laudable Practice

'Saint's relic returns to cathedral 500 years on' declared The Times on 7th November.  And just so we know who was to blame for that 500 year interruption, "Henry VIII's men" are pointed to as vandals who destroyed the shrine of holy Chad. That is how the news that Lichfield Cathedral is 'recreating' the shrine of Saint Chad hit the headlines in the UK last week.  One can easily imagine responses from a particular Anglican (and, indeed, non-Anglican) 'angry Protestant' constituency: loud invocations of Article 22 and condemnation of the popish practice of relics.   This post, by contrast, seeks to give a Laudian response, that is, a peaceable Protestant perspective (remembering that the Apostle exhorts us, "as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men"). To begin with, let us consider the account of the project given on the Lichfield Cathedral website .  There are, it must be admitted, some silly statements on the site that d...

From Richard Montagu's Articles of Enquiry in the Primary Visitation of the Diocese of Norwich, 1638: an insight into the significance given by the Laudians - and, later, by the Old High tradition - to the Absolution at Mattins and Evensong: Do your parishioners come late to church, and not at the beginning of Divine service, to make their humble confession unto Almighty God? who, by coming late, deprive themselves of the benefit of absolution, and do become unprofitable hearers and petitioners in that holy action ... Doth he use the absolution to be pronounced on penitents, not as it is a declaration of forgivenesse, but as a prayer, altering the words of the Common Prayer-book, as some have presumed to do? (It is worth noting that in addition to 17th century Puritans denying this to be an Absolution, and turning it into a prayer, the Ordinariate has also explicitly done this .)