laudable Practice

In early 1623, Francis White was one of the Church of England divines who took part in a disputation , ordered by James I/VI, with Fisher the Jesuit. Later that year, White was appointed Dean of Carlisle, a clearly a sign of royal approval. In 1626, early in the reign of Charles I, he was appointed Bishop of Carlisle, with Cosin preaching at his consecration. He was closely associated with the ecclesiastical policies of the Personal Rule, with his Treatise of the Sabbath Day published in 1635 at the direction of Charles and dedicated to Laud. The trajectory of White post-1623 career in the Church of England - Jacobean and Caroline - is mentioned in order to emphasise that his role in the disputation was clearly highly regarded. It is this which makes his handling of one issue in the debates particularly significant. Regarding the apostolicity of the Church, Fisher had stated: The Church is Apostolicall, and that apparantly descending from the Apostolicall Sea, by succession of Bishops...

In a recent post addressing Jeremy Taylor's understanding of episcopacy at the Restoration, I sought to demonstrate that the maximalist Laudianism (to use Peter Lake's terminology) of his 27th January 1661 consecration sermon was not reflected in his attempts to reconcile both the political nation and his dioceses to episcopacy. Instead, I characterised these attempts as defined by the Hookerian Conformist case for episcopacy: an emphasis on the antiquity of episcopacy, but not making jure divino claims; the relationship between episcopacy and ecclesiastical and political stability, after "the late unhappy confusions"; and how the exalted claims of jure divino  presbytery contrasted with the fidelity of the bishops to the Royal Supremacy.  Taylor's deployment of the discourse of Hookerian Conformity placed him firmly within the Restoration Episcopalian mainstream. Laudian jure divino claims for episcopacy were not characteristic of how the restored Church and M...

As our readings from  In The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858) - by Henry Charles Groves, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - begin to draw to a close, we turn today to a reference to the 9th century Frankish theologian Ratramnus (or Bertram). Groves notes that Keble and Pusey both appeal to Bertram's work,  De corpore et sanguine Domini , in defence of their own eucharistic teaching. For Groves, such invocation is very odd: Both he and Dr. Pusey appeal to the book of Bertram often. And yet, with their profound learning, I should have thought that they would rather have avoided a book which was placed in the Index librorum prohibitorum, which speaks so strongly against the Objective Presence, that some Roman authors, as Sixtus Senensis and Possevin, (Cosin, Hist. of Transub., p.131,) affirmed that it was written by the Zuinglian, Ecolampadius; a book, of the author of which the ...

Continuing his critique of Pusey in The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), Henry Charles Groves - a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - addresses the "simple question" raised by Pusey: But with Dr. Pusey, "the simple question is, 'is our Lord and God present there?'" He must indeed be simple that would allow that. It certainly is the simple question with the Romanists, when defending themselves against the attacks which their Protestant assailants make on them. But the simple question with Anglican divines was, "Is the Lord sensibly present there?" It was thus Cosin argued.  Groves quotes from Cosin's Notes on the Book of Common Prayer , in which - as with Andrewes - a thoroughly Reformed understanding of the Eucharist is evident: True it is that the Body and Blood of Christ are Sacramentally and really (not feignedly) present, when the blessed Bread a...

Following on from yesterday's post , there are three relevant episodes noted in the introductions by George Ornsby (b. 1809, received orders 1841) to the two volumes of Cosin's correspondence (published in 1869 and 1872). All three episodes suggest the significance of the influence of Bishop Overall (consecrated to the episcopate 1614, Bishop of Norwich 1618-19) on Cosin's understanding of French Reformed orders.  After taking orders, Cosin had been appointed Overall's secretary. The influence upon Cosin of Overall's acceptance of Continental Protestant non-episcopal orders is explicit: With regard to their [i.e. French Reformed] Orders, he would seem to have accepted the judgment of his "lord and master Overall " (as he delighted to term him), who "was wont to say, 'Though we are not to lessen the jus divinum of Episcopacy, where it is established, and may be had, yet we must take heed that we do not, for want of Episcopacy, where it cannot be h...

From John Cosin's account of his exile in Paris, with the court of King Charles II: I never refused to join with the Protestants, either  here  or  anywhere  else, in all things wherein  they  join  with  the  Church  of  England. Many  of  them  have  been  here at our Church  and we  have  been  at  theirs.  I  have  buried  divers of  our  people  at  Charenton, and  they  permit  us to  make  use  of  their  peculiar  and  decent  cemetery here  in  Paris  for  that  purpose; which  if  they  did  not,  we  should  be  forced  to  bury  our  dead in  a  ditch. I  have  baptized  many  of  their  children  at  the  request  of  their ...

In the seventh of his 1844 Bampton Lectures, An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England , Jelf - one of the Zs, those whom Nockles highlights as the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses the question if the Church of England has "not abandoned some of the means of grace, by her refusal to recognise five out of the seven Sacraments, which the Church of Rome retains?". Earlier in the lectures he had considered the ordained ministry as a means of grace. Next week's post will explore his understanding of private confession and absolution. In today's extract we see Jelf refute the suggestion that the Church of England was deprived of particular graces because it rightly did not define Matrimony, Confirmation, and Unction as Sacraments of the Gospel. Matrimony The holy estate of Matrimony is so highly esteemed amongst us as to be considered compatible with the highest...

... beseeching thee to inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant, that all they that do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity, and godly love. Having prayed this petition from the Prayer for the Church Militant with Jewel and Hooker , we turn now to Cosin and Taylor. In his account of the differences between the Church of England and Tridentine teaching, Cosin summarised the Tridentine claim for tradition he was critiquing: That all the ecclesiastical observations and constitutions of the same Church ... are to be approved held and believed as needful to salvation and that whoever approves them not is out of the Catholic Church and must be damned. He contrasted this with the Church of England's confession of sola scriptura , or in the words of the Prayer for the Church Militant, "the truth of thy holy Word": All the two and twenty canonical books of the Old Testament and the...

In 1660, with the monarchy restored and the nightmare of the 1650s over, and as the Laudian Mark Frank rejoiced in the "miraculous restoring" of a "comely uniformity" to the Church of England's worship, the Presbyterian polemicist  Zachary Crofton lamented the re-emergence of the signs of Laudianism: Bowing to the Communion Table Symbolizeth with the worship of Pagans and Papists; those known Idolaters, especially in that order in which it was of late (and beginneth afresh to be) used among us, in his Majesties Royal Chappel, Lambeth Chappel, the Cathedral and many Parish Churches, whilst the Table must be made in the frame of an Altar, railed in, and advanced as an holy Inclosure; fixed at the East end of the Church; and furnished with Altar-Furniture, and Coverings, and Candlesticks with Candles in them placed therein. In the 1640s it had seemed as if the anti-Laudians had won the altar wars.  Parliament had decreed that rails must be destroyed, and the Holy...

From Cosin's   Notes on the Book of Common Prayer   (1638), on the rubric in the BCP 1559 Holy Communion requiring the Curate to " declare unto the people, whether there be anye holy dayes or fastynge dayes the weke folowyng".  Cosin particularly refutes the Puritan (and later low church) claim that the call to observe the Lenten fast set forth in Edwardine and Elizabethan legislation was merely "politic", that is, for secular purposes. He thus demonstrates - as did Andrewes - that observing the Lenten fast was part of the discipline of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana , a discipline proclaimed in the epistle and gospel appointed for the first day of Lent: They that speak so much against us, who put some part of our religion in keeping fasting days, as if we had nothing but a politic use of keeping Lent, Fridays, and saints' eves, let them look well to this place, where the curate is bound to exhort the people earnestly towards the religious observation of...

As the holy Eucharist is both sacrament and sacrifice,  Brevint  also addresses the nature of the ministerial priesthood at the Eucharist.   In ministering the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood, the priest has "as much power ... as any prophet or angel": The body and blood of Jesus Christ is, in full value, and heaven with all its fulness is, in sure title, instated on true Christians by those small portions which they receive at the blessed Communion: the minister of Christ having, as to this effect, as much power from his Master for what he acts, as any prophet or any angel ever had for what they did. In also setting forth the Lord's Sacrifice in the Eucharist, there "sacramentally offered again to God", the ministerial priesthood similarly handles that which has made "the powers of heaven shake": So shall the new Israel tread in the pious steps of the old, who ever, from time to time, reiterated, either in Mispah or in Gilgal, &c. that ...

Yesterday's post addressed Brevint's rich understanding of the gift of the Lord in the holy Eucharist.  Now we turn to his presentation of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, "a sacramental passion" set before God and us upon the altar.  As the title of Brevint's work explicitly states, the Eucharist is both sacrament and sacrifice. Of particular note is Brevint's willingness to describe the "sacramental mystery" as a presentation of the Lamb's offering "as effectually and truly" as it was upon the Cross: The other time most favourable and proper, next to that of his real passion, is that of the holy Communion, which ... is a sacramental passion, where, though the body be broken, and the blood shed, but by way of representative mystery, yet both are as effectually and as truly offered for our own use, if we go to it worthily, as when that holy and divine Lamb did offer Himself the first time ... Therefore, whensoever Christians a...

I have presented some of their scholars to be ordained Deacons and Priests here by our own Bishops, (whereof Monsieur de Tarenne's Chaplain is one, and the Duke de la Force's Chaplain another,) ... and I preached here publicly at their ordination. Cosin's words here refer to the ordination on Trinity Sunday, 12th June, 1650 in Paris of the Reformed theologians Daniel Brevint and John Durel.  They were ordained deacon and priest on the same day according to the Ordinal of the Church of England by Thomas Sydserf, the exiled Bishop of Galloway.   This itself, of course, was a significant statement: receiving episcopal orders while episcopacy and the liturgy remained prohibited in England and, in 1650, with little hope of their restoration.  It was, despite the circumstances, a compelling statement of the Laudian vision. Cosin presenting and preaching; a faithful bishop conferring holy orders, maintaining apostolic order; two respected French Reformed theologi...