laudable Practice

In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a good sermon by a stranger, but no Common Prayer yet - 1st July 1660. After dinner to St. Margaret’s, where the first time I ever heard Common Prayer in that Church - 5th August 1660. In the morn to our own church, where Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by saying 'Glory be to the Father, &c.' after he had read the two psalms; but the people had been so little used to it, that they could not tell what to answer  - 4th November 1660. This day also did Mr. Mills begin to read all the Common Prayer, which I was glad of - 11th November 1660. Pepys' diary entries for 1660 provide an insight into how the return of the Book of Common Prayer was, in many places, approached with a prudent caution in the aftermath of the Restoration. It was, of course, the case that, as the Preface to the 1662 revision would declare, in constitutional terms, the legal requirement to use to the Prayer Book had not been legitimately repeale...

I hope it will so happen to us, that it will be verified here, what was once said of the catholics, under the fury of Justina: "Sed tanta fuit perseverantia fidelium populorum, ut animas prius amittere, quàm episcopum mallent;" if it were put to our choice, rather to die, (to wit, the death of martyrs, not rebels) than to lose the sacred order and offices of episcopacy, without which no priest, no ordination, no consecration of the sacrament, no absolution, no rite, or sacrament, legitimately can be performed, in order to eternity. Jeremy Taylor's declaration in his 1642 work Episcopacy Asserted was a statement of Laudian maximalism that would, as we have seen , be later repeated in the very different circumstances of his sermon at the 1661 consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops for the restored Church of Ireland. As previously suggested in the post regarding that sermon, however, there are grounds for understanding this maximalist Laudian claim as fundamentally...

On this day in 1661, Jeremy Taylor entered the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin to preach at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops (one of whom was Taylor himself) for the restored Church of Ireland. There was something of an understandable atmosphere of Episcopalian and Royalist triumphalism on the day, captured in the anthem written for the occasion: Now, that the Lord hath re-advanced the crown, Which thirst of spoyle and frantick zeal threw down. Now, that the Lord the miter hath restor'd, Which with the crown lay in dust abhor'd ... Taylor's sermon was very well-received. Dudley Loftus , a canny political operator during the Commonwealth and at the Restoration, noted in his account of the proceedings : The Bishop of Downes Sermon was such as gave great and general satisfaction, being elegantly, religiously, and prudently composed, and so convincingly satisfying the judgments of those who have opposed the order and jurisdiction of Episcopacy, ...

While The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761) ended its survey of the place of imagery in the Church of England since the Reformation with an account of the return of dignified, modest imagery in the Restoration Church , consideration of the criticism levelled at the depiction of the Crucifixion in the window installed in St. Margaret's begins with a footnote referring back to the 1640s. Critics of the window deemed it 'superstitious'. The footnote points to how this echoed the iconoclasm of the 1640s: During the civil Wars indeed, such pretended Abuses were assigned as Reasons for demolishing all such Windows. As a rebuke of such iconoclastic arguments of the 1640s, the footnote turns to a 1645 sermon by "an eminent Divine of Oxford thus delivered his Sentiments to the learned Audience of that University". The preacher was Jasper Mayne, who was sequestered under ...

After examining the imagery retained at the Elizabethan Settlement , the continuation of this policy in the Caroline Church , and the openness of Reformed Conformists to imagery , The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761) turns to the destruction of this heritage in the iconoclasm of the civil wars: the Flames of a consuming Civil War burst out with irresistible Violence, and spread an universal Chaos of Confusion. In the preceding Tumults indeed, Lord Clarendon relates, that seditious and factious Persons caused the Windows to be broken down in Churches, and committed in them many other insolent and scandalous Disorders.  However, after the military Standard was erected, these profane Outrages were greatly increased. Some stately religious Fabrics were totally demolished; many were converted into Stables, or polluted and profaned by other shocking Abominations. Their beautiful Sculpt...