The Aberdeen Assembly

Aberdeen Cathedral

Over the last couple weeks Anglican and Presbyterian doctrine have been on my mind. While the differences between Presbyterian and Anglican faith sparked the Great Rebellion, these two churches nonetheless share a common interest for establishment under the same Crown, and, when squared against Independents like Cromwell and fifth monarchists, Presbyterians finally joined ranks with Anglicans to ensure the continuation of a national church in both Scotland and England by the restoration of Charles II (sic.,  treaty of Breda). Therefore lines of fraternity can be surprising. Nevertheless, the WCF stems from a family of Swiss confessions proven to be somewhat alien if not hostile to the 39 Articles.  When strictly interpreted by the Speyer Diet & Peace of Augsburg, the WCF’s severe iconoclasm places it rather outside the sphere of  ’original protestant’ churches to the point of anabaptist radicalism. However, the Church of Scotland shares the same godparantage as England, and for at least this reason the English clergy under James I were directed to pray for Scottish Kirk as a true branch of the Holy Catholic Church (canon 55, 1604 ecclessiastical canons). Rome has never enjoyed a similar degree of charity, suggesting Presbyterianism’s greater affinity.  If certain differences in ‘faith and order’ can ever be bridged, two reforms would be considered: 1) the historical complaints lodged by  Presbyterians against the English BCP; 2) the reforms proposed by the 1616 Aberdeen Assembly as a starting point for any principled engagement.

Matthew 15:9

“They worship me in vain that teach doctrines and commandments of men: for you leave the commandments of God to keep your own traditions.” –Matt 15:9 (KJV 1769)

Matthew 15 has been a proof text used by iconoclasts to purge public worship of man-made ceremony and custom. Surprisingly, even Weslyan Methodists, who ought to known better by their 25 Articles, commended plain worship by this same verse, overturning ceremonies otherwise understood by Anglicans as  ’laudable’ or ‘indifferent’. When iconoclasts believe ‘man-made worship’ is forbidden by the  second commandment rather than whether they server edification or “good order”, puritans loose touch with the older protestant idea of adiaphora, “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word” (Article 34). Nor are puritans especially consistent when the prior biblical imperative is used .

Questions for RPW

Bishop Thomas Morton 1618

After King James dismissed the Puritans’ Millenary Petition at Hampton Court, Puritan complaint against ceremony naturally intensified. A longer list of ‘unlawful rites’ were compiled when ministers refused to subscribe to Whitgift’s Three Articles, publishing their grievances in the 1605 Lincolnshire  Abridgment. Thomas Morton, Bishop of Chester, answered the Abridgment in a treatise called A Defense of the Innocence of the Three Ceremonies. Here, Morton handles the three biggest controversies– viz. kneeling at holy communion, the cross in baptism, and the surplice. The arguments which Morton applied were already laid by Nicholas Ridley who defended the cope in 1550 against the parsing of Hooper. Likewise, the 1604 canons gave an elaborated defense for signing the cross, and the same type of apology– namely, the indifference of church ceremony– would also be written by the Scottish bishops at Perth for the sake of bowing.

For the Puritan argument that everything not expressly commanded in God’s Word is forbidden in worship, Morton answers–

“Some ceremonies are merely ceremonies; some mixed. They that are merely ceremonies need no special warrant from scripture, but are sufficiently warranted by the general approbation for God’s Word, which giveth a permission and liberty to all the churches to make their own choice of ceremonies according to the rules of order and decency;  but the mixed ceremonies, whereunto the imposers, or the generality of observers of them, annex some superstitious and erroneous opinion (whether it be of merit or inherent holiness, efficacy, or real necessity), do in this case change the nature and become doctrinal, and in this respect are condemned as not only beside the warrant, but plainly against the precept of Holy Scripture”.

The problem with Puritanism was a confusion of “mixed” for “mere” ceremonies. In his eight volumes of Ecclessiastical Polity Richard Hooker goes to great length distinguishing between these two kinds of ceremony. But, the Regulative principle (RPW) forces conflation by insisting upon imaginary or haphazard application of scriptural. Of this misuse of biblical text, Whitgift had a dismal opinion, “the scripture is most untolerably abused and unlearnedly applied”. Bancroft describes Puritan regulativism as being ‘anabaptist’. In Whitgift’s 1573 Answer to the Admonition, Whitgift notes although the Puritans give chapter and verse for what they say, the texts enlisted bear little or no relation to the point they conclude, only prima facie, “That no ceremony, order discipline, or kind of government may be in the Church, except the same be expressed in the Word of god, is a great absurdity and breedeth many inconveniences’.

Even if  RPW is supposed to as true, more questions than answers arise. Amongst these many questions, a few more poignant ones are listed here. While some are minutae, according to RPW if a single one is violated God will reject worship rendered:

• The example of Lord’s Supper (Luke 22) was communicated between men with no women feasting. How do regulativists justify female communicants when there’s no example or command for such?
• Should ministers receive before lay people? What command is there for lay people partaking first? Doesn’t the order of reception affect prelacy?
• Many regulativists serve grape juice at communion and/or leavened bread. If consistent, why not unleavened bread and fermented grape? Christ abstained from strong drink, so shouldn’t cups be mixed (cut with water)?
• How does one justify Sunday morning communion when the example in scripture is Saturday evening?
• In public prayer what bodily position should the minister assume? Should he stand facing against the people or with them during prayer?
• What about the location of the pulpit? Should it be in the center or to the side? Where should the table sit? The center or in a closet? While the table is taken from the institution of the Supper, where is the command for either a pulpiterium or Lectern? Often these furnishings are decked with images like crosses, etc.
• How is pew communion legitimate when the method of delivery set forth in scripture is clearly eating at the Lord’s table, not pews?/li>
• How is the order of worship justified? Why not communion before the sermon? Which is the apex of worship, hearing the Word or the presence of Christ in sacrament?
• What is not done or omitted in worship often has ‘theological commitments’ which regulativists rarely take account. An example is the frequency, or lack thereof, of communion.
• If the scriptural example for prayer follows the orans position (outstretched arms and upright palms), then isn’t clasped hands entirely rejected by God? Nor does the bible give positive example of prayer by sitting? If these are excused away, then how does RPW remain coherent in the face of a scriptural example?
• What warrant is there for setting the Psalms of David to noted music if these notes not be given by scripture? During the distribution the Zurich and Scottish churches read scripture if not observed silence. They did not sing.
• At the same token St. Paul apparently exhorts the Holy Kiss when Christians gather. What justification is there for not kissing today?

Consider the implications. If any of the above violates outward form, then prayer and sacraments are null and void. That leaves little grace amongst regulativists! As mentioned before, RPW is the flipside of Romanism. Both elevate ceremony (or the lack of) beyond scriptural warrant,  making what previously was indifferent (subject at most to ‘principle’ not explicit command) of salvific necessity.

One reason I’ve returned to the discussion of RPW is because the same logic which debunks it also applies against enormous claims of ‘Holy Tradition’. In both cases, what is necessary and what has liberty are hopelessly muddled. Anglicanism historically have solved both problems by dividing doctrine and discipline according to the rule of scripture, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man” (Article VI).

Two Great and Admirable Rules

George Herbert d. 1633

George Herbert recently got my mind back upon RPW. Regulativism is not altogether different from the radical sacramentarianism of Rome. Richard Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity was a massive and brilliant answer to both extremes. For the most part, Anglican worship is based upon general principle not precise commands. In the 39 Articles and the BCP Preface these precepts are generally described as benefiting  ’peace’ and ‘edification’. It is hard to imagine how Anglicanism might theologically explain itself without a defense of kinds of law. With respect to the above precepts, the justify our synods and usage of Common Prayer. Below Hooker nicely sums the precepts mentioned in our BCP preface ,

“it is, however, again argued, that though there be in Scripture no special and specific direction for every thing, yet there are general rules for all things towards one end; and that to prevent men’s acting according their own fancy, the Apostles has set down four general rules, and that all things n the Church must be appointed not only not against, but by and according to them. The rules are, “Nothing scandalous or offensive unto any, especially unto the church of God”. “All things in order and with seemliness;” “All unto edifcation;” and, “All things unto the glory of God.”

George Herbert’s Country Parson is a wonderful, short read. Organized in concise sections providing wisdom on every major aspect of ministry, from the parish to the home, it is recommended reading for all churchmen. In Chapter XIII, Herbert beautifully sums Hooker’s four principles, associating them with the two great commandments of the Lord,

“And all this he doth, no as out of necessity, or as putting a holiness in the things, but as desiring to keep the middle way between superstition, and slovenliness, and as following the Apostle’s two great and admirable Rules in things of this nature: The first wherefore is, Let all things be done decently, and in order: The second, Let all things be done to edification (1 Cor 14:26-40). For these two rules comprose and include the double object of our duty, God, and our neighbor; the first being the honor of God; the second for the benefit of our neighbor”.

For more on these precepts and their relation to primitivism, see this earlier post.

Article on Freewill

The Fall

An earlier post on Necessary Doctrine made some general statements about Henrican theology. I’d like to recap two points. First, the early date of clerical subscription was as early as 1536,  followed by the Catechism in 1538. The intent of catechism, bible, and articles teaching together was a continuous feature of Settlement, beginning with Henry. Second, Henry’s theology, even in the mid-1530′s, was ‘reformed’ (Augustinian). The Henrican view of God’s grace began to theologically impact Worship, first, with respect to saints and, by Edward’s reign, vulgarities in the Mass.  Henrican Catechisms and Articles were not merely ‘negative statements’ but were tied to matters of ceremony, each connected to the same doctrine of salvation. In this respect, Henrican theology offers a system of thinking, centered on the idea of ‘justification’. A high treatment of grace does not downplay sacrament but extols dependence on the very means instituted by Him.

Insufficiency of Man’s Will:

Anglicanism was careful not to depart from antique teaching. Henry, no less than Elizabethan Articles, refuted Calvin’s ‘irresistible grace’. Anglicanism indeed taught man might resist grace (article 16). That being said, it is also true by Anglican theology that man is not saved by ‘freewill alone’ (sola arbitrium). Man has an inability to turn to God unless working with grace. A preventing grace is thus required to free man’s will from original corruption, so man might then desire God’s generous help and benefit. The thirty-nine articles plainly say regarding this ”preventing’ grace:

The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will. (Article 10)

Necessary Doctrine is of the same accord. While Henry defines freewill as “a certain power of will joined with reason whereby a reasonable creature, without constraint in things of reason, discerneth and willeth good and evil”. Freewill, here, is being being spoken in terms of its facticity. It remains a positive reality even if its power is diminished– like the existence of the sun on a cloudy day– and despite the Fall it remains active. Yet sin taints the working of Reason and Will, infecting both in such a way that these powers are in a decayed or injured state. Though not depraved by absolute degree (mankind may still render righteous civil works), the post-lapsarian situation of man has run upon the rock of Scylla, unable to approach the shore of the highest good, namely the true worship and joy of God (Rom. 1:20-23). Therefore, man’s guilt continues, his wickedness not forced from outside by an ‘evil divinty’ but springing from within his own heart which both commits sin and is the cause of sin. The 1543 Catechism says throughout:

“the high power of man’s reason and freedom of will were wounded and corrupted, and all men thereby brought into such blindness and infirmity, that they cannot eschew sin, except they be illumned and made free to espeical grace, that is to say, by a supernatural help and working of the Holy Ghost” (p. 360)

“…while a certain freedom of will in those things which do pertain to the desires and works of this present life, yet to perform spiritual and heavenly things, freewill of itself is insufficient” (p. 360)

“We conclude that freewill is in man after his fall; which thing whoso denieth is not a catholic man: but in spiritual desires and works to please God, it is so weak and feeble, that it cannot either begin or perform them, unless by the grace and help of God it prevented and helpen” (p. 361)

“…it followeth, that freewill, before it may will or think any godly thing, must be holpen by the grace of Christ, and by his Spirit be prevented and inspired, that it may be able thereto: and being so made able, may from thenceforth work together with grace” (p. 361)

Thus, a preventing grace not fully dependent upon man is necessary. It is that first justification/grace which inclines man to choose life contrary to sin whereupon both Reason and Will are renewed for the purposes of cooperation, not enemity, with God, “It is surely the grace of God only that first we be inspired and moved to any good thing: but to resist temptations, and to persist in goodness and go forward, it is both of the grace of God and of our freewill to endeavor” (p. 362).

The Henrican catechism suggests this first justification establishes a ‘Higher’ Reason, making a greater liberty possible. This explains the priority both Hooker and 18th century divines (like William Law) gives Reason. Upon preventing grace Reason finds new/higher power, giving deliberation greater clarity and light so men know solace and truth in what God offers, being inclined choice yet not overpowered.  The increased power of Reason and Will is what is meant by this ‘assistance’. But, while preventing Grace is the first cause of justification, it remains man’s liberty to finally choose what has been better given/revealed. The 1543 Article of Justification says,

“albeit God is the principal cause and chief worker of this justification in us, without whose grace no man can do no good thing, but following  his freewill in the state of a sinner, increaseth his own injustice, and mulitplieth his sin; yet so it pleaseth the high wisdom of God, that man, prevented by his grace, (which being offered, man may if he will refuse or receive,) shall be also a worker by his free consent and obedience to the same, in the attaining of his own justification, and by God’s grace and help shall walk” (p.365)

The inability of man to work out his salvation alone, though he might refuse it, mandates the sacramental life. Henry VIII reminds backsliding Christians when they fail by their own infirmities (as they often do), to seek Christ where His pledge is found,  ”And when they do feel nothwithstanding their diligence, yet through their own infirmity they be not able to do that they desire, then they ought earnestly, and with a fervant devotion and steadfast faith, to ask of him, which gave the beginning, that he would vouchsafe to perform it: which thing God will undoubtedly grant, according to his promise, to such as persevere in calling upon him” (p. 362).

The ‘beginning’ is not the secret will of God. We have no sure comfort there. It is the sacraments whereby we first come into God’s House.  In the Article on Justification Henry advises the manner men ought to recover ‘their estate of justification’ if they continue to sin, “to arise by penance, wherein proceeding in sorrow and much lameentation for our sins, with fasting, alms, prayer, adn doing all such things, at the least in true purpose and will, as God requireth of us, we must have a sure trust and confidence in the mercy of God” (p. 366).

The mercy of God is not evidently found in predestination, but penance whereby we return to the nourishment of Christ.  Christ knows our frailties (even the incompleteness of Reason) and so provides visible and audible signs of Himself for our peace. We find these in the sacraments and ministry of the Church where the promise of forgiveness explicitly offered.

Boldly Saying:

While freewill corrects the ‘enormities’ of “irresistible grace”, the other extreme– man’s will alone (“sola arbitrium”)– is equally resisted. If man was capable of desiring Christ without assistance, glory would be given to fallen nature not heaven. And where does fallen man find the heavenly Lord except through the church? It is the church which Christ speaks and acts through by which He shows His death and life. Without preventing grace man might rely upon natural strength, aka. ”spiritualism”, rather than religion or ecclesiology. Augustine, therefore, offers a rather indispensable view of the ‘church’, basing it on justification, explaining why men turn, need, and depend upon God’s graces within sacraments rather than lonely cells. Augustine was the theologian of the cathedral while Cassian gave logic to the ordeal of the cenobium. The insufficiency of the Will requires men to seek assistance in the sacraments which is where the Promise is made visible. Grace and sacrament is therefore bound together, and not torn apart unless men seek confidence in something other than the ‘signs’ instituted by Christ. The Henrican catechism finishes the Article on Freewill warning clergy,

“All men be admonished and chiefly preachers, that this high matter they be looking on both sides, so attemper and moderate themselves, that neither they so preach the grace of God, that they take away thereby free will, nor on the other side so extol freewill, that injury be done to the grace of God” (p. 363)

There was once a time Anglicanism was certain of itself. Today it is too rare to hear doctrines of grace proclaimed like Hooker who said of England’s theology, the CofE possessed the surest, safest, and most perfect means for salvation. Henrican catechisms do not shy from the same exceptionalism,  ”this book containeth a perfect and sufficient doctrine…a declaration of true knowledge… a true exposition of the scriptures and true doctrine…a true understanding of that which is necessary for every Christian man to know, for the ordering of himself and his life” (pp. 216, 218), etc.

What do Anglo-Catholics today consider most ‘distinctive’ contra Rome? Is it, for example, language or jurisdiction– sic., “english-speaking lands”? Anglicana‘s wonder was not style but the content of instruction and preaching. Anglicanism once boasted the surest catholic system of theology, learnedness, and ministry since apostolic times. It was greater than both Rome and Constantinople.  Original sin, Freewill, and God’s grace joyously rung from the halls of England, pouring forth upon colonies and ‘english speaking’ lands. Her doctrine is not reduced to style but indeed offered the purest and most certain way of salvation.

Anyway, with regard to Elizabethan theology, as it is found in the 1562 Articles, it is not a distant faith but reiteration of the basic tenets of Henry. Henry is not ‘counter-reformation’ or a ‘retraction’ with respect to Anglicana‘s own (Vincentian)  development of doctrine. There is a rejection of supererogation, merit, and congruity before justification. A rather high grace view. Yet predestination is avoided and grace treated synergestically. Augustinian and Aquianus notions of first cause are kept. We might wonder if the Settlement’s formative period was indeed Henry’s life, dating back to the 1530′s, rather than Edward’s reign or the return of the exiles after Mary’s betrothal?

Institution of Ministers

The 1928 Office of Institution concisely spells our standards of faith. We might call these standards, “the Books of the Church”. Together they sum Anglican Faith, Order, and Worship. Prayer Book 1928 churches might want to re-examine the same Institution Office.

First, it gives curious a description of parish government where laity elects their local priest while the bishop consecrates. The role of lay people (vestry) in appointing their own Rector is both a Reformation and Republican principle. When the Protestant Episcopal Church constituted itself, founders like Bp. William White and Samuel Provost drafted its government akin to the American Congress, where a House of Deputies (laymen and curates) voted. The influence of Parliament and Puritanism in England, not to mention the intercession of the Crown against Papacy, provided a bedrock for laypeople sharing the government of the Church.

Also, interestingly, the Office of Institution in the Prayer Book is the only rite which assigns a ceremonial role to the Warden. The senior Warden hands the keys of the Church (access to grounds, facilities, and property) to the charge of the Priest, “In the name and behalf of N. Parish I do receive and acknowledge you, the Rev. AB, as Priest and Rector of the same; and in token thereof give into your hands the keys of this Church” (p. 570 1928 pew book). If one desired to reconstruct a theology of Kingship from the PB, the Warden might give insight (suggesting control over the annates, alms, and goods of the Church in general).

Second, the Institution emphasizes the duty of the Priest as a sacerdotal, not just teaching.  In a three-fold prayer for blessing (p. 572), the received minister (Bishop or Institutor) petitions, “Be graciously pleased to bless the ministry and service of him who is now appointed to offer the sacrifices of prayer and praise to thee in this house, and the meditation of his heart, be always acceptable” .  The ‘sacrifices of prayer’ might be referenced to Holy Communion which says, “with these holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee” etc., (p. 80). The Office also gives provides a kind of ‘certificate’ whereupon the the rector’s Cure is called a “sacerdotal relation” (p. 569). The sacerdotal relation is the ‘serving at the altar’.  ”O Lord my God, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; yet thou hast honored thy servant with appointing him to stand in thy House, and to serve at thy holy Altar” (p. 573).

But, by far the most fascinating portion, is when the Bishops hands the “Books of the Church” to the Incumbent. The Books of the Church are a special interest for BCP catholics, providing a summary of our standards–

“Then shall the Institutor receive the Incumbent within the rails of the Altar, and present him the Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and Books of Canons of the General and Diocesan Convention, saying as follows.

Receive these Books; and let them be the rule of thy conduct in dispensing the divine Word, in leading the Devotions of the People, and in exercising the Discipline of the Church; and be thou in all things a pattern to the flock of thy care. ” (p. 571)

When Anglicans speak of the “bible”, we are often pointing to either the Authorized version (those versions following a proper textual method as outlined in the 1611 edition) or the “largest volume”. The ‘largest volume’ would the vernacular translation required by canon law to be displayed in churches, i.e, the bishop’s bible, which included the King’s articles of religion (both Henry’s 10 Articles– an adaptation of the Augsburg Confession– and later Elizabeth’s). Therefore, between both ‘method’ and ‘articles’,  the Church provides a rule for dispensing the Word.  More about Anglicana‘s Bible can be read here (Cranmer on Necessary Doctrine).

Obviously the book of common prayer refers to the 1928 version (or at least those of like ancestry, coming from the 1559 Elizabethan template). An interesting article on the PB as ‘magisterium’ here.

And, finally, the book of canons. Anglican canon law varies widely from province to province. Dr. Norman Doe has brilliantly albeit laborously distilled their commonalities, the backbone of which are the Supremacy Acts. Our interest in Monarchy is how the Crown (as supreme ‘Godparent’ and ‘Warden’ of the church) determined her discipline, especially in areas of ritual. The Injunctions, visitations, advertisements, and other canons from the Reformation (and before) bud from Supremacy.

The Saxon Visitation

Chancellor Crell

The Saxon Visitation Articles were published in 1593 to counter the influence of receptionism amongst Lutheran Churches in Saxony. They define an effectual, localized, spiritual presence in the bread. While Thomas Cranmer had died a convinced ‘receptionist’, Archbishop Parker added article XXIX, modifying Cranmer’s earlier spiritualization of sacrament so that an objective and local presence might be also confessed in the bread,

“The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament”

The XXIXth Article permitted a distinctly  literal (verba) interpretation of sacrament. In so far as the Article persisted after the Restoration, the 1662 Black Rubric might to be read as ‘consubstantiationist’. Hence, the Restoration, like Elizabethan settlement, technically brought Anglicanism to a more German-catholic view.

How secondary elements (like ornaments) relate to Article 29 is another story. Generally speaking, Tudor and Stuart monarchs favored late Henrican worship (1538 Injunctions) and also wished to restore aspects of the 1549 against more ‘puritan’ elements pressed from the vantage of the 1552 BCP. A discrepency in eucharist theology persisted between what would become Parker’s 39 vs. Cranmer’s earlier 42 articles.  The modifications to the 1559 BCP tried to resolve such, and, though Elizabeth restored the older words of administration, the prayer of consecration could also be understood to locate the oblation with worshippers (the real presence located in hearts of the people) rather than in the elements. Thus, between 16th century articles and prayer book, the CofE comprehended both Calvinistic and Lutheran views of sacrament. This would leave her, confessionally speaking, somewhere near the Wittenberg Concord (1536) and Variatas Augsburg (1542) on the continent. The latter was also composed by Melancthon and signed by Calvin. These along with Bucer’s writings deserve re-examination if we are to speak of a “classicaly Anglican”  eucharist.

The image above is Chancellor Nicholas Crell’s head. Crell was executed for “acts of treachery” against the Duke in Wittenburg , 1601. Amongst these ‘acts’ were propagating receptionist views. Frederick William I with Rev. Aegidius Hunnius managed to reverse Calvinist gains through such Visitation powers. Below is Visitation Article’s used to exclude Calvinist views on the Holy Supper, summing the genuine Lutheran position.

Article 1. Holy Supper

The pure and true doctrine of our churches concerning the Holy Supper:

I. The words of Christ, “Take, eat, this is My body; drink, this is My blood” are to be understood simply and according to the letter, as they read.

II. In the Sacrament there ae two things that are given and received with  each other: one earthly, which is bread and wine; and one heavenly, which is the body and blood of Christ.

III. This giving and receiving occurs here on earth, and not above in heaven.

IV. It is the true natural body of Christ that hung on the cross, and the true natural blood that flowed from the side of Christ.

V. The body and blood of Christ are received not only by faith spiritually, which can also occur outside of the Supper, but here with the bread and wine orally. Yet this happens in an unexplainable and supernatural way, as a pledge of assurance of the resurrection of our bodies from the dead.

VI. The oral partaking of the body and blood of Christ is done not only by the worthy, but alos by the unworthy, who approach without repentance and true faith. Nevertheless, this leads to a different result: by the worthy for salvation, by the unworthy for judgment.

1559 Injunctions

The Queen's Chapel

The Ornament Rubric (which permitted a Henrican church aesthetic as per the second year of Edward VI) should be understood in light of the 1559 Prayer Book, where it is first found, alongside the Articles of same era. The Swiss influence on Cranmer’s 1552 liturgy was moderated by Elizabeth’s ‘catholic affections’, and while the 1559 Supremacy Act repealed Marian codes (sic., Romanism), the Queen requested the Prayer Book commission restore early Edwardian ceremony (G.G. Perry, p. 260).

Early Edwardian ceremony would keep England in the Protestant fold yet by forbidding destruction of medieval roods and altars, she would keep her catholic aesthetic. Early Edwardian-Henrican ceremony was not Romanism carte blanche. They were restricted by 1547 and 1538 codes as well as Henry’s Ten Articles (Lutheran inspired). It should be noted Elizabeth’s own chapel was illustrative of the conservative standard she pursued, and Puritans were distraught by her use of crucifix, vestments, and candles. The 1559 Act of Supremacy restored early Edwardian standards, and Elizabeth would strengthen the early Tudor sensibility by adding her own twenty-five items to it.

Elizabethan Injunctions are important because they informed English ceremonial law for nearly two centuries. We must remember Elizabeth was not a Puritan nor were the Carolines Romanists. The English settlement forbade both Radicalism and Romanism. More important than the Ornaments which constitute Anglican aesthetic (e.g., crucifixes, patens, rails, pyxs, candlesticks, garlands, etc.) is the context of their liturgical use. The Injunctions tell how ornaments conform to Articles and Prayer Book. Ornaments continued where they did not transgress key reforms of the CofE—namely the pruning devotions to the saints; regulationg real presence as expressed in communion; and the exhibiting of Holy Orders, particularly bishops, in the church. Such issues were controverted in lights, the position of the table, vestments, and musical instruments.

Lighting.  Unlike the Swiss Reformation, Anglicans refrained from abolishing commemorations of saints yet opposed their cultic abuse. Veneration of saints were consequently regulated, and various codes aimed to end their misuse—i.e., “pilgrimages, relics, or images, lighting of candles, kissing, kneeling, decking the same, or any such superstition” [Art. 2, 3, 23, 35 below]. The 1538/47 Injunction(s) regarding veneration both read, “admonishing their parishioners, that images serve for no other purpose but to be a remembrance, whereby men may be admonished of the holy lives and conversation of them that the said images do represent: which images if they do abuse for any other intent, they commit idolatry in the same” (item 3). The 1549 liturgy similarly provides the praise and example of saints yet avoids direct prayer, “…whose examples, O Lord, and steadfastness in thy faith, and keeping thy holy commandments, grant us to follow”. While this does not abolish saints (their fast/feast days, commemorations, and images are kept), how honor given to which saints was reworked. For example, Thomas Becket’s feast day was banned, and veneration given to saints was clearly set apart from worship.

This implicated use of ornaments, particularly candles. The Injunctions limit candles within the church banning candles before images of saints (such as St. Mary Lady chapels which frequently had four) while allowing only two on the altar. Two altar candles were the minimum subscribed by S. Osmundi, designating Low Mass while four or more candles indicate High. Two candles became canon law under Henry VIII (Item 7, 1538 Injunctions), and in generally limited the number of candles throughout the church, “only the light that commonly goeth across the church by the rood loft, the light before the Sacrament of the altar, and the light about the sepulcher, which for the adorning of the church and divine service shall remain” (ditto). The 1559 Injunctions continued this restriction, saying:

II. Besides this, to the intent that all superstition and hypocrisy crept into divers men’s hearts may vanish away, they shall not set forth or extol the dignity of any images, relics, or miracles; but, declaring the abuse of the same, they shall teach that all goodness, health, and grace ought to be both asked and looked for only of God, as of the very Author and Giver of the same, and of none other.

III. [carried from 1538 Injunction] …and that the works devised by man’s fantasies, besides Scripture (as wandering of pilgrimages, setting up of candles, praying upon beads, or such like superstition), have not only no promise of reward in Scripture for doing of them, but contrariwise great threatenings and maledictions of God, for that they being things tending to idolatry and superstition, which of all other offences God Almighty doth most detest and abhor, for that the same most diminish His honor and glory.

XXIII. Also, that they shall take away, utterly extinct, and destroy all shrines, coverings of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindals, and rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition, so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glass windows, or elsewhere within their churches and houses; preserving nevertheless, or repairing both the walls and glass windows; and they shall exhort all their parishioners to do the like within their several houses.

XXXV. Item: that no persons keep in their houses any abused images, tables, pictures, paintings, and other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition.

Musical Instruments. The English Reformation made the liturgy a ‘work of the people’, bringing the entire Church into the call and response not just the clergy. Consequently, vernacular translations of the Mass appeared, and prayer was to be audible. The Injunction ordered liturgy/song to be “plainly understood and perceived”.  Loud instruments like bells and organs that might drown out the voice of the congregation were scrutinized and regulated.

Bells also had implications beyond noise. Typically bells had been used during the consecration rite and were thus connected to the elevation and visual adoration of the elements. Lutherans defended this practice (WA, 54, 122) as necessary to fence off receptionist opinions. Anglicanism however simultaeneously integrated both receptionism and sacramental union (e.g., consubstantation) into her rite. Elizabeth restricted bells to a single chime before the call to worship, the sermon, and the Eucharist prayer. The English Prayer Book from 1552 onwards directs:

…the curate that ministers in every Parish Church or Chapel, being at home, and not being otherwise reasonably letted, shall say [Morning and Evening Prayer] in the Parish Church or Chapel where he ministers, and shall toll a bell thereto, a convenient time before he began, that such as be disposed may come to hear God’s Word, and to pray with him.

In England that often means that the bell is rung for five minutes one half-hour before public service adn then again for five minutes immediately before. (Anglican Catholic, p. 95)

Said chant impacted processions as well. The banning of processions was partly due to dubious litanies which invoked saints or transubstantivist observances like Corpus Christi that ‘parade the sacrament about’. But also processions were considered disorderly by nature where “wanderings about” was deemed disorderly and interruptive to public liturgy.  Remaining in pews allowed better audibility and edification. Outside Rogation Sunday (and the beginning/end of service) processions were generally forbidden.  From the Injunctions:

XVIII. Also, to avoid all contention and strife, which heretofore hath risen among the queen’s majesty’s subjects in sundry places of her realms and dominions, by reason of fond courtesy, and challenging of places in procession; and also that they may the more quietly hear that which is said or sung to their edifying, they shall not from henceforth in any parish church at any time use any procession about the church or churchyard, or other place; but immediately before the time of communion of the Sacrament, the priests with other of the quire shall kneel in the midst of the church, and sing or say plainly and distinctly the Litany, which is set forth in English, with all the suffrages following, to the intent the people may hear and answer; and none other procession or litany to be had or used, but the said Litany in English, adding nothing thereto, but as it is now appointed. And in cathedral or collegiate churches the same shall be done in such places…and all ringing and knolling of bells shall be utterly forborne at that time, except one bell at convenient time to be rung or knolled before the sermon. But yet for retaining of the perambulation of the circuits of parishes, they shall once in the year at the time accustomed, with the curate and substantial men of the parish, walk about their parishes, as they were accustomed, and at their return to the church, make their common prayers.

XLIX. Item, because in divers collegiate and also some parish churches heretofore there have been livings appointed for the maintenance of men and children to use singing in the church, by means whereof the laudable science of music has been had in estimation, and preserved in knowledge; the queen’s majesty neither meaning in any wise the decay of anything that might conveniently tend to the use and continuance of the said science, neither to have the same in any part so abused in the church, that thereby the common prayer should be the worse understanded of the hearers, wills and commands, that first no alterations be made of such assignments of living, as heretofore has been appointed to the use of singing or music in the church, but that the same so remain. And that there be a modest and distinct song so used in all parts of the common prayers in the church, that the same may be as plainly understanded, as if it were read without singing; and yet nevertheless for the comforting of such that delight in music, it may be permitted, that in the beginning, or in the end of common prayers, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or suchlike song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence of the hymn may be understanded and perceived.

Altars.   Puritans returning from exile reimposed the 1550 Edwardian ordinance that replaced wood tables for altars.  By 1557 an ornamental chaos emerged. Some churches had altars, others tables; some located their tables in sanctuaries, others in the choir or the naïve; some celebrated to the east, others northward, etc..  A table might be anywhere short of the market. Relocation of altars often accompanied removal of rails and roods.

Upon Elizabeth’s ascension altar desecration was prohibited without approval of wardens and curates who were allowed to install wood tables, yet these tables were to be, “decently made, and set in the place where the altar stood”. Returning tables behind the rail restored the greater sacerdotal and holy sense of communion. It also restored ecclesial hierarchy and clerical Holy Orders.

Vestments. The puritan bid to flatten clerical into lay authority made vestments no less controversial than altars in the chancel. The 1559 injunction prescribes vestments, “as were most commonly and orderly received in the latter year of the reign of King Edward VI.”  Edward’s “latter year” means the 1552 Prayer Book which put forth the following words at he beginning of the morning service, “The priest shall wear neither alb, vestment, nor cope—but he shall have and wear surplice only”.  However, Elizabeth continued the wearing of a cope in the Queen’s chapel, and Archbishops of Canterbury during the Tudor reign did the same. The Canons of 1604 confirm this usage allowing the wearing of copes in cathedrals. Copes were thus proper garb for Bishops.  The princely significance of the cope required its holding by one or two acolytes to free the wearer’s arms during manual gestures of consecration and to keep it clear while mounting the steps during the approach to the sanctuary. Eighteenth and nineteenth century debates over vestments were waged over the black, Geneva gown vs. continuation of surplice-only. Not until the Oxford movement would vestments find their way back. Queen Elizabeth’s preference for Henrican style is better revealed in retention of ecclesial garb for deans and academics. Likewise, the 1563 introduction of a Latin BCP for use in university chapels aimed to counter and restrain puritan influence (RPW) amongst seminarians.

XXX. Item, her majesty being desirous to have the prelacy and clergy of this realm to be had as well in outward reverence, as otherwise regarded for the worthiness of their ministries, and thinking it necessary to have them known to the people in all places and assemblies, both in the church and without, and thereby to receive the honour and estima-tion due to the special messengers and ministers of Almighty God, wills and commands that all archbishops and bishops, and all other that be called or admitted to preaching or ministry of the sacraments, or that be admitted into any vocation ecclesiastical, or into any society of learning in either of the universities, or elsewhere, shall use and wear such seemly habits, garments, and such square caps, as were most commonly and orderly received in the latter year of the reign of King Edward VI; not thereby meaning to attribute any holiness or special worthiness to the said garments, but as St. Paul writeth: Omnia decenter et secundum ordinem fiant.

Summary: The Injunctions establish important qualifications for the Ornament rubric which does not simply translate to Sarum ceremony carte blanche. Dearmer’s lists of ornaments do not necessarily indicate contraband. Thus, we must look to the Injunctions. Important differences are: a local option for wood tables or altars but each remaining in their place as determined by medieval custom; vestments specified as surplice and cope; single bell tolls at the beginning and end of worship, the eucharist, and the sermon only; two candles on or above the altar/table (a permanent low mass); no candles or censing for saints (plus a separating of black from red-letter saints); restricting processions to the beginning & end of service as well as once-a-year on Rogation Day (marching the parish bounds); a preference for congregational plain and said chant vs. song, organs, and choirs; the placement of vernacular bibles in the churches for public prayer; and installation of Latin prayer books in some academic and private chapels. The chapel and to some extent cathedral observances would remain reservoirs of catholic ceremony. Parish churches more generally were ‘purified’.

I hope to next study Caroline injunctions, then the low church 18th and 19th centuries, considering how each impacted ritualism, distilling what is common.

Article X. On Adiaphora

An often misunderstood and abused, adiaphora was a  crucial apologetic, used to reform the Church against  Rome while preserving England from Puritanism. Against    radicals who demanded a precise biblical prescription for  all worship, Anglican divines (particularly Hooker)  defended the validity of the  Prayer  Book by adiaphora  argument; quoting Article XXXIV:

“It is not  necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places    one, or utterly like…Every particular or national church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the church ordained only by man’s authority”.

Adiaphora’s implications were bigger than canonical ceremony.  In so far as ritual conveyed “grace”, rites might be ranked by importance. Ceremony was divided between rites which forgave sin (divinely instituted worship) from ritual that was man’s response to justifying grace (Melanchthon calls this “Eucharistic worship”). What has been established by custom for the purpose of praise, edification, and memory, the church has liberty to change or modify when necessary. But what God has instituted which is not part of ‘tradition’ but divine command, no alteration may occur. Such differentation sets apart God’s grace  from man’s love, and this is the fundamental distinction between ‘justification by faith’ and merit, i.e., man’s work/response does not remit sin but comes from the promise and efficacy thereof.

When properly understood in the context of the early reformation debates, adiaphora not only seperates God’s decree from man’s response/works but also distinguishes the Church apart from the world. Reformers believed the visible marks of the Church– sacraments and preaching– made her unique from civil institutions. Without such divine signs (Word and Sacrament) the Church might as well be a political party or social welfare program. This is an important apology. Melanchthon says,

“The true adornment of the churches is godly, useful, and clear doctrine, the devout use of the Sacraments, fervent prayer, and the like. Candles, golden vessels, and similar adornments are fitting, but they are not the specifically unique adornment belonging to the Church. If the adversaries (Rome) make these things the focus of worship, and not the preaching of the gospel, in faith, they are to be numbered among those whom Daniel describes as worshiping their god with gold and silver (Dan. 11:38)”.  (Apology, XXIV.51)

No “License”:

While ‘adiaphora’ translates ‘indifferent things’ (sic., sub-title of Article X), it does not mean ‘unimportant’.  Adiaphora issues are no less important than charity, mortification/penance, catechism, or even prayer. They constitute our works or response to sin forgiven. We should use the term strictly, meaning rites which do not “justify” or ‘remit’. The Most Reverend Mark Haverland, in Anglican Catholic Faith and Practice, also distinguishes between essential and non-essential matters, “Other beliefs may be true, and important or even necessary for salvation. Anglican also have historically and strongly distinguished dogmas or essential doctrines (which are few and clearly established in scripture) from pious opinions and inessential truths” (p. 3)

Adiaphora thus draws a sharp line between divine grace and man’s response, lending itself to a strong Augustinaian, high-grace teaching (said above). While we may say non-justifying rites are mutable, this does not automatically mean reducing rites to a bare minimum or breaking from a long established tradition is wise. But in extremis, where custom confuses or undermines the Word and Sacraments, tradition calls for reform.

Sadly, adiaphora is wrongly conceived as “license”. Perhaps this is more likely amongst Baptists (and those who have no historical exegete but are congregationalist and radical in polity), yet it is not the case with the Thirty-Nine Articles where the Crown and Bishops were conservative weights . The CofE principally restrained private liberty according to over-arching but real Christian obligations— e.g, obedience to the civil authority, consideration of the weaker brother, mutual submission between churches, and the antiquity of fathers. These restraining principles were summed by Hooker and the BCP Preface. In contrasting such with RPW, we might call them the Canonical Principle of Worship (CPW). The Thirty-Nine Articles say:

“Whosoever, through his private judgment, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like,) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren” (Article XXXIV).

Article X

Where the 39 Articles relegate questions of adiaphoric ceremony to common order (e.g., Article 34, above), Lutheran confessions more often appeal to theological reasoning. That said, Anglican agreement with Lutheran confessions is not altogether wrong given the Thirty-Nine Articles were an abbreviated reply to continental debates borne after 1530 where Strasburg, Zurich, and Wittenberg pleaded their case at the Augsburg Diet. Lutheran influence during the formative period of the Settlement justifies treating German Concords as virtual tertiary formulas.

The Formula of Concord succinctly defines adiaphora as:

“Some ceremonies and Church practices are neither commanded nor forbidden in God’s Word, but are introduced into the Church with good intention, for the sake of good order and proper custom, or otherwise to maintain Christian discipline” (Article X, Formula Concordia)

Ceremonies which in principal are contrary to God’s Word are not ‘indifferent’ or ‘free’ but “must be avoided as things prohibited by God”. Ceremonies which are perhaps venerable and owe respect yet not divinely given for the remission of sin may be changed (as the Thirty-Nine Articles say “not all rites being the same”) in a way most useful and edifying for the churches of God. “Nevertheless, all frivolity and offense should be avoided in this matter. Special care should be taken to exercise patience toward the weak in faith…We believe, teach, and confess also that no church should condemn another because one has less or more outward ceremonies…This is true as long as they have unity with one another in the doctrine and all its articles and in the right use of the holy sacraments. This practice follows the well-known saying ‘disagreement in fasting does not destroy agreement in faith’ (X.5, 7; Formula).  Should the ban on frivolity be akin to the ‘newfangledness’ warned of by the 1550 BCP? [see Preface]

Conclusion:

What stands out between Lutheran and Anglican Formulas, especially between late 16^th century divines, is Anglicanism’s conservative character. While early Lutherans, like Philip Melanchthon, revered the fathers (Article XXI.1, Augsburg) and regarded old ceremony (Article XV. 44, Apology), later men like Martin Chemnitz bore no adiaphora with Rome as if any discussion with Papacy was instantly compromising. Non-adiaphora Lutherans reasoned that in times of persecution, Christians best “confess every aspect of religion…In this case, even in adiaphora, they must not yield to the adversaries or permit these adiaphora to be forced on them by their enemies, whether by violence or cunning” (X.10, Formula).  Thus a prejudice against catholic custom grew though not characteristic of Lutherans until after 1580.

And, while Anglicanism had its own Puritan party, the Puritan expectation that all external worship have divinely command was resisted by Parker and Whitgift. Anglican adiaphora therefore allowed older church rites to survive. The Queen’s chapel, which Puritans disparaged frequently, was a deposit of conservativism which weighted the settlement. The Anglican treatment of lawful custom is thus found not only in her Prayer Book (which despite various revisions, changed very little following 1559) but the Royal Injunctions which interpreted the Ornament Rubric and England’s catholic continuity. We cannot further define the Ornament Rubric without exploring these very important Royal Injunctions  (these being the Injunctions of 1559, 1566, 1604, 1629, etc..).

Ordering of Priests

The boundaries of liberty given in normativist  worship have so far been probed (well-summed  by the BCP Preface and Hooker’s Four Precepts).  However, normativism has yet to answer this quesiton, “Besides general principles of  restraint, what elements of worship is  specifically required by God; thus, what has no  liberty?”   I found a ready answer in the 1928 BCP rite for “the Form and Ordering of Priests”:

Bishop. Will you then give your faithful diligence always so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church hath received the same, according to the Commandments of God; so that you may teach the people committed to your Cure and Charge with all diligence to keep and observe the same?
Answer. I will so do, by the help of the Lord.

What God Instituted Be clear. Both Anglicans and Lutherans provide distinction between divinely instituted and man-made worship. Both belong in their own category and are treated differently. Ceremony instituted by God must be performed while those belonging to tradition are conditionally approved. Unlike Presbyterians, Anglicans retained man-made rites that did not diminish the gospel but were good for common peace, order, deference to precedence, and edification of the Church. The very nature of the episcopate compelled both uniformity and continuity in ceremony that other Protestants neglected.

Nonetheless, because certain worship is man-made Article XXXIV says, “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly alike…Every particular or national church hath authority to ordain, change, abolish, Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done edifying.  The Lutherans (whom Anglicans consulted in the course of our Articles) likewise retained a good amount of catholic ritual given such edifies. The line, however, is drawn where rites and custom pretend to merit grace and forgive sin, elevating ‘custom’ to the status of dominical sacraments. While antique and venerable, they do not have such power.  Melanchthon says in the Augsburg Apology:

“We should not add to God’s covenant, for God promises that He will be merciful to us for Christ’s sake…Why do we need a long discussion? No tradition was set up by the Holy Fathers for the purpose of meriting forgiveness of sins, or righteousness. Rather they were instituted for the sake of good order in the Church and for the sake of peace” (Apology, p. 190)

Man cannot change or alter the terms of God’s covenant. The visible marks of covenant principally remit sin. After all what would be the church be without this power? Consequently, the Church is known wherever the forgiveness of sin is administered, “For the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments” (AC, Article VII). The Prayer Book tells us the episcopate possesses the Keys which “forgive and retain sin”, and by the laying of hands from Christ, to His episcopate, to their priesthood, these Keys are thereby delegated and used. The 1928 BCP  rite, “Ordering and Form of Priesthood”, summarizes the necessary rites of God (hence, His Keys) :

RECEIVE the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments; In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

A: What’s instituted, commanded, required by God, suffering no alteration, are the “retention and forgiveness” of man’s sin. God appointed His Word and Sacrament for this expressed purpose (mission), without which the church is mere political society, no different than, say, the Elks or Moose lodge.

How many Sacraments? It is readily apparent the Presbytery is charged not only with the instruction, peace, and otherwise canonical obligations (discipline) of the Church but particularly that which Christ appointed, Word and Sacrament. But what are the Sacraments? The St. Louis Affirmation says there are seven, and each is “His covenanted means for conveying His grace”. The Affirmation does not detail the “kinds” of grace conveyed (sanctifying or justifying), but a distinction is nonetheless acknowledged, differentiating Baptism and the Holy Eucharist from the other seven by calling such “necessary”. The Thirty-nine Articles also seperates the rank and dignity of Baptism and the Supper from the lesser, particular rites:

“There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not the like nature of Sacraments with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God” (Art. XXV)

The Elizabethan “Homily on Common Prayer and the Sacraments” (Art. 35) likewise distinguishes Two from Seven:

“But in a generall acception, the mane of a Sacrament may be attributed to any thing whereby an holy thing is signified. In which understanding of the word, the ancient writers have given this name, not only to the other five, commonly of late yeres taken and used for supplying the number of the seven Sacraments: but also to divers and sundry other ceremonies, as to oyle, washing of feete, and such like, not meaning thereby to repute them as Sacraments, in the same signification that the two forenamed Sacraments are” (Homily on Common Prayer, p. 4)

By “corrupt following” perhaps the Articles implicate traditions that have befallen ‘confused usage’? An interesting study would be how the “Mass” is an “uber-liturgy’, broadened by the inclusion of various offeretory elements other than money, bread, and wine. Depending upon occasion, rites like Matrimony and Orders join the presentation alms and bread at the altar, given for God’s blessing.  Perhaps the “uber-liturgy’ of Mass (one rite ecnompassing a number of others) is the origin of the confusion? If so, it’s a beautiful one, but confused where the location of confection is mistaken– i.e.,  A married couple are not Bread and Wine for ‘eating’ . Perhaps I speculate.

Discussing the mystery and mode of sacraments is truly elusive. The Reformation seperated the Supper and Baptism from other rites according to their unique power to “remit or bind” sin. Can we say marriage ‘remits sin’ like Baptism? How about birthday blessings? Obviously palm leaves, paschal candles, and advent wrethes are man-made, albeit revered rites, and as a consequence cannot forgive sin. There must be a criteria, otherwise we become like the Eastern Orthodox who confuse custom with sacraments rendering even style of liturgy ‘essence’. Melanchthon highlights the problem:

“But if marriage has the name ‘sacrament’ because it has God’s command, other states or offices also, which have God’s command, may be called Sacraments, as, for example, the government. Finally, if among the Sacraments everything should be numbered that has God’s command, and to which promises have been added, why do we not add prayer, which most truly can be called a sacrament? For it has both God’s command and very many promises. If numbered along the Sacraments, although in a more prominent plaace, it would encourage people to pray. Alms could alaso be counted here…But let us leave out these things. For no levelheaded person will labor greatly about the number or the term, if only those things are still kept that have God’s commands and promises” (Apology, p. 185-6)

The problem with numbering sacraments is mistaking historical symbols (like crucifixes) and gestures (like the sign of the cross) that perhaps stir and excite faith with covenanted signs instituted by God to forgive sin. Tradition has an allegorical or memorialist signifcance, perhaps preparing us for the greater benefits of Christ, and thus indirectly assist our salvation, but God’s sacraments convey directly divine righteousness. It is not just a matter of ‘scope’, i.e., the universality or general application of the sacraments, but a specific grace which they grant,  i.e., justifying grace. Ultimately at stake is the uniqueness and mission of the Church, “Can man institute rites (seperate from Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Preaching of the Word) which bind and loose”? If so, then what is wrong with the blood of goats and bulls? Or Rome?

A matter of Adoration?                                                                                           Reformers revealed their medieval-scholastic colors by their systematic division of faith and love. Perhaps they were guilty of over-definition, but how else are abuses like indulgences addressed except through theology? Behind debates over justification and sanctification is the very nature of grace, “Is grace conditioned upon man’s civil righteousness?”  Rome based her economy of merit on pelagian and semi-pelagian concepts. The Reformation attacked Roman soteriology through rather rigid Augustinian categories. In fact, Anglicanism was the most true to Augustinian thought. What Anglican (Tudor) Reformers said about ‘justification’ (how sin is remitted) also pertains to dominical sacraments, i.e., their ex opera operato justifying power, wholly outside man.  From the Elizabethan Homily,

“First, you shall understand, that in our justification by Christ, it is not all one thing, the office of GOD unto man, and the office of man unto GOD. Justification is not the office of man, but of GOD” (Homily on Justification, p. 5)

“That we be justified by faith only, freely and without works, is spoken for to take away clearly all merit of our works, as being unable to deserve our justification at GODS hands, and thereby most plainly to express the weakness of man, and the goodness of GOD, the great infirmity of our selves, and the might and power of GOD, the imperfectness of our own works, and the most abundant grace of our Savior Christ” (ditto, p. 9)

Hall is rather final on the subject, the matter having resonance with Donatism,

“St. Augustine met this difficulty by enunicating the catholic doctrine that the true minister in every sacrament is Jesus Christ, and that it is because of HIs agency that when the external requirements are rightly and seriously performed the promised operation of the Spirit is pledged. It is the Savior’s institution and promise, rather than the earthly minister’s faith and worthiness, that makes the sacrament valid. This teaching has been determinative, ever since, of catholic thought on the subject” (Hall, Vol. IX, p. 5).

Answering the question against NPW, “What does God command?”.  One response might be, “whatever ceremony deserves our adoration”. God commands the cure of souls not by man-made rites (no matter how ancient or edifying) but by the very “hands of God”, which the Homily (above) calls “God’s Office”. Luther says the Gospel (promise of remitted sin) comes by four offices– spoken Word, baptsim, supper, and Absolution (aka. keys). The importance of Justification is to understand there is nothing we add to reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins. We must look outside ourselves for divine righteousness and approval, our eyes fixed upon the peculiar signs God has appointed for His Word to give comfort. Word and Sacrament alone reconcile and ‘prevent’ men from sin and to God. The Ordering of Priests beautifully encapsulates this truth when the Bishop hands the candidate a Bible and/or Chalice whereupon fidelity to “Word and Sacrament” is sworn. Normativism gives no liberty with God’s offices, “The chief point is God’s Word and ordinance or command. For the Sacrament has not been invented nor introduced by any man. Without counsel and deliberation it has been instituted by Christ” (Large Cathechism, Part 5.4), and so this is an answer to Regulativists who believe NPW leaves nothing to obey/duly administer.

I am finally drawing closure in my rants against RPW. NPW differs with Regulativism by insisting some (but not all) worship requires the express command of God. Man has a liberty in our response to grace, but none where sin is forgiven. Puritanical RPW lipsyncs Eastern Orthodoxy (and even Rome) when it raises all worship to the dignity and efficacy of sacrament. This is an abuse and gross error. Down the road I’d like explore the “lesser sacraments”, their correlation to the greater, and their essential relation to good works– i.e., responsive and preparatory to divine grace.

The Ornament Rubric

Henrican Style: two candles, altar, single lamp, rail

Note: While this essay deals with the nuts-and-bolts of the Ornament Rubric, here is a more recent overview.

Perhaps the description of the Elizabethan Settlement, “protestant in doctrine, catholic in practice”, is  cliché? Anglican reformers treated worship (outside the sacraments and preaching) as ‘indifferent’, leaving England’s Christians to be governed by more general principles like ‘peace, unity, edification, and antiquity’ of her Church. However, in time, Hooker’s “four precepts” (distilled from the Prayer Book’s Preface) was eclipsed by the Puritan controversy against manual gestures, vestments, and various devotional customs. Evangelicals perhaps sympathetic to radical iconoclasm ought to reconsider the actual canonical standard which defined England’s catholic practice. Against extreme Presbyterian iconoclasm was the Prayer Book’s Ornament Rubric which, in her 1662 Morning Prayer, stated plainly,

“And here is to be noted, That such Ornaments of the Church, and of the Minister thereof and at all times of their Ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the authorization of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth”.

How was the Ornament Rubric to be understood? First, an Ornament is any furniture, vessel, art, vestment, fabric, or icon that otherwise might ordain worship in a church. Therefore, this prayer book rubric does much to delineate Anglican aesthetic.  There are two key phrases, ‘the Minister thereof and at all times of their Ministration”, meaning for all services (e.g., Matins, Vespers, Marriage, Communion, etc.), and “as retained, and be in use….in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI”. This date is the year 1549. What ornaments were ‘retained’ and/or “in use” in early 1548-1549?

The Victorian Reverend Percy Dearmer studied this question, and in 1897 drew up a list (in his Ornament of the Rubric paper). Since Edward’s monarchy began Jan. 28, 1547, his second year would have been between Jan. 28, 1548 to Jan. 27, 1549.  The Rev’d Dearmer makes a critical distinction between those ‘Acts and Articles’ from Henry VIII and Edward’s later Protestantism. The latter date, Jan. 27 1549, would have encompassed the first Prayer Book. Otherwise, with the exception of the Privy’s Council’s 1547 Injunctions, Henrican statutes defined aesthetic boundaries. The Prayer book says relatively little about ornaments (other than certain vestments to be worn during public prayer). However, the 1547 canons and Henrician articles say more.

Injunction Act 1547
Henry is known for flirting with Lutheran teachings but restoring old Roman Catholic usages in 1543.  Upon Henry’s death, the King’s protestant barons, namely Duke Seymour, on behalf of Edward’s minority passed an Injunction. Rev. Dearmer summed this Injunction, saying it removed,

“All relics, shrines, and everything connected with them were taken away, and all images which had been abused by offerings and other superstitious observances ; also all pictures which recorded ‘feigned miracles.’ Lights were no longer to be set before any such nor elsewhere in the church, except two before the Sacrament of the Altar… The Injunctions forbid certain uses of bells, and order the setting up in every church of a copy of the great Bible in some place where the parishioners could read it; and that a pulpit should be provided in every church that did not already possess one… The injunctions of 1547 order the provision of a chest with three keys near the high altar for alms”. (Ornaments of the Rubric 1893).

The 1547 Injunctions made important qualifications. Church steeple bells may be rung before the service. Processions were permitted, “in so far, at least, as they belonged to the service at the altar”. Percy also notes while Monstrances were in use during 1548, they were finally prohibited under both Edward and Elizabeth. Other rites like ‘stations of the cross’ (inside church) were introduced much later and are outside the 1549 cut-off date.

Despite these various restrictions, certain late-Henrican aesthetic lawfully continued into Edward’s early regency and was affirmed by Tudors. Permissible ornmanents included great stone and wood altars (vs. moveable tables of mid-1549); images of great saints;  rood screens; minor and portable altars; altar canopies, covers, and curtains; chancel carpets and tapestries; the pyx for reserves; lamps and candlesticks (given no more than two placed on altar); linens; the crucifix; the altar textus; chalice, paten, and spoons to serve communion; garlands; stools; organs; baptismal fonts; asperages, lavatories, along with washing basins; and pulpits plus lecterns, etc.. (Ornaments, 1893)   But these were canons not of greater authority than the prayer book rubric. Read about the nature of canons here.

Ten Articles 1536
The 1547 Injunction basically returned England to Henry’s Ten Articles as adopted by Convocation and Parliament in 1536. The Ten Articles, somewhat similar to the Lutheran, was England’s first confession, moving her in the direction of Wittenberg until 1552 whereupon Cranmer veered toward the Swiss (sic., Martin Bucer). Nonetheless, there is an appeal to primitive practice. The Ten Articles are interesting because they detail the rites which the 1559 Preface judges beneficial:

Art. IX. Of rites and ceremonies: “As concerning the rites and ceremonies of Christ’s church; as, to have such vestments in doing God’s service as be and have been most part used: as sprinkling of holy water, to put us in remembrance of our baptism, and the blood of Christ sprinkled for our redemption upon the cross: giving of holy bread, to put us in remembrance of the sacrament of the altar, that all Christian men be one body mystical of Christ, as the bread is made of many grains, and yet but one loaf; and to put us in remembrance of receiving of the holy sacrament and body of Christ, the which we ought to receive in right charity, which in the beginning of Christ’s church men did more often receive than they use nowadays to do: bearing of candles on Candlemas-day, in memory of Christ the spiritual light, of whom Simeon did prophesy, as is read in the church that day: giving of ashes on Ash-Wednesday, to put in remembrance every Christian man in the beginning of Lent and penance, that he is but ashes and earth, and thereto shall return, which is right necessary to be uttered from henceforth in our mother-tongue always on the Sunday: bearing of palms on Palm-Sunday, in memory of the receiving of Christ into Jerusalem a little before his death, that we may have the same desire to receive him into our hearts: creeping to the cross, and humbling ourselves to Christ on Good-Friday before the cross, and there offering unto Christ before the same, and kissing of it in memory of our redemption by Christ made  upon the cross: setting up the sepulture of Christ, whose body after his death was buried: the hallowing of the font, and other like exorcisms and benedictions by the ministers of Christ’s church…” (Fuller, the Church History of Britain, p. 165)

By approving of these ancient customs, Article IX likewise approves their instruments, e.g., candles, processions, crosses, pyxs, and apserages likewise implicated.  Of these rites their antiquity, Article IX concludes,

“[of them]… and all other like laudable customs, rites, and ceremonies, be not to be condemned and cast away, but to be used and continued, as things good and laudable, to put us in remembrance of those spiritual things that they do signify, no suffering them to be forgotten, or to be put in oblivion, but renewing them in our memories from time to time; but none of these ceremonies have power to remit sin, but only to stir and life up our minds unto God, by whom only our sins be forgiven.” (ditto)

Conclusion
The 1559 Ornament Rubric, if interpreted by other Anglican canon, is strikingly Elizabethan. The Rubric is exemplary of the Elizabethan s“media via”—fencing off the errors of both Radicals and Rome, reforming church teaching along protestant lines but retaining catholic sensibility and heritage. It was a Lutheran confession of worship. In fact, Elizabeth might be accused of Lutheran preference, rejecting the Calvinist 42 articles prepared by Arch-Bishop Whitgift while approving Parker’s Lutheran 29^th Article (objectivity of the sacrament). At least doctrinally speaking, behind the Elizabethan settlement is the Augsberg family of confessions– the Tudor’s Erastian counterparts. But pertaining to ritual aesthetic, Elizabeth restored indeed reached back to her father, i.e, Henrican piety. Interestingly, this was in keeping with her personal devotions upon which Puritans ridiculed Queen Elizabeth’s conservatism of praying by candles, images, and the altar crucifix.

The coherence of Anglicanism has suffered terribly under  ”broad church” . Rather than seeking unity in her Reformed Catholic standards– Scripture, ecumenical councils, aesthetic, articles, bishops, king, canons, homilies, authorative apologies, and prayer book– she avoided discipline by entertaining a diversity which breached standards and process. The Ornament Rubric is one standard amongst many needed for reclaiming Protestant Catholicity. Specifically, for Anglicanism it brackets ritualism, canonically defining the aesthetic boundaries of our worship, delineating what is ‘adaiphora’ while articulating what we may call ‘Anglican’.

ABC Williams discusses the divergence of traditions, especially those which  impact the marks of the church, namely her gospel and sacraments, but to an extent this applies to aesthetic as well:

When a local church seeks to respond to a new question, to the challenge of possible change in its practice or discipline in the light of new facts, new pressures, or new contexts, as local churches have repeatedly sought to do, it needs some way of including in its discernment the judgement of the wider Church. Without this, it risks becoming unrecognisable to other local churches, pressing ahead with changes that render it strange to Christian sisters and brothers

Williams is discussing ‘recognizability’ between churches-in-communion. What is permissable depends upon episcopate canon and rules like the Prayer Book. Sadly, arugments over Common Prayer  have been doggedly polemicized. But Pery Dearmer’s Rubric of the Ornament gives a studied answer. When Ritualism arrived in America (a generation after the founding of English Tractarianism), John Hopkins wrote an answer how high-church worship fits within the the lawful boundaries of both Prayer Book and royal injunction, The Law of Ritualism (1866). Also, read Percy’s Loyalty to the Prayer Book.

The 1928 Preface

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s Preface  is  identical to the 1789 edition. The  Preface really  establishes the relationship  between the Church  of England and the  American Protestant  Episcopal Church. It also declares certain  secondary standards for orthodoxy. Where  differences arise are often in ceremonial custom  and circumstance, “usages and forms”. The Preface  therefore begins as an exposition on Christian liberty as it pertains to Ceremony, saying:

“that blessed ‘liberty wherewith Chist hath made us free’, that in his worship different forms and usages may without offence be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline; and therefore, by common consent and authority, may be altered, abridged, enlarged, amended, or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient for edification”

We should keep in mind 18th century Protestants did not grant the liberty to either the gospel or morals! Article VII is a rather staple Reformation belief, “Although the Law given from God to Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet not withstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral”.

Since rites and ceremonies may differ according to custom, “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly alike…and may be acknowledged by the diversity of countires, times, and men’s manners” (Art. XXXIV), crucially, the 1789 Prayer Book suggests the extent they differ. However, Americans (as a sign of their episcopal succession) were good to differ from England only where necesssary in custom and civil power. This is where an American cultus begins to shape pecularities. In the Prayer Book these pecularities are extremely minor. What is amazing was the fidelity Americans gave the English Church given the events of colonial revolution. Consequently, the 1789 Book acknowledges a canonical tie by the same “over-arching” principles governing lawful worship, suggesting a conservative ideal, hardly a liscence to newfangeldness:

“she further declares in her said Preface, to do that which, according to her best understanding, might most tend to the preservation of peace and unity in the Church; the procuring of reverence, and the exciting of piety and devotion in the worship of God; and, finally, the cutting off occasion…of cavil or quarrel”

What is missing is an appeal to antiquity. However, this is likely implicit in the deference given to England as America’s “first foundation”:

“the Church of England, to which the Protestant Episocopal Church in these States is indebted, under God, for her first foundation”.

Rather than starting anew, the American church acknowledged traditional reception of custom and discipline not abridged or altered whimsically, nor differing in main or cheif materials. A founding authority is identified not only through the English Prayer Book (forms and usages) but also the Articles and Homilies contained and mentioned therein. This actually says a lot, defining a common life which is actually more ‘confessional’ and precise (in many ways) than fewer formularies Presbyterianism provides.

• “The same Church [England] hath not only in her Preface, but likewise in her Articles and Homilies, declared the necessity and expediency of occasional alterations and amendments in her Forms of Public Worship; and we find accordingly, that, seeking to keep the happy mean between too much stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness in admitting variations…yet so as that main body and essential parts of the same (as well as chiefest materials, as in the frame and order thereof) have still been continued firm and unshaken.”
• “…alterations and amendments. They will appear, and it is to be hoped, the reasons of them also, upon a comparison of this with the Book of common Prayer of the Church of England. In which it will also appear that this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; or further than local customs require”

The Preface therefore establishes a number of formularies (secondary standards). For instance, there is an appeal to tradition. Keep in mind due apostolic succession (the consecration of Bishops White, Provost, and Smith in England) legitimized the Philadelphia Convention. The Church of England even in post-revolutionary America was a ‘corner-stone’. Second, changes in liturgy were limited to ‘local customs’, namely a republican form of civil government and perhaps some leeway in American preference for low church.  The 1785 proposed edition had a distinctly ‘enlightened’, abbreviated tone. But even here it required approval from England before adopted in the States. In the end, it was rejected and what prevailed was a liturgy more catholic than Canterbury thanks to the influence of Samuel Seabury. Ironically, Seabury argued the adoption of the epiclesis in order to further distinguish American liturgy from Rome.

However, local custom did not excuse any essential departure from doctrine, worship, or discipline from England– meaning a commonality in standards. Essentially the American Prayer Book was the 1662 English Use with a few significant 1637 Scottish additions.  The 39 Articles, Homilies, Catechism along with a certain informal continuance of English practice and sense of antiquity carried over, strengthening “instruments of unity” and therefore a canonical principle.

What most stands out regarding the distinctions of American cultus with respect to Worship was the Preface’s allusion to English aim for “comprehension”, namely King William’s 1689 Commission where an alternate rite for Presbyterian inclusion into CofE was considered:

“it cannot be supposed that further alterations would in time be found expedient. Accordingly, a Commission for a review was issued in 1689: but this great and good work miscarried at that time; and the Civil Authority has not since thought proper to revive it.”

Perhaps American Episcopacy has a special, providential role to play with Presbyterian and Methodist daughters? The reference to ‘comprehension’ perhaps mean no more than a liberty to alter rites according to necessity. Yet given this there is remains a dual appeal to ancient forms (inherited standards from CofE) and future economy toward Protestant neighbors (1689 comprehension).  The Preface perhaps offers a vision of Anglicanism as media via in American context, episcopal salt in wilderness of unchecked enthusiasm?

Of Ceremonies, 1559

The 1559 Prayer Book was the most distinctly  Protestant (pro-Calvinist) of prayer books. That being  said, it never fell into the innovation of  Anabaptism/  RPW.  Following Queen Elizabeth  I’s reinstitution of  Common  Prayer,  future book revisions (e.g., 1662)  varied  little. The section “Of  Ceremonies” gives the  rationale for reintroducing Edward’s discipline.  These  same reasons are not unlike the “four precepts”  elaborated by Hooker. “Of  ceremonies” articulates how polity and NPW work together to produce a uniform standard or Canon– hardly worship anarchy (the charge of Regulativists). Though the 1559 Prayer book admits many ‘indifferent rites’ and a ‘freedom of spirit’ in church ceremony, there are indeed “over-arching principles” that qualify and restrain private freedoms, aka., “newfangledness” or “misguided zeal” of rectors, congregants, and even bishops. Below is a summary, “Of Ceremonies”. Notice the echo with Hooker who likely rephrased what Parker elucidates here in the 1559 book:

Good Order: “And forbecause they were winked at in the beginning, they grew daily to more and more abuses, which not only for their unprofitableness but also because athey have much blinded the people and obscured the glory of God are worthy to be cut away and clean rejected. Other there be which although they have been devised by man, yet it is thought good to reserve them still, as well for a decent order in the Church, for the which they were first devised, as because the pertain to edification, whereunto all things done in the Church, as the Apostle teacheth, ought to be referred. And although the keeping or omitting of a ceremony in itself considered is but a small thing, yet the willful and contemptuous transgression and breaking of common order and discipline is no small offense before God”

Canonical “The appointment of the which order pertaineth not to private men, therefore no man ought to take in hand nor presume to appoint or alter any public or common order in Christ’s Church, except he be lawfully called and authorized thereunto”

Edification “…use such ceremonies as they shall think best to the setting forth of God’s honor and glory and to the reducing of the people to a most perfect and goldy living”

Antiquity “..surely where the old may be well used there they cannot reasonably reprove the old only for their age without betraying their own folly. For in such a case they ought rather to have reverence unto them for their antiquity, if they will declare themselves to be moe studious of unity and concord than of innovations and newfangleness, which, as much as may be with the true setting forth of Christ’s religion, is always to be eschewed.”

Economy: ”For as those be taken away which were most abused and did burden men’s consciences without any cause, so the other that remain are retained for a discipline and order…are not to be esteemed equal with God’s law…And that they put away other things which from time to time they perceive to be most abused, as in men’s oridnances it often chanceth diversly in diverse countries”.

As said before, RPW seems to create more problems than answers. Especially when the Regulativist party is properly expanded to include Reformed Baptist, we see RPW indeed has a wide range of private opinion, even denying the power of the sacraments themselves. Furthermore, RPW wrongly applies the ‘precisionism’ of the instruments of the temple to all public worship. This is equivalent to reasserting the ceremonial law of Moses over external form where we can have no confidence that our burnt offerings “of a contrite heart’ will be accepted. Though the Church may have “over-arching principles” (which evenly applied provide for good order and true piety), unlike the OT we have no explicit command for various elements of congregational prayer. Much is deduced but deductions are varied resulting in wide opinion.  Nor can we default to ‘circumstance’ where silence may otherwise require cessation since many “circumstances”  indeed have liturgical significance.

Or do we have liberty?

Normativists would say “though the sacraments give no liberty (we cannot change the elements of bread and wine no more than we can change the marks of the church– such has been instituted by Christ), we do have liberty in rites which where no explicit command exists. The 1559 BCP says the same regarding this liberty and its purpose:

“And besides this, Christ’s gospel is not a ceremonial law, as much as Moses’ law was, but it is a religion to serve God, not in bondage of the figure or shadow, but in freedom and of spirit, being content only with those ceremonies which do serve to a decent order and godly discipline, and such as be apt to stir up the dull mind of man to the rememberance of his duty to God by some notable and special signification whereby he might be edified”

Worship is not private. Not even for various parties in the church. Good order is the love of brother and father. The Preface to the 1559 BCP gives procedural guidelines for grievances or disagreements. We see fexibility but within the framework of a “lawful call” and “due authority”:

“for the resolution of all doubts concerning the manner how to understand, do, and execute things contained in this book, the parties that so doubt, or diversely take anything shall always resort to the bishop of the diocese, who by his discretion shall take order for the quieting and appeasing of the same so that the same order be not contrary to anything contianed in this book. And if the bishop of the diocese be in any doubt, then may he send for the resolution thereof unto the archbishop.”

The accompanying Act of Uniformity 1559 says regarding appellations,

“…until other order shall be therein taken by the authority of the Queen’s Majesty, with the advice of her comissioners appointed and authorized under the great seal of England for causes ecclesiastical or of the metropolitan of this realm… the Queen’s Majesty may, by the like advice of the said commissioners or metropolitan, ordain and publish a such farther ceremonies or rites as may be most for the advancement of God’s glory, the edifying of His church, and the due reverence of Christ’s holy mysteries and sacraments”

As with Hooker, where/when discord occurs there is a forum and process to be mindful of.

Hooker’s Four Precepts

More on the Prayer Book wars!

Regulativists (RPW) view Normativism (NPW) as  invitation to worship anarchy.  Drudged up are  nightmare scenarios of ‘french-fries’ served during  communion or ‘motorcycles’ run up on stage during  praise team jams. Perhaps such scandals have  occured, and if they have surely it’s deeper the RPW  but a compound matter where Protestants cast aside Confessional standards.

How NPW is played out also depends on ecclesial polity.  A church which whose government is conducted on a synodal basis would have .  Lutherans and Anglicans both subscribe to such polities, and historically NPW produced documents like the Book of Concord and Common Prayer. Compare this to the Directory of Worship produced by the Westminster Assembly which resembles more a guideline for worship than book of fixed prayer, homilies, and rubrics. Hardly worship anarchy! Regulativists very rarely bother to examine what they criticise, rejecting common prayer without recognizing it as belonging to the Reformation family of scriptural worship. More than eighty percent of the BCP is directly quoted from scripture. The BCP’s song book after all is the Psalter.

Besides this, Regulativists  are challenged to answer why their worship is more historically diverse than Prayer Book churches? Despite the plain authority of scripture, Regulativist have a broad range of practice with respect to stringed instruments, hymnody, use of sacramentals (e.g.,  crucifixes), order of worship, and devotions/rubrics during communion. Furthermore, the Regulativist camp includes Reformed Baptists as well as Presbyterians who essentially have taken RPW so far as to basically reject the Sacraments of the church. Perhaps much of this is due to a hastily conceived Directory that lent moe freedom than even the Geneva version? Perhaps it’s legacy of Westminster itself where Independents and Presbyterians remained silent on inherent harm of Congregationalism?

Anway, the charge of worship Anarchy does not hold against the foremost Magisterial churches (Lutheran and Anglican) which complimented NPW with a catholic church polity that required subscription to canon hammered out by either council or King (turning NPW into CPW). CPW owes itself to those “over-arching” biblical principles shaping worship that Regulativists conveniently miss.  Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 5 defends Common Prayer. In it are four precepts (over-arching rules) that Hooker distills for the governance of worship. Hooker demonstrates  how catholicity and biblical principles work together to preclude such ridiculuous innovations as  ”monster trucks in the chancel”. It behooves all regulativists to read and consider  Hooker’s defense of Fixed Prayer against the “misguided zeal” and havoc of extreme biblicism. Indeed, Hooker calls the consequences of these four precepts “more precise” than RPW :

Worship is Dignified: The first postulate is, “That in the externals of religion, such things as are or seem most effectual to set forward godliness, — either from considerations of God’s greatness, or the dignity of religion, or heavenly impressions on men’s minds, — ought to be reverently esteemed.”

Worship is Traditional: Hence we lay down as a second postulate, “That in things whose fitness is not of itself apparent, nor may be easily proved, the concurrent judgment of antiquity ought to prevail with those who cannot allege any weighty impropriety against them”.

Worship is Canonical: Hence the third posulate is, “that where no law divine, nor invincible reasoning argument, nor notorious public injury, maketh against what the Church hath instituted, even though it be but recently, her authority ought to weigh more than any mere opinion to the contrary; and to claim deference, especially from her own children.”

Worship has Expediency: Hence the fourth postulate is, “That in cases of necessity, or for common utility’s sake, certain ordinances profitable in themselves, may occassionally be relaxed”.

–Hooker, EP, book V, sections V-IX

Hooker poses this question, “How is uniformity justified where rites indifferent?” This is where church polity is deterministic. The ecclesiology of  Baptist and contemporary fundamentalist churches only allow a ‘voluntarist’ uniformity.  However,  these are not ‘catholic churches’. Catholic churches are premised upon mutuality between bishops (the presbytery) who compose the Church, “the universal church exists within the local (and vice-versa)”. The Church of England, though a national church governed by Monarch, viewed herself conciliar, ruled by synod when not by commission or crown. It is by synods diverse opinion on fundamentals may be addressed, so this may likewise be viewed as a footnote to ‘economy’, i.e., protocol for reform. Hooker says,

“..since scripture does no prescribe all particular ceremonies; and so many modes in things indifferent might occur to the natural mind. The only practicable method of proving uniformity seems to be from deliberate consultation and decision of the Church in general council hereupon; and not from the utterly impractable suggestion of churches mutually adopting from each other, till all comees to similarity”

The Black Rubric

Note: Since publication, my views on the eucharist and its elements (bread and wine) have somewhat changed. The point in this article was to differentiate Anglican eucharistic presence from the Genevan/Calvinistic one. After further reading, Anglican sacramentalism ought not be mistaken for Lutheran though it is indeed closer to the German idea than Calvin’s. Unlike the Calvinist, Anglican eucharistic doctrine generally agree the elements are separated for use by the both prayer and Word, and the point of focus is indeed in the elements. Nonetheless, the bread is spiritually eaten by faith and not carnally so (as the black rubric says). This might be called “phillipist’ as the Variata is the best continental approximation, usually employing the terminology of ‘sacramental union’. Otherwise, the Anglican is generally more conservative than the Calvinist, giving a true objectivity to the bread and wine which the Genevan commonly does not. The Black Rubric should certainly be treated as part of the historical Prayer Book which lends definition as to how Anglicans uniquely understand the Eucharist contra Rome, Geneva, and Zurich. Please read this superior article by Bp. Peter Robinson, A Conservative Reformation .  Another that reviews terminology of ‘sacramental union’, evident in our articles, is Mr. Lavender’s Laudian Theology of the Lord’s Supper. And, interestingly, Dr. Tighe identified article 29 as a concession to Luther rather than a rejection of consubstantiation. So, perhaps my piece isn’t totally off the mark. These are also superb essays on the same: Novak on Eucharist and Dr. Crouse on Anglican Sacramentalism. Fr. Hart has suggested a convergence of thought between Protestants (represented by Anglicanism) and Rome. Hopefully, together, these links suffice until I can better edit the post below.  For now, note that the Lutheran makes greater plea to the christological statements following the ecumenical council Chalcedon as I partly show below. 

Background: Like the Vestment Controversy, the “Black Rubric” was a topmost Puritan grievance from the middle of the 16-th century until the Toleration Acts in 1689. The Black Rubric concerned bodily gestures of the laity during communion, decrying ‘adoration’ of bread and wine. Divines like Thomas Cranmer hoped to restrain ‘superstitious’ lay devotions (e.g., genuflecting, bowing, and kneeling unto the bread) that persisted through the Edwardian regency despite Puritan remonstrance.

Though the rubric Calvinist-inspired, it confusingly gave leeway to veneration of the host, angering Puritans who wanted a more consistent condemnation. Normally rubrics were highlighted in red ink. It was the only prayer book rubric printed in black font, hence its name. The Black Rubric stated:

We do declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done, or ought to be done, either to the Sacramental bread and wine there bodily received, or to any real or essential Presence there being of Christ’s natural flesh and blood. For as concerning the Sacramental bread and wine, they remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored, for those were Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians. And as concerning the natural body and blood of our savior Christ, they are in heaven and not here. For it is against he truth of Christ’s natural body, to be in more places than one, at the same time.

The controversy around adoration illustrates how tightly prayer and theology are bound together. Minutia such as how the sacrament is received can become a great liturgical matter with deep theological ramifications. Relatively simple rules intended to restrain error—e.g, “scripture alone” or RPW– too frequently explode into larger hermeneutical, creedal questions, especially where the issue does not render itself easily interpretation or “necessary consequence”. Amazingly even the smallest bodily gesture could speak volumes regarding the nature of the bread, having even creedal implications. In reality there are few ‘transparent’ matters but many more complex questions. The Black Rubric was one such dilemma.

Puritans believed measures like the Black Rubric evidenced Episcopacy’s wish to restore Roman Catholicism. Thus the matter was both dire and urgent. When the Solemn League and Covenant (SLC) was finally adopted by Puritans (Long Parliament 1643), the Black Rubric was just one of many complaints which justified English civil war beginning in 1642. But the black rubric controversy was rooted in earlier, acrimonious debates on the continent that began in Germany between Reformed and Lutheran parties. This debate later spilled northward into Britain where partisans differed over the extent Roman Catholic sacramentology required revision. Debates around the Supper are summed by two main categories, the Black Rubric properly belonging to the second–

1. The elements of communion as an offertory sacrifice,
2. The mode of Christ’s presence during the Supper.

Christ’s Presence: With respect to adoration and real presence, amongst Protestants only Lutherans and Calvinists gave the Supper a spiritual realism. Zwingli and the Anabaptist reduced the entire rite to an empty symbol, not departing grace but only stirring the heart to contemplate Christ. This view is called memoralism. However, the Zwinglian position will not be discussed here since in the English Church all parties rejected it. All parties were “realists”. The Henrician Church was either Recusant (Romanist) or Lutheran. By the time of Prince Edward IV possessed the throne, the church added Calvinist definitions. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the principal author of the BCP, was himself a Lutheran won over to Calvinism in the 1546. But these differences were enough. Though much of England’s Protestantism might be said to have been a mixture of Calvinistic and Lutheran opinion, the combination was nonetheless tense if not volatile. Their disagreement was not over realism in the rite but the over the consecrated bread itself conferring grace.

Both Lutherans and Calvinists believed the command, “take, eat this in memory of me” bound the limits by which Christ could say to have been ‘present’. Thus, adoration (if permitted at all) had to be connected to the activity of ‘eating’— not carried about or displayed. Luther considered genuflection and other forms of adoration during the rite “indifferent” given these acts of veneration were not separated from an immediate intent to eat. The bread could not be smuggled home or placed in a monstrance on the altar since its purpose for nourishment not gazing. Calvin held a more restricted view, shaped least not by the regulative principle but especially by the mode through which Calvin conceived grace conferred in the rite.

Natural eating was not Calvin’s focus. The difference with Luther revolved around interpretations of the ‘verba’, “this is my body”, i.e., “hoc est corpus meum”. Calvin preferred a figurative interpretation while Luther (like the Roman Catholic) insisted on a literal. Calvin argued the bread cannot circumspect the flesh of Christ given Christ’s humanity was located in heaven not on earth or in bread. Christ’s flesh cannot be swallowed by the mouth or gnashed by teeth. Moreover, the human nature of Christ could not be “all places at once”. Thus, it was improper to speak of the bread as containing or carrying the substance of Christ. If Christ is not localized in or around the bread, then how His death is appropriated by the believer becomes the crucial question. Calvin’s answer is the Holy Spirit, through the administration of the rite, raises the hearts of men spiritually into heaven whereupon they really and truly communicate with the substance of Christ.

Though this sounds very “memorialist”—a symbol that stirs faith upward– Calvin insists a real, spiritual reality lay hidden behind the rite. Calvin is focused on the rite as a whole, especially the faith of those who commune with Jesus, not particularly the bread. Calvin’s Supper may be generously called an ‘upward epiclesis’, evidenced by his liturgical preference for the Sursum Corda, “lift up your hearts”. The ‘key’ idea for Calvin is the Eucharist is a true ‘ascent’, the partaker raptured by the Holy Spirit. However, this was a radical departure from earlier understandings of communion since the “ascent” technically shifted focus away from the word-consecrated bread toward faith working inside men, essentially ex opere operantis. Calvin’s new emphasis is more the congregation rather than any particular element in the rite. The “body” for Calvinism is no longer a tangible bread that we may touch for greater faith but an ‘intellectualized’ body corresponding to the saving faith of congregants. Already there’s a strong sense of iconoclasm (displacing all visual symbols) in this schema which is absolute under RPW.

Luther’s literal approach toward the words, “this is my body”, challenged him to explain how the bread could localize Christ if His body remained in heaven. For Luther, Christ’s humanity was capable of descent to earth (a downward epiclesis) according to Christ’s homostasis with His own divinity. Though an economy of man and divine exist in Christ, Jesus remained was a single person, not two. Both the miracles and sufferings of Christ—e.g., walking on water, raising from the dead, ascending into heaven, virgin birth, dying on the cross, his passion, etc—were necessarily experienced and executed by one and the same person who never ceased being both divine and human simultaneously. To say otherwise would render impossible any claim that “our God died for us”. According to Luther, the real presence of Jesus “in, around, and under” the bread is likewise miraculous, the quality of omnipresence belonging to Christ’s divinity yet inseparable from His humanity by reason of His entire person. Luther pressed the homostasis of Christ in order to explain how ubiquity may communicate human activity (death) to the bread.

Unlike Calvin, Luther avoided ambiguity regarding locale of grace. Calvin somewhat equivocates or confuses the means of grace by emphasizing an invisible element “in, around, and under” the ‘hearts of men’. Consequently, it is unclear what role the bread plays, and the related efficacious channel for grace is now generalized and abstracted to the rite itself of which the congregation is the principle component. Calvin ushers a radical shift. In contrast, Luther retains the concrete center and efficacy of the bread as an objective sign and seal. His focus is not the hearts of men but how the creative-word divinizes the bread (and in turn, our souls). In fact, Luther’s efficacy operates outside and independent of faith working, ex opere operato. The reality of the Christ’s Body “within and around” bread does not depend on man’s belief. If men partake in unbelief, they do so to their condemnation. The sacrament remains efficacious with or without proper faith. Luther seems to set the Roman error straight without a radical departure from earlier devotions, and this kind of conservatism is more in character to Anglicanism. One might then understand how Lutheranism lends itself to tolerate adoration while Calvinism quickly marginalizes traditional devotion.

Emphasis on faith working (reception) shifted ecclesiology away from the altar toward the pews. Under Calvin the spotlight is not the verba uttered by the minister over bread and wine but on the piety of the congregation. This shift favored a new view of the church as democratic assembly if not a flattened hierarchy of elders. No more was the president accompanied by deacons and con-celebrants in the Eucharist prayer and rubrics. No more was the role of distribution exclusively in the hands of clerics. If the rite is so generalized, the implication is grace has no (or at least a very weakened) ecclesial medium, allowing faith to be understood in more pietistic ways.

Puritans called adoration “bread worship”. The matter was far more complex. Not only at stake was traditional lay-piety but the Creedal and Apostolic traditions that the Church of England based her Orthodoxy upon. For Puritans the black rubric represented license to idolatry. For recusant Romans and Anglicans the black rubric was at best hastily conceived and confused, serving no good purpose. Both parties disliked the Rubric’s simultaneous permission/condemnation of adoration. Queen Elizabeth wisely omitted it from the 1559 version resulting in a great diversity of practice. Some parishes continued kneeling while others forbade. This uneasy situation lasted until 1643 when kneeling was finally banned. However, if the Crown bowed to Puritan accusations of idolatry, England’s historical orthodoxy would have been compromised.

Ecumenical Councils: A great scandal of Protestantism is its selective appropriation of the councils. Protestants define orthodoxy as the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Yet this is misleading since Chalcedon is only one of five councils which explain the Nicaea formulas. Protestants conveniently dismiss the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth councils on the basis they only reaffirmed Chalcedon. This simply is not true! We cannot fully understand nor appreciate Chalcedon without acknowledging the Councils that followed, namely Constantinople I and II. This is especially true for the Sacrament debate that borrowed heavily depended upon these Christological councils. Calvin drew heavily from Chalcedon, but Luther understood Chalcedon in light of ecumenical synods that followed. It is a gross example of Reformed ‘higher criticism’ with respect to Patristic sources to appropriate Chalcedon at the expense of Constantinople.

Calvin’s understanding of the verba’s “body” or “meum” conceded Zwingli’s contention that Christ’s body unalterably remained in heaven, incapable of descent or ubiquity due to natural limitations. Calvin evoked the chalcedonian formula, “two natures, without confusion…the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each being preserved”. Calvin especially appealed to Leo’s seminal dictum, “each nature does what pertains to it—the human to the human, the divine to divine’. Jesus’ humanity (i.e, his passion and death) therefore could not do what was improper to it, i.e., to become “in and around” the substance of bread. Rather, the omnipresence of God belonged separately to the divine nature and these properties are not shared. Thus, Calvin forces a radical wedge between Christ’s human and divine attributes, supposedly mustering orthodoxy in defense of Zwingli’s iconoclasm.

However, Calvin’s appropriation of the fourth ecumenical council is a highly selective. While Chalcedon did insist on the distinction of man and divine, it also confessed the inseperable and indivisible unity of divine and human natures, both concurring in “one person and one substance,not as if Christ was parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ”. Calvin conveniently passes over this unity of natures as one substance and person of Christ, making what is to be one, rather two (as the divine cannot deify or commune with the human). Also, Leo’s dictum of proper activity his later writings which, far from revoking his earlier Tome, elaborate the chalcedonian doctrine where “divine action neither damage the validity of the human nor do human actions damage the fullness of the divine, and between them neither is their property absorbed nor persons doubled”. Furthermore, Calvin ignored Chalcedon’s simultaneous affirmation of Cyrill’s Second letter that stressed the unity of the natures in one Person, “Godhead and Manhood completed for us one Lord and Christ and Son by their unutterable and unspeakable concurrence into unity”, especially since the councils that clarified Chalcedon were decidedly Cyrilian. Therefore, Calvin is rather biased about both the foundational documents and Chalcedon’s wording.

Calvin’s radical approach toward Christ’s two natures effectively doubles the person of Jesus, approaching Nestorianism. While Calvin would not deny the ubiquity of the divine nature, he radically divides the two natures in such a way that the same is not granted to the Person of Jesus. It is as if Calvin forces confusion with ‘nature’ and ‘person’, Worst, Calvin’s Nestorianism, if consistent, logically divorces Jesus’ divine miracles from His Manhood and vice-versa. This is very similar to Nestorius’s rejection of Theotokos (“one who gives birth to God”). If God cannot participate in Jesus’ humanity, then how can we say, “God died for our Sins”, since death is proper only to human nature? This is what Calvin is really saying, replacing nature for person.

More damaging to Calvin’s arguments against ubiquity (or a “downward epiclesis”) are later ecumenical councils (Constantinople II and III) that necessarily clarified Chalcedon in order to avert similar doublings of Christ’s persons. These later councils dealt with the will and miracles of Jesus, insisting that neither divine nor human actions could be confused; neither could they be isolated from each other. When Jesus ascended into heaven, his human nature necessarily accompanied the divine. Likewise, when Christ died on the cross, His divine nature shared His death. It is rather a false proposition to say either God or Man died. Constantinople III claimed One Person died. To say otherwise divides or doubles His single Person. Constantinople III also said regarding His crucifixion:

“We recognize the miracles and the sufferings as of one and the same Person, but of one or of the other nature of which he is and in which he exists…believing our Lord Jesus Christ to be one of the Trinity and after the incarnation our rue God, we say that his two natures shone forth in his one subsistence in which he both performed the miracles and endured the sufferings through the whole of his economic conversation and that not in appearance only but in very deed”

Constantinople II described the unity of two natures in one person a “synthetic and hypostatic union” (canon 4). Synthetic union meant two unconfused natures which are untied but do not allow separation. The Seventh canon condemned those who divide the natures making of them two persons or entities. And, finally the ninth prescribed worship of Christ by single adoration–

9. If anyone says that Christ is to be worshipped in his two natures, and by that wishes to introduce two adorations, a separate one for God the Word and another for the man; or if anyone, so as to remove the human flesh or to mix up the divinity and the humanity, monstrously invents one nature or substance brought together from the two, and so worships Christ, but not by a single adoration God the Word in human flesh along with his human flesh, as has been the tradition of the church from the beginning: let him be anathema.

Conclusion: Far from viewing themselves a new or primitive Church, Magisterial Protestants leaned heavily on Patristic sources like Chalcedon to justify their claim that Rome had departed from apostolic faith. While Rome fell back on medieval scholastics, Protestants borrowed from older fathers like Augustine, Jerome, and Leo III, disproving the claim that Reformers breeched tradition. However, when Lutheran and Calvinists confessions were presented to the East, Greeks could not “amen” Protestant orthodoxy simply because Reformed faith was so eclectic and partial with quoting the Fathers. Augustine’s predestination minus his sacramentology, or Leo’s two natures without Cyril’s one Person, revealed their critical and even innovative approach to orthodoxy which the East rightly calls ‘over-intellectualized’.

The Puritan rejection of adoration really entailed a new concept of worship. How does God communicate His graces? The Reformed favor weak ecclesial structures, democratizing church government to deprive prelacy of its disciplinary power. Traditional sacramental piety suffered the chopping block, and low clergy allied themselves with Radicals (like Zwingli) led the charge. The gravity of communion shifted away from the consecration of the bread to the internal disposition of the heart. Under the Zwingli, iconoclasm joins with the spiritualization of the Eucharist. Calvin’s subsequent appropriation of Zwingli’s Gnostic division of Spirit and Matter is too unstable to be reconciled with either Luther or early lay devotion. Like the Black Rubric (oddly condemning yet permitting adoration), Calvin’s insistence on the Real Presence, generalizing it to somewhere in the rite itself but nowhere particular, is a ‘useless equivocation’.

The end result is confusion. We cannot identify the channel of grace either in the president or consecrated elements. Worse, by rationally tearing asunder what God has declared one (His Eternal Son taking a rational soul and very body), we risk approaching separate Christs vs. the One Christ. The eighth of Constantinople II declares this doubling a falsehood, and, ironically, in the context of worship Calvin may be advocating idolatry,

“those who divide or split up the mystery of the divine dispensation of Christ and those who introduce into that mystery some confusion are equally rejected and anathematized by the church of God”.

Receptionalist and Memoralists alike ought to ask themselves this question, “Did God die on the Cross”? If God died on the cross in union with perfect man, then couldn’t perfect man likewise be given to us in and around bread in union with God? Our response to this miracle may indeed be veneration; after all, Christ accepted the adoration of the hemorrhaging woman touched his garment. When God declared himself “in, around, and with” the Burning Bush, Moses likewise removed his sandals before God’s presence.

The question of God’s presence in the bread (where He proclaims I AM HERE) is essentially Christological. In this respect Luther, not Calvin, comes closer to the sum of patristic faith– “the faith of Leo, Cyril, and Nicaea”. The question boils down to the Mystery of the Incarnation—how two distinct natures can be indivisibly united in One Person for our salvation.

Treaty of Breda

http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/glossary/treaty-breda.htm 

 Background to the Civil Wars: 
When Solemn League and Covenant sought to replace the Church of England for a Presbyterian polity, Independents and Radicals blocked its advent by gaining control the Army. In 1649 the Army would march on Parliament, expelling the majority-Presbyterian Party. Independents feared not only a ban against Congregationalism but also felt Presbyterians would likely usher a restoration of King Charles, i.e. royalism. In the hands of the Army who feared a secret alliance with Scots, King Charles was soon executed. This would be the first regicide in European Christendom, and, almost as a foretaste of the French Revolution, Radicals and Congregationalists would then declare England a “Free State” ruled under Republican government.

Solemn League was an alliance between England’s Parliament and Scotland. The origin of Solemn League began when Archbishop William Laud ‘imposed’ 1549 Prayer Book rubrics onto the Church of Scotland. The growing conservativism of Canterbury caused Presbyterians to resist, leading to the signing of a National Covenant. The National Scottish Covenant justified armed resistance against the King’s Church and Uniformity on the grounds of Regulative Principle (RPW). Fearing eminent occupation by a Catholic-Irish army which Charles I was in the process mustering, in 1940 the Scottish Kirk launched a pre-emptive invasion into north England, defeating royalist troops at the border, forcing the King to ratify the National Covenant for Scotland. When Charles I summoned the Long Parliament to settle reparations with Scotland, Puritans made common cause with Covenanters, expelling Royalists, launching the English Civil War.

The English Civil War, 1643-49, had two tragic ramifications: 1. Introduced religious pluralism, effectively rendering meaningless all previous acts of Subscription and Uniformity, institutionalizing and rendering permanent the great disorder within the church which began (in England) with the Presbyterian (RPW) Vestment Controversy (and in Scotland over the Prayer Book). 2. Ended divine right, introducing the Presbyterian notion of constitutional monarchy if not the Independent demand for modern Republicanism. Regardless, Parliament (and the rights of the People) would emerge supreme over the Crown and Orders. The combination of constitutionalism and religious pluralism would ultimately unleash an wild democratic impulse and individualism upon Anglo society and culture, reaching an appex in late 17th century.

In 1654 Cromwell exchanged permanent Reformation for social stability imposing a Bonpartist rule over England, gradually reintroducing the moderates into the Parliament. Otherwise known as the ‘Protectorate’, Cromwell’s England would reign until 1659, until the Presbyterian Party was invited back. For the most part Independency and Radicalism had burned itself out. The public wanted their King and English Presbyterians had hopes for a Kirk. Charles II (Son of the beheaded Charles I) could return on the condition Parliament consented to Breda.

The Breda Declaration: What was the Treaty of Breda? Breda was the Solemn League and Covenant but especially committed the King and his household to it. Independents in the English Parliament had rejected Solemn League, favoring instead an open Christian pluralism under the Articles of Religion 1648. The 1643 Westminster Confession was never adopted as a standard. Instead, it was modified to say little about church polity, giving room to Radicals, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians alike. Banned, however, was episcopacy. Breda was the Scottish Kirk’s final bid for Presbyterian supremacy throughout the three realms. Charles II signed it in 1650, and in 1660 the English Parliament followed suit under the restoration of the Long MP’s. 

When King Charles II returned to England in 1660, Parliament had an election. Royalists were swept into power by the public, and Puritanism—both in its Presbyterian and Independent forms— was gradually ejected. Charles II proposed a phased settlement and was somewhat committed to mediating two hardened factions, initiating talks between Presbyterians and Anglicans over polity, liturgy, ceremonies. Presbyterians lost moral ground when Fifth Monarchy Men and other Radicals (the Derwentdale Plot) sporadically attempted insurrection between 1661-1664. and though Charles II offered exemptions and indulgences to Presbyterian ministers, the Parliament nullified the King’s clemencies fearing a restoration of divine right. In the end Parliament’s Acts of Uniformity, Test Acts, etc. aka. Clarendon Codes, slowly purged the Presbyterian Party from Church and State. The sentiment was summed on St. George’s Day, 1661, when Parliament ordered a public burning of the SLC.  Charles and James II had Catholic leanings (James was a roman catholic convert), so Puritans were surely not missed. Presbyterianism had been marginalized, and in the public’s eye it was synomynous with Revolution. Thus, Engagers ultimately followed Congregationalists into the ‘free church’. Puritans would not substantially return to government until 1689 when the Toleration Acts of Cromwell, as expressed in the 1648 Articles of Religion (SLC), were restored.  

Oath Breaker? Did Charles II have a right to break the Solemn Covenant he signed in 1650?  I want to avoid arguing divine right vs. constitutionalism. The complaint of Radicals and Puritan alike was the King was bound by His own law? If this be true, then isn’t Parliament also bound? The Scottish Convention which negotiated Solemn League by tradition could not pass a permanent law. Moreover, when Westminster Assembly drafted the Articles/Confession of Faith, this was done without the consent of the King causing the Anglican divines present during the first 15 weeks of negotiations exit the Assembly, concluding the revisions were not only a breach of the 39 Articles but legally ‘null and void’. Even if King Charles II assented to Solemn League, he only did so because his Kingdom was held hostage by wild men, SLC being a document forged by an unlawful, armed rebellion. If Charles II signed a unlawful declaration with no legal authority whatsoever, then can a false or foolish oath bind a magistrate?   

Legitimacy of Public vows: Anabaptists refused all oaths on the grounds of Christ saying, “let your Yes be a Yes and your No be a No. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” (Matt. 5:33-37). Yet the Puritans understood as world as fallen, and oath-taking was a practice carried forward from the OT as a concession for restraining sin, especially permissable upon sundry times where serious or lawful interests were involved and an appeal to the witness of God necessary to secure confidence and end strife.  It was under these circumstances the National Covenant and Solemn League were drawn. Scriptural examples and principles of national covenanting justify such extraordinary occasions: Neh. 9.38; Deut. 29. 10-13; Jonah 1. 16; Rom. 6. 13; Deut. 26. 15-19; and 2 Kings 11. 17. Moreover, public vows are binding. Those who break them are surely cursed, a sin not only due to disobedience but perjury and blasphemy (since the vow is sealed in the Name of God). Jer. 2.4,  11. For more on public oaths and covenants, see:  http://www.truecovenanter.com/

Breaking Rash Vows: But what if someone swears to perform a duty that is contrary to the Word of God?  According to G.I Williamson,

“an oath is binding only if the thing promised is good and just, that is, agreeable to the Word of God. The reason for this is evident: that which is contrary to the word of God is sin, and it is man’s duty not to sin; therefore, sweraing to sin cannot justify or obligate sin. Thus when one discovers that he has promised a solemn oath to sin, his only recourse is to ask forgiveness for having made such a promise in the first place adn then to renounce the oath (Matt. 14:1-12). It was wrong to take the oath in the first place. It would be doubly wrong to keep it after discovering it was sinful.” p. 229 WCF study. 

Calvin in his Institutes says men are not to vow beyond the measure of grace or vocation given (i.e, beyond their lawful duties or inner capability). Furthermore, vows offend God, especially if for superstitious ends or ficticious worship, and such are “empty and nugatory”. (Institutes, IV.13.7)

Conclusion: We cannot know the heart of Charles II. His moral life was not a paragon of purity. However, at the time of Breda, 1650, did he know the Solemn League and Covenant was unscriptural, contrary to the Word of God, and therefore sinful? We cannot absolutely say. If Charles II signed Breda knowing his oath was to a false, then he committed a detestable act, i.e., perjury (in contrast to his father, Charles I, who died before denying his own convictions, i.e., surrendering the Episocpacy). The SLC was a rash given the extra-biblical and fanatical nature of RPW.  English and Scottish reformers had no right to resist the Laudian Prayer Book (the reason d’etre for civil war). Moreover, the English and Scottish delegations represented ‘bandit parliaments’, sic. a people’s conventions, which had no authority to pass permanent law. If Charles committed perjury then perhaps he stood condemned. Otherwise he had every right to restore the Prayer book, epsicopacy, and even later deprive Presbyterian and Independent ministers, given the Kings vow contradicted his lawful duty. 

Next PostingGoing a little deeper with SLC and its RPW underpinnings, I’d like to discuss ‘the black rubric’ or kneeling at the altar. However, this will require a leave of absence as I not only edit earlier posts (where there is much poor grammer) but give time to understanding the complicated trinitarian and christological arguments behind the mode of Supper.

Future posts might deal with Knoxian ‘active resistance’ vs. Anglican ‘passive obedience’. When the particulars of RPW (anti-vestments and anti-adoration) were combined with Knox’s peculiar “active resistance”, Presbyterianism betrayed its Magesterial orgins embracing the Anabaptist spirit alongside Levellers, Ranters, Lollards, Quakers. The Black Rubric and Active Resistance must be next.  Other subjects related to SLC are: reduced episcopacy, baptismal grace, apocryphra and canon, and aborted synods.