laudable Practice

Having addressed the contention of papalist apologists, that the Reformed Church of England was an innovation, a rejection of the 'old religion' for the 'new', and thus a removal of the ancient landmarks, Boys, in his Rogation Sunday sermon , then turned to those who separated from the Church of England, accusing it of being inadequately reformed. Boys' response is fascinating, not least because he emphasises - against Puritan Separatists - not the Reformed nature of the English Church, but its continuities with the patristic era. In other words, he accuses the Separatists, no less than the papalist apologists, of removing the ancient landmarks. Indeed, he sets forth a very forceful critique of the Separatists and their "platform of government": Now concerning Schismatics, and Separatists, as they be worthily surnamed, novelists, even so their platform of government, is a new device, which no Fathers ever witnessed, no Council ever favoured, no Church ever...

Upon these premises, I will infer this conclusion ... that the reformed and conformed Protestants, in the Church of England, do justly condemn both Papists and Puritans, as upstarts and novelists, in removing the most ancient bounds of our forefathers ... Boys' Rogation Sunday sermon , on the text Proverbs 22:28, after addressing the need to maintain the ancient landmarks in the polity, turns to the Church of the realm. Against both Papalist and Puritan, Boys refuted the charge directed by both, that the Church of the Elizabethan Settlement was an innovation, a removal of the ancient landmarks.  Today's post considers Boys' response to the charge from Papalist apologists. Against the emotionally powerful Papalist narrative that the Reformed Church of England was a denial of the 'old religion' - that it was, indeed, a 'new religion' - Boys, after the manner of Jewel's Apology , presented the Reformation of the Church as a recovery of the ancient landmarks...

In a Rogation Sunday sermon , on the text Proverbs 22:28, Jacobean cleric and theologian John Boys - Dean of Canterbury 1619-25 - expounded the vision of the justly, rightly ordered community set forth in Articles 37, 38, and 39. He first set out how traditional Rogationtide practices encouraged a respect for established landmarks and inherited rights, necessary for the justly and rightly ordered community: It is the part of every parishioner and party, to preserve, so much as lieth in him, all the liberties, franchises, bounds, and privileges of the town where he dwells. St Paul in a great extremity, pleaded that he was a citizen of Rome, and the chief captain, who had the charge of him, answered, 'with a great sum obtained I this freedom'; the Church of England in the fourth part of the Sermon, for Rogation week, doth advise parishioners, in walking their perambulation, seriously to consider the bounds of their own Township, and of all other neighbour parishes, bordering upon...