|
This was a paper given to the English Prayer Book Society
by Canon Arthur Middleton.
It was published as a booklet and Foreword.
Foreword
Is there anything distinctive in the Anglican tradition of doctrine and worship? From the Reformation to the present, the Church of England has always maintained her place in the unbroken tradition of the universal Catholic Church, reforming in some matters but holding firmly to the essentials of faith and practice. Yet a particular quality, something which the writers of the Oxford Movement liked to call the 'ethos' of the Church, has developed. Its evolution can be followed from the early work of consolidation by Hooker and Jewel, the sacramental emphasis of Andrewes and the Caroline divines, the Evangelical Revival, the Oxford Movement, the Christian Socialists and the response to the challenges of the present time. We look to no single Reformer like Luther or Calvin. We have no foundation document like the Westminster Confession, but the Book of Common Prayer stands, as it has stood for centuries, to be the source of worship and doctrine. We have been blessed through our saints and martyrs, our scholars and the devotion of millions of people whose faith has been sustained by the worship and pastoral care offered by the Church in this land.
Arthur Middleton has researched and written extensively on these things; he has analysed the question succinctly and clearly in The Peculiar Character of Anglicanism. In his longer work Fathers and Anglicans, he has demonstrated the influence of patristics on Anglican thought. He has inspired many of us by his articles and lectures; and in this new volume he shows how the pursuit of holiness has never departed from the Church of England, even in difficult and apparently barren times. Temperate, respecting reason, fervent but avoiding emotionalism, there is a line of prayer to unite us with the past and with each other.
Raymond Chapman
Emeritus Professor of English, University of London
The Flame of Prayerful Living
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold,
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for lesse be told.
The Temple : George Herbert [1] Blind people who will not look upon the real world of God, but persist in following their own corruptible sin, fall into the ditch. But there is a remedy, and this poem, which you know as Teach me my God and King, is called the Elixir, a word that means, a remedy - a word used in the ancient science of alchemy (that preceded chemistry). It is a kind of chemical mixture that can change metals into gold. Or it is a preparation that is able to prolong life indefinitely, a supposed remedy for all ills. This is the cure all, wonder drug. The philosopher's stone had the same power and here George Herbert is alluding to this imaginary philosopher's stone. But Herbert's stone is not something imaginary, it is the touch of God's love that turns all into gold. Everything he touches must be given a value that is equivalent to turning everything to gold.
Julian of Norwich claims that when the Holy Spirit touches the soul it longs for God rather like this, 'God of your goodness give me yourself, for you are sufficient for me … If I were to ask less I should always be in want.'[2] Hence my title The Spirit of Anglican Devotion deliberately avoids using the modern word 'spirituality', a word that Lancelot Andrewes himself did not use. Today, this word has come to be associated with 'feelings', 'feel good feelings', a self-regarding fulfilment or self-realization and not sufficiently with the desire for God. It has become a word that is used and understood in a vague, fuzzy and self-regarding way about uplifting feelings. The dictionary is more precise in defining 'spirituality' as 'a distinctive approach to religion or prayer'. To deliberately use the word 'devotion' is to focus on this distinctiveness in the classical Anglican approach to religion and prayer, where the focus is not on experiencing a 'feel good factor', but on living the dogma of the revealed Christian mystery in such a way that, instead of the mystery being assimilated to our mode of human understanding, it is allowed to effect an interior transformation of spirit that enables it to be experienced mystically.[3] It changes the heart and mind, renewing one's whole mental and emotional attitude, which begins in self-renunciation and is accomplished and sealed by the Spirit, so that one's life becomes conformed to the doctrine. In the Scriptural sense it purifies the character like gold in an 'assayer's fire'.[4] That is repentance. Here lie the seeds of Anglican mystical theology that is consonant with the Christian Mystical Tradition.
What is distinctive about Anglican devotion, what qualities are native and integral to the Anglican understanding of devotion and religious practice? It is never an isolated individualistic pietism; always, it is concerned with dogma, doctrine, life, worship, and Christian discipline, which must colour and inspire the whole of life, where personal devotion and personal life are inseparable from liturgy and theology. In the people who produced this literature, prayer was their primary concern, their abiding preoccupation, and so it was the driving force of their lives because 'they were all soaked in the primitive and medieval tradition of contemplation as the normal outcome of a life of serious prayer'. Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Richard Baxter (1615-1691), Thomas Ken (1637-1711), William Laud (1573-1645), George Herbert (1593-1633), John Donne (1571?-1631) and Thomas Traherne (1636-74) et al. John Byrom tells us 'all of them spoke the same language, at least where prayer is concerned; the language of loving desire for God.'[5]
An English Bible
The hearing and reading of the Bible became an essential ingredient in Anglican devotion, giving Anglicans direct contact with that scriptural spirit that strongly affected their devotion. Cranmer had longed to promote the circulation of the Bible in English, though he was not the first English churchman to desire it. The inspiration for this general diffusion of the Bible for 'vulgar people' in the 'vulgar tongue', came from his reading of the Fathers, and from the fact that the Anglo-Saxons had translated parts of the Bible and read it in what was their 'vulgar tongue'. Cranmer's liturgical revision was concerned to embody such biblical material in the Prayer Book lections. It is to the Fathers that he appeals to justify an English Bible, in the face of petty quibbling objections from the bishops. In 1539 Cranmer wrote a Prologue or Preface, which was published in April 1540 and prefixed to the Great Bible, and was appointed to be read in churches that year. He appealed to St John Chrysostom's sermon 'De Lazaro', on the benefits 'lay and vulgar people' can derive from reading the Scriptures. He intended to claim nothing more than what Chrysostom had written. Chrysostom is concerned that those who listen to his sermons should read their bibles at home between these sermons and memorize what he has preached on such texts as they read; 'and also that they might have their minds the more ready and better prepared to receive and perceive that which he should say from thenceforth in his sermons'. All these things have been written for our edification and amendment. The reading of Scripture is a great and strong bulwark against sin, and ignorance of it can ruin and destroy those who do not know it. Such ignorance causes heresy in corrupt and perverse living.
The Book of Common Prayer
Central to this Anglican way is The Book of Common Prayer with the Eucharist at its heart, 'the matrix of their devotion'. Any understanding of Anglican devotion must give The Book of Common Prayer a primary role because it is informative for Anglicans not only in defining doctrine and polity but also for the content and style of devotion. The concerns and consequences of corporate worship are the concerns and consequences of personal worship. Anglican devotion always presupposes the life of the Church, meaning 'it is personal but never private, never detached from an individual's engagement with the community and the world. The pattern of Anglican devotion grows out of liturgical prayer, out of the sacraments rooted in the earth. Anglican piety emerges from a life steeped in the church's common prayer.[6]
Daily Mattins and Evensong in the parish churches attracted many devout lay-people and these Offices were also said in their homes, with the household, family and servants. So these offices became central to family prayer. When, during the Commonwealth The Book of Common Prayer was forbidden, it became more highly valued in an underground use as a book of household devotion. The Church continued in an underground exile surviving in the spirit of its liturgy, a kind of 'catacomb' existence. The Restoration enabled the Prayer Book to be used openly. The effect on countless individuals and homes of the weekly or daily recitation of the Offices cannot be over-estimated. Here was a 'liturgy in which a piety, domestic and communal, personal and corporate, was at work moulding hearts and minds'. Its mark is traceable in the poetry of Donne, Herbert and Traherne, and in its liturgical excellences set out in the very many books on, or devotional companions to, the Prayer Book, which the century produced.[7] In the words of the Eikon Basilike[8] 'wholesome words, being known and fitted to men's understandings, are soonest received into their hearts, and aptest to excite and carry along with them judicious and fervent affections'.
Those whose earlier devotional life was nurtured by the Prayer Book will have traces of its phraseology in their subconscious that were the first stirrings of prayer and religious understanding. Such phrases surface with the appropriate prompt that can echo in one's thoughts, such as 'the devices and desires of our own hearts' (General Confession); 'a godly, righteous and sober life' (do.); 'grant us true repentance, and his Holy Spirit' (Absolution); 'envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness' (Litany); 'hearty repentance and true faith' (Absolution); 'in love and charity with your neighbours' (Invitation); 'these holy mysteries' (Post-Communion); 'that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in' (Thanksgiving); 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace' (Catechism); 'create and make in us new and contrite hearts' (Ash Wednesday Collect); 'serve and please thee in newness of life' (Confession).
What do these phrases tells us about our devotional life according to The Book of Common Prayer? Could they be a kind of 'video clip' of what was happening through time and place to countless people throughout history as they practiced their religion? Here in this liturgical and sacramental piety faith and repentance are central, where in the awareness of the Holy Spirit's work the fundamental aim is to make us 'new creatures' in spite of the sins that do so easily beset us. The life of devotion is a journey in which the individual is responsible for the living of life in co-operation with the Spirit's grace. Life is oriented God-wards in the service of the neighbour through Christ, the God-Man, lawgiver and Redeemer. It is a devotion which insists that Word and Sacrament are for living 'in newness of life', that worship is meant to send us out in the process of being remade, 'confirmed and strengthened in all goodness'. This devotional literature underlines the Christian life as the recollected life of disciplined prayer in Word and Sacrament that is aware of mystery, and can be practiced by ordinary men and women. Prayer and meditation and affective devotion to Christ are there, as is the following and imitation of Christ.[9]
Practical Divinity
This life is a way of practical divinity. Seventeenth-century Anglicans called moral theology 'practical divinity' to which ascetical theology was completely united. Prayer requires an ascesis, a disciplined training that must change attitudes of mind and lifestyle. In other words the moral life and the life of prayer are inseparable. This is patristic, in that if one did not practice the virtues one would not attain to real and true prayer. The life of prayer was to affect how the Christian behaved. Today, the life of prayer has been separated from the way we behave as the devotional life is reduced to 'spirituality', where the emphasis rests on feelings as the measure of spiritual health rather than behaviour. Ascetical theology has been separated from moral theology. This is at odds with the spirit of Anglican devotion, which is about the Christian-in-the-Church, the full co-operation with grace in a total Christian life.
In our devotional heritage belief, devotion, duty, discipline and life, are inseparable. Dogma, life and prayer are one piece. How we live and how we pray cannot be separated in Christian living. Each affects the other, becoming a practical matter for the devotional life 'of all who live through a Life not their own transmitted to them by the Spirit through the means of grace, the Book and the Bread, within the eucharistic fellowship of the baptized who share in the apostolic faith.[10] The purpose of positive and practical divinity is to bring us to Heaven. It is to affect 'our judgements, settle our consciences, direct our lives, mortify our corruptions, increase our graces, strengthen our comforts, save our souls ...'.[11] The meaning of responsible discipleship, of growth in grace, of incorporation in Christ, is that 'if any man be in Christ he is a new creature' .
The aim of such practical devotion is to make a person 'a new creature', 'sincere in his obedience', a favourite phrase that illuminates what is meant by 'the perfection of wayfaring men'. This was the ideal being presented to the members of the Church in the Catechetical Books written by such people as Lancelot Andrewes, Henry Hammond, William Beveridge, Jeremy Taylor and others. William Nicholson gives a clear explanation of this in his Plain and Full Exposition of the Catechism (1655), 'For here you are directed what to know and what to do, in which two consists the life of religion.'[12] 'We know Him when we know His will, and we love Him when we make His will our rule for our life and practice. This is, to use St. Paul's words, "to behold as in a glass darkly the glory of the Lord, and to be changed into the same image." ' He points out that in 'the perfection of wayfaring men', for absolution perfection is not expected from us in this life, and reminds us that to attain such a state, grace is needed. Such grace does not produce in us 'an unsinning obedience, but it makes us 'a new creature', creates in us a sincere obedience to the whole Gospel'. So the wayfarer's perfection depends upon response to grace and responsibility in obedience. 'There is no surer way to the full perfection of the whole man than the perfect following of Christ in the communal life of the Church'.
Practical divinity requires fostering in each individual what has been called 'a conscience made of obedience'. This is at the heart of Anglican devotion. In matters of conscience, the personal responsibility of the individual in Christian living must be guided by his own reason. Matters of conscience require a person to be a judge for himself, ready to account for himself, but this does not prevent a person from seeking spiritual counsel and absolution in particular cases, as The Book of Common Prayer advises. Faith and repentance are inseparably linked in the Prayer Book (as in the Holy Communion invitation, the catechism and the Homilies), and this is essential to a devotion held up as the achievable ideal to the members of Christ's Family.
Anglican devotion strives to inculcate a life of discipleship rather than one of spiritual accountancy. It is a matter of standards and serious commitment, for those who are alive to their imperfections as they try through grace to follow Christ and seek a devotion, which as John Hales taught, claims every part of our life.
Lex Orandi Lex Credendi
There runs through the devotional writings of this period a general assent to the sense of the Latin tag, Lex orandi, lex credendi, the rule of praying is the law of believing. A fuller expression is Lex orandi legem statuat credendi, let the law of prayer establish the law of belief.[13] Or as Michael Ramsey neatly put it, that Anglicans do their theology to the sound of church bells. The Lex orandi is about the apprehension of the reality of God in an openness of the whole person to God, where waiting and openness is of the essence. Here, God is not a God whom we discover but a God who reveals himself, a God who comes. So the Lex orandi, prayer, devotion, is necessary to the Lex credendi, what we believe and what is called theology, to keep it to its proper vocation. As John Klimakos and others have reminded us, the theologian is one who prays, and the one who prays is a theologian. So the doctrine of the Prayer Book is as important as the language in which it is expressed. The converse is also true. If the focus is on the lex orandi to the exclusion of the lex credendi the result will be a non-theological devotion that will degenerate into a cult of devotion and not to anything in particular, but will exist only in itself and for itself alone. This organic connection between the lex orandi and the lex credendi is the very essence of Anglican devotion whose beating heart is The Book of Common Prayer. The importance of this cannot be over-estimated today, because since the Renaissance the law of prayer and the law of belief have become disassociated, and not only has this given rise to 'spurious spiritualities' but also to 'spurious theologies'.
Byrom goes on to say, that there is a richness in Anglican devotional literature, and especially in the seventeenth century, that flows from something deeper than torrential intellect, or even high poetic gifts. He cites Dr. Austin Farrer's Church Literature Society Lent Book, Lord I Believe, which some of you may have. Here Farrer points out that 'no dogma deserves its place unless it is prayable, and no Christian deserves his dogmas who does not pray them'. In this slim paperback, we see this philosopher-theologian and priest in study and closet expounding an organic theology with grace informed reason. Like these 17th century devotional writers, no article of the Creed is unprayable or remained unsprayed. Martin Routh, President of Magadalene College Oxford from 1791, for sixty-three years, and the last man in Oxford to wear a wig, always had William Laud's Private Devotions on his desk and used the devotions for each hour. Canon Scott Holland described Bishop Westcott as reading and working in the very mind with which he prayed;
Then, the first interview revealed where the secret of his power lay. We had never before seen such an identification of study with prayer. He read and worked in the very mind with which he prayed; and his prayer was of singular intensity. It might be only the elements of textual criticism with which he was dealing; but, still, it was all steeped in the atmosphere of awe, and devotion, and mystery, and consecration. He taught us as one who ministered at an Altar; and the details of the Sacred Text were to him as the Ritual of some Sacramental Action.[14]
In Westcott's episcopate it bore fruit in his continuous pastoral concern for social justice that flowed immediately and quite naturally from his study of the Incarnation, by way of his prayer, as also did William Temple. There is an ascesis, a discipline, a training, in the engagement with study and in this commitment to prayer that affects study with the ascesis of prayer, in this love of learning and the desire for God. This is what makes not only a grace-informed reason, but also it makes prayer the connecting link between belief and action. Study as well as prayer requires a disciplined way of living, an ascesis, a training.
The cause and root of this connection is The Book of Common Prayer, which Jeremy Taylor called 'a storehouse of rare divinity' and whose living heart is the liturgy, that in the 19th century F. D Maurice described as his theological teacher as well as the generator of his prayer. John Henry Newman said that the people learn their theology on their knees, 'the theologian is one who prays'. So if the law of prayer establishes the law of belief then new forms of prayer can lead us into a deeper understanding of the faith we profess when and if this organic connection is maintained.
The Desire for God
There is then, within this devotional literature a massive learning and a deep desire for God. The Church of England that emerges in this seventeenth century is not some static institution but a school of learning where divines read, studied, prayed and meditated on God. The spirit of their theologizing is akin to Anselm and Aquinas. This love of learning and the desire for God are not incompatible and it gives these seventeenth century divines a peculiar richness because their piety was no mere top-dressing to scholarship but the spring and generator of their learning and its richness. This unmistakable mark of them, a love of learning and a deep desire for God, is so deeply intertwined that it is pointless to try and distinguish them, though the manner of their lives makes clear that whenever the two came into conflict it was invariably the love of learning which gave way. This makes the point reinforced by Hegius, the fifteenth century German Christian humanist, that 'all learning is harmful which is gained at the expense of piety.'[15] They breathe that Augustinian spirit expressed in his commentary on the psalms, 'I sought my God, that if possible I might not only believe but actually see something'.[16]
All the books I mention were at one time or another, and more often than not for long periods of time, what Charles Stranks describes as
the household treasures, the loved and trusted guides and counsellors, of multitudes of English speaking people. Now … they are perhaps more honoured than read. Yet to the devout soul they still offer an unfailing inspiration and to those who love good literature they bring examples of our language at its best. Fine as they are in themselves they are still finer if seen in relationship to each other, contributing to, or correcting, a developing religious tradition, which rarely proceeds in a straight line but swings from one point to another as one generation stresses a particular truth, and its successor, in an effort to correct the balance, runs to the opposite extreme.[17]
Manuals of Private Devotion
This literature, falls into a number of distinct categories. There were the Primers that were popular handbooks of prayers and elementary instruction for the laity, which are mentioned here en passant before moving on to the manuals of private devotion; the most famous of which belonged to Lancelot Andrewes who was always essentially a pastor. They express the tone and character which the English Church aims at forming in her members: largeness of sympathy, self-restraint, soberness, fervour, and the spirit of "continuous but not unhopeful penitence." These prayers bring us into intimate contact with a scholar, a bishop, and a favoured courtier, who 'wholly spent himself and his studies in prayer and the praise of God, compassion and works of charity.'[18] Here he offers himself, his soul and body, a contrite and a broken heart, in thankfulness to his Creator. As Dean Church wrote, it brings the spirit of the Prayer Book 'from the Church to the Closet'.[19]
First, they exemplify the value of method, system, and order in personal prayer giving them an educational value as forms of prayer. The several parts of prayer are represented: confession, petition for grace, profession of faith, intercession, praise and thanksgiving. Being one of the translators of the Authorized Version, his translation of the creation narratives and his deep reverence for the natural world, influenced his devotions. Each day's devotion is introduced by a brief memorial of the great works of creation relevant to the day: on Sunday, it is the commemoration of the creation of light, on Friday, the making of man, on Saturday, the Sabbath rest of the Creator and so with the other days. Commemoration is combined with thanksgiving for one of the blessings of revelation and redemption, 'the harmony between the natural and spiritual world - in other words, the sacramental idea of the universe - kindles and elevates the mind of the worshipper in feeling a kinship with all created things.'[20]
Introduction for Sixth Day
Blessed art Thou, O Lord,
Who broughtest forth of the earth wild beasts, cattle,
and all the reptiles,
for food, clothing, help ;
and madest man after Thine image, to rule the earth,
and blessedst him. (Newman's translation) The poetry in these introductions gives them the character of primitive hymns, full of joyous and free delight in nature as the handiwork of God, reflecting in its beauty and harmony the attributes of its Maker. These devotions are a mosaic of quotations from Scripture, Ancient Liturgies, Creeds, the Prayer Book, devotional collections of the Synagogue, the Eastern Church, and Latin Christendom, so there is little originality in the material but the originality lies in the way in which it is woven into a structure for personal devotion. Andrewes adapts the language of prayer in the Christian-Judaeo tradition for his own personal use.
William Laud's Devotions, like Andrewes, are expressed in the language of the Prayer Book Collects, ancient liturgies, Holy Scripture and psalmody, that he personalizes for the purpose of his own prayer. The book is arranged for the whole week with prayers for different hours of the day. As well as the Prayer Book Collects it has prayers from the early Christian Fathers, prayers for different occasions and for people of all classes. There is a spirit of penitence pervading it and every hour is punctuated by an expression of such prayer. He is a man whom ultra-Protestantism was cruelly persecuting. His prayers display to us a conscience sensibly alive to the goodness of God, and its own imperfection, a heart deeply penetrated by a sense of sin, a broken and contrite spirit, which he knows God will not despise. Follow Laud from the controversies of his time to the retirement of the closet and you find a priest on his knees, pouring out his soul in prayer.
Thomas Wilson's Devotions entitled Sacra Privata, are quite different. They are a series of Personal Meditations, Devotions and Prayers. The first part is a series of prayers suitable for different occasions, conditions and people that can be useful for individuals. Then come a series of meditations for each day of the week - Sunday: Episcopacy, Monday: Holy Scriptures; Tuesday: False Doctrine; Wednesday: Sober Life; Thursday: Church Discipline; Friday: Ordination; Saturday; Alms. The final section is a series of prayers and thanksgivings. Here is a reservoir that can irrigate anyone's personal prayer. These first three manuals were specifically written for private and personal use, though others can profitably use them, but there is a second class of manual written for general use by the laity. Bishop John Cosin's Collection of Private Devotions comes in this category and by 1719 it had gone into ten editions. It encourages hourly prayer with an Office, but includes prayers for various occasions, devotional comments on the Church's seasons and lists the seven root sins with the seven penitential psalms. Sherlock's Practical Christian is a communicant's manual for the edifying of his parishioners in the Christian life by spiritual direction in the practice of it. Thomas Comber's Companion to the Temple points out that those who neglect public prayer seldom pray in private so his commentary on Prayer Book worship aims to make this the solid background of the Churchman's religious life. Using these devotions can transport us into a spirit of prayer and living communion that can powerfully affect us and deepen our prayer life, as we enter into the experience of those who have taken prayer seriously. Musicians become proficient by imitating their teachers and masters, by first playing in someone else's style. Why? Because musicians, like painters and writers and sculptors, know in their fingertips or vocal chords or ears, that imitation is the way to excellence and originality.
The Catechetical Books
A second category is the catechetical books. This second type is concerned with the end product of Christian living, namely the attitude to religion and life that Anglican devotion is attempting to create in the members of the Church. Liturgical catechesis is an ancient way of teaching Christian doctrine and life. Its primary aim is to bring the individual into the life of the Church rather than merely communicate 'religious knowledge' on a cerebral level. Its concern is 'edification', the ‘building-up’ of a member of the Body of Christ, introducing people into the life of the Church, into an enfolding of its meaning, contents and purpose. This can only be by participation in the liturgical services and their explanation. 'O taste and see how good the Lord is'. First taste then see, that is, understand.
In the seventeenth century the pattern of instruction in the meaning of membership was through preaching, catechism and personal spiritual counselling. In an Episcopal Charge (1661) Jeremy Taylor told his clergy
Let every minister teach his people the use, practice, methods and benefits of meditation or mental prayer. Let every minister exhort his people to a frequent confession of their sins, and a declaration of the state of their souls; to a conversation with their minister in spiritual things, to an enquiry concerning all parts of their duty: for by preaching and catechizing, and private intercourse, all the needs of souls can best be served; but by preaching alone they cannot.
These seventeenth century Anglicans saw catechesis as part of the Ministry of the Word. George Herbert in The Country Parson gives a whole chapter to the catechism 'to which all divinity may easily be reduced'. He understood catechesis to be a doctrine-devotion synthesis:
For there being three points of his duty; the one, to infuse a competent knowledge of salvation in every one of his flock; the other, to multiply and build up this knowledge to a spiritual temple; the third, to influence this knowledge, to press and drive it to practice, turning it to reformation of life, by pithy and lively exhortations; Catechizing is the first point, and but by Catechizing, the other cannot be attained.[21]
Catechesis is for the translation of devotion and doctrine into Christian living, into practical divinity. This understanding of catechesis is in the minds of the authors of the various catechetical books who called them 'sums of divinity'. In view of the content of the Catechism it could hardly be otherwise and we have noted already that in this seventeenth century doctrine, Christian behaviour and devotion cannot be separated. 'They form a synthesis, a combination of these elements in a complex whole.'[22] In The Catechising of Families[23] we read:
Now what is the Christian Religion?' the answer is 'The Christian religion, as doctrinal is, the revelation of God's will concerning his kingdom, as our Redeemer; or the redeeming and saving sinful, miserable man by Jesus Christ. And the Christian religion as it is in us, is the true conformity of our understanding, will, and practice, to this doctrine.
It was a difficult time for the Church of England when everything seemed lost due to the Civil War and Cromwell's attempt to presbyterianise the Church of England. These catechetical books had a cumulative effect in building up Anglicans in their faith when outwardly all seemed lost. That great Anglican John Evelyn, the friend of Pepys, and like him a diarist, complained that no real Christian instruction was being given in the parish churches. Can that same criticism be made about parish churches today? In his diary he wrote, 'there was now nothing practical preached, or that pressed for reformation of life, but high and speculative points and straines ... which left people very ignorant and of no steady principles'.
Lancelot Andrewes’s Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine (1630) is probably the earliest of these books. Henry Hammond's Practical Catechism (1644) William Nicholson's Plain and Full Exposition of the Catechism (1655) and Richard Sherlock's The Catechism of the Church of England Explained (1656) appeared. In The Golden Grove, which really started out as such an exposition, Jeremy Taylor offers his book as an alternative to the view of those who had destroyed the Church that 'all religion is a sermon'. When the Church of England was restored such handbooks of faith and practice were still needed. Thomas Ken's Exposition of the Church Catechism appeared in 1685 and William Beveridge's The Church Catechism Explained in 1704. This kind of book made a substantial contribution to the Anglican heritage both in theology and devotion.
The usual layout following that of the Catechism is an exposition of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer or prayer generally, and the sacraments, followed by an explanation of the Decalogue and the duties. 'The objective was to create a generation "steadfast in the Faith and sincere in their obedience", through instruction in the apostolic doctrine, through the breaking of bread and the prayers, through character-building by grace in a workaday world where men and women are called to "the new life".'[24]
These are not just a chance collection of the books of a number of seventeenth-century authors; they are the work of men unified both by their theological presuppositions and by their view of the nature and purpose of spiritual direction. They constitute one well-tempered, strongly-forged instrument to bring people to Heaven. They are not merely opinions on the spiritual life. They constitute a spiritual way. Against a clearly drawn doctrinal background, these men painted a Christian piety with alternate strokes of moral theology and devotion.[25]
So we have a deep devotion that is strongly moral and sweetly spiritual, with its sense of eternity conditioning all our actions in time. This is an abiding testimony to the power and worth of 17th century Anglicanism that is concerned to fill people's waking hours and invest every occupation with a sense of consecration to an eternal destiny.
The Devotional Classics
The third category is the devotional classics. These devotional books stand alongside the Manuals of Private Devotion and the Catechetical Books. They are akin to works like à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ or The Devout Life by Francis de Sales Historically, this type of devotional book goes back to 1576 when John Woolton published The Christian Manuell, or of the life and manners of true Christians. His theme was to show:
how needefull it is for the servaunts of God to manifest and declare to the world: their faith by their deedes ... and their profession by their conversation'. A hallmark of this spirituality is, that 'all justified men should walk in a new obedience.'[26]
And he encourages daily self-examination with prayer as an essential devotional discipline.
Such devotion was undergirded by doctrine. 'Constantly this can be noticed in the general and explicit theological presuppositions of the writers and especially in passages concerning the Eucharist. So here in The Christian Manuell teaching on justification by faith is sensibly related to doing good works and the test of faith is seen to be the good life.'[27] This kind of devotional genre was meant to be an elementary treatise of theology, with careful teaching on the nature of prayer, which would enable the reader to form his own petitions in his own words, with specimen devotions and meditations to guide him in doing so, together with directions for public and private duties. The basic premise was that everyone should have a clear understanding of religion, and laity should accept both spiritual and intellectual responsibility.
The Anglican Reformation was, doctrinally, a return to the faith of the early Church, and, in part at any rate, a return to the earlier type of devotion. It was the influence of the early Christian Fathers that put Christian intellect prior to Christian sentiment. A further influence, which produced the same effect, was a changed emphasis in the concept of liturgy itself. Anglicans laid stress on the principle of edification, which further strengthened the ascendancy of head over heart. Anglican piety rarely strayed very far from the spirit and fashion of the liturgy; indeed it presupposes, as we have seen, The Book of Common Prayer as the basis.[28]
Bringing to the fore this principle of edification combined with the calm and ordered piety of the Anglican liturgy, assisted the development of a more restrained and sober devotion in which there is a strong ethical tinge. The word "reasonable" occurs frequently in connection with personal piety. The model is scriptural and influenced by the early Christian Fathers and is strongly ethical in the spirit of self-dedication. It is an exact and careful piety aiming at bringing all daily life under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Some Examples
1. The Practice of Piety Directing a Person how to walk that he may please God
Published in 1612 by Lewis Bayly it influenced personal religion for two centuries, including John Bunyan, and was reprinted forty-nine times in English. George Webb's The Practice of Quietness was subtitled 'Directing a Christian how to live quietly in this troublesome World'. It is the application of ascetical/moral theology to the events and relationships of daily life, where quietness and recollection, praying without ceasing or practising the presence of God ring a contemporary bell as essential ingredients of how to live Christianly in today's workaday world.
The pattern for Anglican devotion was not to be an à la carte approach to Christian living, but a deeply devotional and sane, disciplined and detailed, embracing of the whole of a person's life. It was demanding but rewarding. The concept of duty gave it strength but it is duty understood within that love which is the fulfilling of the law.
Scripture … often expresses charity to be the fulfilling of God's law, as the best expression of all our duty toward God, of faith in Him, love and reverence of Him; and as either formally containing or naturally producing all our duty toward our neighbour.[29]
Here is the influence of the Prayer Book Catechism, which everyone then learned by heart with its two Duties, each of which is a duty to love, to love God and the neighbour. They are followed in the Catechism by 'the Desire' insisting that these duties cannot be discharged without 'diligent prayer' and ‘special grace’. This concept of duty is strong but not coldly self-reliant, for it can only be performed through grace and in the spirit of devotion in the new life in Christ mediated by the Spirit through the Book and the Bread. The General Confession daily reminded worshippers of the threefold duty to God, the neighbour and one's self: 'a godly, righteous and sober life'.
2. The Whole Duty of Man
'Concerning the particulars of this resolution of obedience, I need say no more, but that it must answer every part and branch of our duty.'[30] We find this in The Whole Duty of Man in the section on preparing for Holy Communion. It was published anonymously in 1657, after the Civil War and on the Restoration of the Church of England. It dealt plainly with the moral duties of Christians and was inspired by the last words of the Book of Ecclesiastes, 'Fear God and keep the commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.'
Here is a manual, probably the most influential of all, which became part and parcel of Anglican religious practice. It greatly helped the healing of the Church and the redirection of its energies and by 1790 had reached twenty-eight editions. John Wesley used it and recommended it; confirmation candidates were given it for their future guidance and it was to be found in most homes and many churches. It continued as the standard book for the laity well on into the following century. Nobody knows who wrote it, though Henry Hammond wrote the Preface.
The emphasis is on conduct rather than belief, 'the plain way of holiness', and was influential in emphasizing that 'religion without morals is but superstition, that Christianity is not a set of beliefs but a way of life'. Of course it is both, and as the The Practice of Piety maintains, true devotion rests on right belief. The full title describes the book The Whole Duty of Man, laid down in a plain and familiar way for the use of all, but especially the meanest reader; divided into seventeen chapters, one whereof being read every Lord's Day, the whole may be read over thrice in the year. High Anglicanism had hitherto appealed to the educated and leisured classes, The Practical Piety to the squires and merchants, and The Whole Duty sought to influence everybody who could spell out a piece of simple English.
3. Holy Living and Holy Dying
The needs of Anglicans with catholic sensibilities were eventually met in more accessible form by the publication in 1650 of Holy Living by Jeremy Taylor, to be followed in 1651 by Holy Dying, the two being subsequently printed together. John Wesley read it when he was at Oxford and first began to doubt whether he was in a state of salvation. It started the quest that led to his conversion. John Keble, who first studied it in 1817, described the experience as an epoch in his religious life. No book other than the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer has had a more profound and lasting influence on the distinctive inwardness of Anglican devotion. There is no other book that so clearly expresses the essence of the classical Anglican understanding of the spiritual life with its insistence that there is no division between what is religious and what is secular. By grace our 'natural actions' may be turned into actions of religion.
Jeremy Taylor was writing to sustain members of a church in distress. An archbishop and a king had been executed. The Book of Common Prayer was forbidden, the bishops proscribed and the orderly life of the church broken. With the devotional writings of Jeremy Taylor a different note is struck, in that he wrote for more catholic Anglicans, though the composition is the same. Holy Living too is structured on our threefold duty but there is a livelier quality of style than in The Whole Duty. As McAdoo points out, it is practical, the work of a moral and ascetical theologian, who is also a poet writing in prose and one who is profoundly aware of the existence of mystery in worship and life, that gives it a mystical and sacramental quality. The beatific vision is man's destiny through grace yet 'Live by rule' is his watchword and 'a strict course of piety' is part of an integrated spirituality in which devotion is compounded of strength and sweetness, of discipline and a rich affectivity.
The difference between seventeenth century devotion and that of today is that, 'in the seventeenth century it is holistic while that of today is an atomized devotion.'[31] Remember that Taylor as an expositor is also a literary genius and so 'something beautiful and unique is put at the disposal of those who long to grow in grace "filling every corner of our heart with thoughts of the most amiable and beloved Jesus" '.
With the same basic framework as The Whole Duty it is built around the threefold duty, 'soberly, righteously and godly', within which are three chapters on Christian sobriety, Christian justice and Christian religion. In these times, the controversy about the visible and the invisible Church was never far away, and so it is not surprising to find a valuable section on the external and internal acts of religion. Taylor concludes his work with a wide range of prayers for a variety of conditions and eventualities, which Stranks thinks are 'too much like enraptured dissertations on theology to be used in their entirety today, but the short intercessions which he recommends, for use either in the morning or at any other time which may be convenient, are as brief and pointed as a Prayer Book collect.'[32] Here are the rich insights into the problems of being human from the pen of this very literary Anglican divine that are valid for all time. Set within the context of charity the theme song ringing through them is, Love is a many splendoured thing. Here is wise spiritual direction on prayer, temperance, chastity, humility, modesty, envy and on repentance which 'of all things in the world, makes the greatest change.'[33]
Preparation for the 'Holy Sacrament' with its great theological and devotional depth brings to mind Michael Ramsey's strictures on The Parish Communion Movement. After commending the benefits of that movement his second critical point is that 'The awe in the individual's approach to Holy Communion, which characterized the Tractarians and the Evangelicals of old, stands in contrast to the ease with which our congregations (today) come tripping to the altar week by week.'[34] What we have in Holy Living is the work of a skilled moral/ascetical theologian, a rare combination that is too often lacking in many contemporary writers who describe their commodity as 'spirituality'. This quality of Taylor’s spiritual counselling is what distinguishes Holy Living from other equally popular manuals. Another of his devotional books is The Golden Grove (1655), which exemplifies the 17th century pattern of devotion so simply.
Means and end
Not only is there always a positive end in view within these devotional manuals but also a specific way of achieving that end. In Scougal's The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677) the end is 'a real participation in the Divine Nature' known as the patristic doctrine of Theosis, the deifying of human nature; it is a recurring theme in Caroline divinity. The means to achieving this is discipline, which opens our lives to faith and love, to humility and purity. We find the same theme in Henry More (a Cambridge Platonist), in his Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660): 'Obediential faith and affiance in the true God', issuing in charity, humility and purity, are the sources of this Life as it enters men's lives. Both writers unhesitatingly anchor the mystery of faith in regular devotion, meditation and Holy Communion.[35] The layman Robert Nelson in The Practice of True Devotion, in Relation to the End, as well as the Means of Religion (1698) asserts the end to be 'that we should become new creatures', the means to this end being, the 'exact performance of duties', which are indispensable: 'A man may be a bad man, and use them all; and yet there is no being good without them.'[36] Such Anglican devotion has been described as a piety of the heart as well as of the head, an affective devotion, the end being that of becoming a 'new creature' which is the recurring theme of this life of devotion.
Other Works
The restoration of the monarchy was the signal for the restoration of the Prayer Book as the embodiment of the theological insights and devotional spirit of a church that understood itself as both catholic and reformed. A series of books written to revive understanding and sustain prayerful use of the Prayer Book marked the 17th century. There was Anthony Sparrow's A Rationale on The Book of Common Prayer, 1655; Thomas Comber's A Companion to the Temple, 1684; Robert Nelson's Festivals and Fasts, 1704; William Nicholls' A Comment on The Book of Common Prayer, 1710; Such expressions of Anglican piety centering upon the Prayer Book were appealed to a century later by Keble, Newman and Pusey, as evidence that the aims of the Oxford Movement were no innovation.
In 1728 came A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law. This masterpiece of Christian seriousness lacked the range of the earlier writings of this style, but illuminated its diagnosis with vivid portraits of character-types. Law's Serious Call made a powerful appeal to the consciences of English people. The little community within which he lived at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire recalls the better-known family community of Little Gidding in the previous century.[37] There are many other rich treasures in this type of Anglican devotional manual.
Prayer and Poetry
David Scott,[38] the priest-poet, introduces the life and thought of five seventeenth century Anglican divines, Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, John Donne, Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne. Scott states that the language of the seventeenth century is 'one of the main characters in this book', because his 'tasting’ of this seventeenth century idiom in these writers affected him at an early age and formed in him ideas and values.
He sees them as 'spiritual writers' bridging the worlds of earth and heaven but with an evocative power that rested on their sensitivity to see the extraordinary in the ordinary that is epitomized by Herbert's poem Teach me My God and King. The paradox of mystery and revelation, transcendent and imminent, is beyond comprehension and yet 'is revealed through those images which can contain the truth of both states at once.' Scott cautions against rigorous distinctions between prose and poetry, because, through combinations of rhythm and sense and sound, and the rhythms of feeling and intuition, when they find the right language they are both capable of speaking of heaven in the ordinary.
It is the combination of the literary and mystical in these seventeenth century 'spiritual writers' when the English language had a dignity, strength, and high standard of excellence, that T. S. Eliot tuned into and found such a converting influence. Here is a mystical theology that Anglicans have too often ignored. Professor Raymond Chapman[39], wrote about the poetry of Anglican Devotion and described this devotional poetry as different from religious poetry because, 'It is created from an active state of mind and spirit, deeply feeling the presence of God, seeking to come closer to Him through words.' Again we are back to language which in these seventeenth century writers has a power that can express the uncreated through the created, an apprehension of the divine.
The Herbert hymns have sunk unnoticed into many of us. We value them as expressions of Anglican piety at its best. They are not abstractions from the head but the spiritual combat of a heart in the everyday life of the soul. Here as we glimpse the heavenly in the ordinary, we catch a mystical awareness that is born of spiritual combat in one whose delicate and precarious health was bound to affect the moods and feelings which become a true expression of the prayer from which God does not turn away. Read The Church-Porch, The Altar, The Collar, The Priesthood, The Pulley, The Elixir, A Priest to the Temple. Use his hymns as part of your daily prayer.
Thomas Traherne may be less familiar to you. In his poetry you will discover 'that if you can invoke all the powers of your imagination to follow him he will take you on ventures into time and eternity that none of the others will. He will turn your understanding inside out, thrill, surprise and exhaust you'[40] In Traherne you will find 'grace', ‘unimaginable generosity woven into the very fabric of the universe', a vision of a gracious God in his creation who continually speaks hopefully to you.
With John Donne you can let 'the three-personed God' ‘batter’ you and beg,
Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run
And do run still, though still I do deplore? There you will discover with Donne that even divine redemption is not complete until he has finished and held you in the divine grasp.
Hymns and vision
This naturally leads me to another expression of Anglican devotion in the hymnal. Nicholas Lossky, the Russian Orthodox theologian, advised his fellow Orthodox to search in the English Hymnal as one way of discovering Anglican doctrine and devotion.
When the fourth century Arian Emperor's persecuting soldiers surrounded his church in Milan, Bishop Ambrose locked himself and his people in the Church and sang hymns on the Incarnation to confront this heresy's denial of Christ’s divinity. Ambrose's hymns articulate pure doctrine in poetry that communicates the experience out of which the doctrine has come. Hymns unconsciously engrave on our hearts such experience and doctrine, even before we understand it. As an eight year old choirboy a hymn engraved itself into me. The Great God of heaven is come down to earth by H. R. Bramley,[41] summed up for me the Incarnation, especially the penultimate verse.
The Word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,
Yet in flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains;
He is that he was, and forever shall be,
But becomes that he was not, for you and for me.
Those last two lines haunted me for years and set me thinking about the Incarnation by immersing me in the liturgical worship of the Church and the undivided tradition of Christian doctrine, not as mere theory but as life. Thought is not enough: if I was to understand what I was thinking I had to believe and faith would lead me into understanding. A wonderful moment came some years later when that penny dropped and I understood what I had always believed and thought. Flesh and blood did not reveal it "but my Father who is in heaven". Faith and understanding have their springs in the eternal.
It is impossible to overrate the value of good hymns for personal as well as public use. Next to the Bible itself, prayers and hymns have influenced our understanding of the faith and moulded our theology. There is a power in them that never dies. Easily learned in the days of childhood and of youth, often repeated, seldom, if ever, forgotten; they live with us, a most precious heritage through all the changes of our earthly life. They form a fitting and most welcome expression for every kind of deep religious feeling and speak to us of faith and hope in hours of trial and sorrow. They can stimulate our Christian efforts, remaining in us as the rich consolation of heart and mind, and as one common bond of fellowship between the living members of Christ's mystical Body.
There in the hymnal you will learn about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God the Holy and Blessed Trinity, the life of grace. Hymns celebrating Our Lady, saints, martyrs, and confessors remind us that the Church embraces the communion of saints in which we live with our forbears in the faith. Herbert's hymns and those for morning and evening written by Ken and Keble can provide nourishment for our personal prayer. There you will find pure doctrine in poetically evocative language, a compendium of theology to stimulate devotion and duty, the discipline of Christian living.
The Sermon
We can find in the sermons of Anglican divines a rich vein of devotion. Here are two examples, the first, The Worthy Communicant by William Beveridge[42] in the seventeenth century, is about a subject of contemporary concern and relevance. This contemporary relevance of the sermon's subject matter has already been highlighted with reference to Michael Ramsey.
For Beveridge the frequency of Holy Communion stemmed from the practice of the Apostles and primitive Christians and then from the reason for the Eucharist and the purpose of the institution. For apostles and primitive Christians this sacrament was the chief part of their public devotions. They looked upon themselves as obliged to do this in remembrance of Him, as often as they met together to worship and to serve God. If we consider the purpose of the institution, we will find that we ought to receive this Sacrament as often as we possibly can.
His concern is the right understanding of the Apostle's words, 'He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself'. People have mistakenly believed that, if they are not worthy to receive the Sacrament, and do so, they are damned. Paul is not speaking of the qualifications of the person receiving, but the manner of the communicant in approaching the sacrament, having in mind the disorders and divisions among the Corinthians in their Christian assemblies. Their sin was to eat the Lord's Supper as if it had been common food, without respect or reference to Christ's mystical body and blood so that they over ate and over drank. This is 'eating and drinking unworthily,' as if it was not Christ’s body and blood, but common meat and drink, 'expressing no more regard or reverence towards it, than they do to bread or wine at their own tables.'
The worthy receiving of this Sacrament is about the disposition of soul and body when receiving the Holy Sacrament, which must be a manner worthy and suitable to that body and blood which we there receive; in order to do so our minds must first be rightly disposed and prepared for it. He then cites what our Church requires of us in her Catechism,
that it is required of them who come to the Lord's Supper to examine themselves about three things:
1. Whether they repent them truly of their former sins steadfastly purposing to lead a new life?
2. Have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of His death? And
3. Be in charity with all men?' And accordingly, in the exhortation at the Communion she calls upon all the communicants actually to perform these great duties. And verily, these three things, Repentance, Faith, and Charity, are absolutely necessary to the qualifying us for the worthy receiving of Christ's body and blood, in the sense now explained.
The importance of preparing for Holy Communion, whose currency today is somewhat undervalued, is a recurring theme among all these writers as a necessary discipline in the life of devotion.
The second sermon is a Christmas sermon by Lancelot Andrewes,[43] where, as always, he expounds the wholeness of the Christian mystery. So Easter cannot be separated from Christmas or Pentecost or Resurrection and Inspiration from Incarnation, or from the consequences of this Christian mystery, any separation between the union of human and divine. Christmas needs Easter, '... the still greater mystery of death and resurrection, where we see the divine-human interchange in a new and still more striking perspective', in a new birth from the dead. Easter is described as a second Christmas. Christmas unites Christ with humankind, not in its sin but in its infirmities, mortality and death, and in a brotherhood which death dissolves. Easter heralds a second birth from the grave. Christmas unites him to our side by his mother, Easter unites us to his side by the Father. 'But half-brothers before, never the whole blood till now… this is the better day by far'. This is why Christmas needs Easter and why Easter is by far the greater feast.
This saving life is the Resurrection life and it is to be ours by Inspiratio, inspiration, the breathing into us by the Holy Spirit of this very life of God, which the Eucharist communicates to us. God clothed in flesh is to enable we human beings to be invested with divinity, partake of the divine nature, which is the supreme goal of salvation. As St Paul kept saying, 'It is not my life but the life that Christ lives in me' and it is this, which is saving life that is the work of the Holy Spirit. So Incarnation, Resurrection and Inspiration are organically connected with that one end in view, the deifying of human nature that is the supreme goal of salvation.
Andrewes' vision is Trinitarian. He is a pastoral theologian with a theology to be preached, and therefore with a practical purpose, nothing less than to participate in the divine life Christ lives with the Father in the Holy Spirit. This is a life within the Church, a sacramental life in worship and in prayer, a life of continual movement and growth in the very life of God himself. This is the end towards which the spirit of Anglican devotion nurtures us, to be inspirited with divinity. This is saving life, salvation.
A school of godliness
Finally, a brief mention must be made of family religion. As early as the time Thomas Becon (1511-67), as set out in his Catechism, there had been practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a practical family piety in which the fathers were seen as 'rulers of their own families'. ‘For every householder’s house ought to be a school of godliness, for as much as every householder ought to be a bishop in his own house, and so oversee his family that nothing reign in it but virtue, godliness and honesty.' This spirit provided the firm foundation for the household piety of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The prayer for householders, 'To have children and servants is thy blessing, O Lord, but not to order them according to Thy work deserveth Thy dreadful curse', comes from the primer of 1553. It assumes that children and servants come under the same authority, a most important aspect of contemporary thought at the time. Herbert wrote in A Priest to the Temple, that a priest should take equal pride in his children and his servants for he would find 'as much joy in a straight-growing child or servant as a gardener in a choice tree'. The encouragement of such a spiritual responsibility in the household created a need for practical and devotional aids that were provided in the form of revised Primers. Such family religion at this time is alive and well and Bishop Bull (1634-1710) commended it in a pastoral letter to his clergy but he died before it was sent. Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724), when Archdeacon of Suffolk used his Visitation Charge to commend the practice. What a bonus for clergy and churchwardens and a change from the current preoccupation with ecclesiastical legislation, quotas and diocesan strategies!
In conclusion
To think and pray and read, therefore, with such men as Andrewes in their 'sweet and living love for sacred scripture', with Laud in his hope and fear and grief, with Taylor in his fruitful exile, with Baxter, Herbert and Ken in their marvellous integrity, with Whichcote and John Smith in the deeps of their wisdom, and all in their union with the living Christ, is to be exalted to a total reaffirmation of the mystery and grace of God, healing the heart, cleansing the mind and establishing the will:[44]
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest.
Footnotes
[1] "The Elixir", in The Temple, [ Herbert's Works, Vol. II, Bell and Dalday, 1859] No. 156, p. 212. - Return to text
[2] Revelations of Divine Love [Penguin Classics 1980], p. 68. - Return to text
[3] V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (James Clarke, Cambridge and London 1973), p. 8. - Return to text
[4] Wisdom 3. 6; Ecclesiasticus 2.5. - Return to text
[5] The Glowing Mind, Prayer in some Caroline Divines, [SLG Pamphlet 1991], p. 1 - Return to text
[6] Urban Holmes, What is Anglicanism? (Connecticut, 1982), pp. 70-71 - Return to text
[7] H. R. McAdoo, Anglican Heritage: Theology and Spirituality (The Canterbury Press 1991), p. 54. - Return to text
[8] 1648, a royalist work claiming Charles I as its author, but attributed to J. Gauden, a bishop of Exeter. - Return to text
[9] McAdoo, Ibid, p. 56. - Return to text
[10] McAdoo, Ibid, p. 62. - Return to text
[11] Robert Sanderson, 1587-1663, Sermon III Ad Clerum, n.34; Vol. II. P. 105 and cp. Sermon IX Ad Aulum, n. 28, Vol. I, p. 242 (Oxford 1884), cited by McAdoo, Ibid, p. 62. - Return to text
[12] Exposition of the Catechism, [Library of Anglo Catholic Theology, Parker Oxford 1842], "The Epistle. Dedicatory", p. xiv. - Return to text
[13] Byrom Ibid, p. 2. - Return to text
[14] Arthur Westcott, Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott (Macmillan and Co, London 1903), Vol. II, p. 311. - Return to text
[15] Byrom, Ibid, p. 3. - Return to text
[16] Augustine, Commentary on the Psalms, 71, 7. - Return to text
[17] C. J. Stranks, Anglican Devotion, [SCM Press, 1961], p. 9. - Return to text
[18] R. L. Ottley, Lancelot Andrewes (Methuen, London 1905), p. 180. - Return to text
[19] Masters of English Theology [Murray, London 1877], p. 105. - Return to text
[20] Ottley, Ibid, p.181. - Return to text
[21] The Country Parson, Ch.XXI. - Return to text
[22] McAdoo, Ibid, p. 82. - Return to text
[23] vol.XIX. p.54. - Return to text
[24] McAdoo, Ibid, p. 83. - Return to text
[25] H. R. McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology, (Longmans, Green & Co 1949), p. 171. - Return to text
[26] John Woolton, The Christian Manuel, 23. - Return to text
[27] H. R. McAdoo, Anglican Heritage: Theology and Spirituality, [Canterbury Press 1991], p. 75. - Return to text
[28] McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Divinity, pp. 138-9. - Return to text
[29] Isaac Barrow, Twenty-Two Sermons, 1801, edn., Vol. II. Sermon 22 , p.532. - Return to text
[30] Sunday III. 12 In Preparation for Holy Communion. - Return to text
[31] McAdoo, Anglican Heritage: Theology and Spirituality [Canterbury Press 1991], p. 79. - Return to text
[32] C. J. Stranks, Ibid, p. 75. - Return to text
[33] Ch IV Sect IX. - Return to text
[34] Durham Essays and Addresses [SPCK 1956], p. 19. - Return to text
[35] McAdoo, ibid, p. 81. - Return to text
[36] Ch. 13 and Preface. - Return to text
[37] see Maycock's biography of Nicholas Ferrar for an account of the Little Gidding community. - Return to text
[38] Sacred Tongues 'The Golden Age of Spiritual Writing' (DLT, 2003). - Return to text
[39] February 2003 edition of New Directions. - Return to text
[40] Denise Inge, Thomas Traherne, Poetry and Prose (SPCK, 2001), p.xiii. - Return to text
[41] Hymn 29, in the Old English Hymnal. Sadly in The New English Hymnal this verse is omitted from the hymn, no doubt because it is not instantly comprehensible. In the light of the place of this verse in my own unfolding comprehension, I find this sad. The things of God cannot ever be instantly comprehensible. We see through a 'glass darkly'. - Return to text
[42] Works, VI. [Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, Oxford, 1845], p. 20. - Return to text
[43] Works, (Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology) Vol. 1. p. 122. - Return to text
[44] Byrom, Ibid, p. 26. - Return to text
|
