laudable Practice

In his Answer to Gardiner (1551), Cranmer had to address a point that Gardiner clearly delighted in emphasising - that Cranmer's developing eucharistic theology stood apart from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and the Catechism Cranmer himself had published in 1548: Truth it is, as St. Augustine saith, we receive in the sacrament the body of Christ with our mouth, and such speech other use, as a book set forth in the Archbishop of Canterbury's name, called a Catechism, willeth children to be taught, that they receive with their bodily mouth the body and blood of Christ; which I allege, because it shall appear it is a teaching set forth among us of late, as hath been also and is by the book of Common Prayer, being the most true catholic doctrine of the substance of the sacrament, in that it is there so catholicly spoken of, which book this author doth after specially allow, howsoever all the sum of his teaching doth improve [i.e. change] it in that point. So much is he contrary ...

Last week we saw, from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , how Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685) asserted a subordination of the Son on the basis on Nicene confession that He is begotten of the Father, "God of God", the Father thus being "the Fountain, Original and Principle of the Divinity". This view of the divine monarchy and the Son's subordination was, of course, controversial, provoking sustained critiques of Bull, despite (as previously noted) divines such as Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor sharing this understanding. Nelson himself has no hesitation whatsoever in affirming Bull's position, placing it in a wider context of Lutheran and Roman Catholic divines who likewise understood the Nicene Confession, and identifying its opponents as "the Calvinistical School": he hath learnedly and solidly confuted the unreasonable and uncatholick Notion of the Moderns, which maketh the Son a self-dependent Principle of Divinity (and by...

Peter Lake's On Laudianism: Piety, Polemic and Politics During the Personal Rule of Charles I (2023) has been sitting on my desk for some months. I began reading it on 2nd January and am now one-third of the way through the book. As I had realized from reviews I had previously read, I am in fundamental disagreement with his understanding of Laudianism. Over the next few weeks, there will be a series of posts as I make my way through the book, explaining my disagreements. Let me begin, however, by stating some agreements. Lake states, "Laudianism was one of a number of ways of being protestant, just one of the modes of reformation available in and to the English post-reformation church" (p.19f). As Laud himself declared in his conference with Fisher, "And the Church of England is Protestant too". Those contemporary critics who accused Laudianism of rejecting the Reformation, and those historians who repeat this claim, entirely miss a fundamental aspect of Laudia...

The Sign of the Cross is the most universally "Catholic coded" thing in the world. The comment appeared on X in the midst of a debate on Christmas Day about the ecclesiastical identity of the McCallister family in 'Home Alone'. (Yes, you read that correctly.) This particular comment was regarding Kevin crossing himself while saying Grace before a meal. This matter, of course, is not entirely straightforward. Kevin, as some contributors pointed out, crosses himself in the Orthodox fashion. A previous comment achieved 'community note' status when, after describing Kevin walking into a church on Christmas Eve as "one of my earliest encounters with Catholicism in film", it was pointed out that the church in question was actually Episcopalian - albeit with some clearly Roman Catholic statues added. To return to Kevin crossing himself, various contributors to the debate also pointed out that many Lutherans and Anglicans/Episcopalians also made the sign of ...

In our last reading , prior to Advent, from the 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), we considered how Lindsay's critique of the rejection of festival days by the opponents of the Articles of Perth stood well within the mainstream of the Continental Reformed tradition. We resume the readings from Lindsay's work as he refutes those who, rejecting the Articles of Perth, appear to make the provisions of the 1560 Book of Discipline (rejecting festival days, requiring communicants to sit for reception etc.) a necessary order: Yee are not able to produce any warrant for the vniforme iudgement of the Church, nor Canon of Assembly, nor act of Parliament, nor confession of faith, nor publike protestation, which either condemnes the points concluded at Perth, as vnlawfull to bee vsed in the worship of God; or establisheth the contrary as things necessary, that ca...

Resuming weekly readings from Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner (1551), we turn to Gardiner challenging Cranmer's account of our true feeding on Christ. This account, insists Gardiner, falls far short of catholic teaching: But the catholic teaching, by the Scriptures, goeth further, confessing Christ to feed such as be regenerate in him, not only by his body and blood, but also with his body and blood delivered in this sacrament by him indeed to us, which the faithful, by his institution and commandment, receive with their faith and with their mouth also, and with those special dainties be fed specially at Christ's table. Before proceeding to Cranmer's response, we might note how Gardiner uses the phrase "at Christ's table", suggesting that the use of 'table' with reference to the altar was not necessarily an inherently Reformed usage. In terms of Cranmer's response, he again declares that he does not disagree with Gardiner's statement that Ch...