A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The 55th canon of the Convocation of 1603, is as follows: “Before all sermons, lectures, and homilies, the preachers and ministers shall move the people to join with them in prayer, in this form, or to this effect, as briefly as conveniently they may: ‘Ye shall pray for Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, that is, for the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world, and especially for the Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland. And herein I require you most especially to pray for the king’s most excellent Majesty, our sovereign Lord James, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, and supreme governor in these his realms, and all other his dominions and countries, over all persons, in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal. Ye shall also pray for our gracious Queen Anne, the noble Prince Henry, and the rest of the king and queen’s royal issue. Ye shall also pray for the ministers of God’s holy word and sacraments, as well archbishops and bishops, as other pastors and curates. Ye shall also pray for the king’s most honourable council, and for all the nobility and magistrates of this realm, that all and every of these in their several callings may serve truly and faithfully, to the glory of God, and the edifying and well-governing of His people, remembering the account that they must make. Also ye shall pray for the whole commons of this realm, that they may live in the true faith and fear of God, in humble obedience to the king, and brotherly charity one to another. Finally, let us praise God for all those which are departed out of this life in the faith of Christ, and pray unto God that we may have grace to direct our lives after their good example, that, this life ended, we may be made partakers with them of the glorious resurrection in the life everlasting,’ always concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.”

The special pleading of some Presbyterians and their advocates, renders it necessary to observe, that the Church of Scotland alluded to, is not the present Presbyterian establishment.

The assertion made by the adversaries of the Church of England is this, that the 55th canon bids us pray for the Church of Scotland, and must have recognised “that Church under a Presbyterian form as it now is, because none other, at that time, existed.”

Now we may commence our observations by remarking upon the extreme improbability of the alleged fact, that those who passed the 55th canon should contemplate in the Bidding Prayer, the Presbyterian community of Scotland, and regard it as a sister to the Churches of England and Ireland.

The leading members of the Convocation were, Andrewes, Overall, and King, eminent men, and of most decided views on Church government. Can the student of ecclesiastical history refrain from smiling when he is told that a Convocation of the English clergy, headed by these divines, who had already given a character to the age in which they lived, intended to place the “Holy Kirk,” as the Presbyterians styled their denomination, on the same footing as the Churches of England and Ireland?

The president of the Convocation was Bancroft. Dr. Sumner has taught us how immense are the powers which the president of a Convocation possesses, and how unscrupulously those powers can be used to silence the Convocation, if it be suspected that the majority of the members differ in opinion from the president. Bishop Bancroft was certainly not more likely to be tolerant of opposition than our present primate, and what Bancroft’s opinion of Presbyterianism was, is stated in a sermon which he published. Of “the Holy Kirk,” as the Presbyterians called themselves, Bancroft said that “they perverted the meaning of the Scriptures for the maintenance of false doctrine, heresy, and schism,” and he likens that “Holy Kirk” to “the devil’s chapel in the churchyard in which Christ hath erected his Church.” We consider Bancroft’s language as unjustifiably violent; but such being his language, it is monstrous to suppose that he intended to place that Kirk, in his estimation so unholy, on the same footing as the Churches of England and Ireland, or that he would not have discontinued the Convocation, if he had suspected that it would recognise that Kirk as a sister Church.

The king who gave his consent to the canons, and who, in giving his consent, acted, not as a sovereign in these days, on the advice of his ministers, but on his own authority, was James I. And King James’s opinion on Presbyterianism was sufficiently decided, and by this time well known:

“That bishops ought to be in the Church, I have ever maintained as an apostolic institution, and so the ordinance of God; contrary to the Puritans, and likewise to Bellarmine, who denies that bishops have their jurisdiction immediately from God. (But it is no wonder he takes the Puritans’ side, since Jesuits are nothing but Puritanpapists.) And as I ever maintained the state of bishops and the ecclesiastical hierarchy for order’ sake, so was I ever an enemy to the confused anarchy or parity of the Puritans, as well appeareth in my Basilicon Doron. Heaven is governed by order, and all the good angels there; nay, hell itself could not subsist without some order; and the very devils are divided into legions, and have their chieftains: how can any society then upon earth exist without order and degrees? And therefore I cannot enough wonder with what brazen face this Answerer could say, that I was a Puritan in Scotland and an enemy to Protestants: I that was persecuted by Puritans there, not from my birth only, but ever since four months before my birth? I that, in the year of God 1584, erected bishops, and depressed all their popular parity, I then being not eighteen years of age? I that in my said book to my son do speak ten times more bitterly of them nor of the Papists; having in my second edition thereof affixed a long apologetic preface, only in odium Puritanorum? I that, for the space of six years before my coming into England, laboured nothing so much as to depress their parity and reerect bishops again? Nay, if the daily commentaries of my life and actions in Scotland were written, (as Julius Cæsar’s were,) there would scarcely a month pass in all my life, since my entering into the 13th year of my age, wherein some accident or other would not convince the cardinal of a lie in this point. And surely I give a fair commendation to the Puritans in that place of my book, where I affirm that I have found greater honesty with the Highland and Border thieves than with that sort of people.”—Premonition to the Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, p. 44.

Now is it credible that a monarch, despotic in his disposition, and peculiarly despotic in what related to the Church; in an age when the supremacy was asserted and exercised with as much of inconsiderate tyranny as the most determined liberal of the present age could wish or recommend,—is it credible that a despotic sovereign, holding these opinions, would give his sanction to a canon which would raise the system he dreaded and abhorred to a parity with the Church of England and Ireland?

Certainly the advocates of Presbyterianism must be prepared to believe things very incredible to men of reasoning minds, if they can believe this to be probable.