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Tuesday, February 02, 2021

The Roots of Anglican Confessionalism


Anglican confessionalism is rooted in the Elizabethan Settlement in the sixteenth century, and not in the Restoration Settlement of the seventeenth century. In his essay, “The Thirty-Nine Articles,” Bishop J. C. Ryle, a leading nineteenth century evangelical, defended the Elizabethan Articles of Religion against a growing movement in the Church of England which sought put the seventeenth century Restoration Book of Common Prayer on a pedestal as the Anglican Church’s “Rule of Faith.”

The Tractarians found the views of the seventeenth century Restoration bishops more congenial than those of the Edwardian and Elizabethan Reformers. The seventeenth century Restoration bishops who for a large part were High Churchmen and Laudians were less critical in their reading of the early Church Fathers and Church history. They were for the most part Arminian in their doctrinal views. They had been strongly influenced by the partially reformed, transitional 1549 Edwardian Prayer Book and the retrograde 1637 Scottish Prayer Book in their liturgical views. Their doctrinal and liturgical views stood in sharp contrast to those of the Edwardian and Elizabethan Reformers.

The Tractarians were able to interpret much of the seventeenth century Restoration Prayer Book in a Catholic sense. This greatly endeared the Book to the Tractarians. They sought to elevate the Book to be the English Church’s standard of faith and practice and to prevent any changes to the Book. In Tract III John Henry Newman warned against even the slightest change in 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Edward Keble wrote that God himself had given the 1662 Prayer Book to the Church of England.

The nineteenth century was not the first time that the Anglican Church saw a movement to replace the Articles of Religion with the Book of Common Prayer as the Church’s standard of faith and practice. In 1789 the General Convention of the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States adopted its first Prayer Book. The Articles of Religion were omitted from the Book. 

An informal discussion of their reinstitution at 1792 General Convention revealed that the bishops were divided in their opinion. White and Claggett favored their reinstatement. To the general surprise Seabury expressed the doubt that the new province needed any articles at all. He strongly voiced the opinion that the doctrines of the Church “should be comprehended in the Liturgy.” At the same time he saw the need for a definitive statement of the Church’s faith. Bishops Madison and Provosts were in favor of dropping the Articles altogether. This difference of opinion was also reflected in the House of Deputies. Further discussion of the subject was postponed at subsequent General Conventions until 1799. At the 1799 General Convention a committee of the House of Deputies submitted this recommendation:
That the articles of our faith and religion, as founded on the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament, are sufficiently declared in our creeds and liturgy, as set forth in the book of common prayer established for the use of this church; and that further articles do not appear to be necessary.
At the same General Convention a committee of the House of Deputies was appointed to revise the Articles. The committee made several proposals reducing the number of Articles to seventeen and drastically altering their language. These proposals were entered into the journal of the General Convention but were not adopted by the House of Deputies. The House of Bishops was not consulted in the matter. 

At the 1801 General Convention the Elizabethan Articles were adopted with a few alterations, but subscription to the Articles was not required from the clergy. A canon requiring clerical subscription was proposed at the 1804 General Convention. It was not adopted. Protestant Episcopal clergy were left to adhere to the principles of the 1801 Articles as their consciences dictated.

Anglican confessionalism has at best received a lukewarm reception in the American Church. In 1925 General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church a resolution was adopted to remove the Articles from the American Prayer Book. With the adoption of the 1928 Prayer Book, however, interest in the removal of the Articles from the Prayer Book waned and a second vote was not taken on the proposal. It was quietly dropped. In the 1979 Prayer Book that province relegates the Articles to the historical document section of the Prayer Book.

The first Anglican Church in North America gave more weight to the Affirmation of St. Louis than to the Articles of Religion. The second Anglican Church in North American equivocates in its affirmation of the principles of the Articles in its constitution and canons. It does not require clerical subscription to the Articles. A not uncommon attitude in the ACNA is that the church has moved on since the Articles were adopted in the sixteenth century. 

The ACNA’s first Archbishop Robert “Bob” Duncan has publicly stated that the Elizabethan Settlement is outdated, and the Anglican Church needs a “new settlement.” He has advocated a retrograde movement to the pre-Reformation Medieval Church in doctrine and liturgy. Evidence of this movement is discernible in the ACNA’s ordinal, catechism, and service book. The canons of the ACNA show the influence of the Canons of the Catholic Church; its actual form of governance, as opposed to the form of governance outlined in its constitution and canons, also shows the influence of the Catholic Church.

As I drew to the reader’s attention at the beginning of this article, Anglican confessionalism has its roots in the Elizabethan Settlement in the sixteenth century. At the heart of Anglican confessionalism is the Elizabethan Articles of Religion—one of the key formularies of the Elizabethan Settlement. Among these formularies are The Book of Common Prayer of 1559, Bishop John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England of 1562, the First Book of Homilies of 1547 (the “Edwardian” Homilies), and the Second Book of Homilies of 1571 (the “Elizabethan” Homilies). While I would not describe them as formularies, the Catechisms of Alexander Nowell and The Decades of the Continental Reformer Heinrich Bullinger, a series of sermons about the reformed faith, influenced thinking in the English Church during the reign of Elizabeth I.

The Elizabethan Articles of Religion are a revision of the Forty-Two Articles of Religion drafted in the last year of the reign of Edward VI and authorized by Royal Mandate on June 19, 1553. They are Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s last contribution to historic Anglicanism. 

Edward VI died in the same year and upon ascending the throne his older sister Mary, a devote Catholic, suppressed Forty-Two Articles of Religion. She had Cranmer tried as a heretic and burned at the stake. She had never forgiven him for the part he played in the Henry VIII’s divorce from her mother Catherine of Aragon, a divorce that had made her an illegitimate child and for a time had deprived her of the right to succession to the English throne.

While it is sometimes argued that the Forty-Two Articles were not binding upon the Church of England because they were not approved by Convocation or adopted by Parliament, it must be noted that Edward VI was the temporal head of the Church of England under the Act of Supremacy of 1534. While the concurrence of Convocation and Parliament may have been desirable, they were not essential. If the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and the Forty-Two Articles of 1552 are anything to go on, the English Church would have moved in a far more Reformed direction if the young king had not died from tuberculosis.

Mary’s reign was short-lived. It lasted six years. During her reign, however, she aggressively sought to stamp out Protestantism in her realm. A number of leading Protestants fled to the Continent to save their lives. The Marian exiles, as they often called, would play an important role in the development of historic Anglicanism during the reign of Elizabeth I who succeeded her oldest sister on the English throne.

Elizabeth was a Protestant and not as some writers suggest a crypto-Catholic. She had Protestant tutors and she had lived in the house of Catherine Parr who was a strong Protestant.

Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, had been beheaded upon what were trumped-up charges. She had been deprived of the right of succession as had Mary. This right was restored toward the end of the reign of Henry VIII, but for a time her status as a princess of the realm was in doubt. Her legitimacy was also questioned. Elizabeth herself had for a time during her older sister’s reign been imprisoned in the Tower of London. When she ascended the English throne, the Pope had declared that she was not a legitimate successor to the throne, had offered the English throne to any Catholic monarch who deposed her, and had absolved in advance from the sin of murder anyone who killed her. Among Elizabeth’s most pressing concerns was preserving her own life, securing her throne, and maintaining the stability of her realm. The decisions that she made regarding religion should be weighed in light of these concerns.

The Marian exiles had experienced significant differences of opinion when they first took refuge in Strasbourg. They divided into two groups. One group went to Geneva; the other, to Zurich. When the exiles returned to England upon Elizabeth’s ascension to the English throne, they would form two distinct theological streams in historic Anglicanism. Both were Reformed in their theological outlook, but they had different views on such matters as vestments, liturgy, the governance of the church, and the governance of the state. It was in the last two areas that the Genevan party got themselves into hot water with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth would come to view the views of members of this party as not only extreme but also seditious. They not only sought to replace the existing form of church governance with one modeled upon that of the Church of Geneva, but they also sought to replace the monarchy with a theocracy. They subscribed to the views of John Knox who had written The Monstrance Regime of Women in which he had raked Mary, Queen of Scots, and all women rulers over the coals. This did not endear Knox or like-minded members of the Genevan party to Elizabeth. For these reasons Elizabeth kept the Puritan movement in check during her reign.

The party that enjoyed Elizabeth’s patronage were the Marian exiles who went to Zurich where they sat at the feet of the Swiss Reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, who had replaced Ulrich Zwingli as the leading Reformer in the Swiss city-state. In Zurich the magistrates chose the pastors of Zurich’s churches as well as governed the city-state. This was the pattern in the other Swiss city-states, the exception being Geneva. In Geneva the pastors of Geneva’s churches chose the magistrates who governed the city-state. The relationship of the English Church and the English Crown during Elizabeth’s reign and later is modeled upon that the relationship of church and state in Zurich and the other Swiss city-states. In the Act of Supremacy of 1559 Elizabeth I was recognized as the supreme governor of the Church of England. Any statement of the faith of the Church of England would require her royal assent as well as the approval of Convocation and the authorization of Parliament.

Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury was Matthew Parker. Parker was not one of the Marian exiles. He had remained in England during Mary’s reign and had escaped her attention. Parker would play a lead role in the reduction of the Forty-Two Articles to the Thirty-Nine Articles. When the revised Articles were submitted to Elizabeth for her review in 1563, she would strike out Article XXIX. At the time she was involved in marriage negotiations with the Lutheran German princes and Article XXIX rejected the Lutheran view of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The Lutheran view taught that the sacrament itself could confer faith upon the communicant. It was not necessary for a communicant to have a vital faith to receive any benefit from the sacrament.

Archbishop Parker and the other bishops would petition Elizabeth to ratify the Articles in 1566. Elizabeth, however, refused to give her royal assent to the Articles until 1571, by which time her marriage negotiations with the Lutheran German princes had come to nothing and Article XXIX had been reinserted into the Articles.

The Convocation of Canterbury put forward a new Book of Canons, also known as the Book of Discipline, for the Elizabethan Church in the spring of 1571. They were signed, in person or by proxy, by all the bishops of the Southern province. A copy of the Canons in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge shows that they were also signed by the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Durham and Chester who may have been acting as proxies for the other bishops of the Northern province. However, they were not signed by the Lower House of the Convocation of York and therefore their placement before that body is questioned.

William Edward Collins argues in his introduction to The Church Historical Society’s 1899 edition of The Canons of 1571 in English and Latin that the canons derive their authority from the bishops in synod and not from the advice and consent of the clergy. In any event the Canons never received the royal assent and consequently they possessed no legal force. While the Canons were thus lacking legal validity, they were accepted as authoritative in the Province of Canterbury and were acted upon in the dioceses of the Southern province.

The Proposed Canons of 1571 contain this passage.
And because those articles of Christian religion, agreed upon by the Bishops, in the lawful, and godly convocation, and by their commandment, and authority of our noble princess Elizabeth assembled and holden [= held], undoubtedly are gathered out of the holy books of the old, and new Testament, and in all points agree with the heavenly doctrine contained in them: because also the book of common prayers, and the book of the consecration of Archbishops, Bishops, Ministers and Deacons, contain nothing repugnant to the same doctrine, whosoever shall be sent to teach the people, shall not only in their preaching, but also by subscription confirm the authority, and truth of those articles. He that doth otherwise, or troubleth the people with contrary doctrine, shall be excommunicated.
The 1604 Canons, adopted on James I's ascension to the English throne, would require clerical subscription to the Prayer Book and to the Articles. 

During Elizabeth’s reign the first Protestant services were held in North America, using The Book of Common Prayer that was authorized by the Act of Uniformity of 1558, adopted by Parliament in 1559 and give the royal assent in the same year. The Elizabethan Prayer Book was essentially Cranmer’s 1552 reformed liturgy with several alterations, additions, and omissions. Among the most notable changes was the dropping of the Declaration on Kneeling, the combination of the Words of Distribution of 1549 and 1552, the dropping of the prayers against the Pope from the Litany, and the addition of a rubric prescribing the use of traditional vestments.

The 1552 Declaration on Kneeling states:
Lest yet the same kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise, we do declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental bread or wine there bodily received, or unto any real and essential presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood. For as concerning the Sacramental bread and wine, they remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored, for that were Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful christians. And as concerning the natural body and blood of our saviour Christ, they are in heaven and not here. For it is against the truth of Christ’s true natural body, to be in more places then in one, at one time.
While this declaration was dropped from the 1559 Prayer Book, its teaching was not abandoned by the English Church. Unlike rubrics of the seventeenth century Restoration Prayer Book, the rubrics of the 1559 Prayer Book do not direct that any leftover consecrated bread and wine be consumed after the Blessing but rather state, “And if any of the bread or wine remain, the curate shall have it to his own.”

While the combination of the 1549 and 1552 Words of Institution has been misconstrued as teaching the belief that Christ is substantively present in the Sacramental bread and wine, as Dyson Hague and others have explained, the first part of the 1559 Words of Institution are a prayer for the communicant in which the minister delivering the Sacramental bread and wine expresses the wish or desire that the communicant will benefit from Christ’s body broken and blood shed on the cross. The second part of the 1559 Words of Institution are instruction to the communicant on how the communicant should receive the Sacramental bread and wine.

The dropping of the prayers against from the Litany were politically motivated. At the time Elizabeth was hoping to gain some form of recognition of her right to the English throne from the Pope.

In practice the traditional vestments were not used—only “a comely surplice with sleeves” When Elizabeth’s chaplains wore Mass vestments in her chapel, she became furious with them and ordered them never to appear before her again in such vestments.

The removal of the crucifixes, images, reliquaries, stone altars, and other trappings of Medieval Catholicism begun in the reign of Edward VI was completed in Elizabeth’s reign. Stone altars were replaced with movable wooden communion tables that could be placed in the body of the church for the celebration of the Holy Communion.

This is leads to the sticky question, “What service book should a confessional Anglican use in services of public worship?” The straight answer is any service book that conforms to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the doctrinal and worship principles of the Elizabethan Articles. It does not have to be an historic Prayer Book. 

Historic Prayer Books that conform to these criteria are the 1552, 1559, and the 1604 Prayer Books. The 1559 Prayer Book was used for more than eight decades before its abolition in 1645. It was the Prayer Book in use at the time that the Elizabethan Articles received the royal assent in 1571. The 1604 Prayer Book is the 1559 Prayer Book with some changes, notably a rubric requiring ordained ministers to administer the sacrament of baptism in private houses and the addition of a section on the sacraments to the Prayer Book Catechism. 

On the other hand, the seventeenth century Restoration Prayer Book, The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, while the Book uses text material from the 1604 Prayer Book, contains a number of significant changes that move its doctrine and practices away from the reformed Prayer Books of 1552, 1559, and 1604 and align the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with the partially reformed, transitional 1549 Edwardian Prayer Book and the retrograde 1637 Scottish Prayer Book. Whether it genuinely conforms to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the principles of the Elizabethan Articles is debatable.

In the twenty-first century a major consideration in the choice of a service book is its suitability for regular use on Sundays and other occasions in a wide variety of circumstances and with relatively diverse group of people. Historic Prayer Books lack the flexibility and nimbleness for that kind of use, particularly on the North American mission field.

In my next article in this series, “The Anatomy of a Flawed Rite: The Holy Communion Service of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.” I examine where that rite moves away from the reformed doctrine and practices of the 1552-1604 family of Communion Services and how the rite paved the way for further movement away from the same doctrine and practices.
For an examination of shifting attitudes toward the seventeenth century Restoration Prayer Book, see my previous article, "The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: A Brief History of a Love-Hate Relationship."

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