laudable Practice

In the seventh of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier presents an understanding of the English Reformation that is now deeply unfashionable: Both the mode and progress of the Reformation, it may first be observed, were very different in this country from what happened with other nations. In the first place, with us it began at the head. It was not a comparatively obscure and unauthorised individual who first questioned, and put down the usurped dominion of the pope; but it was the actually existing government, the king himself, who, with the concurrence of the legislature, and of his subjects at large, resumed those rights of which his predecessors had been stripped, and which had from himself been withheld.  Secondly, the work begun did not go on without interruption. On the contrary, it received very material checks, as well from the capricious humour of Henry, as from that dispensation of Providence which suffered the kingdom, after being ...

Another example of an antecedent for Taylor's critique of a radical Augustinianism in Unum Necessarium is found in Peter Heylyn's examination of the theology of Dort in Historia Quinqu-Articularis: Or, a Declaration of the Judgment of the Western Churches; and more particularly of the Church of England, in the five Controverted Points (1660). Heylyn's work was, of course, published after Unum Necessarium , but it points to an aspect of the Elizabethan Settlement that provides a basis for a critique of radical Augustinianism: there was another Canon passed in this convocation [of 1571], by which all Preachers were enjoined to take special care ... that they should maintain no other doctrine in their publick Sermons to be believed of the People, but that which was agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and had from thence been gathered by the Catholick (or Orthodox) Fathers, and ancient Bishops of the Church.  To which rule, if they held themselves as they ...

On this day in 1558 Elizabeth acceded to the throne.  In  Ecclesia Restaurata (1660), the Laudian polemicist Peter Heylyn rejoiced in the Elizabethan Settlement, presenting it as a restoration of primitive purity: And now we may behold the face of the Church of England, as it was first settled and established under Queen Elizabeth. The Government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops, according to the practice of the best and happiest times of Christianity. These Bishops nominated and elected according to the statute in the 25th of King Henry VIII, and consecrated by the Ordinal, confirmed by Parliament, in the fifth and sixth years of King Edward the 6th, never appearing publickly but in their Rochets, nor officiating otherwise than in Copes at the Holy Altar. The Priests not stirring out of doors but in their square caps, gowns, or canonical coats, nor executing any divine Office but in their Surplice, a vestment set apart for Religious services in the Primitive times, a...