Making Sense of Our Anglican Heritage: The Laudians

The three chief historic Church of England formularies are the Articles of Religion of 1571 from the reign of Elizabeth I and The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and The Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons of 1661 from the reign of Charles II. The first is a product of the Elizabethan Settlement; the second and third are products of the Restoration Settlement. They form together the classical Anglican standard of doctrine and faith.

When I consider the implications of these facts, it is evident to me that we cannot completely exclude the High Churchmanship of the Laudians from historic Anglicanism. We cannot make the Laudians into the Papists into which their Puritan detractors sought to make them, and then dismiss them altogether. The Laudians were certainly given to ritualism and they revived a number of customs and practices that the English Reformers had suppressed. However, they had no sympathy for the Church of Rome or for papacy and the papal system.

The Laudians thought that the customs and practices that they were reviving were those of the Primitive Church. They concluded from the writings of the early Church Fathers that these customs and practices were ancient and allowable. Where the Laudians may be faulted is that their fascination with antiquity resulted in an uncritical approach to the Patristic writers. They were not as cautious as the Edwardian and Elizabethan Reformers in their reading of the Patristic authors.

The Laudians in part represent a reaction to the growing radicalism of the Puritan movement in the Church of England. The Puritan movement would in turn grow more radical in reaction to the High Churchmanship of the Laudians. The Puritans associated the Laudians’ High Churchmanship with Papistry even though the Laudians were not themselves Papists or Papistical.

The Laudians would create a serious obstacle to the aspirations of the Puritans who wanted to establish a presbyterian form of church discipline and governance, modeled upon that of the Church of Geneva. They wanted to further revise The Book of Common Prayer or do away with the Prayer Book altogether.

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