laudable Practice

The ministers shall often admonish the people, that they defer not the baptizing of infants any longer than the next Lord's day after the child be born, unless upon a great and reasonable cause, declared to the minister, and by him approved, the same be postponed.  As also, they shall warn them, that without great cause, they procure not their children to be baptized at home in their houses. But when great need shall compel them to baptize in private houses - in which case the minister shall not refuse to do it, upon the knowledge of the great need, and being timely required thereto - the baptism shall be ministered after the same form, as it should have been in the congregation - and the minister shall the next Lord's day after any such private baptism, declare in the church, that the infant was baptized, and therefore ought to be received as one of the true flock of Christ's fold. Amidst the provisions of the Articles of Perth was that, when necessity required it, minist...

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...

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...

In the debates surrounding the Articles of Perth introducing kneeling to receive the Sacrament in the Church of Scotland, 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 , reflected on how this was also a debate about liturgy.  Quoting his opponent, Lindsay noted how he alleged that because kneeling to receive the Sacrament was accompanied by words of administration, this replaced the Words of Institution: The fift breach of the institution made by kneeling is, the altering of the enunciatiue words of Christ, This is my body which is broken for you: This is my bloud which is shed for you, in a prayer, To blesse our body and soule, saying, The body of our Lord Iesus Christ, &c. This was no new debate. Hooker had responded to a similar criticism of the liturgy and practice of the Church of England by Cartwright, offering a robust defence of the words of administrat...

Addressing how critics of the Articles of Perth condemned kneeling to receive the Sacrament as 'popish', 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 , summarised how those critics viewed the practice as contrary to the laws of the King and the Estates of Parliament: I come to consider the ordinances made, as ye alledge, against kneeling: where first yee alledge an Act made in the Assembly 1591, that an Article should bee formed, and presented vnto his Maiesty, and the Estates, for order to be taken with them, who giue or receiue the Sacraments after the Papistical manner; but by Papistical maner is meante, the giuing of the Sacrament by a Masse Priest, and the receiuing the same after the order of the Romane Church ...  Lindsay, however, points out that the purpose of such laws was to prevent conversion to the Roman obedience: The tenor wherof is those Perso...

Ye shall pray for Christ’s holy Catholick Church; that is, for the whole Congregation of Christian People dispersed throughout the whole World, and especially for the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland. So began the bidding prayer required to be said, according to the 1604 Canons of the Church of England , by preachers before "all Sermons, Lectures, and Homilies" (Canon LV). It sets before us the Jacobean ecclesiastical vision of the national Churches of the Three Kingdoms, with "the King’s Power within His Realms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and all other his Dominions and Countries ... the highest Power under God" (Canon I, on the King's Supremacy).  Crucial to this vision was that the Church of Scotland did not stand apart from the Churches of England and Ireland. This did not mean that diversity was unacceptable. The Church of Ireland, after all, had the 1615 Articles of Religion, different to the English Articles. The Church of Scotland also had...

Having considered how David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - defended the authority by which the Articles of Perth were introduced, in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , we now turn to his defence of the provisions of the Articles themselves. The Articles of Perth, at the urging of James VI/I, reintroduced to the Church of Scotland kneeling to receive the Holy Communion, Communion of the sick at the end of their earthly lives, the private Baptism of infants when necessary, Confirmation, and observance of the major festivals of Our Lord. Those who, rather than peaceably accepting the lawful decision of the General Assembly, cantankerously opposed the Articles of Perth sought to portray them as 'Roman' practices - despite the fact that many of their provisions were found in other Reformed churches. Quoting an opponent who ridiculously suggested that Roman Catholic opinion would interp...

Nor do we eat the flesh, without first adoring, with Augustine. And yet none of us adore the Sacrament. The words of Lancelot Andrewes, referring to Augustine's  homily on Psalm 98 - "no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped" - were invoked by Pusey to defend a Tractarian understanding of adoring Christ in the consecrated Bread and Wine of the holy Sacrament. Pusey also pointed to further words from Andrewes: Christ Himself ... in and with the Sacrament, out of and without the Sacrament, wheresoever He is, is to be adored. 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 - pointed to the fundamental weakness in Pusey's reading of Andrewes. Pusey had to demonstrate that Andrewes understood adoration, and the reference to Augustine on Psalm 98, in a manner different from the other divines of the reformed Church ...

In 1618, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland accepted the Five Articles of Perth , proposed by James VI/I. These Articles restored to the Scottish Church practices quite common elsewhere in Churches of the Reformation: kneeling to receive the holy Sacrament; administering holy Communion to the sick in the home; administering the Sacrament of Baptism, when necessary, in the home; Confirmation administered by bishops; and observance of the festivals of our Lord. Contrary to the populist polemics found in Presbyterian histories, these Articles were not 'imposed' on the Scottish Church. No, the Church of Scotland acceded to the direction of the magistrate who had a concern for the good order of the ecclesiastical estate.  As the preacher at the Perth Assembly noted, such a synodical process was right and proper, "for what Christian king did euer determine in ecclesiasticall matters any thing without aduice of his clergie?". The preacher was John Spottiswoode, A...

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 ...

The Laudians, says Diarmaid MacCulloch stood "aloof from most Protestants as well as from the Church of Rome".  It is a statement which summarises MacCulloch's view of Laudianism as rupture, a fundamental break with the Protestantism of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana . He continues: Thus in July 1624 one of the most uninhibited spokesmen of the movement, Richard Montague, said that he sought a Church of England that would 'stand in the gapp against Puritanisme and Popery, the Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety'.  This was the beginning of the via media discussion, which would have a major future in the Anglican tradition. This, to say the least, seriously misunderstands Laudianism.  To begin with, Montague's famous A New Gagg (1624) was, as the text makes abundantly clear throughout, an explicit defence of Protestantism: Against Protestants your Gag is directed, not Puritans: and yet all your addresses, well-neer, are against Puritan Positions, malitious...