Foundations of the Anglican Church CXV

We posted about Lancelot Andrewes, Nicholas Ferrar and the Little Gidding community, and George Herbert, and now will continue with more on the Caroline Divines—the Anglican clergy who typified a revival of piety in the Church of England in the seventeenth century. 

Another prominent Caroline Divine was John Cosin (1594-1672).  Having matriculated at Caius College, Cambridge before taking Holy Orders, once ordained his rise in the Church was rapid.  He began as secretary to the Bishop of Lichfield, went on to be chaplain to the Prince-Bishop of Durham, a canon of Durham, and then archdeacon of East Riding in Yorkshire.  Upon receiving his doctorate in divinity he was advanced to the Mastership of Peterhouse at Cambridge and then to vice-Chancellor of the University.  In 1627 he had composed, at the command of Charles I, a book of devotions for the Protestant Ladies in Waiting to Charles’ Catholic Queen, Henrietta Marie.  It was always troublesome to the High Church wing that the good Protestant ladies of the court often looked rather less devout than the Queen and her Catholic ladies.  Cosin was a staunch royalist and pawned the silver plate of Peterhouse for the royal cause in the Civil War with the Parliamentarians.  He was deprived by the Long Parliament of his benefices for his support of the King and fled to Paris where he served as the Protestant Chaplain to Charles II in his exile.  At the Restoration he returned to England and was made Prince-Bishop of Durham.  He was an ardent High-Churchman though he had no problem with non-episcopal ordination among the French Huguenots.  He also tried valiantly to win compromise with the Presbyterians at the Savoy Conference of 1661 but without success.  He was greatly responsible for the 1662 Prayer Book reviving both prayers and rituals more consistent with the ancient liturgies than the 1552 and 1559 books used previous to the Civil War.  Durham was a rich see and Cosin was most generous in applying his revenues to works of charity and education. 

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) is one of the better known Caroline Divines because of his extraordinary prose style.  He came from humble origins at Cambridge but because of his intelligence and ability to learn quickly was able to secure a place in the university.  He was only 20 when ordained to the priesthood.  He was a protégé of Archbishop Laud, the High-Church Archbishop of Canterbury whose antagonism to the Puritan faction provided the spark that would set off the Bishop’s War in Scotland which morphed into the English Civil War and brought down both monarchy and episcopacy with King Charles and Archbishop Laud both losing their lives to the axe.  Taylor, like Laud, was always suspect by the Puritans of being a crypto-Catholic and he was on friendly terms with many Catholics including the Franciscan friar chaplain to Queen Henrietta Marie.  Yet, for all his cordiality to Catholics, Taylor was a convinced Anglican.  He was a staunch defender of episcopacy against the Presbyterian polity of Cromwell’s Puritan Parliamentarians and this led to three imprisonments during the Commonwealth.  Friends secured him a position in Lisburn, county Antrim in Ireland in the final years of the Commonwealth and at the Restoration he was named Bishop of Down and Connor and Vice Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin.  It was a tremendous disappointment to him not to be called back to England.  It was surprising that he was not given a better position as his wife (his second wife, his first having died in 1651) was an illegitimate daughter of no less than King Charles II himself. 

He was a competent bishop in difficult circumstances with most of his clergy being Presbyterian and not willing to give it up and most of the populace being Catholic and not willing to give that up either.  His literary contribution is perhaps greater than any of the other Carolines due to both the volume of his writing and quality of his prose.  In addition to numerous sermons he wrote several books of devotions and prayers that have remained popular through the centuries. He also wrote manuals for the devout life and for preparing for a devout death as well as a worthy reception of Holy Communion.  The Catholic Paulist Press did a volume of his work in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series. 

Thomas Ken, 1637-1711, was an Oxford grad who, after holding several relatively inconsequential rectories, went on to be a canon at Winchester and a chaplain to the bishop there.  He went on to be chaplain to the King’s neice, the Princess Mary (later Queen Mary of William and Mary fame) and afterwards a chaplain to King Charles himself.  He later angered the King, however, when he refused the King’s infamous mistress, Nell Gwynne, hospitality in his home.  He wrote many devotional prayers and hymns which are still used today, most notably “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow” and “All Praise to Thee, My God, This Night.”  A trip to Rome in 1672 left him unimpressed with Catholicism. 

In 1684 when the See of Bath and Wells (a very important diocese in the Church of England and the bishop of which plays a significant role in the coronation ritual) feel opened, King Charles remembered Ken’s scruples about hosting the royal mistress and in admiration for his pluck insisted that Ken be named bishop. The King allegedly declared: “where is that little priest who refused lodging to poor Nell?”  When Charles was dying the following year, Ken was summoned to minister to him at his deathbed and his manner of ministry edified all present save for the dour Scot, Gilbert Burnet. 

Ken was no friend to Catholicism and opposed a lifting of the penal laws proposed by the Catholic King James II who succeeded Charles II in 1685. James had him imprisoned and brought to trial for his résistance, but he was acquitted.  Nevertheless, when William and Mary (to whom he had once been chaplain) deposed James in the Glorious Revolution, Ken felt that his oath of allegiance to James prevented him from giving allegiance to the new Protestant co-monarchs.  (We will have postings on “The Glorious Revolution” to explain all this in the near future.)  William and Mary deprived Ken of his See and he retired to the manor of his old friend Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, at Longleat.  Somewhat penniless himself, Ken influenced Weymouth to be exceptionally generous to the poor of the surrounding countryside and even to establish a school for boys at Warminster. 

There are other voices of seventeenth-century Anglican piety/spirituality that we could consider but I think these and those in the previous posting give us the flavor of the flourishing of Anglican spirituality in the seventeenth century.  As the Church of England broke free of its Calvinist/Puritan heritage it was able to recover some of the vitality that it had known in the Middle Ages with spiritual writers such as Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing.  What we see with the Caroline Divines is a deep but not a saccharine piety rooted in scripture, sound theology, and an appreciation for the sacramental/liturgical life of the Church.  It would be important—given that these Divines were all of the High Church camp—to give a clarification of seventeenth-century High Churchmanship lest it be confused with the ritualism of the Oxford movement which was still a long way off in the distance.

Seventeenth century High Churchmanship was marked not so much by ritual—though there was a deep concern for a dignified Church order—as by an appreciation for the patristic heritage which had, for a great part, been lost in the Puritan years.  The seventeenth century saw a revival of interest in the ancient Church Fathers—both Greek and Latin—and a desire to align the life of the Church in its liturgy, its asceticism, and its canons with the theology and practice of the ancient church.  They were not so much concerned about vestments (though they did insist on the prescribed vestments of the Prayer Book, namely the surplice) and ornaments as they were about adherence to the liturgical texts and rubrics.  There was a great flourishing of hymnody as well as a restoration of organs—and some magnificent instruments—and music.  In their study of the Fathers, they narrowed the gap between their and Catholic theology although pretty much to a man the Caroline Divines were by no means “papistically inclined.”  There were some loose and unofficial ties established with the French Church (where there was also a spiritual renaissance at the time as well as an enthusiasm for Church music) which stood in a somewhat semi-autonomous relationship with the papacy.  Unfortunately this spiritual revival would come crashing down by the end of the seventeenth century with the rise of rational liberalism but that is for future postings. 

Foundations of the Church of England CXIV

The Lady Chapel at
Chichester Cathedral

Well, back to what is becoming my magnum opus.  Before we move on from the Stuart Age I would like to look briefly at the flowering of Anglican spirituality epitomized in a group of writers collectively referred to as the “Caroline Divines.”  They get that moniker because they are generally considered to include Anglican writers extending from the reign of Charles I through the Commonwealth (where they were in disfavor) to the reign of Charles II.  (Carolus, is the Latin for Charles, and Caroline here is not a proper name but an adjective designating the time frame from 1625 (accession of Charles I) until 1685 (demise of Charles II), though it really can be extended through the brief reign of Charles II’s brother, James II which ended with his deposition during the Glorious Revolution in 1688. 

We have already looked at Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Chichester and later Bishop of Winchester as well as Dean of the Chapel Royal.  Andrewes defended the doctrine of the Real Presence (though he rejected Transubstantiation) claiming that after the bread is consecrated (his word) it is no longer bread in a natural sense.   Bishop Andrews considered it somewhat blasphemous to examine too closely the “how” of Christ’s Eucharist Presence, comparing it to the mystery of the Incarnation where Divinity and Humanity are united in one Person. 

Andrews used terms such as “sacrifice” and “altar” in referring to the Holy Communion and to the table on which it was celebrated.  His private chapel was fitted out with silver candlesticks, a censer, and five copes among other High Church paraphernalia. But he wasn’t just another High-Church dilettante who liked smoke and to play dress up.  He was a profound preacher who could stir his audience with both piety and theological precision.  He is most famous, however for his book of private prayers (Preces Privatae).  Here is an example, his night prayer. 

"Let me think upon thy Name in the night season, and keep thy law: let the evening prayer go up unto Thee, and thy pity come down unto us, O Thou which givest songs in the night, which makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to praise Thee, which givest thy beloved wholesome sleep."

Or this in his old age

"Gotten past the day I give Thee thanks, O Lord. The evening draweth nigh: make it bright. There is an evening, as of the day, so also of life: the evening of life is old age: old age hath overtaken me: make it bright. Cast me not off in the time of age: forsake me not when my strength faileth. Abide with me, O Lord, for even now it is towards evening with me, and the day is far spent of this travailling life. Let thy strength be perfected in my weakness."

It’s a little baroque for my personal taste, but there is a depth of deep piety in the prayers and it echoes both the scripture and profound mystery appreciated by the best of Catholic writers of the period. 

We also looked at Nicholas Ferrar and the pious household of his extended family at Little Gidding.   For me, Little Gidding is the proof being in the pudding of Anglican Spirituality in the seventeenth century.  We see people taking their faith seriously and grace welling up from deep within the soul to become charity for one’s neighbor.  For over thirty years from 1626 and long beyond Ferrar’s death, the community at Little Gidding was marked by lives of deep prayer and practiced charity among the locals.  The Ferrar household prayed the daily offices of the Church of England, kept the fasts, and maintained at least one person in prayer in the ancient church they had restored on the property while at the same time seeing to the education of local children and providing health services for the local population. 

A close friend of Ferrar was the Church of England priest, George Herbert, the noted metaphysical poet.  Herbert gave up a promising career in politics to be ordained and took a parish near Salisbury where his fervent devotion expressed itself both in worship and in the pastoral care of the people entrusted to his cure.  Much of his poetry has been set to music, both as hymns and anthems, and is still sung in the Church today.  He died quite young—aged 39—in 1633, worn out by his labors.  Here is one of his poems which echoes the doctrine of the Dark Night of Saint John of the Cross. 

When my devotions could not pierce


Thy silent ears; 


Then was my heart broken, as was my verse: 


My breast was full of fears 


And disorder:



My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, 


Did fly asunder:


Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, 


Some to the wars and thunder 


Of alarms. 



As good go any where, they say,


As to benumb 


Both knees and heart, in crying night and day, 


Come, come, my God, O come, 


But no hearing.



O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue 


To cry to thee, 


And then not hear it crying! all day long 


My heart was in my knee, 


But no hearing. 



Therefore my soul lay out of sight,


Untuned, unstrung: 


My feeble spirit, unable to look right,


Like a nipped blossom, hung 


Discontented.



O cheer and tune my heartless breast, 


Defer no time; 


That so thy favors granting my request,


They and my mind may chime, 


And mend my rime.

These are only a few of the examples of the deep piety exhibited in the seventeenth-century Church of England.   They parallel the spiritual renaissance flowering in Catholic France at the same period—and indeed are paralleled by a number of English Catholic authors of the period such as Dom Augustine Baker.  We will look at several others in a future posting and they will provide a good foil against which we can examine the theological and spiritual decline of the Church in the eighteenth century, a spiritual bankruptcy that would deeply affect our American religious scene down to the present day.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church CII

Nicholas Ferrar 

One of the more interesting phenomenon of the Religious Renaissance in the Church of England was the “community” at Little Gidding.  The Puritan faction was appalled and called it a “Protestant nunnery” but in fact it was nothing more than a devout extended family living a prayerful life while supporting themselves by their own labors, most through bookbinding.  Nevertheless, the Community at Little Gidding demonstrates the desire of devout families in the Church of England to live the sort of intense commitment represented by a monastic life style.  It also shows the resurgence of a Catholic understanding of the freedom of the will under grace that had been supplanted in Anglicanism by the Puritan/Calvinist emphasis on predestination.  Liturgical Prayer and spiritual discipline were seen as characteristics that testify to active collaboration with grace in a way that the Puritan faction rejected.  The experience of the Ferrar household at Little Gidding is a bright spot in the history of Anglicanism and its instinct will rise again a century later with the Wesleys and Methodism. 

The organizer of the Community at Little Gidding was one Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637).  Ferrar,  a fellow of Clare College Cambridge, was a friend of George Herbert, the Welsh-born English Metaphysical poet and Anglican priest.  Herbert is one of the leading “Caroline Divines.”  After travelling extensively on the continent where he encountered Roman Catholics (including Jesuits and the Oratorians of Saint Philip Neri), German Lutherans, Jews, and Anabaptists—all of whom broadened his religious views—he returned to England with a vision of establishing a pious household for himself and his extended family.

After a brief and contentious term in Parliament, Ferrar persuaded his mother, his brother and his brother’s wife and family and his sister and her husband and children to go in with him and purchase the abandoned manor at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire.  They restored the ancient church on the manor—it had been a Templar Church—and one member or another of the family was always to be found there in prayer.  They had a strict regimen of keeping the prescribed fasts of the Church of England and of following the Prayer Book daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer.  They devoted themselves to the education of the local children.  And they supported themselves by bookbinding, an art which they learned from a Cambridge binder.  They attracted much notice and even three visits by King Charles I.   The Ferrars were enthusiasts for the High Church vision of both a disciplined Christian life and dignified liturgical service.  They fitted the Church at Little Gidding with a pipe organ as well as a brass lectern in the traditional shape of an Eagle.  Nicholas Ferrar died in 1637 but the communal life continued for another twenty years at Little Gidding.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church CI

The Laudian Altar at St. Peter's

Wolverhampton, an example of 

Laud's pushing the Church of 

England into a more sacramental

or even "Catholic" direction

There is so much to talk about—I want to finish some reflections on the Pope’s Christmas message to the Curia as it is a very dramatic innovation that helps us understand just how serious Pope Francis is in the Reform of the Church.  And then there is the matter of his new cardinals.  Very interesting choices: more interesting from the perspective of who was not chosen than for who was.  But I really want to get back to the Anglican history and we left off on the brink of some very crucial developments.  I must have been a Scandinavian in a past life as I seem to like the smorgasbord approach.  Or maybe—and more likely—I just have a short attention span.  But today we go back to England in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century.  Charles the I has just ascended the throne.  And it is a lively time for the Church of England.

Charles, incidentally has a wife that is openly Catholic.  His mother—Anne of Denmark—had been a Catholic ( a convert from Danish Lutheranism) but quite discreetly.  Charles’ wife, Henrietta Marie, was a French Princess and there was nothing discreet—much less clandestine—about her papist leanings.  Charles had a Catholic chapel—the Queen’s Chapel—built for her at the Palace of Saint James, the seat of the Court in London.  

During the reign of Charles there was a distinct move away from the stern puritan/Calvinism of the Church of England.    Charles named William Laud to be h is Archbishop of Canterbury and while Laud was a convinced Anglican, he was a bit of a throwback to the sort of Anglicanism represented in the First Book of Common Prayer (1549).  His views on the sacramental life of the Church were anything but Calvinist, much less the Zwinglism advocated by Cranmer in his later development.  Laud wanted to restore a certain dignity, even pageantry, to the Liturgy.  Moreover Laud and other “High Churchmen” moved away from the strict double predestinarianism of the Calvinists.  (This was the idea that God had predestined some to eternal salvation and others to eternal damnation and there was nothing that one could do alter the eternal sentence.)  We will go into more details about Archbishop Laud and “Laudian” Anglicanism in future posts, but suffice it to say here that the Archbishop’s preferences—and his determination to force a liturgical uniformity on the Church—only widened the split between the Puritans (who tended towards Presbyterianism) and the High Churchmen (who supported episcopalianism or governance of the Church by bishops). 

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church was in a period of great spiritual renewal generated by the Counter Reformation.  Spiritual writers were producing volume after volume about prayer and mystical theology.  The Spiritual Exercise of Saint Ignatius Loyola had given a mystical discipline to Ignatius’ disciples the Jesuits.  The writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross—two Spanish Carmelites—were being translated into all the European languages and being read by the devout.   The French Church in particular was undergoing an incredible spiritual renaissance.  Francis de Sales and his Introduction toThe Devout Life brought spirituality into the realm of everyday people.  English Catholic writers on the continent, notably Richard Crashaw, Robert Southwell, Dom Augustine Baker and Dame Gertrude More, helped introduce contemporary spiritual writings into the English world and the result was a renaissance of spirituality among Anglican divines as well.  Jeremy Taylor, Herbert Thorndike, and Thomas Ken are three examples of Anglican spiritual writers at this period.  The flowering of a spirituality was not conducive to the Calvinist spirit which was always suspect of any move away from a strict adherence to Scriptural doctrine and moral rigidity  to personal piety and subjective religion.