laudable Practice

In his 2016 article ' Primitive Christianity revived: religious renewal in Augustan England ', Eamon Duffy pointed to "the new assurance" of Anglicanism at the Restoration that it was the embodiment of the Primitive Church. This can give rise to an interpretation in which the Anglicanism of the' long 18th century' is believed to have viewed itself in 'splendid isolation', haughtily aloof from the other Christian traditions in Europe during this era.  There are very good reasons indeed for robustly challenging any such notion. The Laudian and High Church tradition had a vibrant cosmopolitan vision, embracing the Gallicans and Jansenists . 18th century Anglicanism had high praise for the Lutheran churches and exercised a significant care for non-episcopal Protestant churches .  Another expression of such cosmopolitanism is found in invocations of leading European eirenic Protestant thinkers and their view of the Church of England. Timothy Puller's 1...

From Casaubon's preface to his  Answer to Cardinal Perron  (1612), a summary of how James VI/I and his eirenic, Hookerian orthodoxy prized and envisaged the restoration of the unity of Christendom, through  charity and moderation healing the wounds of disunity, allowing the churches to be centred around 'the ancient and the necessary'. Once again, it demonstrates how an eirenic vision - rather than a straightforward Reformed Conformity - was evident in the Jacobean Church. Religious and wise men shall further understand what manner of peace, and concord in the Church this most pious Prince wisheth: and upon what terms and conditions his Majesty is ready to make covenant. For this answer is tempered with such moderation, that the zealous endeavour by all good means to make up peace, appeareth not to be inferior to the zealous endeavour of defending the truth. And this surely is the King's opinion, this his firm sentence, that it is but vain for such men to think, or talk...

In another example of the eirenic, generous orthodoxy urged by James VI/I, Casaubon in his  Answer to Cardinal Perron  (1612) invoked a liberty on "things not necessary" as a means of promoting peace between national churches on opposing sides of the Reformation divide. Here again James and Casaubon both look back to Hooker, with his insistence that there can be unity and communion between national churches upholding different ceremonies, for the Church catholic can have "without offence or breach of concord her manifold varieties in rites and ceremonies of religion" ( LEP V.68.6). Similarly, James and Casaubon also anticipate the Laudian vision - shared with Grotius - of a Union of Churches of the Northern Kingdoms , including the Gallican church .   Wherefore his Maiestie thinketh that there is no more compendious way to the making of peace, then that things necessarie should be diligently separated from things not necessarie: that all endeauours might be spent a...

In his   Answer to Cardinal Perron  (1612), Casaubon noted the call of James I for key reforms to the Roman liturgy: use of the vernacular; communion in both kinds: an end to private masses; no adoration of images or relics; and the removal of invocation of saints.  Alongside this, James, as he had stated in  his 1616  Premonition  concerning the Bishop of Rome, would, if "the forme of the ancient Church be restored ... acknowledge his primacie". Such reforms, according to Casaubon, would be a basis for intercommunion between the Churches of Europe: For the communion of the faithfull consisteth much in the publike exercises of pietie: and this is the chiefe bond of union so much desired by good men. Wherefore if Christians could but agree about this, why might not all Europe communicate together? only, granting a libertie to schoole-Diuines with moderation to debate other opinions. Which were a thing much to be wished, and that foundation once laid, by the ...

Following on from the consideration of  Unum Necessarium   in Jeremy Taylor Week, it is worth discussing how earlier divines of the ecclesia Anglicana provided antecedents for Taylor.  The issue of the fate of infants dying before Baptism led Taylor to refer to an incident involving King James VI/I and the Scottish Church: That it having been been affirmed by S. Austin , that Infants dying unbaptized are damn'd, he is deservedly called duruspater Infantum, and generally forsaken by all sober men of the later ages: And it will be an intolerable thing to think the Church of England guilty of that which all her wiser sons, and all the Christian Churches generally abhor. I remember that I have heard that K. James reproving a Scottish Minister, who refus'd to give private Baptism to a dying Infant; being ask'd by the Minister, if he thought the Child should be damn'd for want of Baptism, answered, 'No, but I think you may be damn'd for refusing it': and he said w...

For today's post, an extract from the Answer to Cardinal Perron (1612) of Isaac Casaubon, the Huguenot thinker who found refuge in the Church of James I/VI and was directed by the Crown to respond to Perron's assault on the English Church.  Reading Casaubon's section on "the mystery of the sacred Eucharist", it is difficult not to think of Charles Prior's statement that aspects of Laudianism were "deeply entrenched in Jacobean religious culture". Related to this, it is suggestive of how the irenic theological commitments of James were of particular significance to this.  What is more, it is a reminder that what could attract some significant French Protestants during these decades to the ecclesia Anglicana was not the recognition of merely another Reformed Church but, rather, something distinctive: that the ecclesia Anglicana was - as Clarendon would famously declare at the Restoration - "the best and the best-reformed church in the Christia...