The Church of Ireland's Declaration of 1870: a Laudian statement

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It is not uncommon in the Church of Ireland for The Preamble and Declaration of 1870 to be invoked by evangelicals as a 'low church' document, almost as if it is a confessional expression of evangelical Anglicanism. The reality, however, is that The Preamble and Declaration is robustly Laudian in character.

To illustrate this, I set out below the key statements from The Preamble and Declaration alongside excerpts from a 1630 sermon by the Laudian divine Giles Widdowes. The sermon was, according to its title, "concerning the lawfulnesse of church-authority, for ordaining, and commanding of rites, and ceremonies, to beautifie the Church": it was, in other words, a thoroughly Laudian statement. The prominent Puritan polemicist William Prynne felt compelled to attempt to answer it, an indication of its significance as a Laudian statement.

Setting The Preamble and Declaration alongside Widdowes' sermon not only reveals the character of this foundational document of the Church of Ireland - it also illustrates the nature of Laudianism, as a movement committed to the episcopal and liturgical character of a Protestant national Church. 

Laudianism, therefore, was no anticipation of Anglo-catholicism. When Laudianism is (entirely) misinterpreted as such an anticipation, the Laudian character of The Preamble and Declaration - which was intended to be an explicit rejection of later 19th century Anglo-catholicism - is obscured. Widdowes' sermon, however, definitively demonstrates how Laudianism stands apart from later Anglo-catholicism. In doing so, it therefore sheds a bright light on the Laudian nature of the Declaration of 1870.


We, the archbishops and bishops of this the Ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church of Ireland, together with the representatives of the clergy and laity of the same ...

From the yeare of the Lord 179 there were Arch-bishops & Bishops in the Church of England, and Wales ... and they haue successiuely continued to this day ... Here note that our Church did not beginne a little after Luther, but being sicke with Popery, she the recouered her Apostolicall faith. Like as a sick man recouering, then enters not into the World to beginne his life, but into the recouery of his former health.

The Church of Ireland doth, as heretofore, accept and unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as given by inspiration of God, and containing all things necessary to salvation; and doth continue to profess the faith of Christ as professed by the Primitive Church.

The doctrine of the primitiue Church, which is the law, and the Gospell, the old, and the new Testament, and here is vnderstood the doctrine of the Reformed Church, which is the 39 Articles of Religion. This is the materiall breife of all Christian doctrine, and let this suffice for this present. 

The Church of Ireland ... will maintain inviolate the three orders of bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons in the sacred ministry.

There was a superioritie still in the Ministerie. Christ aboue the twelue Apostles, the twelue Apostles aboue the seuentie disciples: S. Paule aboue Timothie, Timothy aboue the Presbyters in the Church of Ephesus in doctrine, and manners of the Church. 1. Tim. 1: in ordaining Bishopps, & Deacons ... The Bishop doth gouerne by the key of knowledge and by the key of iurisdiction. The Bishop doth gouerne in the Church by the key of knowledge in that he giues authority by ordaination & mission to able and fit men for to preach, to pray, &c. in the Church. 

The Church of Ireland, as a Reformed and Protestant Church, doth hereby reaffirm its constant witness against all those innovations in doctrine and worship, whereby the Primitive Faith hath been from time to time defaced or overlaid, and which at the Reformation this Church did disown and reject.

Puritans, who desire to seeme to be iust, and holy; but in their doctrine, and discipline, they are the vnderminers of our True, Protestant, Reformed Church.

The Church of Ireland doth receive and approve The Book of the Articles of Religion, commonly called the Thirty–nine Articles, received and approved by the archbishops and bishops and the rest of the clergy of Ireland in the synod holden in Dublin, A.D. 1634*; also, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the Church of Ireland ...

For the 39 Articles are true precepts of faith; all Collected out of holy writ. The Common praiers are godly praiers ... This Puritan is a Non-Conformist. For he is oppositely set, a Contradictist to the Scriptures deduceable sence in three things. The first is the 39 Articles of our Churches Reformed faith. The second is our Common Praier-booke. The third is the Canons of our Church.

[*We must note, of course, that the Church of Ireland's commitment to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion is itself the result of a definitively Laudian act by the 1634 Synod, with those Articles replacing the Irish Articles of 1615.]

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