laudable Practice

As for the reformed churches, except our neighbor Church, they haue abandoned daies dedicated to Saints. For those who passionately opposed the Articles of Perth , the Church of England loomed large. The Articles were, it was asserted, a means of conforming the Church of Scotland to the 'but half-reformed' national Church south of the border. This explains why, although the Articles of Perth restored to the Church of Scotland the observance of the five principal festivals of our Lord but not the saints' days commemorated by the Church of England, the Articles' opponents raised the spectre of 'popish' saints' days. In the defence of the Articles of Perth given by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth - the attack on the Church of England's saints' days is directly address, Firstly, Lindsay challenges the allegation on Hooker...

Cosmopolitanism has been a theme running through these readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull : from the influence of Episcopius on the younger Bull, to a later critical but still admiring response to Episcopius, to the warm relationship with the Gallican Bossuet. Today's reading offers another example of the cosmopolitan context both for Bull and wider 18th Anglicanism.  In 1703, John Ernest Grabe - of whom Nelson notes, "his particular friend and mine" - published a new Latin edition of Bull's works: with his [i.e. Grabe's] own many learned Annotations, and introduced it into the World with an admirable Preface, which did great Justice to our excellent Author, as well as to his learned and judicious Writings. Grabe had been born at Königsberg, in the Kingdom of Prussia, in 1666. Settling in Oxford in 1697, he received Church of England orders in 1700, becoming chaplain of Christ Church. While the son of a Lutheran divine and a subject of the Kin...

It is not at all original to read Hooker's exposition of the Sacraments in Book V of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity alongside the Consensus Tigurinus (the Consensus of Zurich), the 1549 agreement between the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on the Sacraments. Torrance Kirby , for example, has said that Hooker's teaching on the Sacraments as 'moral instruments' is "demonstrably in agreement with the Consensus Tigurinus". Similarly, Diarmaid MacCulloch regards Hooker's eucharistic views as being at home in "Bullinger's Zurich".  The purpose of this post, therefore, is not to offer any original commentary but to consider how the Consensus Tigurinus is significantly reflected in Hooker. The focus of this post is V.57.3-5 of the Laws . We begin, however, with a passage from the Laws just prior to V.57, as Hooker considers "The union or mutuall participation which is betweene Christ and the Church of Christ in this present worlde". In...

An enduring theme of these posts on the defence of the Articles of Perth given by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth - has been how he interprets the Articles as standing fully within the mainstream of the continental Reformed tradition. This is also particularly evident in his approach to the Articles restoring to the Church of Scotland the five principal festivals - Our Lord's "birth, passion, resurrection, ascension, and sending down of the Holy Ghost".  Referring to his opponent who sought to invoke "the iudgement of the reformed Churches", Lindsay declares "he reiects the doctrine and practise of the reformed Church, which stands wholly in his contrarie". Lindsay, therefore, points to the practice of both continental Reformed and Lutheran churches:  They in Geneua who obserue the day of Natiuitie, and Easter, approue ...

The Lutheran Churches do acknowledge reall presence by way of Consubstantiation: it is no wonder therefore, that they approue kneeling. The Reformed Churches, as they damned bodily presence, so haue they reiected the gesture of kneeling in the act of receiuing. For the critics of the Articles of Perth , as the above words indicate, the matter was very straightforward. Of course the Lutherans knelt to receive the Sacrament, for they are Ubiquists. By contrast, the Reformed, who reject "bodily presence", denounce kneeling.  In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), pointed to a much richer, diverse Protestant landscape. To begin, he invoked a broader understanding of 'Reformed' to include the Lutherans. While obvoiusly rejecting Consubstantation, he emphasises that Lutheran sacramental teaching does share important characteristics with the Reforme...

As David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , continues his defence of the Articles of Perth providing for kneeling to receive the Sacrament, he emphasises that this practice is related to another aspect of the administration of the Sacrament - that is, that communicants receive the Bread and Wine from the minister.  This was contrary to those who opponents of the Articles of Perth who defended sitting to receive the Sacrament as more appropriate, enabling communicants to break the Bread for each other and pass the Cup to each other. In the words of an opponent quoted by Lindsay, "The sacramental Supper should carry the resemblance of a Supper, in the formes and fashions thereof, or else it cannot rightly be called a Supper". Lindsay, however, points out that the means and reality of our partaking of Christ in the Sacrament requires a quite contrary unde...

The sixth breach of the Institution made by kneeling, is the taking away of the distribution that ought to be amongst the Communicants. When Christ sayd, Take yee, eate yee, he insinuates, that they should take and diuide amongst themselues. So said an opponent of the Articles of Perth , which had introduced kneeling to receive the Sacrament in the Church of Scotland: kneeling to receive prevented seated communicants from breaking the Bread among themselves. The response of David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , is significant because he invoked, in support of kneeling to receive, the continental Reformed tradition's emphasis on the Fraction in the Lord's Supper. In Reformed-Lutheran disputes of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the Fraction had become a distinctive Reformed act, the characteristic sign of a Reformed eucharistic understanding. As...

In our last reading , prior to Advent, from the 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), we considered how Lindsay's critique of the rejection of festival days by the opponents of the Articles of Perth stood well within the mainstream of the Continental Reformed tradition. We resume the readings from Lindsay's work as he refutes those who, rejecting the Articles of Perth, appear to make the provisions of the 1560 Book of Discipline (rejecting festival days, requiring communicants to sit for reception etc.) a necessary order: Yee are not able to produce any warrant for the vniforme iudgement of the Church, nor Canon of Assembly, nor act of Parliament, nor confession of faith, nor publike protestation, which either condemnes the points concluded at Perth, as vnlawfull to bee vsed in the worship of God; or establisheth the contrary as things necessary, that ca...

As we abhor the superstitious observation of festival days by the Papists, and detest all licentious and profane abuse thereof by the common sort of professors, so we think, that the inestimable benefits received from God by our Lord Jesus Christ, his birth, passion, resurrection, ascension, and sending down of the Holy Ghost, were commendably and godly remembered at certain particular days and times ... The Articles of Perth , adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1618, restored the observance of the great feasts of our redemption. The Second Helvetic Confession had said of these observances, "we approve of it highly". The opponents of the Articles of Perth, however, invoked the 1560 Book of Discipline , which dismissed these observances as feasts "that the Papists have invented". In particular, opponents viewed the observances as a binding of the conscience: imposed vpon the consciences of men without the expresse Commandement of Gods Word,...

In his defence of authority by which the Articles of Perth were introduced, in a  1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - addressed the allegation that the practices required by the Articles were contrary to the order and discipline of the Church of Scotland as praised by Beza. Lindsay, however, points out that this is not what Beza meant by Scotland's "good order or discipline". Beza, rather, was praising the Geneva-like approach to ecclesiastical discipline: "the use of this Ecclesiasticall power in censuring of manners". What is more, not only was Beza not referring to the particular ceremonies that had been previously adopted by the Church of Scotland, it was also the case that those ceremonies did not conform to the Genevan use: But yee, no sooner heare good order or discipline commended but presently yee imagine, that your table ge...

Today we reach a final extract from ' Answers to the Exceptions Made Against the Assembly of Perth ' in the 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618, by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38). Lindsay here sets forth a well-established understanding of the civil magistrate's duty to uphold conformity, not for binding the conscience but as a means of securing the peace of the kirk: Since the time that Kings and Princes became Christian, it hath alwayes beene the custome that Synodicall Decrees were authorized by their Lawes; not that the allowance or authoritie of Ciuill Lawes is made a rule to a Christians Conscience, but that the externall man might thereby bee tyed to the obedience of these things, which the Church hath found to be agreeable to the Word of God, that is the only rule of conscience: and it is to bee hoped, that God shall so dispose the hearts of the whole Estate, to the loue of ...

As David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - continues his defence of the Articles of Perth, in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , he again emphasises that such matters of ceremony and practice are not  determined by Scripture. Contrary to those who attacked the Articles of Perth, and who exalted the previous ceremonial order of the 1560 Book of Discipline , Lindsay explicitly states that the provisions of the Articles were not "knowne verities": None of the affirmatiue voters approued the Articles for knowne verities; for when wee speake of knowne verities, we vnderstand the verities defined in Scripture, such as are the points of our faith, which no man ought to call in question: but that any man did giue his voice otherwise, then his iudgement led him, yee will hardly perswade vs, much lesse, that any man would openly professe this. This, as Lindsay has previously demonstrated , re...