About the Author Mr. Charles Bartlett
My garden blog: Bunny Garden; Profile: the Penitent Presbyterian, and our family oratory… St. Martha’s , a Countess Anne Memorial.
Salisbury Cathedral
About Anglican Rose:
Anglican Rose is a reference to Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent, when fasting is temporarily relaxed, joy shining forth amidst penance. Mid-Lent was a time men returned to their ‘mother church’ or cathedral, giving chance to visit parents, siblings, cousins, and neighbors. Sons gave roses to their mothers. People crossed themselves at the baptismal font of their infancy. The Epistle Reading for Mothering Sunday is Gal. 4:24, “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all”.
Glastonbury Tree
The Rose Tree is the Glastonbury Thorn, the staff which Joseph of Arimathea planted, blooming upon English soil. The Rose Tree symbolizes our Mother, who, strengthens us with nursing milk from Bethlehem so we might grow, bloom, and ripen in alms and faith, “I will not cease from Mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land” (Blake). In England both Church and Crown nurtured a baptized folk, watering a budding vine from Christ’s root. The Rose symbolizes such, reminding men not only of their natural affections but spiritual life fed through the paps of Word and Sacrament.
Walsingham Abbey
Anglican Rose is a quest for magesterial Protestantism within the context of antique orthodoxy and medieval Catholicism. It is an exploration of our roots, particularly amongst northern Protestant & Erastian churches, where early Anglicans aimed for something older than Papacy– a Conciliar West where the national is fostered within the catholic. Here, early Protestants negotiated a balance with Rome and Eastern churches by way of secular monarchs, confessions, and convocations. They did not wish to overthrow Doctors or Fathers but restore primitive religion by them. Much of this blog is a consideration of these intentions and how Northern Catholicism, more particularly, the Elizabethan Settlement– that “Occidental Star”– might restore Christendom by her many sprigs. Let us revisit our mother’s baptismal font, recalling once again our spiritual birth-waters and humble parentage.
“I know a Rose Tree springing Forth from an ancient root, As men of old we singing, From Jesse came the shoot that bore a blossom bright Amid the cold of winter When half spent the night.
Where of Isaiah spake Is Mary, spotless maiden Who mothered, for our sake, The little Child, newborn By God’s eternal counsel On that first Christmas morn ~ Rosa Mystica, Hymn 17 (1940 Hymnal)”
Below are varied testimonies from those divines who sung their affection for the national church without missing Catholic faith:
Bishop of Fund du Lac, the Rt. Rev’d Charles C. Grafton, believed the restoration of Christendom depended upon mutual recognition between national churches; in particular, the English with the Russian and Greek:
“If a reunion of Christendom is to be attained, it will come through the union of Anglican and Eastern Churches. It is in this direction the safe guiding providence of God directs His people. It requires largeness of vision and generous toleration of unessential differences, and much of the charity that hopeth all things, believeth all things, and of the faith that believes that with God all things are possible. For so glorious a consummation Anglicans must be willing to recognize the devotion, the missionary zeal, and the orthodoxy of the Russian and Greek Churches.” (Chp. XX, Works)
The Rt. Rev’d Walter H. Frere admitted a reasoned keeping of provincial ceremonial within catholic worship as having a binding quality with the English churchman:
“On the other hand, while laying all due stress on catholicity, it is right also to recognize the privilege of local Churches to have their own ways in such matters of ceremonial wherever diversity seems justifiable and desirable. It is right also to recognize concurrently the obligation of loyalty in the individual to the local and national Church, in whose rites he takes a part, and to whose ordinances he is bound.” (Principles of Religious Ceremonial, p. 138)
In Loyalty to the Prayer Book (1904), the Rev’d Percy Dearmer begged national ceremonial as the most principled way to reawaken the catholic soul within England if not throughout all Christendom:
“If English Priests had stuck to their formularies as Romans and Easterns have to theirs, then the English Church would to-day be as marked as the Roman or the Eastern Churches are by such practices as frequent Services, fasting, the supremacy of the Eucharist, and the use of distinctive vestments for the Sacraments. Those who still fancy that obedience is insular would do well to consider seriously what alternative they have to propose. They will find that the only alternative is anarchy, under which each parson may set up his own ideas of Church order and worship; and these ideas have persistently differed, not in details only, but in essentials, from the principles of the Church Catholic. By this system; or want of system, you may have a pseudo-Romanism in one parish, a pseudo-Puritanism in another, and a decorated worldliness in another, but in few will you have Catholic worship and order. Nor will you gain the respect or trust of the rest of the Church or of the world at large… But loyalty to the Prayer Book disarms the enemies of the Church, at the same time as it restores the effectiveness of her friends. And if we set–as we should–the fortunes of the Church Universal above those of our own communion, we shall still do well to remember that the weakening of Anglicanism would remove the greatest agency which God in His providence has left in the world for the reunion of Christendom.”
Speaking of Christendom’s peace, in the lecture Christianity and Politics (1889), the Rev’d W. J. H. Campion praised the national church as the very incarnation of catholicism for English people, England’s particular necessarily coinciding with the universal:
“But the truth remains that religion is an element in the highest national life. ‘A national church alone can consecrate the whole life of a people’. And a national church can only mean an established Church, and a Church which either has great inherited wealth of its own, or is supported in part by national funds…The Christian religion has been acting on the group of States which we call Christendom from the first days when stable organization formed themselves after the entrance of the new life of the Germanic race into the remains of the dying Roman Empire. It has been the strongest of all the influences that have moulded them throughout their history. It has pierced and penetrated the life of individuals, the life of families, the life of guilds, as well as the laws and institutions, the writings and works of art in which they have embodied their thoughts and hopes. They are in a sense its children. It is impossible to regard them as S. Augustine regarded pagan Rome. But deep and penetrating as has been her influence and manifold her consequent implications with the existing national and social life of mankind, the Church is essentially Catholic, and only incidentlly national. It is their Catholic character so far as it remains, at least their Catholic ideal, which gives to the different fragments of the Church their strength and power. The ‘Church of England’ is a peculiarly misleading term. The Church of Christ in England is, as Coleridge pointed out, the safer and truer phrase. And this fundamental Catholicism, this correspondence not to one or another nation, but to humanity, rests on the appeal to deeper and more permanent needs than those one which the State rests. It is thus that the true type of the Church is rather in the family than in the State, because the family is the primitive unit of organized social life. Not in the order of time, but in the order of reason, the Church is prior to the State, for man is at once inherently social and inherently religious. And therefore it is only in the Church [viz. national and catholic] that he can be all that it is his true nature to be”
A 1902 sermon, preached by the Rev’d John de Soyres, the English bidding prayers are recollected as examples of national and catholic loyalties co-existing whereof the English owe religion to both:
“So, although in our creed we profess allegiance only to the Universal Church, our hearts are not debarred from including our own Communion also. In the English Cathedrals and Universities the Bidding Prayer before sermon begins: “Let us pray for Christ’s Holy Catholic Church that is, for the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world;” but then it adds: “especially for that pure and reformed part of it established within these realms.” So we, believing in the Catholic Church, longing for her realization, praying for that unity that shall fulfil the prayer of Jesus Christ, yet we also pray for our National Church: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.” We do not depend upon memories of the past only. We can recall events in these latter days testifying that the power of the Church of England…”
In National Apostasty the Rev’d John Keble reminds churchmen the history of catholick church in Britain, admitting England a christian nation but her modern indifference courting a sad lopping:
“The case is at least possible, of a nation, having for centuries acknowledged, as an essential part of its theory of government, that, as a Christian nation, she is also a part of Christ’s Church, and bound, in all her legislation and policy, by the fundamental rules of that Church—the case is, I say, conceivable, of a government and people, so constituted, deliberately throwing off the restraint, which in many respects such a principle would impose on them, nay, disavowing the principle itself ; and that, on the plea, that other states, as flourishing or more so in regard of wealth and dominion, do well enough without it. Is not this desiring, like the Jews, to have an earthly king over them, when the Lord their God is their King? Is it not saying in other words, ‘We will be as the heathen, the families of the countries,’ the aliens to the Church of our Redeemer?” (St. Mary’s Oxford, 7.14.1833)
In 1844 Alexei Khomiakov‘s letters to the Rev. William Palmer poetically expressed the cultural heart of England’s high churchmen:
“… In reality every Englishman is a Tory at heart. There may be differences in the strength of convictions, in tendency of mind; but the inner feeling is the same in all. Exceptions are rare, and are as a rule found only in people who either are altogether carried away by some system of thought or beaten down with poverty or corrupted by the life of the large towns. The history of England is not a mere thing of the past to the Englishman; it lives in all his life, in all his customs, in almost all the details of his existence. And this historical element is Toryism. The Englishman loves to see the beafeaters guarding the Tower in their strange mediaeval costume … he likes the boys in Christ’s Hospital still to wear the blue coats which they wore in the time of Edward VI. He walks through the long aisles of Westminster Abbey, not with the conceited vanity of the Frenchman, nor with the antiquarian delectation of the German, but with a deep, sincere, and ennobling affection. These graves belong to his family, and a great family it is; and I am not speaking now merely of the peer or the professor, but about mechanics and cab-drivers; for there is just as much Toryism in the common people as there is in the upper ranks of society… Whiggism may be his daily bread; but Toryism is all his joy in life . . . his sports and games, his Christmas decorations and festivities, the calm and sacred peace of his family circle, all the poetry, all the sweetness of his daily existence. In England every old oak with its spreading branches is a Tory, and so is every ancient church-spire which shoots up into the sky. Under this oak many have enjoyed themselves, and in that ancient church many generations have prayed.”
A love for Christ’s Church in England was likewise felt by the high-churchman evangelical, the Rev’d John Wesley, who pleaded with his enthusiasts not to abandon the bride of their youth on contempt of poor watchmen:
“We look upon England as that part of the world, and the Church as that part of England, to which all we who are born and have been brought up therein, owe our first and chief regard. We feel in ourselves a strong storgh, a kind of natural affection for our country, which we apprehend Christianity was never designed either to root out or to impair. We have a more peculiar concern for our brethren, for that part of our countrymen, to whom we have been joined from our youth up, by ties of a religious as well as a civil nature…We look upon the Clergy, not only as a part of these our Brethren, but as that part whom GOD by his adorable Providence, has called to be watchmen over the rest, for whom therefore they are to give a strict account. If these then neglect their important charge, if they do not watch over them with all their power, they will be of all men most miserable, and so are entitled to our deepest compassion. So that to feel, and much more to express either contempt or bitterness towards them, betrays an utter ignorance of ourselves and of the spirit which we especially should be of (Reasons Against Separation, 1758).”
The Rt. Rev’d Richard Boyce outlines the benefits of a ‘big church’ for North American Anglicans if centrifugal elements could gather around a sufficiently orthodox center:
“Further, the opportunity to sit at the table and help shape the new province is a wonderful way to do mission for classic Anglicanism. Our input as the “elder brother” of American orthodox Anglicanism is invaluable and could reawaken the traditional sense in people who have lived with pressure from the other direction far too long…The great majority of orthodox Anglicans in the world do not ordain women as priests. The situation is the reverse of the ECUSA experience, and it is the minority [in the proposed ACNA] who ordain women who will ask tolerance…It appears each jurisdiction will be free to follow its own practice but not to enforce it on others; we could help make sure of this if we sit at the table; some may even phase out women priests. (Statement on CCP, 9.8.08)
The Most Rev’d Mark Haverland explains the vital role Anglicanism might play in churching English-speaking people(s) contra Anglicanorum Coetibus. Warning against ‘premature reunion’ with Rome, the Archbishop said:
“We believe that classical Anglicanism, as presented clearly in The Affirmation of Saint Louis and in our liturgies and other authoritative formularies, is already faithful to Scripture and the Fathers and is already fully Catholic and Orthodox. Conversion is not necessary and absorption is not appropriate. We believe that our Anglican patrimony is, moreover, by God’s grace and Providence, also most appropriate for the English-speaking peoples* and probably is essential for the successful evangelization or re-evangelization of the English-speaking lands. We hope eventually for a genuine dialogue concerning the Petrine Office and long for the day when we, with our Orthodox and Oriental Christian friends, may again find in the successor of Saint Peter a patriarch with the primacy of honor and with high authority both as an organ for strengthening the Church’s unity and also as an instrument for the articulation of the Church’s teaching. We regret that the forthcoming Constitution, while kindly meant, seems set to delay that happy day.”–AB Haverland (11.09.09)[*When first posted, before second editing, it read, "..English and English-speaking peoples..."]
Less bashful about the ethnic basis of national churches, the Rt. Reverend Robert Redmile, the Lord Bishop of the Christian Episcopal Church in Richmond, explained the “appropriateness” of Anglicanism for both English and English-speaking people:
“…our Church is described as being a “national Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Anglican tradition”. And that is exactly what we are. We are a Canadian Church. Since the social, cultural, and political foundations of Canada are British, most of our people are British in their ethnicity, being that either their forebears or they themselves have come from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland… That is to say, we are a Church which has descended and which has derived its identity from the Church of England. The Church of England was first established by Saint Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, in 597. Later, at the Synod of Whitby held in 664, the Church of England was united with the ancient British Church which had been brought to the Roman Province of Britain in Apostolic times and had been established until the Anglo-Saxon invasions had driven the British Christians out of their own country and into Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. The Church of England, or what in Latin is described as the Ecclesia Anglicana or Anglican Church, is and always has been the national Church of the English people.”
Nor should we discount the many cultural traditions that have left indelible marks upon America’s culture as the Most Rev’d Peter Robinson noted respecting Anglicansim’s providential witness to Christ:
“However, orthodox Christianity, and especially orthodox Anglican Christianity is too important to be merely the hobby of the holy huddle. We need to reassert the need for God in the everyday world. This was something our Hanoverian forefathers intuitively understood, but we have lost. Until recently, there were a large number of common phrases in our language that were drawn from the BCP and from the King James Version of the Bible. These were perhaps the ultimate testimony to the impact of Anglican Christianity on our culture.” (3.14.10)
Possibly relevant to Hanover’s connections with Britain, the Most Reverend Robinson ventured the scope of the English Church according to its original charge as an orb whose rays could nourish a catholic north:
“However, as a counterbalance to this there is some evidence that in the case of the Gallican and English Churches there was a certain amount of local autonomy. Local councils were held – such as the English Council at Clovesho in the 10th century – to resolve local difficulties and make Canons. We also have that somewhat cryptic letter of St Gregory to St Augustine of Canterbury referring to the later as “‘Patriarch’ of the other orb.” Implying that the Archbishop of English Church had a certain degree of independence from Rome and was to make his own decisions in keeping with the Catholic and Apostolic faith. He was perhaps also expressing a hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury might one day become a Patriarch to the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe.”
Perhaps provincial affections are very way to restore a catholic peace whereby neither ideal opposes or diminishes the other. I believe these eddies are incredibly important for knowing Anglicanism as a beautiful yet delicate blossom, unique amongst Christian trees, having an old root that reaches deep into native soil yet having limbs that extend shade for lesser trees along that living water. Bishop Giles de Bridport spoke of England’s old liturgy in much the same way, “The Church of Salisbury shines as the sun in its orb among the Churches of the whole world in its divine service and those who minister it, and by spreading its rays everywhere makes up for the defects of others.”
Please consider these pure water pools for reflection on Anglican parents and predecessors:
- Old High Churchman by M’ Lord Peter D. Robinson
- Society of Archbishops by Fr. Derrick Hassert
- Prayer Book Society USA by Fr. Gavin Dunbar
- North American Anglican Journal by Mr. Jesse Nigro
- Hackney Hub by Mr. Jordan Lavender
- Northern Catholic Archives by assorted
- Whithorn Press by Fr. Brian Foos
There is only one problem with this and that would be that rose vestments were not worn in the medieval English liturgy. Lent was kept in the Lenten Array, that is, vestments of toned white. The use of rose coloured vestments is part of the use of Pius V where the Roman colour sequence was taken as a sign of submission to the Roman See.
The Ornaments Rubric in the 1559 and 1662 Books of Common Prayer ordered what was used in England in the second year of Edward VI and that would have been according to the Sarum usage which had been imposed upon the whole kingdome in 1541 by the Convocations and Parliament.
Chapelmouse,
When one argues from the pontificals as Dearmer did you must remember that the bishops were frequently attempting to gain points with the papacy. But what they did was almost unverisally rejected by the dioceses and especially the great cathedrals with the exception of Exeter. But the legislation of 1541 made Sarum usage both canon and parliamentry law.
Take another look at the wording of the Ornaments Rubric. It excludes the actions of the Royal Councils which did not have the authority of Parliament making what was legally allowed that which was in accordance with the act of Parliament at that specific date.
Hello Lee,
I really thank you for the comments. Your point about the 1541 legislation is incredibly important, and really simplifies the diversity of England’s pre-reformation rites. By royal councils determining the meaning or limits of the Ornament Rubric, I assume you are speaking of the latter Injunctions? I recently came across a footnote regarding the ornaments rubric as understood by the 1662 Uniformity Act. From the note, it seems to suggest the Injunctions were continued from the time of Elizabeth, giving boundaries for Ornaments of the church? Any thoughts?
I may have very well misunderstood this quote?
BTW. I updated the ‘about’ page.
Chapelmouse,
No, you have not misunderstood the quote. You quite understand what was written, but it must be understood that the Puritan party from Elizabeth’s day forward has never let truth get in the way of their attempt to undermine the plain teaching of the Church as expressed in the Book of Common Prayer. I would point you to the works of Vernon Staley, Wickham Legg, Malcolm MacColl, St. John Hope, Cuthbert Atcheley and the Rt Rev’d Walter Howard Frere, C.R.. Now I realize that represents a lifetime and a shelf load of reading, but they understood that from the moment it was published there were those even among the bishops what Elizabeth had preferred who sought to undermine both the prayer book and the English Church.
First, there was no futher order taken by Elizabeth or with Elizabeth’s approval. And even if there had been, the act of Parliament approving the necessary changes at the beginning of the reign of James I would have negated and abolished those changes because they would have been done with a lesser authority than that of the Convocations and Parliament. And this would be even more true of what was done in 1662. The bishops at that time knew that they would be unable to restore everything required by the rubric and the act of Parliament, but they hoped for better days when it would be able to be done. And those days came. But the little fifth column of Puritan churchmen remains with us. They like the positions which they have achieved in the Church but they have no intentions of being loyal and obeying the book as it was intended. Their loyalty is to the radicals of the reformation period and later while the true churchman’s loyalty is intended to be to the faith and practice of the universal Church as expressed by Bishop Andrewes canon, i.e., “One Canon, two Testaments, three Creeds, four Councils and five centuries.”
Thank you Lee. As you might have seen in the comments page under 1559 injunctions, I agree with you. Regarding the authors, are there any particular titles you recommend amongst their many works?
Chapelmouse,
And while I am at it, could you please get in touch with your friend Kevin of The Ohio Anglican and let him know that his propers for Morning and Evening Prayer are incorrect. We are in the middle of the Second Week before Advent and the propers are on page xl and xli of the 1928 prayer book.. It is one of those tricky little things which most seminary graduates miss.
I have been to the new group blog and it looks very nice and reads equally well. I wish all of you the greatest success with it.
A most interesting and readable publication, not least because despite the obvious differences between you and classical Anglican Evangelicals, you have linked to the Barnabas Project’s blog at http://canterburytrail.wordpress.com. We at Barnabas will reciprocate.
Your ‘quest for magisterial Protestantism within the context of antique orthodoxy and medieval catholicism’ filled me with nostalgia; thirty years ago I was on that same quest, but finally concluded that my goal was like El Dorado, a compelling legend about a place that did not actually exist. I wish you better fortune than I had.
My only caution to you at present is that your statement that ‘early Anglicans and Lutherans aimed for a patristic Conciliar West’ is only true if you add the word ‘some’ when speaking of Anglicans. I don’t believe there has ever been a time when any theology or ecclesiology could have been predicated of all Anglicans, or even all Anglican bishops. This is, I believe, the reason why all such quests lead to places other than the one originally sought.
Blessings!
‘Might be handy’–an understatement of epic proportions! All the different Anglican traditions have their own definitions, and always will. What would be ‘formative’ and ‘salient’ for one would be ‘popish’ or ‘fanatick’ for another.
The problem is that ‘Anglicanism’ as a particular form of churchmanship really doesn’t come into existence till after the Toleration Act of 1689 that allowed Presbyterians and Congregationalists their separate existence. Prior to that even they were supposed to be part of the Church of England, and many of them (like the episcopalians and the conciliarists and the latitudinarians) even claimed to be the ‘true’ Church of England. The only definition that works all the way from the Reformation Parliament to today is that Anglicanism is whatever the Government of the day says it is. It is, I believe, fundamentally an Erastian Protestant church.
That’s what makes church life so confusing for some members of Anglican churches in countries where the government refuses to rule the church. In the US, the Episcopal Church is established by custom, not by law, but just as firmly established as the Church of England because of its DNA, and therefore just as bound to provide a place for contemporary moral and philosophical standards, however opposed they are to some of the Anglicanisms of the past.
So even an attempt to say what Anglicanism is not is an attempt to tell a government, or in the case of the US a society, what it may or may not believe and practise, and pretty much doomed to failure. I’m content to live in a church like the Episcopal Church because I’m content to live in a society like the US. And the Episcopal Church will continue to put up with me even though I’m a conservative Evangelical because it’s part of a culture that puts up with me.
I haven’t explained this very well, but it’s the best I can do in this many words.
I could not disagree more with Philip. In true Anglican terms, yes, the Church of England is “Protestant,” because after all these years it is yet a Latin Church and words go to the root of their Latin meanings. ‘Protestare’ means ‘to testify FOR’ and not against. And what, in Anglican terms, being Protestant meant was that you testified for the supremacy of Holy Scriptures and against the inventions of the Western Church in the middle ages which did not conform to that canon.
Beyond that, the real Anglican Rose is the Glastonbury Thorn which is referenced in the carol, “I saw a Rose Tree Springing.” This was the staff of Joseph of Arimathea which planted in English soil took root and bloomed again and refers to the very early planting of the British Church as evidenced by the earliest fathers.
When one looks at the Prayer Book propers for Mothering Sunday, the operative phrase is taken from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, i.e., “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” That Jerusalem is the Church and especially the church triumphant and mystical. And this is the reason that the English went back to the parish of their baptism and family on Mothering Sunday. And we as Anglicans need to remember that it was the Church which was the mother of the state. The Church of England was larger and covered more territory that the petty kingdoms that were finally united into the one country. It was the Church which gave England and the United States the pattern for our governments in the Convocations of Canterbury and Y9rk which each consisted of a house of bishops and a house of clergy*(representing the parishes) with an executive in the respective archbishops and metropolitians. And they were each founded by churchmen. Two thirds of those who signed the Decalartion of Independence were Anglicans and fifty percent plus one of the delegates to our Constitutional Convention were also Anglicans, most of whom got their first training in government in their parish vestries.
Thank you Bishop Lee. OK. I get an ‘F’. In heraldry I always considered the thorn and rose as representing two separate kingdoms united by Crown. I never saw it as interchangeable signs pointing to the same thing. The ‘oral tradition’ in both art and legenda is worth their meditative time. Thank you.
I had to clean up the ‘pax dei page’ because I neither like the revised common lectionary nor Pius V. I finally began to break from it by switching the Rose colour in favor of a Mothering Sunday theme. Your last comment on Gal 4:26 freed me from the earlier RC lection/Isaiah passage.
May I further pick your brain? If you have any time, Bishop Lee, please feel free to comment on the the 1943 lectionary vs. earlier ones. How continuous is it with the Sarum lections/Breviaries? How about the 1549 BCP? I have yet to find anything on this particular subject. ( Answer: the 1549 Lectionary comes from medieval Matins as translated by Cardinal Francis Quiñones but with saint days reduced. The lectionary revisions that followed in 1559, 1789, 1892, 1928, and 1943 used the body of the 1549 but gradually added days of saints, apocryphral readings, and vigils. This represents a kind of lifting of certain necessary disciplines as discussed in the Articles of Perth with such laudable customs of ‘crossing’, et al.) An interesting observation on the lectionary can be read, 1943 lectionary and well as here. Also, a brief discussion can be read about the 1943 vs. 1928 lection if you scroll down on this post by M’ Lord Peter.
Hello Philip,
Thank you for the link! At times like this perhaps a definition for Anglicanism might be handy. I believe it possible to gather all ‘formative’/classical documents– injunctions, salient works of divinity (Jewel, Hooker), homilies, prayer books, prefaces, parliamentary acts, cathedral and royal chapel practices, articles, etc.– and walk away with kind of working definition of classical Anglicanism. We do have plenty of documentation, and if treated in an interlocking manner, weighing sources of authority, I think a consistent orthodoxy emerges. Ranking authority in the Anglican system means starting with documents that are “appointed” for use in the churches, namely, those with royal seal and convocation approval. These include:
Book of Common Prayer 1662
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion 1571
Anglican Ordinal 1550
Canons Ecclesiastical 1604
Advertisements 1566
Two Books of Homilies 1547 & 1564
Bishop’s Bible Preface 1568
King James Bible Preface 1611
Nowell’s Catechism 1578
Jewel’s Apology 1562
Foxe’s Martyrologies 1562
Queen Elizabeth’s Primer 1578
This is quite a bit, but obviously there is no excuse to think Anglicanism undefinable. Some of the above might sound redundant as they are bound together with the ceremonies and rites of the BCP. However, explicit mentioning is required since the BCP proper does not officially include either Psalter, Ordinal, or Articles, using the phrase, “together with”, as found on the BCP title page.
Further context might invite older versions of the same texts such as Elizabeth’s Eleven Articles 1559 or the 1549 BCP. I’ve found the Henrician standards to be very important in understanding Anglican doctrine, especially w/ the Homily on the Declining of God as well as Article 16, using with the Ten Articles 1536 as well as Henry’s longer catechism, called Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of Man 1547, to assist the interpretation. Good hermeneutics demands reference to earlier English texts (especially those approved by royal authority) before going to continental sources.
Nor is this list of Anglican sermons and other works exhaustive. For instance, Richard Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity 1597 is an Anglican “must” read. We might add many other works such as those belonging to John Wesley, Richard Fields, and Lancelot Andrewes, et. al.. Together these explain not only the ‘right use’ of ceremony but how the first five centuries of the undivided church is properly understood by Anglicans. And, while none of this is final, Anglicanism will do best by recognizing these same texts posses a dignity and order that pet divines often lack.
While Anglicans certainly don’t need the present-day British Crown or parliament to cease control of the church, we do need present-day bishops to value the regal accomplishments of the Tudor and Stuart regimes in the church. It’s really a honorable memory of our royal nursing parents (1532-1716), and therefore the associated texts approved, that is missing. I suggest when we forget them, we forget ourselves.
Phillip, thanks for the link, and God Bless you. I know many good churchmen in the Episcopal church. I pray our flock is regathered soon by wise and loyal bishops.
I know this is very late, but there are points worth comment.
Where a lot of us have problems with the Ornaments Rubric is that few of us have ever seen the Elizabethan Act of Supremacy or the Elizabethan and Carolean Acts of Uniformity. The two Acts of Uniformity aren’t printed in most editions of the1662 BCP; usually, only in the desk books (but not in the current Cambridge) or in Gee & Hardy.
To Brother Lee’s bibliography, I’d suggest Addleshaw,’High Church Tradition’, and Addleshaw & Etchell,”Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship’. These have to do with the whole period between the accession of Great Eliza and the accession of Victoria. We do need to recognise that things were done differently in this period before the revival and restorations during the later 19th c.
Yes, there are the schools of thought. Puritans did seem to take their lead from Calvin and/or his more extreme disciples. However, within Anglicanism, one could sensibly suggest four major schools of thought, as expressed by the various expositions of the 39 Articles: the Evangelical, the Rational, the Sacramental, the Sacerdotal. When one reads representative expositions from these four schools, and uses his mind to pull the thinking together, one does find oneself right smack in the middle of the tension among all four schools. It can be like being stretched on the rack.
We are indeed fortunate that Henry VIII did determine that Sarum would be the one Use. How this actually worked in practice was another story. I suspect that the other Uses continued until the BCP came in due to inertia. Priest would do what they’d always done, including the infamous rendering of the Gloria Patri:”Gloria Patria, et Filia, et Spirita Sancta”. This was so noted in Germany and I see no reason to think it wasn’t done elsewhere.
The mention of the Glastonbury Thorn reminds me that there was a shoot from the Thorn planted in the gardens at Washington Cathedral many years ago; it is now a full-grown tree. Some think that, so long as this thorn stands at Washington Cathedral, there is a glimmer of hope for the EC. I don’t know off hand of other shoots in the USA or Canada.
Now, I received a copy of the Anglican Digest a month or so past, and let out a great shout. +Robert Condit Harvey, sometime bishop in the Continuum, has finally published his long awaited book on the early British Church, “To The Isles Afar Off”. I have known +Harvey since the early ’70s. He’s worked on this book longer than I’ve known him. During the mid-’70s, I visited the Harveys at Bergenfield for a few days. I had the privilege of looking at some of his notes and research materiel during this visit. I’ve been waiting for a long time to see this book. Without having actually held it in my hands, I commend it to us all most heartily. After several readings, it will certainly join several other of my favourite books to be re-read over and over.
Another such book is Norman Taylor, “For Services Rendered”, which is a collection of literary extracts mentioning the BCP or its services. A wonderful read!
Benton
I said in my first post above that this was a most interesting blog, but I had no idea how interesting it was until I rechecked this page and saw that on December 6, 2009 I replied to something that wasn’t posted till February 9, 2011. What’s more, my reply was exactly right! I shall have to think very deeply about all this…
Hi Philip, My earlier reply was pretty much the same, but I did not indicate a ranking of documents by royal seal and convocation, i.e., appointed texts. I wanted to update it for that reason without adding a lot of verbage on this page.
I also see the cult of the King as being something both AC’s and evangelicals share. Evangelicals do this by embracing the 39 articles and 1701 act of settlement; these two documents proving England and her church Protestant. Anglo-catholics embrace the monarchy liturgically and prelatically, especially by the memory of Charles I and the divinizing of prelacy in general (both common to that era).
But none of this answers what to do with this ranking once its historical veracity is acknowledged? We still face the problem of bishops not acting in place of the king, namely, taking responsibility for the nursing/discipline of the church. There are perhaps only a couple bishops in America, mostly in small jurisdictions, that enforce and teach the Settlement as normative. Nonetheless, supporting their dioceses and the societies which they belong is very important. The other factor that’s needed are laity and priests trying to establish something on the parish level where orthodox bishops are absent.
‘I also see the cult of the King as being something both AC’s and evangelicals share’—I wouldn’t count on it, even if you mean the authority rather than ‘cult’ of the king. Evangelicals have usually put Parliament’s authority above that of the monarch, as almost all of them did in the 1640s and again in 1688, and many in England today are basically republican.
And I don’t think Evangelicals would accept the Thirty Nine Articles just because they were approved by Convocation and the Crown. They accept them for the same reason the Articles accept the creeds, because they are Biblical. Most of them, anyway; many Evangelicals have had difficulties with some of the Articles over the years, especially with the one about there being nothing superstitious in the Prayer Book.
But until the recent unpleasantness, Evangelicals never really thought ‘Anglicanism’ worth a second thought. They were Biblical Christians in the Church of England, or a descendant thereof, and it’s been a great sadness to me to see them go haring off after that will-o’-the-wisp. Although I am an Anglican, my only interest in Anglicanism is historical. Historically, I still say that Anglicanism is whatever the government of the day says it is, and since the government of the day no longer says it has to be anything in particular, it is nothing in particular. You distill from some of the things the government has said over the years a reasonable sort of church framework, as you are entitled to do, while others distill something different, using different criteria. Bless ‘em all, or at least all that are content for me to differ from them…
Thank you Philip. Your replies actually cut to the heart of this blog. My only disagreements with your analysis are:
1. The problems affecting 19th century Anglicanism was not so much “the government of the day” but inroads made by advanced sectors of anglo-catholic revival that successfully delegitimized the Privy Council and then went about intellectually reordering the Settlement away from Whitgift’s Three Articles toward Gore’s liberal catholicism– namely, the minimalism of Creed and Eucharist. In 1871 the privy council was not asleep at the wheel. They attempted a crackdown on ritualism, but this failed, and perhaps it was a case of “too little, too late”. I can also agree with you in so far as the strength of the church did not lie with government per se, but the rise and fall of the Tory Party which represented the supremacy of the Crown in church and state.
2. There ought to be a real distinction made between sacred Christian monarchy and ‘government’ as identified with secular Parliamentary supremacy. The monarchy of the Tudor and Stuart periods was no mere ‘government’ but a nursing parent of the church, baptized and consecrated herself, responsible for the faith of the realm, and possessing a provincial cure. Whether Evangelicals or Catholics recognize this fact is somewhat irrelevant to Anglicanism as a body doctrine. As doctrine, Anglicanism says the Crown is head and governor of the church, ordering externals and intervening in disputes. In fact, if you take the litany as properly ranking the erastian order from Crown to people, the parliament would be ranked fairly low, immediately below the authority of church synod. In this sense, Keble’s appeal for orthodox bishops makes sense where Privy Council and Crown have already abducted from their duties in the church, and I am somewhat sympathetic given significance of religious emancipation at the time.
As far these points are totally irrelevant to Evangelicals goes to show how far evangelicals have alienated themselves from classical Anglicanism– reducing it to rather anemic categories like biblical method, liturgical style, political etiquette, or cultural emphasis. When, in fact, Settlement Anglicanism has specific dogmatic and theological articles which set real boundaries against Rome and Anabaptist– if not certain Reformed– modes of theology. This alienation, unfortunately, has generally occurred in both evangelical and catholic camps, and thus Settlement Anglicanism itself faces a rather uphill battle to reverse the massive impact of liberal catholicism which (whether evangelicals know it or not) has compromised the original Protestant position as much as the classical high church party in England which was identified with royalism. However, when we identify royalism with parliament, we degrade and loose touch with the inner life and force that Anglicanism originally conveyed, intensifying those centrifugal forces historically pressed from the outside. With respect to common authority, see articles 20 & 34 if not 37.
‘As doctrine, Anglicanism says the Crown is head and governor of the church, ordering externals and intervening in disputes’—it’s certainly true that Evangelicals once had a far more positive view of the state in general and the crown in particular than they do now. Even after all that Charles I did in what they could only see as an attempt to destroy the evangelical wing of the church, they still had such great hopes of Charles II, and thought that his Gracious Declaration of 1660 had given them a church they could live in. And it was Parliament that took that from them in 1662. Since 1689 Evangelicals have really only seen the state as something that would protect them from those who would expel them from the church rather than encourage and support them in their ministry.
And they did make a biblical case for the positive view when they had it. I must admit that despite the number of texts I’ve had to read in the last few years where that case was made or taken as made, it never once occurred to me to consider it something to be taken seriously today, at least by an Evangelical active in PECUSA, which deleted all references to the state from our version of the Articles of Religion. I shall give some thought to thinking again about that…
‘Evangelicals have alienated themselves from classical Anglicanism– reducing it to rather anemic categories like biblical method, liturgical style, political etiquette, or cultural emphasis’—I’d certainly agree that many Anglicans who have used the word ‘evangelical’ of themselves have not meant more by it than these things, and worse, especially in PECUSA, and increasingly so in the C of E. There’s a lot of work to be done…
Greetings! Just a quick note to say that the quotation – ‘I will not cease from Mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land’ (invoked above) is actually from William Blake’s great illuminated book *entitled* Milton, rather than BY John Milton, as the text implies. Thanks – and nice website!