Greek Church" and "S. Mark's". In The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), Taylor invokes, for example, "the Greek liturgy attributed to S. James" and "the Egyptian liturgy". It is another interesting example of how the Reformed orthodox Ussher and the Laudian Taylor, for all of their soteriological differences, shared important convictions, not the least of which was a respect for the Churches of the East and a willingness to acknowledge how their faith and practice was, in their view, shared by the Churches of England and Ireland.
Having invoked the East's liturgies, Ussher then considered the form of private absolution used in the Orthodox churches:
in the present practice of the Greek Church, I find the absolution expressed in the third person, as attributed wholly to God; and not in the first, as if it came from the priest himself.
Taylor likewise points to the Greeks not using the indicative form of private absolution:
it is certain that the forms of the present use were not used for many ages of the church: in the Greek church they were never used ...
Ussher then pointed to another aspect of the Eastern absolution, as outlined by Patriarch Jeremias II (1587-95):
And so among the Grecians whatsoever sins the penitent "for forgetfulness or shamefacedness doth leave unconfessed, we pray the merciful and most pitiful God that those also may be pardoned unto him, and we are persuaded that he shall receive pardon of them from God," saith Jeremy, the late Patriarch of Constantinople.
Where, by the way, you may observe no such necessity to be here held of confessing every known sin unto a priest, that if either for shame, or some other respect, the penitent do not make an entire confession, but conceal somewhat from the notice of his ghostly Father, his confession should thereby be made void, and he excluded from all hope of forgiveness.
Again, Taylor also noted this understanding shaping the East's approach to private confession:
The Greeks had no such tradition ... The Greeks were not oblig'd to it; it was not necessary to them.
For both Ussher and Taylor, the East's approach to private confession and absolution was radically different to the Tridentine practice: pastoral not juridical, not requiring from the penitent an enumeration of all sins, with a form of absolution older and more fitting than the Latin indicative form. And for both Ussher and Taylor, this was the practice of the Churches of England and Ireland, sharing what they understood to be the practice of the East. Ussher gives this touching expression in An Answer to a Jesuit:
it being found true by often experience, that the wounded conscience will still pinch grievously, notwithstanding the confession made unto God in secret. At such a time as this then, where the sinner can find no ease at home, what should he do but use the best means he can to find it abroad? Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?
To support this, he then turned to one of the great Greek Fathers:
According to which prescription Gregory Nyssen, toward the end of his sermon of repentance, useth this exhortation to the sinner: "Be sensible of the disease wherewith thou art taken, afflict thyself as much as thou canst. Seek also the mourning of thy entirely affected brethren to help thee unto liberty. Shew me thy bitter and abundant tears, that I may also mingle mine therewith. Take likewise the priest for a partner of thine affliction, as thy Father. For who is it that so falsely obtaineth the name of a father, or hath so adamantine a soul, that he will not condole with his son's lamenting? Shew unto him without blushing the things that were kept close; discover the secrets of thy soul, as shewing thy hidden disease unto thy physician. He will have care both of thy credit and of thy cure."
This, said Ussher, was not an exhortation to "that we should open ourselves in this manner unto every hedge-priest", but rather:
communicate our case both to such Christian brethren, and to such a ghostly father, as had skill in physic of this kind, and out of a fellow-feeling of our grief would apply themselves to our recovery.
It is an approach to private confession and absolution that, in many ways, is deeply Orthodox.
These examples of Ussher looking towards the East raise important questions about how he viewed the Churches of England and Ireland. It is another demonstration of how 'Calvinist' falls flat as a description of Ussher's theological and ecclesial vision. Alongside Taylor and, that other great Irish Laudian bishop, Bramhall, we see how a shared reverence for the Christian East suggests a broader, deeper vision of how the Churches of England and Ireland were to be situated. That the Churches of England and Ireland could, according to Ussher, Bramhall, and Taylor, be understood to share significant aspects of the faith and practice of the Churches of the East places them amongst the national, episcopal churches, free of papal claims, stretching from the far west of Europe to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean.
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