'Excellently learned, pious and charitable': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and the good bishop's death

He was buried about a Week after his Death at Brecknock, and lies, as I am informed, between two of his Predecessors, Bishop Manwaring and Bishop Laucy, and his Funeral was attended with great Numbers of the Gentry and Clergy, both of the County of Caermarthen and Brecknock.

It was on 17th February 1710 that Bishop George Bull passed from this earthly life. In Robert Nelson -in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull - fittingly notes that Bull was laid to rest alongside two particular predecessors in the See of St Davids. Roger Maynwaring was bishop 1636-46, William Lucy 1660-1677 - the last bishop before the Parliament abolished episcopacy and the first bishop after the Restoration. Nelson's reference to Bull's mortal remains resting between two predecessors whose episcopates reflected "the late unhappy confusions" was hardly without significance: it was a reflection of Bull's own experiences during the Interregnum and of his Tory loyalties.

Bull had initially requested to be buried elsewhere in his diocese. His wife, however, sought a burial place for both of them:

But the Bishop was prevailed upon by the Desire of his Wife, to consent to be buried at Brecknock [i.e. Brecon], it being the Place where she designed to pass her sorrowful Widowhood, and consequently, thereby should have an assurance of lying in the same Grave with him; and the matter was so ordered, that in making the Bishop's Grave, she gave Directions to have it done up with Walls everyway, and so large as to contain two Corpses. And it hath pleased God very lately, since I begun the Life of her excellent Husband, to call her to Rest ...

Here is a simple but moving reminder of Article XXXII. Not only priests and deacons, but bishops also "are not commanded by God's Law ... to abstain from marriage". As Jeremy Taylor stated in Ductor dubitantium (1660):

The old primitives and holy Bishops and Priests in the first ages liv'd better with their wives, then now-a-days they doe without them; and therefore it were better to tread in their footsteps, and to walk in that way to which we are pointed by the law of God ... in Scripture no chastity or continence is requir'd of a Bishop but the Matrimonial.

Ecclesiastical customs and laws which dictate otherwise are, declared Taylor, "a restraint of that liberty which Christ hath left".

During Nelson's writing of the Life, Bull's wife died:

and she is now reposed with this pious Prelate, in that silent Retirement she had provided for herself, till the last Trump shall summon them both to Judgment; And the Lord grant unto them, that they may find Mercy of the Lord in that Day.

Note how Nelson merely offers the words of II Timothy 1.18 at this point. No 'rest in peace'. No anxious 'deliver them from their sins'. No 'bring them into your kingdom'. He merely repeated the Apostle's words for deliverance on the day on Judgement, words which Grotius - who, of course, we have been previously told by Nelson, was held in admiration by Bull - understood to be referring to the deceased Onesiphorus, giving prayerful voice to the Christian hope in the life everlasting. Or as the Prayer Book Burial of the Dead says, "that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting glory".

It was Bull's wife who chose the inscription for his grave:

His Grave is covered with a plain Stone, and the short Inscription upon it which follows, was framed, and ordered by his pious Widow, who was so satisfied with it herself, that she would not suffer it to be cast into any other Form.

HERE LIETH THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, Dr. GEORGE BULL, LATE BISHOP OF THIS DIOCESE; WHO WAS EXCELLENTLY LEARNED, PIOUS AND CHARITABLE; AND WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE FEBRUARY THE 17th. 1709 [new style, 1710], AGED73.

'Excellently learned, pious and charitable'. Amidst the disputes involving bishops in the early 18th and mid-21st centuries, and the various agendas that ecclesiastical parties urge upon bishops, perhaps nothing should be quite so desired as those words chosen by Mrs. Bull: learned, pious, and charitable bishops. Other matters can stand or fall, be addressed through different means, or regarded as not entirely necessary - but to have learned, pious, and charitable bishops, that surely would be for the good of the life, witness, and ministry of the Church catholic.

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

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