The Place of the Caroline Divines in Classical Anglicanism

By Robin G. Jordan

The reign of the seventeenth century English King Charles I is sometimes called the Catholic Reaction. A reaction is a return of a previous condition emphasized by an interval of the opposite. In the case of the Catholic Reaction the opposite was the English Reformation, the Elizabethan Settlement, and the reign of James I.

Charles I was decidedly High Church in his leanings. He and the English Parliament clashed over his military adventurism and extravagant spending. He disliked the Puritans and Presbyterians who had come to dominate Parliament and to control its purse strings. For a time he tried to rule the kingdom without Parliament, reviving a number of obsolete taxes. Eventually he was forced to summon Parliament and request money. This led to another clash between him and Parliament and resulted in the English Civil War

Early in his reign Charles adopted a deliberate policy of appointing bishops who were Arminian and upheld the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Arminian is the name given to the adherents of the doctrine of Jacob Arminius, a Dutch Protestant theologian opposed to the views of John Calvin especially on predestination.

The doctrine of the divine right of kings teaches that kings become the rulers of a nation by the sovereign grace of God and therefore their subjects should obey them as the Lord’s anointed (see 1 Samuel 9:16). Those who rise in arms against the king, resist the king’s authority, or refuse allegiance to the king are rebelling against the order that God himself has established, and therefore their rebellion is rebellion against God.

Charles sought to rule as an absolute monarch who was above the law. He demanded unquestioning obedience from his subjects. He justified his absolute rule on the basis of this doctrine. A number of the better livings were bestowed upon the king’s sycophants who showed more passion for preferment than for the Bible and the gospel.

Charles’s new Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud shared his High Church principles and with Charles’ support embarked on a program of unpopular reforms known as “Thorough.” These reforms and the harsh measures that Archbishop Laud adopted to enforce them so angered and alienated the English people that they eventually cost Laud his head.

Churches were decorated with crosses, elaborately carved furnishings, gilded wooden angels, and stained-glass windows. An elaborate ceremonial with frequent adoring, bowing, genuflecting, and kneeling was introduced into the Communion Service and other Prayer Book services. The use of incense at different points in the liturgy was revived. Communion tables were raised on a footboard and set altar-like against the east wall, covered elaborate frontals, and railed off from the rest of the chancel. Two candlesticks with tapers, a basin for the oblation, and a cushion for the service book were placed upon the table. Priests stood in front of the table as if before an altar and said the prayers with their backs to the people. Communicants were required to kneel at the railings. The practice of singing metrical versions of the Psalms, the Prayer Book canticles, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and other liturgical texts instead of the prose ones was suppressed.

Charles had married a French princess who was a Roman Catholic. She had been permitted to bring her chaplains with her to England and they regularly celebrated Mass in her chapel. A number of the members of the English court, foreign dignitaries, and those seeking favor with the king through the queen attended these services. Consequently the English people were well-acquainted with the ornaments and the ceremonies that were used in the queen’s chapel and did not fail to note the similarities between these ornaments and ceremonies and the ones that Laud was imposing upon the English Church. Laud was accused of trying to reintroduce Popery. Even the Roman Catholic Church thought so. Laud was offered a cardinal’s hat if he persuaded Charles to bring the Church of England back into the Roman fold.

By the time of Charles’ reign the Edwardian Reformation, the Marian Persecution, and the Elizabethan Reformation were a distant memory.

In England’s two universities we find a fascination with antiquity and the Patristic writers. Calvinism and the plain style of church ornamentation and worship associated with the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement were increasingly regarded as too severe for an enlightened and genteel seventeenth century especially for the upper classes. The result was growing predisposition toward Arminianism and ritualism in these quarters.

A number of the younger clergy had come to regard Bishop Lancelot Andrews as an authority on worship and his celebrating of the liturgy as a standard. Andrews was strongly influenced by the teaching of the Patristic writers and the ancient liturgies of the Eastern and Western Churches. In his episcopal chapel he had introduced at an early date a number of the changes that Archbishop Laud would seek to impose upon the entire church. In his chapel the altar in its sancta sanctorum was hidden from profane eyes by a screen. Andrews deliberately departed from the Reformer’s use of a common cup and its place used a medieval chalice and paten. He patterned the worship in his chapel more upon that of the 1549 Prayer Book than the 1552 Prayer Book, which formed the basis of the 1559 Elizabethan Prayer Book and its 1604 Jacobean revision. He revived a number of medieval practices such as the offering of the bread and wine at the offertory followed by the offering of the alms. He devised his own offertory sentences. He used unleavened bread and a mixed chalice for the communion. He reintroduced the manual acts during the Prayer of Consecration. Among the other practices that he revived was the minister bowing to the altar before reading the epistle and gospel, and the congregation saying or the choir singing the response, “Glory be to Thee, O Lord” before the gospel. At every mention of Jesus’ name in the Gospel reading the clergy, the choir, and the congregation were required to acknowledge his sacred name by “bowing the knee.”

In the Canon Andrews diverged the most from the 1552 Prayer Book. The Sanctus was immediately followed by the Prayer of Consecration and then the Prayer of Oblation. The latter was followed by the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of Humble Access, and the Agnes Dei.

The way the Eucharist was celebrated in Andrews’ chapel differed very little from the way the old Mass was celebrated. There wore two notable differences. Andrews wore a cope instead of a chasuble and there was no elevation of the Host and adoration during the Prayer of Consecration. In the latter case Andrews adhered to the rubrics of the 1549 Prayer Book. As to Andrews’ understanding of the Eucharist he is reported to have told Cardinal Perron that the Eucharist was a celebration of the passion and death of Christ which was offered for both the living and the dead and even for the unborn.

Andrew’s celebrating of the liturgy would influence the compiling of the 1637 Scottish Prayer Book. Andrew’s influence is also seen in the rubrics of the 1662 Prayer Book.

The group of churchmen that we know as the Caroline Divines largely gained prominence because they enjoyed royal favor. While most of them were Arminian in doctrine and ritualistic in practice, there are some notable exceptions. Charles’ first Archbishop of Canterbury George Abbott was a Calvinist. The scholarly Archbishop of Amargh James Ussher was a Puritan and drafted the Calvinist Irish Articles. He was widely respected by both sides in the English Civil War. The Protector Oliver Cromwell would give Archbishop Ussher a state funeral.

The Caroline High Churchmen did not comprise a popular movement within the Church of England; their doctrinal and liturgical views did not have a large body of adherents. Their thinking influenced only a small part of the population. Its largest following was found among the Stuart elites--Charles’ courtiers, the greater nobility—the peers of the realm, the lesser nobility—the landed gentry, and their retainers and clients, and those seeking to win the king’s favor. The larger part of the English people was staunchly Puritan and Presbyterian in their sympathies. They had strong anti-Roman and anti-papalist sentiments.

Admirers of the Caroline Divines often commend them for their Biblical and Patristic learning. However, their interpretation of the Bible is often more eisegesis than exegesis. Their reading of the Patristic writers is uncritical. They give more authority to the writings of the early Church Fathers’ than do the early Church Fathers themselves (and the English Reformers).

The Caroline Divines, however, were not Romanists nor did they reject the continental Protestant Churches, as would the Tractarians. William Laud refused the cardinal’s hat he was offered. An English court failed to convict Laud of teaching the doctrine of Transubstantiation and of other charges made against him. Part of the evidence that was used against Laud was his own diary that had fallen into the hands of his enemies before the trial. They showed no scruples at making false entries into the diary. Thwarted at first in their efforts to send Laud to the block, Laud’s enemies finally persuaded Parliament to pass a bill of attainder condemning him to death as a traitor.

John Bramhall and John Cosin ably defended the English Church again its Roman Catholic detractors when they fled to the continent with the queen and the royal heirs. They were less successful in protecting the young princes from their mother’s influence. Charles II converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed; the Roman Catholicism of his younger brother James II caused the Glorious Revolution. James was forced to flee to France and a Protestant monarch was place on the English throne. The English Parliament would adopt a law prohibiting a Roman Catholic from ascending the English throne and requiring all English monarchs upon their ascension to the throne to swear to defend and uphold the Protestant and Reformed Religion of the Church of England.

In the nineteenth century the Tractarians falsely claimed to be the successors of the Caroline High Churchmen. In his seminal work, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Church 1760-1857, Peter B. Nockles refutes this absurd claim. A later generation of Anglo-Catholics would reject them as too Protestant. The Caroline High Churchmen did not accept the universal authority of the Pope or uphold the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which in their opinion are the marks of a true Catholic. Yet the myth of the Caroline High Churchman as the forerunners of the Oxford movement and Anglo-Catholicism has proven tenacious.

The defeat of the Royalists, the execution of Charles I, the abolition of the Book of Common Prayer, and episcopacy did not bring an end to the influence of the Caroline High Churchmen. The death of Oliver Cromwell in 1660, the restoration of the English monarchy, and the ascension of another Stuart, Charles II, to the English throne also restored the Caroline High Churchmen to favor. The Restoration Bishops who produced what is now regarded as the classical Anglican Prayer Book were mostly Caroline High Churchmen. While they had John Cosin’s Durham Book and Bishop Matthew Wren who had helped to prepare the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, the so-called Laudian Liturgy, the book that they produced was fairly moderate in tone. It was substantially the 1559 Elizabethan Prayer Book in its 1604 Jacobean revision with a number of changes. The Restoration Bishops incorporated a few minor concessions to the Presbyterians. They largely ignored the latter’s concerns. Some of the changes that they made were clearly intended to put the Presbyterians in their place. However, they showed no inclination to make any radical changes in the English Prayer Book.

Do the Caroline Divines have a place in classical Anglicanism? A number of writers argue that they do for a variety of reasons, chiefly related to the reading of English Church history to which they are wed and the particular theory of Anglican identity tied to that reading. One of the dangers of giving a place to the Caroline High Churchmen in classical Anglicanism is that some authors skip over the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement that lie at the heart of classical Anglicanism and treat the doctrine and practice of the Caroline Divines as if they are the doctrine and practice of classical Anglicanism (See Death Bradon’s, “Anglicanism Proper”). Lancelot Andrew, John Bramhall, John Cosins, John Overall, Anthony Sparrow, and Jeremy Taylor receive more attention than do Thomas Becon, John Bradford, Thomas Cranmer, John Foxe, Richard Hooker, John Hooper, John Jewel, Alexander Nowel, Nicholas Ridley, Thomas Rogers, William Tyndale, John Whitgift, and other important figures of the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement.

The Caroline High Churchmen did make a significant contribution to two Church of England formularies—The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and The Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons According to the Order of the Church of England of 1661. We need to have more than a passing acquaintance with their writings. We need to understand their thinking, to know what changes they made in the Prayer Book and Ordinal, and their rationale for doing so. We can also benefit from reading writings of the Caroline High Churchmen on a number of subjects, as we can from reading the Edwardian and Elizabethan Reformers and the Puritan Divines. At the same time we need to take a critical approach to their sermons, letters, and other works, being cognizant of both their weaknesses and their strengths.

As with everything we read, we should submit the ideas of the Caroline Divines to Scripture. The Bible should always be the test against which we try doctrine and practice. The Caroline Divines would themselves have agreed with this test. Being human and fallible like ourselves, they had a tendency to find in Scripture support for their thinking where support did not exist. We are all guilty of errors in judgment; we can learn from their mistakes as well as our own.

As I see the Caroline High Churchmen and the Puritans, they both represent developments in the reformed Church of England that began during the period that is associated with classical Anglicanism. They are connected to classical Anglicanism and represent similar but also disparate tendencies in the reformed English Church. Both would move the English Church away from classical Anglicanism but at the same time are firmly attached to a number of its presuppositions. From the Restoration to the nineteenth century the tendency that the Caroline High Churchmen embodied took the form of the Protestant High Churchmen within the Church of England and the Non-Jurors outside the Church. The tendency that the Puritans embodied took the form of the Evangelicals within the Church of England and the Non-Conformists outside the Church. The Methodist movement of the eighteenth century would for a time unite both tendencies.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century emerged two new tendencies in the Church of England—one represented by Latitudinarianism and the other by Tractarianism. Both of these tendencies are disconnected from classical Anglicanism, the latter more so than the former. These two tendencies would dominate the North American Church in the twentieth century in the form of liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism. In the twentieth century a third movement has emerged in the North American Church and elsewhere—Pentecostalism. Like the two preceding movements it is also not connected to Classical Anglicanism. All three movements claim to be genuine expressions of Anglicanism although they are missing this critical connection. All these developments have moved the North American Church further and further away from its Classical Anglican heritage. During the same time period we have also seen the emergence of sixteenth century Anabaptist views in the North American Church—antinomianism, denial of the resurrection of the body, acceptance of personal revelation as more authoritative than Scripture, rejection of the Trinity, and universalism.

Without the vital connection to classical Anglicanism the claim of these three movements to be genuine expressions of Anglicanism must be questioned. They cannot be recognized as Anglican solely on the basis that they are occurring in a nominal Anglican Church on the premise that “Anglican is what Anglican does” at a particular time and place in history. In this understanding anything can be Anglican as long as it occurs in a nominally Anglican setting— burning juniper branches and wafting the smoke to the four points of the compass, sacrificing chickens or goats to the tribal ancestors, walking the twists and turns of a labyrinth, or screeing by gazing into a silver bowl filled with water. Such an understanding is clearly deficient.

To be genuine something must really come from its reputed source. It must be properly so called, and not sham. To express is to represent, to make known in a variety of ways. To be Anglican is to be of the reformed Church of England. For a movement to be a genuine expression of Anglicanism it must stand in continuity with the doctrine and practice of the reformed English Church. It must be representative of that doctrine and practice. In this regard these three movements are seriously defective. This is not to say that they are not genuine expressions of something but it is not Anglicanism. They may be growing in what once was an Anglican garden but this does not mean that they sprung from Anglican rootstocks or seeds nor does it mean that they will bear Anglican fruit.

This does not answer the question of whether the Caroline Divines have a place in classical Anglicanism. It does suggest a way of placing the Caroline High Churchmen. Where they individually and collectively clearly stand in continuity with the mainstream of classical Anglican thought (and not with figures on its periphery), they can be regarded as classically Anglican. At the same time they do represent—both individually and collectively—a significant departure from classical Anglicanism and a reaction to its Protestant and Reformed doctrine and practice.