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The Prayer Book Society was founded in 1972.
Its purpose is to make sure that the liturgy of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) survives in the ever-modern Church of England, which began chipping away at it gradually until the appearance of the Alternative Service Book of the 1980s.
On October 4, 2022, Lord Moore — Charles Moore — the eminent author and past editor of The Telegraph and The Spectator, wrote an article for the former about the Society on its 50th anniversary.
Moore converted to Catholicism in the 1990s in opposition to women’s ordination.
However, he still has a fondness for the BCP and the Society’s work.
He provided a brief history of how the Society came into being, beginning with the first edition of the BCP in the 1500s, dating back to Archbishop Cranmer (emphases mine):
The Prayer Book Society is 50 years old this year. It came into being to protect the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) from the neglect and even hostility of the Church authorities. For roughly four centuries, Thomas Cranmer’s words, along with the Authorised Version of the Bible, provided the normative language of worship and religious education in England. The BCP therefore occupied the collective imagination of the English people. Then it was sidelined by modern versions – a tremendous loss to knowledge, beauty, literature and prayerfulness.
Moore tells us that he asked King Charles III — who was Prince of Wales at the time — to present the Thomas Cranmer prize to a worthy school child in 1989. The recipient had to:
best declaim a Prayer Book passage.
The then-Prince:
kindly and enthusiastically accepted.
Moore tells us:
In a speech of almost barnstorming eloquence, in St James Garlickhythe, the Prince declared that: “If English is spoken in Heaven (as the spread of English as a world language makes more likely each year), God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speech-writer. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book for internal memos.”
He became the Society’s active Patron, and again presented the Thomas Cranmer Awards in 2019. Now that he has become King, all his existing patronages are being reviewed, but it would surely be entirely fitting for the new Supreme Governor of the Church of England to retain his commitment.
Currently:
More than 100 school pupils compete for the Cranmer Awards every year.
It is heartening to read that the BCP has support among younger laity and clergy:
Bradley Smith, the society’s current chairman, tells me that young people are the most numerous new recruits. This began in lockdown, which gave many of them their first chance to engage with the Prayer Book liturgy online. Among young clergy, support is particularly strong. At York Minster, BCP choral Matins is the cathedral’s fastest-growing service.
What excellent news!
Westminster Abbey was scheduled to hold a special service for the Society’s golden anniversary on Saturday, October 8. Unfortunately, a train strike has forced a postponement:
However, Mr Bradley assures me that the service will take place at a later date. As the Prayer Book puts it, there will be “a happy issue out of all our afflictions”.
Indeed.
May God continue to bless the Prayer Book Society and its work for many more decades to come.
For those living in or visiting London, the historic St James Garlickythe offers 1662 BCP services daily as well as on Sundays. It is located in the City of London. The nearest Tube station is Mansion House, and their website gives alternative routes by rail and bus.
The church has existed on its site since the 12th century and had to be rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Sir Christopher Wren designed the present church, known as ‘Wren’s Lantern’ for its many windows.
In the Middle Ages, garlic was sold in the vicinity, hence the name Garlickhythe.
On Monday, September 19, 2022, the United Kingdom held its first state funeral since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.
The public viewing of the Queen’s casket at Westminster Hall ended at 6:30 a.m.:
I am certain that more than 250,000 people filed past in four days in London, because in 2002, 200,000 filed past her mother’s coffin in three days. I was one of them. It was an unforgettable experience.
The Sky News article had more numbers before the Queen’s funeral at Westminster Abbey began:
The Mayor of London’s office said an estimated 80,000 people were in Hyde Park, 75,000 in ceremonial viewing areas and 60,000 on South Carriage Drive.
Overall numbers will be much higher as crowds formed on virtually the entire route to Windsor, where Thames Valley Police said 100,000 people had turned out.
The Telegraph reported much higher numbers for Westminster Hall. These seem more realistic to me:
The four-day lying-in-state ceremony has seen more than a million mourners packing the banks of the Thames, waiting in a queue which, at its peak, took 24 hours and stretched 10 miles, beyond London Bridge to Southwark Park.
On the final day, Westminster Hall was attended by dozens of foreign leaders and royals who have arrived in London ahead of the state funeral, which starts at 11am.
They included Joe Biden, the US President, Emmanuel Macron, the French leader, Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and his wife Michelle, King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain, and King Phillipe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium.
On Sunday morning, the Government warned people not to travel to the queue “to avoid disappointment”.
Another Telegraph article had more statistics about the Elizabeth Line (emphases mine):
At an average queueing time of 12 hours – perhaps even more – they had clocked up a total of 4.8 million hours between them as they shuffled forward, uncomplainingly, in the sunshine, and in the cold, and in the dark. It means that since the late Queen’s lying in state began last Wednesday, her people had spent a cumulative 550 years saying their final thank you.
And if each of them entered the winding, folding queue at its end in Southwark Park, they would have walked 4 million miles between them, the equivalent of 153,846 marathons.
The fact that all of them knew how arduous the wait would be, having been given ample warning, is an even more reliable measure of how much Queen Elizabeth meant to them.
From children in push-chairs to pensioners and even global celebrities, they patiently waited their turn to spend only a few minutes in the presence of the late Queen’s coffin, almost all of them pausing to bow or curtsy, many of them turning away in tears.
As one of my readers, dearieme, pointed out, this shows the trust our Queen had in her subjects and foreign visitors:
How often in the history of civilisations would governments, here or elsewhere, have allowed – even encouraged – huge mobs of the public to congregate, and trust largely to their natural instincts to keep themselves in order?
I think the answer might be “rarely”.
Douglas Murray pondered all of the above in his Telegraph article: ‘Our late Queen’s final act was to bring her nation and the world deeply together’.
Excerpts follow:
The passing of Elizabeth II is remarkable for many reasons. But just one of them is the way in which the Queen’s final act seems to have been to bring her nation deeply together.
There is the literal way in which that has happened, with the mini-nationalists across Britain ceasing – for a moment at least – their relentless task of trying to tear our country apart. The Scottish nationalists observed the death of our monarch without a series of “buts”. Even Sinn Fein paid tribute and passed condolences to the Queen’s son and heir – an act that would have been unthinkable beforehand.
People have rightly remarked on the way in which hundreds of thousands of people have queued to pay their own personal respects to the late Queen. But almost as remarkable is the way in which other nations around the world, as well as their media, have mourned her death …
The Queen leaves behind a Commonwealth that has been united in mourning – hardly the expected reaction if she had been the cruel tyrant of the New York Times’s imagination.
What is more, although the dissenters have received an extraordinary amount of attention, more extraordinary by far is how united the world’s response has been.
France, for instance, is not a country known for its love of monarchy. But on the death of Queen Elizabeth the French political and media class were united in paying tribute to her. She was honoured on the cover of almost every French magazine and periodical, as she was across the European and world media.
This reaction is largely a tribute to a reign of unparalleled length and dignity, a life given to the service of the country and the deepening of alliances with our friends and allies. But it also serves as a reminder of the way in which Britain is regarded around the world. With the exception of a few raucously noisy malcontents, we find that most people do not regard Britain as some terrible tyrannical power, either now or in history. Most see us, rightly, as having been among the fairer, certainly more benign, world powers …
This is the Britain that is still influential both in its impact abroad and also in the lives of its citizens. I doubt that there has been a figure in history whose death has led to such a voluntary outburst of feeling. There may have been despots whose death had to be mourned by their citizens and subjects, but there can have been few, if any, who have ever produced such willing devotion.
And there is a lesson in this for our institutions, and for institutions and nations around the world: people are loyal to institutions that are loyal to them. Break any part of that pact and you break the whole; sustain it and you sustain the whole.
Queen Elizabeth II swore an oath to this country as a young woman, and it was an oath she kept until her dying day. That loyalty is what is being honoured and mirrored today: the respect of people around the world for a life of service and duty. Something to remember, certainly. But something to emulate and live up to as well.
On the subject of tributes from abroad, a Belgian created this inspired photo montage of the Queen:
The next two short videos are well worth watching. The first is about Elizabeth II’s ‘Queenhood’, probably written by the poet laureate with footage from her coronation. The second is a film montage of her entire life from beginning to end:
Operation London Bridge — the Queen’s funeral plan — was now in its final phase in the capital and at Windsor Castle.
A military procession arrived at Westminster Hall to take the Queen for her final time to Westminster Abbey.
A new bouquet of pink and purple flowers with foliage and herbs — rosemary for remembrance and myrtle from the plant which supplied the sprigs for her wedding — replaced the white wreath for her lying in state:
Eight pallbearers from the military carefully placed her coffin onto a gun carriage. Naval ratings holding onto ropes in front and in back guided the gun carriage on its way.
This tradition began with Queen Victoria’s funeral, which took place in January 1901. Horses were supposed to transport the gun carriage, but part of it snapped off in the cold, thereby making it impossible. Prince Louis Battenberg, who was Prince Philip’s grandfather, came up with the solution, which, he said, had operated satisfactorily during the Boer War:
If it is impossible to mend the traces you can always get the naval guard of honour to drag the gun carriage.
The tradition continued throughout the 20th century:
The gun carriage is part of the materiel of the King’s Troop, commanded for the first time by a woman, Captain Amy Hooper. She told The Telegraph that she was in Canada when the Queen’s death was announced:
“BRIDGE, BRIDGE, BRIDGE,” the text stated. “Operation LONDON BRIDGE has been activated. Initiate telephone cascade. All personnel are to return to camp” …
She was in Calgary when the news broke, along with soldiers exercising alongside Canadian mounted units. The British party was flying back to the UK within five hours …
Soldiers as far away as Turkey and America had to cancel their family holidays and return to the UK …
On Monday, she will be leading the gun team in Hyde Park for the Queen’s funeral.
King’s Troop, a unit of about 160 soldiers with an equal split of men and women, has one of the most important ceremonial roles in the British armed forces.
Their six 13-pounder quick-fire guns, built between 1913 and 1918, all of which have seen active service in the First and Second World Wars, are used regularly for royal salutes in Hyde Park, Green Park or Windsor Great Park for State Occasions and to mark royal anniversaries and royal birthdays …
The gun carriage is known as the George Gun Carriage, and carried King George VI’s coffin from Sandringham Church to Wolferton Station in February 1952. It was also used in the funeral of the Queen Mother in 2002.
Queen Elizabeth’s funeral had more troops and regiments than had ever been gathered at one time.
These included troops from around the Commonwealth, particularly Canada and Australia:
The soldiers walked at a 75 beat per minute pace, which is slow and difficult to sustain.
The Times reported on the use of a metronome, mimicked on the day by drum beats to ensure proper timing:
Military chiefs have been told to “up their game” for the Queen’s funeral today and listen to a metronome at 75 beats per minute to ensure the right pace during the procession.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, admitted to nerves but said an enormous amount of planning for the event had gone on for “a very long time”. He said more than 10,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen and women would perform their “last duty” to the Queen during the day’s events.
Queen Elizabeth wished to have her funeral at Westminster Abbey because she had been married and crowned there.
The last monarch to have a funeral at the Abbey was George II on November 13, 1760. The other monarchs had theirs at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
The Queen’s children along with Princes William and Harry walked in the procession to the Abbey.
Meanwhile, heads of state and dignitaries took their places inside. Charity workers also were seated.
The Queen Consort and the Princess of Wales arrived with Prince George, 9, and Princess Charlotte, 7:
The procession arrived at the Abbey and the pallbearers carefully carried the Queen’s coffin inside:
You can find the Order of Service here:
The Times has an excellent article on the service.
You can see the procession from Westminster Hall and the full funeral service. As with the other Royal Family YouTube links I have posted, if you get a message saying it cannot be viewed, click on ‘Watch on YouTube’ or this tweet:
The Queen chose the music, which held particular significance to her and to the Abbey:
Pardon the irreverence, but this is an aerial view of the seating plan in the transept. Look how far back Joe Biden was. Apparently, his Beasts and motorcade got caught up in traffic, although he arrived before the service began. By contrast, the dignitaries who took the white coaches in the ‘podding’ system got there on time. Even if he hadn’t been late, he would still have been seated in the same place.
The altar is to the left and, out of shot, to the right are more seats for guests:
Likely sitting out of shot was, ironically, The Guardian‘s editor, Kath Viner:
Guido Fawkes has a quote from one of her recent editorials. I cannot bear to cite it in full, so here are the first and last sentences:
Royal rituals are contrived affairs meant to generate popular attachment to a privileged institution and to serve as reminders of a glorious past … How much Britain will be changed once this moment floats past the country is as yet unknown.
Guido commented (emphasis his):
Of course that didn’t stop the Guardian’s editor Kath Viner accepting a ticket to the funeral from the “privileged institution” herself. Maybe she’s sentimental…
Another hypocrite turned up, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, she of the second independence referendum.
The Times has a photo of her and her husband, Peter Murrell, along with a few quotes:
Nicola Sturgeon has said it was an “honour to represent Scotland” as leaders from across the world joined the royal family and other mourners at the state funeral.
The first minister was among some 2,000 mourners at Westminster Abbey along with leaders of the other main Scottish political parties. She spoke of a “final and poignant goodbye to a deeply respected and much-loved monarch”.
As I listened to the liturgy, I could not help but think that this is the last time we will hear language from the King James Version of the Bible and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer at a service for the Royals. How I will miss it. I hope I am wrong.
There was one prayer from an even earlier version of the Book of Common Prayer, Archbishop Cranmer’s, from 1549. This was put to music. The choir did it full justice:
THOU knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears unto our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee. Amen.
This was the Bidding Prayer:
O MERCIFUL God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life; in whom whosoever believeth shall live, though he die; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in him, shall not die eternally; who hast taught us, by his holy Apostle Saint Paul, not to be sorry, as men without hope, for them that sleep in him: We meekly beseech thee, O Father, to raise us from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness; that, when we shall depart this life, we may rest in him, as our hope is this our sister doth; and that, at the general Resurrection in the last day, we may be found acceptable in thy sight; and receive that blessing, which thy well–beloved Son shall then pronounce to all that love and fear thee, saying, Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. Grant this, we beseech thee, O merciful Father, through Jesus Christ, our mediator and redeemer. Amen.
The entire liturgy was a lesson about faith and salvation. Even an unbeliver could not miss it.
I pray that it works on the hearts and minds of those in attendance who are indifferent.
The Queen always liked Psalm 42 for its reference to the hart, which reminded her of Scotland:
LIKE as the hart desireth the water–brooks : so longeth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God : when shall I come to
appear before the presence of God?
My tears have been my meat day and night : while they daily say unto me, Where is
now thy God?
Now when I think thereupon, I pour out my heart by myself : for I went with the
multitude, and brought them forth into the house of God;
In the voice of praise and thanksgiving : among such as keep holy–day.
Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul : and why art thou so disquieted within
me?
Put thy trust in God : for I will yet give him thanks for the help of his countenance.
Prime Minister Liz Truss read the second Lesson, John 14:1-9a:
LET not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.
After Psalm 23 was sung, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon followed:
Near the end, clergy from the main Christian denominations recited their own prayers in thanksgiving for the Queen’s long reign of service.
The Abbey’s Precentor then recited a prayer from John Donne (1573-1631):
BRING us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen.
After the blessing, the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry sounded The Last Post:
The congregation sang two verses of the National Anthem.
The funeral service closed with a poignant military lament, Sleep, dearie, sleep, performed by the Queen’s Piper, Warrant Officer Class 1 (Pipe Major) Paul Burns. He stood on a balcony overlooking the congregation. Words cannot describe it.
This video has brief highlights from the funeral:
After the funeral ended, the Queen’s coffin resumed its place on the gun carriage for a procession past Whitehall, down The Mall, then past Buckingham Palace, finishing at Wellington Arch on Constitution Hill.
A gun salute also took place:
The Royals walked with the military, as before. This was a long walk.
Every person in this procession has seen active military service. I put that in bold, because some living overseas think that these are ‘toy soldiers’, as it were. They are anything but.
Here they are in front of Buckingham Palace. Note that the Queen’s household are standing in front of the gates in their normal working clothes to pay their respects:
The horses leading the procession were gifts to the Queen from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), or the Mounties. The Queen was their honorary commissioner.
George, Elizabeth, Darby and Sir John are the latest in a long line of horses given by Canada to the Queen and ridden by senior royals, including King Charles and the Princess Royal, during the annual ceremony of Trooping the Colour …
In 1969, the RCMP presented her with Burmese, a seven-year-old black mare who went on to become the Queen’s favourite horse.
She rode her at Trooping the Colour for 18 years, including in 1981 when Marcus Sarjeant, then 17, shot six blank rounds at the Queen as she was travelling down The Mall to the parade that marks her official birthday.
Although Burmese was briefly startled, the horse won praise for remaining calm due to her RCMP training, in which she had been exposed to gunfire.
Burmese, who died in 1990, was the first of eight horses given to the Queen by the Mounties. George was given to her in 2009. Now 22, he has been ridden each year at Trooping the Colour by Charles.
Elizabeth, now 17, named in honour of the Queen Mother, was a gift to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 …
Sir John, 14, was a 90th birthday present for the Queen and is ridden at Trooping the Colour by Princess Anne, a former Olympic equestrian.
Darby, a 16-year-old Hanoverian gelding, was one of two horses received by the late monarch in 2019.
[Sergeant Major Scott] Williamson is one of four RCMP officers who will ride at the front of tomorrow’s funeral procession after the Westminster Abbey service.
It will travel up Whitehall and along The Mall, passing Buckingham Palace before ending at Wellington Arch. Here, the Queen’s coffin will be transferred from the state gun carriage to a hearse for her final journey to Windsor.
I will cover the committal service at Windsor in tomorrow’s post.
The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity is on September 18, 2022.
Readings for Year C can be found here.
As Queen Elizabeth II will be buried on Monday, September 19, and as Charles III is our new King, today’s exegesis will be on the Epistle, which is relevant to monarchs and others in authority.
May our beloved monarch rest in peace and rise in glory.
Long live the King.
The Epistle is as follows (emphases mine):
1 Timothy 2:1-7
2:1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone,
2:2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.
2:3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
2:4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
2:5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human,
2:6 who gave himself a ransom for all–this was attested at the right time.
2:7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Paul wrote this letter to Timothy to help him come to grips with the issues besetting the church in Ephesus.
John MacArthur explains that the attitude of the congregation was becoming rather exclusive:
If we read through the epistle and if we examine it as we have in the past for the errors that are here, we will be reminded that there were Jews apparently in the church at Ephesus who were claiming that only law-keeping Jews or those who were sort of proselytes to the keeping of the law could be accepted by God. There was a Judaizing element, and that’s apparent in chapter 1 from verse 7 through 11. There were those who were advocating law keeping as the means of salvation. And that was an exclusiveness that said salvation isn’t for everybody. It’s for those who come within the framework of maintaining the Jewish law.
Also, we note that in this Ephesian assembly there was the Gentile exclusivism that grew out of that old philosophy that later became known as gnosticism, which philosophy said salvation only belongs to the elite initiated exclusive people who have reached a level of knowledge, who have tuned in to the various mediators and sub-gods and eons and angelic beings that line up between man and God. So the Jewish people would be saying salvation’s only for those who keep the Jewish law. And the Gentiles might be saying salvation’s only for those who are in the know, who are the gnostics, the ones who know – it’s from the Greek verb to know – who are in the know, that elite group of people who have ascended to another level in some mystical experience with spirits which they believe to be good spirits, which Paul points out to be demons.
So there was an exclusivism that had come to be in the church at Ephesus. Because of this, there was severe error in the doctrine of salvation which becomes the final note of the whole epistle, where he closes out in verse 21 of chapter 6 by saying they have erred concerning the faith. The greatest error was an error in the matter of the extent of salvation. One group saying it’s only for those Jews who are in the know in terms of the Jewish law. The others, it’s only for that one small group of people who are in the know in terms of mystical understanding. Everybody else is left out.
Therefore, Paul urges Timothy to make sure, as a priority, that the Ephesians’ prayers are for everyone — including those outside the congregation (verse 1).
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
Timothy must take care that this be done. Paul does not send him any prescribed form of prayer, as we have reason to think he would if he had intended that ministers should be tied to that way of praying; but, in general, that they should make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks: supplications for the averting of evil, prayers for the obtaining of good, intercessions for others, and thanksgivings for mercies already received. Paul thought it enough to give them general heads; they, having the scripture to direct them in prayer and the Spirit of prayer poured out upon them, needed not any further directions … There must be prayers for ourselves in the first place; this is implied here. We must also pray for all men, for the world of mankind in general, for particular persons who need or desire our prayers. See how far the Christian religion was from being a sect, when it taught men this diffusive charity, to pray, not only for those of their own way, but for all men.
MacArthur has more about what Paul is urging Timothy to do:
Because you have a charge, because you have a commission, because all of this has been confirmed in the church through the prophets as we saw, because all of this is set on your shoulders, therefore, Timothy, get at it. And here’s what I urge you, and then he uses this phrase “first of all.” Here’s what I urge you first of all. And you might ask the question I asked, why is this first? I’ll tell you why. What is the primary objective of the church? What are we in the world for? Listen, if the primary objective of the church is fellowship, where would we be? In heaven cause we’d have perfect fellowship there and none of you could mess it up. If the primary objective of the church was knowledge of the Word of God, we might as well go to heaven. We’ll have perfect knowledge there, and I won’t be able to mess it up with anything that I might say that isn’t quite accurate.
No, see, the purpose of the church in the world today is to reach the lost. And so the priority begins at that point.
Paul includes as ‘everyone’ kings and all who are in positions of authority so that people may lead quiet and peacable lives in all godliness and dignity (verse 2).
Henry explains:
Pray for kings (v. 2); though the kings at this time were heathens, enemies to Christianity, and persecutors of Christians, yet they must pray for them, because it is for the public good that there should be civil government, and proper persons entrusted with the administration of it, for whom therefore we ought to pray, yea, though we ourselves suffer under them. For kings, and all that are in authority, that is, inferior magistrates: we must pray for them, and we must give thanks for them, pray for their welfare and for the welfare of their kingdoms, and therefore must not plot against them, that in the peace thereof we may have peace, and give thanks for them and for the benefit we have under their government, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. Here see what we must desire for kings, that God will so turn their hearts, and direct them and make use of them, that we under them may lead a quiet and peaceable life. He does not say, “that we may get preferments under them, grow rich, and be in honour and power under them;” no, the summit of the ambition of a good Christian is to lead a quiet and peaceable life, to get through the world unmolested in a low private station. We should desire that we and others may lead a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty, implying that we cannot expect to be kept quiet and peaceable unless we keep in all godliness and honesty. Let us mind our duty, and then we may expect to be taken under the protection both of God and the government. In all godliness and honesty. Here we have our duty as Christians summed up in two words: godliness, that is, the right worshipping of God; and honesty, that is, a good conduct towards all men. These two must go together; we are not truly honest if we are not godly, and do not render to God his due; and we are not truly godly if we are not honest, for God hates robbery for burnt-offering … 4. All men, yea, kings themselves, and those who are in authority, are to be prayed for. They want our prayers, for they have many difficulties to encounter, many snares to which their exalted stations expose them. 5. In praying for our governors, we take the most likely course to lead a peaceable and quiet life. The Jews at Babylon were commanded to seek the peace of the city whither the Lord had caused them to be carried captives, and to pray to the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof they should have peace, Jer 29 7. 6. If we would lead a peaceable and quiet life, we must live in all godliness and honesty; we must do our duty to God and man.
MacArthur also lays importance on leading quiet Christian lives for everyone’s benefit:
Now I want to expand on this because I don’t think this is a well understood thought. In 1 Thessalonians we have a similar word, chapter 4 verse 11, where Paul says, “That we are to study” – that is to be diligent – “to be quiet.” We are not to be rabble rousers. If we are known for anything, we are known for our quiet demeanor. We do not make disturbances. We do not disrupt society as such, that is not our intent, that is not our overt effort. “We are to be quiet,” he says, “do your own business, work with your own hands as we commanded you in order that you may walk honestly toward them that are outside” – the unbelievers. They ought to see us as quiet diligent faithful people. Second Thessalonians 3 also speaks to the same matter. We hear, he says in verse 11 that, “There are some who walk among you disorderly, working not at all.” They’re indigent; they are unemployed; they don’t do as they ought. “They’re busybodies. Command them and exhort them by the Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread.”
Now listen, beloved, the church, Paul is saying, is never to be the political agitator. It is never to be seen as the perceivable enemy to national security or national peace. That is not our role. We are to seek to make all the people around us whatever their viewpoint politically, whatever their viewpoint philosophically, we are to seek to make them friends by praying for them rather than enemies by hating them and rejecting them. And sometimes that’s difficult, because when we’re raised in a very clearly defined Christian environment, we tend not only to hate the evil system, but we tend to see all the people in it as our enemies. And so we grow bitter against those who deny the life that we believe is so right. The church even today, I’m sure, in the United States is seen by many as an agitating political force endeavoring to disrupt things in our country.
Now I want you to understand what the Scripture is saying in light of that. Christians are to be model citizens. That doesn’t mean we’re indifferent or apathetic or don’t have an opinion. But we are to be model citizens in every way. We are to be a blessing and a benediction to everyone around us. We are to pray for the salvation of everyone. And if they know us, they should know the church not as a strong political lobby group, not as a powerful group with money moving through society for its own ends. They are to know us as quiet peace-loving people who are constantly committed to praying for the salvation of those who are outside.
We are to submit to the authority over us and more than just submit to it, we are to pray for the salvation of those very people. If we do that, if the church in this country was just banded together in spirit, covenanting together to pray for the lost in our nation and to pray for our rulers and pray for our leaders and not engage in power kind of efforts and power kind of moves and power kind of politics to overturn things and eliminate people and get rid of people, but rather pray for their salvation, we would never be accused or even suspected of disloyalty. Nor would anybody miss the point of our existence. And we would be more likely to be allowed to worship and evangelize without fear or restriction and thus to live our lives in a quiet and tranquil way.
Paul tells Timothy that God finds this exhortation right and acceptable (verse 3) because He wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (verse 4).
MacArthur gives us his analysis of verse 3, referring to the Greek manuscript:
This is a powerful, powerful truth. We are to pray for the lost, one, because it’s good; it’s right; it’s morally excellent. Two, it is consistent with God’s will. We are to pray for the lost because it is consistent with God’s will. Notice verse 3, “This is good and” – here it comes – “acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” It is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who wills all men to be saved. It is the will of God that men be saved. It’s consistent with His will.
The word acceptable, which is also used in a similar phrase in chapter 5 verse 4, has the idea – it’s a very rich word. It’s not just to receive – dechomai. It’s apodechomai. It means to applaud, it means to gladly receive, to accept with satisfaction, to heartily welcome. It’s a very warm word. It is to say the Lord gladly anxiously eagerly with applause and satisfaction and joy receives this. This is what He wants, the salvation of the world. So praying for all the world is really gladly received by God. He applauds that kind of praying. He accepts it heartily because it is consistent with His character.
And what do you mean by that? Well notice it in verse 3, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our” – creator. Is that what it says? No, “God our” – what? – “Savior.” It’s consistent with who He is. It’s consistent with His nature, with His character.
MacArthur wisely clarifies the diference between these verses and John 17, where Jesus did not pray for the world. He did pray for the world but not for the sinful world’s success:
Let’s look at John 17:9, and I thought of this and I brought it in because I didn’t want anybody finding that verse and saying, “Wait, this confuses me.” Why in John 17:9 does Jesus say to the Father in His high priestly prayer, “I pray for them” – that is for the disciples, those who You have given to Me, My own disciples – “I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine”? And somebody would say, well Jesus didn’t pray for the whole world. He says right here I don’t pray for the world. And you know something? That’s right – in this particular case, He said, “I don’t pray for the world.”
What did He mean by that? Well that’s the whole point. Does that mean God doesn’t love the world? Well in John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Now the whole point of the verse is He gave His only begotten Son to fulfill His love, so God loves the whole world. First John 2:2 says He is the covering for our sin and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. So God loves the whole world, gave a Savior to the whole world, a covering for sin is offered to the whole world, why does He say, “I pray not for the world?” And isn’t Jesus’ mission to go to the whole world? Didn’t He say preach the gospel to every creature? Yes. Why in verse 9 does He say, “I pray not for the world?”
That’s very simple. What He is saying here is I’m not praying for the world’s success as the world. You understand that? The cosmos, the evil Satanic system. What He means is, I’m not praying that the world succeed. I’m praying for the disciples to succeed in winning the world, not for the world to succeed in stopping them. He can’t pray for His own and pray for the world which is the enemy.
MacArthur discusses God’s desire to save and mankind’s coming to the knowledge of the truth in verse 4:
The word knowledge here is epignōsis. It means a deep full rich and complete knowledge and that is the knowledge of true salvation. It is used four times in these pastoral epistles. In 2 Timothy 3:7 it talks about people who have a form of godliness but no reality who are ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth – same word. And in Titus 1:1, comparing faith and knowledge, both elements of salvation, again he refers to the knowledge of the truth. So what he is saying here is, it is God’s will that all men be saved and salvation comes through the true deep knowledge of saving truth, the gospel, the work of Christ.
And this may be an answer to some Jews who were saying God willed the damnation of heretics. There were Jews who believed that God willed the damnation of Gentiles in general. And then there was that gnostic/pre-gnostic view that God must have willed the damnation of all the non-elite, the people who never attained mystical knowledge. And he takes issue with that. And he says, “Listen, God wills because He is by nature a Savior that all men would be saved through coming to the full knowledge of saving truth in Jesus Christ.”
And I want to close by talking about the word will and I want you to listen carefully. What kind of will is this? Because somebody looks at this verse and says, oh, God will have all men to be saved. I’ll tell you one thing, God gets what He wants. He’s in charge. Therefore universalism is taught. That is that ultimately everybody will be saved because that’s God’s will. It says so right here. Other people say, no, no, no, no. The Bible teaches hell and the Bible teaches that people are going to be there forever, so some people aren’t going to go to heaven. Therefore when it says God will have all men to be saved. It doesn’t mean all men, just means some men. Because after all, God’s got to get what He wants and He can’t save everybody because hell’s there and some people are there. So He’s got to save all the people that He wants to save. Therefore He doesn’t want to save all people. All doesn’t mean all; it must means some.
Paul says that there is one God and also one mediator between God and mankind: Christ Jesus, Himself human (verse 5).
MacArthur says:
… here we get into a profound argument on the part of Paul, the third element in his reason for evangelistic praying is that it is reflective of God’s nature as one God. It is reflective of God’s nature as one God. Notice verse 5, “For there is one God” – or, “For God is one.” There’s only one God … As it says in 1 Corinthians 8, an idol is zero. An idol is nothing. If you want to spend your life worshiping nothing, that’s your privilege. But that’s folly. God is one. There’s only one God. In Isaiah 44:6 God said it as clearly as it could be said, “I am the first and I am the last, and beside Me there’s no other.” That covers the ground.
And that’s why you see Mark 12:29 to 31 says, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one, therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” Why? You can give all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength to God, because there’s nobody else to give it to. There’s only one. So you love that one God with all the capacity you have to love and worship.
Now this unity of God, the Lord our God is one, the Shema of Deuteronomy 6 is the central truth in all the Old Testament Scripture. As over against the polytheism of the nations surrounding Israel – many gods, many God’s – Israel stood for one God. Now this is Paul’s point. There’s only one God. What do you mean by that? What he means is if there were many gods then there would be many ways of salvation. Right? And isn’t that what the people in the world teach today? Sure. I mean, the world says, “Well, there’s a god for these people and these people and as long as you’re sincere, it’s going to be okay. Every god has his way, every god has his means of salvation.” So if there are many gods, then there are many ways of salvation. And if that’s true, there’s no need for evangelism. Right? You don’t need evangelism. Everybody’s got their own way; leave them alone. They’ll come home wagging their tails behind them. It will all work out in the end.
But Paul says since there is only one God and one Savior God, then that one God stands in the same relationship to all men in relationship to Salvation. If there is one God and that one God is the Savior and that one God desires all men to be saved, then He is the God of all in whom all must believe if all are to be saved, therefore we must pray for all. Since the God of all men wants all men to be saved, prayer for all men is consistent with His nature. The foundation then, beloved, of the universality of the gospel is bound up in the oneness of God. Listen to Romans 3 as Paul begins to delineate the gospel in verse 29, he said, “Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the nations? Yes, of the nations also. Seeing He is one God” – there’s only one God. Therefore all men must come to the same God, therefore all men must hear the same way, and therefore we must pray for all men. There’s only one God. And it is the unity of God that justifies the universal scope of evangelism.
Of Jesus Christ as Mediator, MacArthur explains:
There is not only one God, but there is “one mediator between God and men.” And the Greek text says “man” – no article – “man Christ Jesus.” A better way to translate that to get the intent of the Greek would be, “There is one God and one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus Himself man.” Now here we find the consistency with the person of Christ. How many mediators are there? One. So we can’t say, “Well, there are lots of ways to heaven,” like the Bahai people say, lots of doors; you can go this way, that way; you can follow this leader, that leader, this leader. No, there’s only one. And we’re back to the same thing. One God, one mediator, one way of salvation, therefore we pray for the whole world. God wants the whole world saved and the only way they can be saved is through that one mediator to that one God.
In Job chapter 9 we are introduced to the concept of a mediator as Job cries out in the midst of his distress. And he says in verse 32 in wanting to communicate with God, he says, “For He is not a man as I am that I should answer Him and we should come together in judgment.” He says I don’t know how to get to God. He’s not a man. I can’t just communicate with Him. We can’t sit down and work this thing out. And then in verse 33, “Neither is there any mediator between us.” He uses the word daysman, which is a word for an arbiter or an umpire or a mediator. “There’s no mediator between us” – listen to this – “that might lay his hand on both of us.” And here was Job in the middle of his distress crying out, “Where is somebody who can put his hand on God and his hand on me and bring us together?” Well, that cry is answered in Christ. Isn’t it? Christ is that mesitēs, that mediator, that go between, that one who intervenes between two for the purpose of restoring peace and friendship or of ratifying a covenant, making a promise, forming a compact. And there’s only one mediator. Listen to that, only one.
… There is only one mediator, just one that is the daysman who puts His hand on both God and man and brings them together. And it is Christ Jesus, man Himself – or Himself man. And the word for man here is the word anthrōpos. We get anthropology from it. It is the generic word for man. Anēr is the word for male … But here is the generic word. He became man. He was God always. He became man. He is the perfect God-man. As such He takes God and man and brings them together. And so Christ Jesus is that mediator.
The Anglican 1662 Book of Common Prayer has the following intercession in the liturgy for Holy Communion. It follows the first five verses of today’s reading. Of course, the priest is now praying for King Charles, but, until two Sundays ago, the prayer went as follows:
Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in earth.
Almighty and everliving God, who by thy holy Apostle hast taught us to make prayers and supplications, and to give thanks, for all men: We humbly beseech thee most mercifully [*to accept our alms and oblations, and] to receive these our prayers, which we offer unto thy Divine Majesty; beseeching thee to inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant, that all they that do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity, and godly love. We beseech thee also to save and defend all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors; and specially thy servant ELIZABETH our Queen; that under her we may be godly and quietly governed: And grant unto her whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under her, that they may truly and indifferently minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue. Give grace, O heavenly Father, to all Bishops and Curates, that they may both by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively Word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments: And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace; and specially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear, and receive thy holy Word; truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life. And we most humbly beseech thee of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all them, who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity. And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom: Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ‘s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
One can see how this prayer fulfils Paul’s instruction to Timothy.
Paul impresses upon Timothy the work of Christ’s crucifixion, a ransom for all, attested at the right time (verse 6).
I prefer the King James Version which says ‘due time’ and makes more sense:
Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
Henry says:
As the mercy of God extends itself to all his works, so the mediation of Christ extends itself thus far to all the children of men that he paid a price sufficient for the salvation of all mankind; he brought mankind to stand upon new terms with God, so that they are not now under the law as a covenant of works, but as a rule of life. They are under grace; not under the covenant of innocence, but under a new covenant: He gave himself a ransom. Observe, The death of Christ was a ransom, a counter-price. We deserved to have died. Christ died for us, to save us from death and hell; he gave himself a ransom voluntarily, a ransom for all; so that all mankind are put in a better condition than that of devils. He died to work out a common salvation: in order hereunto, he put himself into the office of Mediator between God and man. A mediator supposes a controversy. Sin had made a quarrel between us and God; Jesus Christ is a Mediator who undertakes to make peace, to bring God and man together, in the nature of an umpire or arbitrator, a days-man who lays his hand upon u both, Job 9 33. He is a ransom that was to be testified in due time; that is, in the Old-Testament times, his sufferings and the glory that should follow were spoken of as things to be revealed in the last times, 1 Pet 1 10, 11.
MacArthur explains substutionary atonement, i.e. Christ dying so that we would not have to endure eternal death:
Go back again to verse 6. Speaking of Christ Jesus who was man as well as God and brought God and man together, it says, “Who gave” – and that word is loaded with content. He gave. John 10:18, Jesus said, “No man takes My life from Me, I” – what? – I lay it down by Myself” – voluntarily. “Who gave” – and what did He give? – “Himself.” Not a portion of Himself, not something He possessed, not something He owned, not something He really didn’t need, He gave everything. That’s the totality of it. Christ Jesus voluntarily gave totally Himself, “as a ransom for all.”
Now the word ransom here is just loaded with meaning. It is not the simple word for ransom, which is lutron. It is antilutron and there’s a huper preposition connected with it in the phrase. And it just fills up the meaning. It’s not a simple word for ransom where somebody’s kidnapped, you go pay a ransom, you get him back. It is the idea of a substitutionary ransom. You put yourself there and free that person by your own enslavement. It is as if a father was receiving a note about a kidnapped child and the note demanded that he go and become the kidnapped person for the freedom of his beloved child. Christ becomes the victim that we might be set free. So it is more than the simple word ransom which means the priced pay for the release of a slave. It is the idea of an exchange. Christ exchanged His life for our lives. He died our death. He bore our sin. He took our place. He gave Himself totally as a substitutionary payment for our sin.
For whom did He do this? He was a ransom for all. Would you just circle that? That’s the point here. Did Christ die for a few? He died for all. That’s what it says. And that’s Paul’s key idea. He is not here, by the way, intending to give a complex treatment on the theology of the atonement. He is not here trying to emphasize all that could be said about the substitutionary ransom of Jesus Christ. His point here is the all. What he wants you to understand is that Christ who is the one mediator came to do a work on the cross in behalf of man and God that would provide a ransom for all men.
Paul puts his stamp of authority on these verses by saying that he was appointed for this work as a herald and apostle, confirming that he is telling the truth and that he is a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and in truth (verse 7).
MacArthur addresses this verse as follows:
In other words, he’s saying what in the world am I doing if this thing isn’t for everybody?
The word preacher is from the verb form kērussō. It has to do with a herald, a proclaimer, a public speaker. In those days they didn’t watch television, didn’t read books, didn’t have newspapers. Basically if you had an announcement, you went into the city square and you made your announcement. It was the time of hot communication. It was a time when you verbalized. The herald went around and made all the announcements the people needed to have and communication was out in the open and people preached in the open and they taught in the open and philosophers spoke in the open and opinions were given in the open. And Paul became one of those open-air preachers, one of those public heralds proclaiming the gospel of Christ. And what he is saying is, why I was ordained by God to go out and publicly proclaim a gospel that if limited belies my very calling. And then I was called not only to be a herald but an apostle. And the word there is – has reference to one being sent as a messenger. Here I am an apostle to the nations, here I am a messenger from city to city and nation to nation, publicly heralding the gospel of Christ. What am I doing if this isn’t applicable to everybody?
He says, “I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not.” You know that I’ve been called as a herald to publicly proclaim. You know I’ve been called as a messenger to extend the truth of saving grace as far and wide as God allows me. As a herald I speak publicly. As a missionary I reach all I can reach. And you know this is the truth and I’m not lying. You know that’s my calling, he’s saying. You know that’s my ordination. And there may be a little bit of rebuttal in his saying that because there might be some in the church that would sort of take issue with the strength of his conclusions here and he reminds them that he’s speaking the truth.
And then he says in the end of verse 7 also, “I am a teacher of the nations in faith” – that is the faith, content – “and verity” – that is sincerity of heart. I’m one who teaches with right content and a right heart of sincerity. And I’m a teacher of the nations. The word the nations is key – ought to underline that. That’s the key idea. I’ve been sent to the nations, to the nations of the world. And I’m supposed to publicly proclaim to all of these people that Jesus saves and that Christ is a ransom for all and call them to salvation. How can I do that if that’s not true? There’s an integrity problem here, he says. I mean, I’ve been ordained for this. In fulfilling the Great Commission, Mark 16:15, to preach the gospel to every creature. Paul says with the faith, the content, and a sincere heart, I go out to speak the truth.
And beloved, I really believe this is a powerful, powerful statement on the mission responsibility of the church for the world. We are called to world missions. Why? Because it is the will of God that all men be saved. Why? Because there’s only one God for them all, and there’s only one mediator for them all who died for them all. And we are called as preachers and missionaries to reach them all. And how could we ever believe for a moment that we were saying something that isn’t true if He did not die for all and if God did not will that all be saved? Then we ought to say that. But we can’t because we know better. And so there is a powerful argument for the universal proclamation of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.
In closing, MacArthur offers this observation:
I am amazed how readily we pray for physical problems and how hesitantly we pray for salvation. And physical problems are not really the significant issue.
That is so true. Perhaps in our era we find it presumptuous to pray for someone’s salvation. It seems intrusive. On the other hand, praying for someone’s recovery from a malady makes more sense. We can empathise with their physical pain because pain is tangible. We don’t want people to suffer.
Yet, MacArthur is correct in saying that physical problems are not the main issue in our lives. Salvation is. Therefore, we should pray for each other’s salvation, because that lasts for eternity, whereas bodily pain is temporary, disappearing before or at the time we die.
May all reading this have a blessed Sunday.
At my church, the 8 a.m. service is Holy Communion with the liturgy from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP).
I am one of the privileged few in the Church of England to be able to attend this service every Sunday.
Since the 1980s, the C of E has done everything possible to take the BCP out of use. In 1980 and 1984 (the edition I have), the Church published the Alternative Service Book (ASB), which the satirical magazine Private Eye lampooned for decades in a series called The Alternative Rocky Horror Service Book. The satirists scored a bullseye with every instalment.
A newer prayer book, Common Worship, superseded the ASB in 2000. It is considerably better.
However, what both the ASB and Common Worship have done is to effectively make the BCP obsolete.
The ASB Wikipedia entry says (emphases mine):
The Prayer Book Society soon complained that it was becoming hard to find a church which used the old prayer book and that theological colleges were not introducing students to it.
I can vouch for both complaints.
I’ve been attending my church for nearly 30 years. In that time, we have had either vicars or curates who entered the seminary, often as second careers. They could not reasonably recite the BCP liturgy. (On the other hand, our present incumbent, a young vicar, also a second careerist, does an excellent job.)
As some of these people were older than I am, I can assume only that they were not regular churchgoers in their youth.
In any event, one of the bright aspects of the coronavirus pandemic is that our church is using the BCP exclusively at 8 a.m. on Sunday. This is because the traditional liturgy service from Common Worship calls for the Peace, which involves shaking hands.
It would seem that other C of E churches also adopted the BCP during the pandemic.
An Anglican laywoman recently posed the following question on Twitter and received encouraging replies:
A benefice is a group of churches in one catchment area.
Here’s another encouraging response:
I’ve noticed a rise in people attending BCP services at churches I sing at, Evensong especially popular. Many of the younger generations I speak to prefer it – “it makes sense”. A church using BCP has flourishing choir of young people and many young families in the congregation.
The young vicar of the Anglican church in Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, in Greater Manchester is particularly enthusiastic:
The Revd Sarah Hancock’s is a typically welcoming C of E response.
Those uncertain about reciting 17th century prayers can be drawn in:
The BCP liturgy went down well on Zoom when the churches were closed. Those who attended online are now back in church:
There were two enthusiastic responses from Cambridge.
The first is from Westcott House, the city’s Anglican seminary:
The second is from Cambridge University Press:
Coincidentally, my copy of the BCP is from Cambridge University Press. It’s nearly 30 years old and still looks like new. It came with an attractive yet durable slipcase, too.
Nothing would make traditionalists happier than a wider return to the BCP for some services, either on Sunday or during the week.
The BCP really does lift the soul and remind one of the communion of saints, those many generations of devout Anglicans who prayed from it through the centuries.
Long live the BCP.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer on historical background to the Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
Percy Dearmer on the Savoy Conference for the Fifth Prayer Book
The clergymen who participated in the 1661 Savoy Conference produced a revised — Fifth — Prayer Book that was first issued on May 19, 1662.
Today it is referred to as the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. It is still in use.
Chapter 11 of Dearmer’s book describes a remarkable volume considering that the Savoy Conference was half-Anglican and half-Puritan.
The preface, which Robert Sanderson, the Bishop of Lincoln, wrote was comprehensive. It laid out the history of the previous Prayer Books and made it clear that all attempts were made to revise liturgies and a set of services to satisfy, in Sanderson’s words:
all sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons of the Church of England.
Dearmer tells us that 600 alterations were made to produce the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. He summarises them this way:
The changes described in this Preface are — 1. (DIRECTIONS) for the better direction of the officiant, 2. (VERBAL) the alteration of obsolete phrases, 3. (SCRIPTURE) the use of the Authorized Version, especially for the Epistles and Gospels, 4. (ADDITIONS) some new prayers and thanksgivings, especially for use at Sea and an order for the Baptism of Adults.
Directions needed to be given to avoid the disputes of the past, especially with the Puritans. A hymn was authorised for Mattins and Evensong, or Morning and Evening Prayer, respectively.
Dearmer tells us that the Consecration of the bread and wine for Holy Communion was made clearer and returned to Church tradition from antiquity rather than embrace a more Calvinist construct:
The rubric before the Consecration (“When the Priest, standing before the Table, hath so ordered,” etc.) was added, and also the direction for the Fraction and other Manual Acts, heretofore left to tradition. The very questionable rubric providing for a second consecration by the mere repetition of the Words of Institution was reinserted. The two rubrics were added ordering that what remains of the Sacrament after the Communion shall be covered with a linen veil, and afterwards reverently consumed.
The Black Rubric about divine Presence in Holy Communion was re-added and revised:
with the crucial alteration of “real and essential presence” to “corporal presence.”
Other ceremonies were clarified. Directions for the publishing of wedding banns were included. The Visitation of the Sick no longer mandated confession. Dearmer explains:
The words “Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special Confession of his sins, if,” etc., were substituted for “Here shall the sick person make a special confession, if,” etc.; and the words “if he humbly and heartily desire it ” were added.
Certain words, more Anglican in nature, returned or were added to the Prayer Book:
The more important were: In Divine Service and in the Liturgy, “priest” was substituted for “minister at the Absolution. In … the Intercessions, “Bishops, pastors, and ministers” was altered to “Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” In several places the word “congregation” was changed to “church.” “Forsake” was well changed to “renounce” in the Baptismal Vow.
The Epistles and Gospels were taken from the 1611 King James Version but the Psalter remained in the words from the 1540 Bible, because the old wording of the Psalms was very popular with churchgoers.
Psalm numbers were altered for certain ceremonies.
More hymns were authorised for Easter Day, and the Gloria was re-added.
A ceremony for baptising adults was added in response to increasing requests in English parishes and for missionary efforts in the colonies.
Prayers to be used at sea were added.
Two state services were added. The Accession Service (for the incoming monarch) was already there, but services for King Charles the Martyr and the Restoration were inserted. These were not taken out until 1854, with the Accession Service the only state service remaining.
Dearmer thought that the two state services were too political and ended up alienating some churchgoers, thereby causing a decline in membership in the Church of England:
They are … full of political opinion, their loyalty is expressed in extravagant terms, and they confide to Almighty God their denunciations of “violent and bloodthirsty men,” bloody enemies,” “sons of Belial, as on this day, to imbrue their hands in the blood of thine Anointed,” “the unnatural Rebellion, Usurpation, and Tyranny of ungodly and cruel men” — using for preference four words where one would have been too much.
This is magnificent, but it is not peace. Now, when we remember that these State Services (with additions in subsequent reigns) were cheerfully used throughout the country for nearly two centuries, we can understand the accompanying decline in the English Church. The Church of a party could not be the Church of a people; nor could a Church, which did nothing to supply in her Services the growing needs of succeeding ages, fail as time went on to alienate large sections of religious men.
He also thought that, over the next two centuries, the public increasingly viewed the Church of England as an exclusive, establishment organisation. The Prayer Book, in his estimation, no longer served the needs of some people, who came to see the prayers as dry and outdated:
the poverty of our Visitation of the Sick has driven many thousands into faith-healing sects, and the inadequacy of The Burial Service has caused others to seek comfort in Spiritism.
Quite possibly. However, Dearmer does not address the fact that since the 17th century, mankind has gradually become given to emotion rather than logic. Consider the revival movements of the 18th century which used sensationalism rather than rationality to get theological points across. We now have no end of tiny Holiness churches which emphasise individual ‘experiences’ and ‘testimony’ over Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture. People don’t go for the Bible, they go for the show.
Dearmer concludes Chapter 11 by expressing his wish for a new Prayer Book. I wonder, had he been alive today, what he would think of The Alternative Service Book (1984) and its successor Common Worship (2000). The latter is an improvement over the former but is mind boggling with so many different collects and versions of various prayers. One wonders if all that is necessary.
Then again, my next door neighbour finds the most modern, pared-down liturgy irrelevant to her needs: ‘Why have liturgy at all?’ It looks as if we are approaching that point, complete with ‘healing services’ every few weeks. The more relevant the Church of England becomes in response to people like my next-door neighbour, the fewer the number of people attending Sunday services.
In fact, any Anglican clergyman that offers a 1662 service finds his church nearly full.
Yes, the 1662 service is still the only one that continues to draw crowds in the 21st century. It’s a pity more Anglican priests don’t understand that simple premise.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer on historical background to the Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
In that last post about the tumultuous events leading to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Percy Dearmer emphasised the joy that Anglicans felt on being able to use their once-forbidden Prayer Book again. In fact, demand was so great that it was reprinted five times that year.
Consensus was that a new Prayer Book was needed. The one in use dated from 1604.
Atmosphere during the Restoration
Even after the Restoration, memories of Charles I’s beheading and the oppressive Puritan Interregnum were still fresh in the minds of the English people.
The new Parliament passed laws ensuring that Puritans and other non-Conformists — called Dissenters during that new era — and Catholics were prohibited from holding public office and more.
In Chapter 10, Dearmer explains (emphases mine):
their worship forbidden by the Conventicle Act of 1664 under a final penalty of transportation, their extremer ministers refused permission to come within five miles of a town by the Five Mile Act of 1665, and their conscientious members debarred, in common with Papists, from all civil, military and naval office by the Test Act of 1673.
This was because many new Parliamentarians had returned:
to their native villages at the Restoration, to find the church smashed, the trees felled, and the home of their ancestors destroyed.
Although Dearmer, who wrote in 1912, was appalled by these draconian laws, he did acknowledge that:
The Puritan ministers also, who were ejected, were, after all, themselves intruders; for there had been a worse ejectment of Anglicans before. Above all this, there loomed in men’s minds the indelible memory of the martyrdom of King Charles.
Continued Puritan interference
The Puritans were not going to give up easily, however.
Before Charles II set sail for England in May 1660 — he had been in exile in the Spanish Netherlands — a delegation of Presbyterian divines (learned and pious theologians) went to meet with him at The Hague:
and asked that, as the Prayer Book had long been discontinued, the King should not use it when he landed. They also asked that his chaplains should give up using the surplice.
The new king replied:
with his usual keenness of wit, that he would not be restrained himself when others had so much indulgence.
Once Charles II was in England, the Puritans continued putting pressure on him and Anglican bishops, asking:
that the Prayer Book might be made like the liturgies of the Reformed Churches.
The nine surviving Anglican bishops replied that maintaining the status quo — holding on to existing elements of ancient Greek and Latin Liturgy — would give the Catholics less cause for complaint. (The Puritans had moved far away from ancient liturgy, parts of which were in the Anglican Prayer Book.)
In October 1660, King Charles declared that a conference would take place the following year to discuss a new Prayer Book.
The Savoy Conference
The Savoy Conference convened on April 15, 1661. It lasted over two months.
It was so called because the Bishop of London, Gilbert Sheldon, lived at the Savoy Hospital and held the conference in his lodgings there. (Today, the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Theatre stand on the site.)
In attendance were 12 Anglican bishops and 12 Presbyterian divines. Each side also had nine assistants, called coadjutors.
The Puritans expressed their usual complaints about the use of the word ‘priest’, the frequent participation of the congregation in prayers, kneeling for Communion, the use of wedding bands in the marriage ceremony, commemorating saints’ feast days, the Catholic nature of vestments and even the use of the word ‘Sunday’.
The Anglicans were not having any of it:
The Bishops replied to such criticisms as these by referring to Catholic usage, and to a Custom of the Churches of God, agreeable to the Scripture and ancient, and to the Catholic Consent of antiquity.
Dearmer gives us summary statements from both sides.
The Puritans said:
To load our public forms with the private fancies upon which we differ, is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism to the world’s end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading of the Scriptures, and administration of the Sacraments in the plainest, and simplest manner, were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient Liturgy, though nothing either of private opinion, or of church pomp, of garments, or prescribed gestures, of imagery, of musick, of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities which creep into the Church under the name of order and decency, did interpose itself. To charge Churches and Liturgies with things unnecessary, was the first beginning of all superstition.
If the special guides and fathers of the Church would be a little sparing of encumbering churches with superfluities, or not over-rigid, either in reviving obsolete customs, or imposing new, there would be far less cause of schism, or superstition.
The Anglicans said:
It was the wisdom of our Reformers to draw up such a Liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could justly except against. For preserving of the Churches’ peace we know no better nor more efficacious way than our set Liturgy; there being no such way to keep us from schism, as to speak all the same thing, according to the Apostle. This experience of former and latter times hath taught us; when the Liturgy was duly observed we lived in peace; since that was laid aside there bath been as many modes and fashions of public worship as fancies.
If we do not observe that golden rule of the venerable Council of Nice, ‘Let ancient customs prevail,’ till reason plainly requires the contrary, we shall give offence to sober Christians by a causeless departure from Catholic usage, and a greater advantage to enemies of our Church, than our brethren, I hope, would willingly grant.
The Anglicans won.
The one thing both sides did agree on was including Scripture readings from the Authorised — King James — Version of the Bible.
The Savoy Conference ended on July 24, 1661.
Fifth Prayer Book, 1662
On November 20, 1661, a committee of Anglican bishops was appointed to revise the Prayer Book.
They completed their work on December 20. The Convocations of the Archbishops of York and Canterbury approved the Fifth Prayer Book.
On February 25, 1662, the new Prayer Book was annexed to the Bill of Uniformity.
After passing both Houses of Parliament, the Bill of Uniformity received royal assent on May 19.
The legislation then became the Act of Uniformity, and the Fifth Prayer Book — the Book of Common Prayer — was made mandatory for public worship in the Church of England. And so it remained until 1984.
Dearmer concludes:
It is sometimes said as a jibe against the Prayer Book that it is part of an Act of Parliament.
Yet:
our present Prayer Book was not one whit less the work of the Church, whose rights and liberties were most carefully safeguarded at every stage. The troublous century which we call the Reformation Period began with tyranny and oppression, but it ended with the establishment of constitutionalism in 1662; and the royalist Parliament which enforced the settlement, did at least represent the people.
The next entry will concern the 1662 Book of Common Prayer itself.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Percy Dearmer on the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible
Percy Dearmer wisely skipped over the turmoil that was going on not only in England but in Europe during King James I’s (James VI of Scotland) and Charles I’s respective reigns.
However, some historical notes need to be added to understand the civil and religious strife during this time. The two intermingled, causing much violence and uncertainty.
Before getting to Chapter 10 of Dearmer’s book, I shall try to sum this up as briefly as possible.
James I was Charles I’s father. When the latter was of marriageable age, the Continent was experiencing political struggles between Catholic and Protestant royal houses and emperors. Spain was a powerful player at this time. People today would find it amazing to know that Spain ruled the Low Countries, but the Spanish Netherlands did indeed exist between 1581 to 1714.
James hoped to broker peace with Spain by marrying Charles off to Princess Maria Anna. However, as the Wikipedia account of Charles I‘s life and death tells us (emphases mine):
Unfortunately for James, negotiation with Spain proved generally unpopular, both with the public and with James’s court.[19] The English Parliament was actively hostile towards Spain and Catholicism, and thus, when called by James in 1621, the members hoped for an enforcement of recusancy laws, a naval campaign against Spain, and a Protestant marriage for the Prince of Wales.[20]
The Spanish Court — including Princess Maria Anna — opposed the match, and it never took place.
However, Charles did marry a Catholic, France’s Princess Henrietta Maria, in 1625, which did not stand him in good stead in England. He had succeeded his father as king in 1624 and was crowned formally on February 2, 1626. Tensions ran high:
Many members of the Commons were opposed to the king’s marriage to a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Catholic recusants and undermine the official establishment of the reformed Church of England. Although he told Parliament that he would not relax religious restrictions, he promised to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with his brother-in-law Louis XIII of France.[41]
Things were not well in the royal household at that time:
Disputes over her jointure, appointments to her household, and the practice of her religion culminated in the king expelling the vast majority of her French attendants in August 1626.[58]
However, not long afterwards, diplomacy with Spain ensued and his marital problems were resolved. In fact, Charles and his Queen consort:
embodied an image of virtue and family life, and their court became a model of formality and morality.[73]
That said, the religious issue of Henrietta Maria’s Catholicism did not disappear.
Taxes were high so that Charles could finance war. He also granted monopolies, which companies paid for. One of them was for soap:
pejoratively referred to as “popish soap” because some of its backers were Catholics.[108]
Another religious issue was the determination of Calvinists — Puritans — to become the dominant religious force. Yet another — on the opposite side of the aisle — was the popularity of Arminianism, which posits that man can accept or reject salvation. In addition, Charles’s diplomacy with Spain was viewed with suspicion, as a way of bringing in Catholicism via the back door.
Charles was concerned about the direction the Reformation was taking in England. The action he took proved to be unpopular:
In 1633, Charles appointed William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury.[118] Together, they began a series of anti-Calvinist reforms that attempted to ensure religious uniformity by restricting non-conformist preachers, insisting that the liturgy be celebrated as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, organising the internal architecture of English churches so as to emphasise the sacrament of the altar, and re-issuing King James’s Declaration of Sports, which permitted secular activities on the sabbath.[119] The Feoffees for Impropriations, an organisation that bought benefices and advowsons so that Puritans could be appointed to them, was dissolved.[120] To prosecute those who opposed his reforms, Laud used the two most powerful courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber.[121] The courts became feared for their censorship of opposing religious views, and became unpopular among the propertied classes for inflicting degrading punishments on gentlemen.[122]
Conflicts arose in Scotland and Ireland. Parliamentarians in England were also furious with Charles. They impeached Archbishop Laud in 1640 and accused the king of tyranny.
On January 3, 1642, Charles entered the House of Commons to have five members of Parliament arrested on charges of treason. (Word had reached the men, who escaped by boat.) When Charles made his demand, Parliament refused to comply.
It should be noted that the monarch never enters the House of Commons. That Charles did so sealed his fate.
The result was the English Civil War which lasted from 1642 to 1651. It was fought between the Roundheads (Parliamentarians) and Cavaliers (Royalists):
The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then the Protectorate under the personal rules of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658) and his son Richard (1658–1659). The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors’ consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament‘s consent, although the idea of Parliament as the ruling power of England was only legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.[2]
The period between Charles I’s death and Charles II’s accession to the throne is called the Interregnum, which had strong religious overtones:
The Interregnum was a relatively short but important period in the history of the British Isles. It saw a number of political experiments without any stable form of government emerging, largely due to the wide diversity in religious and political groups that had been allowed to flourish after the regicide of Charles I.
The Puritan movement had evolved as a rejection of both real and perceived “Catholicisation” of the Church of England. When the Church of England was quickly disestablished by the Commonwealth Government, the question of what church to establish became a hotly debated subject. In the end, it was impossible to make all the political factions happy. During the Interregnum, Oliver Cromwell lost much of the support he had gained during the Civil War.
Puritans dominated the landscape:
After the Parliamentarian victory in the Civil War, the Puritan views of the majority of Parliament and its supporters began to be imposed on the rest of the country. The Puritans advocated an austere lifestyle and restricted what they saw as the excesses of the previous regime. Most prominently, holidays such as Christmas and Easter were suppressed.[2] Pastimes such as the theatre and gambling were also banned. However, some forms of art that were thought to be “virtuous”, such as opera, were encouraged. These changes are often credited to Oliver Cromwell, though they were introduced by the Commonwealth Parliament; and Cromwell, when he came to power, was a liberalising influence.[3]
Interestingly, independent Protestant churches flourished during this time:
The breakdown of religious uniformity and incomplete Presbyterian Settlement of 1646 enabled independent churches to flourish. The main sects (see also English Dissenters) were Baptists, who advocated adult rebaptism; Ranters, who claimed that sin did not exist for the “chosen ones”; and Fifth Monarchy Men, who opposed all “earthly” governments, believing they must prepare for God’s kingdom on earth by establishing a “government of saints”.
Despite greater toleration, extreme sects were opposed by the upper classes as they were seen as a threat to social order and property rights. Catholics were also excluded from the toleration applied to the other groups.
When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard succeeded him. However, Richard lacked authority and his rule was brief, 264 days:
The Protectorate came to an end in May 1659 when the Grandees recalled the Rump Parliament, which authorised a Committee of Safety to replace Richard’s Council of State. This ushered in a period of unstable government, which did not come to an end until February 1660 when General George Monck, the English military governor of Scotland, marched to London at the head of his troops, and oversaw the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
Understandably, no one in Britain wants a repeat of this, including the religious restrictions that took place during these years.
History lesson concluded, let us turn to Percy Dearmer.
He informs us that the Book of Common Prayer was abolished in 1645:
and its use made penal.
With Charles II’s accession to the throne, there was much rejoicing:
ENGLAND turned with shouts of joy from the rancour and violence of the Commonwealth, from the spiritual despotism of the Presbyterians and of the Independents who ousted them, and from the resulting distraction and impiety, to the Restoration of Church and King, and of free Parliamentary institutions …
However, the mood turned against non-Conformists, who were persecuted.
With the Church of England re-established, there was great hunger for the previously banned Prayer Book:
So great was the demand for Prayer Books that, before 1660 had reached its close, five editions of the old Book were printed.
But the Prayer Book had not been revised since 1604, and many agreed at least in this — that a new revision was needed.
This brings us to the theological background of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the subject of the next post in this series.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
Percy Dearmer blamed Calvinists for sucking the life-blood out of Anglicanism
Last week’s post about Calvinists is recommended reading for today’s entry.
The theological conflict between Calvinists and traditional Anglicans continued long after Elizabeth I’s reign.
Elizabeth I was not a Calvinist, nor was her successor, James I (James VI of Scotland). However, a Calvinist — Puritan — faction was strong and still wanted to leave its stamp on the Church of England.
This conflict continued throughout most of the 17th century, as Dearmer explains in Chapter 9 of his book.
Fortunately, even during the tumultuous atmosphere of the early 1600s, lasting good was to emerge in England via the Authorised — King James — Version of the Bible.
Percy Dearmer researched the history of that era and found documentation by a prominent German historian, Dr Dollinger, regarding this new edition of the Bible (emphases mine below):
I believe we may credit one great superiority in England over other countries to the circumstance that there the Holy Scripture is found in every house, as is the case nowhere else in the world. It is, so to speak, the good genius of the place, the protecting spirit of the domestic hearth and family.
Would that this were the case today. Believers would do well to pray that this becomes so once more. I have never seen such a group of atheists as I have in England — and Great Britain as a whole.
Dearmer, while condemning Edward VI’s advisors and the subsequent Puritans, asks us to be philosophical about good coming from bad:
Those who come after — some time after — are able to separate the good from the evil, and to possess all that is worthy, not from one side only, but from both. Thus the world does slowly grow in wisdom, learning to eschew what is evil and to hold fast what is good … that freedom to-day which is the main hope of Christendom — the freedom to go back behind the traditions of men to the plain words and pure example of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Before I get to the Authorised Version — the KJV — there were other ecclesiastically historical events which preceded it.
The Hampton Court Conference, 1604
In January 1604, when James I succeeded Elizabeth I, the Puritans pressed for what they called a Millenary Petition. The objective was for more reform in the national Church.
The King, who was no Puritan but who — according to Dearmer — loved a good argument, responded with the Hampton Court Conference.
The Puritans, predictably, laid out their objections to the Third Prayer Book of Elizabeth’s reign. As notionally ‘Romish’ elements of the First Prayer Book had been restored, they wanted to see these eliminated once and for all.
The Puritans’ objections were much the same as before: vestments and the Sign of the Cross made during Baptism.
They had others:
the wedding ring, the word “priest,” bowing at the name of Jesus; the Puritans also disliked the Thirty-nine Articles as not sanctioning Calvinism; they desired that Baptism should never be ministered by women, that Confirmation should be taken away, and also the Churching of Women, that “examination” should go before Communion, that “the longsomeness of service” should be “abridged” and “Church songs and music moderated,” that the Lord’s Day should not be “profaned” (by the playing of games), that an uniformity of doctrine should be prescribed, and a few other things.
The wedding ring is interesting. I used to run across committed Christian men in the United States who refused to wear one. They never explained exactly why, but, presumably, this objection to wedding bands as being unbiblical must have persisted through the centuries.
As for the Thirty-nine Articles espousing Calvinism, that was never going to happen as the previous posts in this series explain. The Church of England was always intended to be a middle way. It had — and has — its own identity.
Unfortunately, that sound set of Thirty-nine Articles was discarded as being of historical interest only at the end of the 20th century not only in England but elsewhere in the West, including — perhaps, especially — in the Episcopal Church in the United States. It is no surprise, therefore, to find clergy becoming agnostic or atheist and turning to New Age rituals. Biblical preaching and practice is largely gone. But I digress.
Dearmer explains that dictating to the letter what churchgoers should believe in what was a somewhat pluralistic church community would have been a dangerous move. So was dictating what people could do on Sundays. That came during Cromwell’s Interregnum, but that is the subject of another entry.
Dearmer also points out that the Puritans’ desire for fewer hymns resulted in an equally ‘longsomeness of service’ as clergy preached ever-longer sermons and introduced lengthy extemporaneous prayers.
King James wrote his impressions of the Hampton Court Conference afterwards, documenting his delight at verbally opposing the Puritans:
We have kept such a revel with the Puritans here these two days as was never heard the like … I have peppered them as soundly . . . They fled me so from argument to argument without ever answering me directly …
Today’s Puritan sympathisers do the same thing. Answer comes none.
The Fourth Prayer Book, 1604
The Puritans were determined, as are their present-day Anglican equivalents, most of whom reside in the United States.
They wanted a new prayer book and they got one.
It was not a total win for the Puritans, but they won certain battles over verbiage and ceremony (see sections in bold):
– A new section was added to the Catechism which explains the Sacraments. Dearmer credits this to a prominent theologian of the day, Dr Overall.
– A prayer for the Royal Family was added to the end of the litany.
– Prayers of thanksgiving for weather (e.g. needed rain) and health (e.g. against the Plague) were added.
– A ‘lawful Minister’ — not ‘priest’ — had to administer Baptism, although this did not exclude a layperson doing so in an emergency.
– A subtitle to the rite of Confirmation — ‘the laying on of hands’ — was duly added.
– A subtitle to the Absolution — ‘the remission of sins’ — was added.
– Existing lessons (readings) from the Apocrypha, still in use in Roman Catholic liturgy, were omitted:
the quaint history of Bel and the Dragon, and the much-loved romance of Tobit were given up.
The Canons of 1604
The King had approved the Canons of 1604 which prescribed elements of worship in England, including use of the Prayer Book.
Some of these please neither ‘Romanists’ nor Puritans as they specified a middle way. They reinstituted the reverence for the name of Jesus — probably by the bowing of the head each time His name was mentioned — and enforced a minimum of altar linen and clerical vestments in worship.
The Authorised Version of the Bible
The Fourth Prayer Book was eventually replaced by that of King Charles II in 1662.
The more lasting contribution of this era was the Authorised Version of the Bible, so called because King James granted his approval, hence ‘authorised’. Today, most of us call it the King James Version, the KJV.
I wrote about the KJV in 2011:
The King James Version celebrates its 400th anniversary this year
BBC shows on the King James Version
BBC’s Story of the King James Bible — The Commission
BBC’s Story of the King James Bible — The Translation
BBC’s Story of the King James Bible — The Legacy
The timeline of a Bible for the British Isles
Now on to Dearmer’s history of it. During the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, one of the Puritans, Dr Reynolds, proposed a new edition of the Bible.
At that time, the Geneva Bible of 1560 — inspired by John Calvin’s teachings in that city — was the pre-eminent version used in England by the people. It seems odd then, that a Puritan would want a revision of it and that the mainstream Anglicans present opposed the idea. The clergy used the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, which was never popular amongst churchgoers.
However, King James voiced his support. He never liked the Geneva Bible because its Calvinist footnotes, in his words, were:
very partial, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits.
This is because the footnotes implied that only God, not governors, kings or princes, was the true authority. Whilst that is scripturally accurate, our governors are there to maintain godly order. However, the Geneva Bible does not mention this. Consequently, James thought that zealous people could take against the Crown, citing the Bible.
When the conference ended, James drew up a list of 54 divines, irreprochable and highly learned theologians. Interestingly, none were bishops, although some did become bishops later. Dearmer observes:
the Authorized Version, in fact, owes its excellence to the common sense of the King in choosing his men for their learning and capacity, and not for their official position. This may seem a very obvious piece of wisdom: but it is to be noted that it has been forgotten in our hitherto unsuccessful twentieth century attempts at Prayer Book revision.
I couldn’t agree more.
The King reduced the number of divines to 47. They were the ones who came up with the new Bible:
King James’s fifty-four divines were afterwards reduced to the “prodigiously learned and earnest persons, forty-seven in number,” who, Carlyle says, gave us our version of that Book of Books, “which possesses this property, inclusive of all, add we, That it is written under the eye of the Eternal; that it is of a sincerity like very Death, the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the Soul of Man.”
The history of English versions of the Bible was accompanied by bloodshed and martyrdom, and this particular era would see the same in the English Civil War, which was to come.
However, as Dearmer rightly says, Scripture united the divines, some of whom were mainstream Anglicans and others Puritan:
Puritans and High Churchmen had the Scriptures in common, and did alike fervently believe in them: outside the rooms in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, where the forty-seven divines met, religious folk were maligning each other in brilliant, bitter, and abusive pamphlets; but within those learned conferences all hostilities were silenced, all differences ignored: men like Overall and the saintly Andrewes, on the one side, joined with Reynolds and Abbott on the other; and the forty-seven worked in such singular harmony that it is impossible even to distinguish between the three companies which worked in three different places: the Authorized Version of the Bible reads like the work of one great man.
The Holy Spirit was truly working through them to write one great Bible which has withstood time. Dearmer explains that the genres of various books were preserved, some poetic and others, such as the Gospels, simplistic so as to be understood by the greatest number of people.
It is a theological and literary masterpiece — for everyone:
The divines — who might have wrought a literary gem for the bookshelves of the learned, after the manner of the age that produced Donne and Milton, Burton and Sir Thomas Browne — threw aside the pedantries and preciosities which were in fashion, and sat humbly at the feet of those predecessors who in peril of death had hewn out the words of life with such strength of simplicity; and they produced a book which has been at once the comfort of the peasant and the model and inspiration of our greatest writers.
Dearmer rightly adds that, although this was the era of literary masterpieces (e.g. Shakespeare), scholarly wisdom does not often equate with absorbing prose:
Now scholars are not generally masters of prose, and the combination of the critical and the constructive gift — of science and art — is almost unknown to-day, when learned translations and exact commentaries are common enough, but the majority of ancient books have still not been turned into English classics. The English Bible is an exception. We do not think of it as a translation at all: we think of it as the greatest of English classics, which, among other things, it is.
Many unbelievers in Britain have read it for its literary merit. I can only pray that the Holy Spirit works through them and ends their stubborn blindness to our Redeemer and only Advocate.
Dearmer says that, although King James appointed the divines in 1604, they did not begin work until 1607. It took them only four years to write this beautiful and enduring Bible, which first appeared in print in 1611.
Dearmer concludes:
And what is true of the English Bible is true also of the English Prayer Book. Scholars who won the consecration of martyrdom gave to it a like power of inspired translation, and endowed it with the magic of their prose. Thus it is that the one book worthy to be set side by side with the English Bible is that Book of Common Prayer, which has won a place in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon race second only to the Bible, and which day by day issues it forth in psalter and lectionary to the people.
I wish that were still the case. Fortunately, I am able to attend a 1662 Book of Common Prayer service once a month.
Next time we look at Dearmer’s history of that prayer book, written after the Restoration. With the end of the English Civil War and the Interregnum came the return of monarchy and a new king, Charles II, my favourite.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
Percy Dearmer on the Third Prayer Book and Elizabeth I
One of the themes that Percy Dearmer returns to in his history of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is the fact that early English Protestants enjoyed many of the aspects of liturgy, church adornments and vestments that Calvinist reformers — Puritans — wanted to dispense with.
These fell under the category of adiaphora and the question arose whether they should be allowed because they are not mentioned in Scripture.
A number of fundamentalist denominations and independent churches today believe that if Scripture does not mention an aspect of adiaphora, believers should not be using those liturgies, adornments and vestments.
The Puritans wanted to get rid of everything that even suggested the Catholic Church. Yet, many English Protestants enjoyed attending church services for those very reasons. In their opinion, there was no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Dearmer agreed with the lowly pewsitters. So do I.
In the second half of Chapter 8 he takes issue with the Puritans, some of whom were unduly influential in the Anglican Church during the reign of Elizabeth I. Excerpts and a summary follow, emphases mine.
The Third Prayer Book restored some of the adiaphora of the first book. Some clergy refused to use it for that reason. ‘Convocation’ below refers to the Convocation of the Church of England:
… efforts were made, in Convocation and in Parliament, to abolish those beautiful and helpful ceremonies which stirred some men to a strangeness of opposition in this era of religious reaction. The sign of the cross in Baptism, kneeling at communion, the wedding-ring, every sort of vestment, including the black gown and college cap as well as the cope and surplice, were bitterly attacked.
In 1562, the lower house of the Convocation put a proposal to the vote which would have abolished all these things, including the church organ. Elizabeth I was strongly opposed to such reform. Fortunately, in the end, it lost by only one vote: hers.
Dearmer wrote his book in 1912. In his view, the anti-adiaphora movement was dying in England. Yet, it persists elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
Dearmer strongly objected to what he saw as:
this madness which fastened upon England — a madness which is only becoming extinct in the 20th century. It was the insanity of a wild reaction, a kind of Romanism turned inside out.
Dearmer wrote that by abolishing the adiaphora, the Puritans rid the English Church of her beauty. I couldn’t agree more with his analysis. Plainness can drive people away from church. Furthermore, in their zeal, the Puritans made a false connection between the papacy and beauty. Therefore, they went out of their way to make English churches ugly, a trend that was reversed only centuries later:
Because the Roman Catholic Church (in common with the whole of Christendom up to the 16th century) acted on the obvious truth that beauty is a good thing, the majority of Englishmen paid Rome the compliment of embracing ugliness for her sake. They magnified Rome so much that they shaped their conduct by running into opposites. They threw away the wealth of popular devotion, which made her churches living houses of prayer with open doors and thronged altars, and which is still her real strength to-day; they did not know that such devotion had always been the note of all Christendom, and was (as it still is) even more marked in the Eastern Churches than in those in communion with the Pope. They thus set themselves against the mind of Christendom, as well as against one of the profoundest truths of God’s universe — the inspiring virtue of beauty. They invented the notion that the devotional ways of fifteen hundred years and the use of any loveliness of symbolism in the service of God were connected with the autocracy of the Pope — a notion which would have been impossible even to their narrow minds, had not the Eastern Churches been in their time both weak and remote (for Moscow itself was in the hands of the Romanist Poles in 1610). They thus in their blindness presented to the Papacy an enormous reserve fund of power, which has served it ever after for whatever recoveries the Papacy has made since have been due not to the peculiar doctrines of Romanism, not to the autocracy of the Pope, but to the fact that, in Western Christendom as a whole, men have believed that Catholic devotion and beauty in worship are a prerogative of the Papacy. As if the beauty of garments, or organs, or altars, or prayerful cathedrals, made by man, was more Popish than the beauty of the humblest flower which God has made!
Dearmer reminds us that the Puritans gained not only theological but also political strength for the next century, which culminated in the English Civil War in the 17th century:
… it was the power of Calvinism that was to bring King Charles I and Archbishop Laud to the block. Yet with Calvinism there were identified many great and noble things, and the struggle of Puritanism against royal absolutism was in its measure a struggle for human freedom.
For these reasons, no one in England wants another civil war — or Calvinism.
Dearmer has an interesting breakdown of who was and was not a Puritan during the Elizabethan era:
The greatest men — Shakespeare, for instance — stood contemptuously aside from the “precisians,” and the great Elizabethan era went its own way, worshipped its Queen, and admired its Prayer Book. But the middle class, brought up on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Geneva Bible (p. 103), was largely Puritan; many of the bishops withstood the Queen in its interests as much as they dared — they had long since pulled down the altars.
Therefore:
The most the Church could do was to fight hard for the very idea of liturgical worship, and for a few things that preserved the principle of ceremonial, modest as they were — such as the surplice, the cope in great churches, the cross in baptism, kneeling for communion, the organ, the vested altar, and the wedding ring.
Fortunately, in the 19th century, beauty returned to the Church of England:
At the present day the Anglican Church is the great standing witness in the West and in the new countries against the notion we have described — that devotion and beauty are a monopoly of the Churches in communion with Rome. It is for this reason that she is still so strenuously opposed from both sides. But her witness is to-day so evident because during the last two generations a movement, now practically universal in all parties, has been at work to revive the spirituality and beauty of worship, by restoring in some measure the orders and ornaments of the Prayer Book — such orders, for instance, as those requiring daily services and frequent catechizing …
Now that the civilized world has at least come to see the inward power and outward beauty of catholic worship, she is able to set her churches in order again; and this is being done, not slowly.
In between these two historical periods, the Puritans wrought more change.
The next entry in this series will look at the Fourth Prayer Book and the King James Version of the Bible.
This year, I have been running a series of posts on Percy Dearmer‘s 1912 volume, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book, published by Mowbray.
These are the previous posts in the series:
Percy Dearmer on the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 1
Percy Dearmer on the title page of the Book of Common Prayer – part 2
Percy Dearmer on the earliest church service manuscripts
Percy Dearmer’s interpretation of St Paul on prophecy and tongues
Percy Dearmer on elements of worship in the New Testament
Percy Dearmer: how several prayer books became one liturgical book
Percy Dearmer on Reformation, royalty and the Book of Common Prayer
Percy Dearmer: first Anglican Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’ for a violent era
Percy Dearmer on the effect of Edward VI’s reign on the Church of England
Percy Dearmer on the Second Prayer Book’s Calvinistic bent
In Chapter 8, Dearmer explains the Elizabethan — the Third — Prayer Book used in the Anglican Church.
Elizabeth I succeeded her half-sister Mary on November 17th, 1558. After Mary’s Catholic rule and the return to the Sarum Missal, Protestants were eager to use the Second Prayer Book once more.
However, Elizabeth and a small party of Anglicans wanted certain contentious elements of the Second Prayer Book removed. The result was the Third Prayer Book, introduced in April 1559, under the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity. Oddly, there was no convocation of the Anglican Church, although nine bishops in the House of Lords (as Lords Spiritual) voted against it. Yet, this new, Elizabethan Prayer Book was soon in use throughout the land.
Dearmer rightly laments that those compiling the new book did not revisit the First Prayer Book instead of the Second. That said:
considering what had happened in Mary’s reign, the wonder is that the Queen in her wisdom was able to counteract the extremists as much as she did. England had indeed reason to be grateful to Elizabeth, in this as in other matters.
Dearmer tells us that what was revised did, in some measure, hark back to the First Prayer Book:
- Morning and Evening Prayer were returned to the choir area near the altar, rather than wherever clergy deemed appropriate;
- The Ornaments Rubric brought back the old, elaborate vestments, taken away in the Second Prayer Book;
- The ancient words of administration (e.g. ‘The Body of our Lord …’) were restored for Holy Communion;
- The petition for deliverance ‘from the tyranny of the bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities’ disappeared from the Litany;
- The Black Rubric, which denied Real Presence in Communion, was removed.
New to the Third Prayer Book were the Prayer for the Queen as well as the Prayer for the Clergy and People.
Also new was that the Third Prayer Book was published in Latin in 1560. This edition was for use at universities, where Latin was common parlance, and in places where a language other than English (e.g. Gaelic) was spoken.
There is a web page with text from the Parker Society about the Latin Prayer Book (credit for the image at left), which has more detail, including this (emphases mine):
The Book produced was purportedly a translation of the 1559 Book, but in fact differed from it in a number of ways, mostly fairly minor. Most of the changes introduced were copied from a Latin translation of the 1549 Book, some were from older Latin missals, and some were original compositions. It is not certain whether these changes were intentional, or the result of carelessness – but likely the former. The effect of these changes tended to make the Latin Book more conservative, i. e., more like the 1549 Book or the Latin missals, and less “Protestant”. For example, reservation of the sacrament was made more explicit in the Communion service connected with the Visitation of the Sick, and in one printing Communion was provided for use at burials.
Other changes occurred, affecting Anglican worship and belief:
- Feast days for ‘black-letter saints’ (those outside the major group, e.g. the Apostles) were added to the Church calendar, their commemoration optional;
- The introduction of Additional Services, most of which are for special occasions;
- The Forty-Two Articles of Religion were reduced to Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which hold to this day.
Dearmer presents us with a timeline of events:
1558. November. Accession of Elizabeth.
1559. April. Third Prayer Book and Third Act
of Uniformity.
1560. First of many Additional Services issued.
1561. The Kalendar revised.
Day’s “Partial Psalter,” the Old Version (Sternhold and Hopkins), with some additional hymns, and the Queen’s interim licence for private use.
1562. The Thirty Nine Articles.
The Pope withdraws his adherents from the Church services, and thus begins the schism. between England and Rome.
Day’s “Complete Psalter,” the Old Version as above, in almost its final form, with the Queen’s seven years licence for private use.
1566. The Advertisements enforce a minimum of decency.
1566. The Old Version, as above, printed by Day with the Queen’s licence, and “allowed to be sung of the people, in Churches, before and after Morning and Evening prayer: as also before and after the Sermon, and moreover in private houses.”
1571. Second Book of Homilies.
Of course, not every Anglican clergyman was happy with this turn of events. The nation was not far removed from the violent era that made the First Prayer Book ‘too fair-minded’. Puritan clergy, who wanted the Anglican Church to embrace Calvinism, pressed for another revision in that direction. Some refused to use the Third Prayer Book.
More about their objections next time.
Churchmouse Campanologist 