By Bishops Rent Asunder - Part II

One thing that comes across in reading White's 'Case' is that he maintains the moderate, 18th century, view of Episcopacy, and his thoughts can be summarized under three heads:

1. Bishops were of Apostolic Institution and had developed late in the New Testament period.
2. They were fundamental to a properly ordered church, but in an emergency ordination by Presbyters could be tolerated.
3. He defined their role more in terms of 'supervising presbyters' than 'successors of the Apostles.'

White's views were not quite as Latitudinarian as some others in what might be described as the Low Church party because he goes half way to meeting High Church claims, and does not treat the Episcopate as a civil institution. He treats it rather as an ancient institution which the Church of England and her daughters had received from the first century of the Church's history. It is also quite clear that he does not envision American bishops as being 'Lord bishops' in the English sense. His job description for them is more in the order of a supervising presbyter who keeps and eye on the clergy in his district, ordains, and chairs the local Convention. White, as a son of the colonial Church, does not attach much importance to confirmation. His own practice seems to have changed over his almost fifty years as Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania. In the early days, he seems to have confirmed such as came to him for the purpose, and later in his career he did make a tour of Western Pennsylvania, but there is little record of his going out of his way to travel the diocese confirming. This is partly because, like most early bishops, he had a day-job - in his case, being the rector of the joint Parishes of Philadelphia.

The High Church party in the late 18th century did not have the same obsessiveness about bishops that would develop under the Tractarians. George Prettyman-Tomline (1750-1827) who served successively as Bishop of Lincoln, then of Winchester, agreed with White that bishops were of Apostolic origin, and were fundamental to a well-ordered Church, but he put more emphasis on the fact that between the first and the end of the third century, the Canons of the Church increasingly placed the bishop at the centre of the ministerial system. Yet for all that, Tomline does not automatically regard foreign orders as invalid, but rather irregular or incomplete. This notion of Episcopacy carried over into the nineteenth century among the Old High Churchmen, and it was a factor behind their support of the Anglo-Prussia Jerusalem Bishopric. However, as the nineteenth century progressed, extravagant claims on the part of episcopacy were increasingly made by Tractarians, and their Ritualist successors, whilst Evangelicals tended to start talking about the parity of ministers, and that Episcopacy was a purely human institution with dark rumblings that it did not originate in New Testament times. As usual, the High got higher, the Low got lower, and they both made themselves ridiculous in the process!

New Testament Evidence
It has to be said that no complete picture of the Church's ministry appears from the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles starts with the Apostles as the only ministers of the Church in the first few chapters. Then the seven, later described as deacons, are added in Acts 6: 1 - 6. Later in Acts (14:23), Paul and Barnabas are recorded as having 'ordained them elders in every church,' which, when couple to various references to 'elders' [presbyters] and 'deacons' in the Epistles, suggests that a local ministry of deacons and elders, under the supervision of the Apostles had become normative by the mid-40s AD. On occasion, the New Testament text refers to overseers [bishops] but the context demands that on most occasions we accept this as a synonym for presbyter. However, by the 60sAD it is evident that the ministries of presbyter and bishop are beginning to divide as the Church passes into a second and third generation of existence. Paul seems to set his seal of approval on this process in his letters to Timothy and Titus, but I think it is almost as big a mistake to claim that Episcopacy is 'de jure divino' as it is Presbyterianism, or congregationalism, as no modern form of Church government is precisely that of the New Testament, nor, realistically, can it be, as, to fall back on a point made in the Thirty-nine Articles,

"It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word."

Tomline's "Elements of Christian Theology" [Volume II, pp. 371 - 405] whilst commentating on the Twenty-Third Article devotes a good deal of time and space to this historical development of the Episcopate as a distinct office - basically between 60AD and 130AD - and its acquisition of an exclusive right to ordain which had occured by the late-200s, at least a generation before the Council of Nicaea. He also gives some attention to local adaptions of episcopacy, but, given the state of historical science c.1800, these are not extensive, however it is quite clear that he understood that there had been a process of historical development.

Unfortunately, the development of Episcopacy in the United States since the 1840s has tended to ignore the cautious approach adopted by Anglicans from the 16th to the early 19th century. Tractarians did not hesitate to make exclusivist claims that unchurched anyone who did not live under an Episcopal system. They took with an unusual degree of literalness Ignatius of Antioch's comment, 'where the bishop is, there is the Church' and in the process began to accumulate many of the trapping of the mediaeval episcopate which earlier generations of Episcopalians had ignored. However, in terms of 'dress sense' the theatrical version of the Episcopate remained confined to the Midwestern Biretta Belt until well into the 20th century, and it is only post-WW2, as the process of the Episcopal Church becoming 'high, wide, and theologically half-an-inch deep' was well underway that anything other than rochet and chimere was seen on the majority of bishops. This caution was well-advised in the American context where there is still a lingering suspicion of monarchy and mediaevalism. However, behind the scenes a subtle shift had occurred in the balance of power between bishops, standing committees, and diocesan conventions.

[Next - Part 3 - The Balance of Power]

By Bishops Rent Asunder... Part I - The Conventions of the Church

A line from a paraody of 'The Church's One Foundation' which I sometimes think describes the dilemma facing Continuing Anglicanism in the early 1980s as it worked out the implications of both separating from the Episcopal Church, and of the Affirmation of St Louis. The United Episcopal Church of North America, of which I have been the Presiding Bishop for almost fifteen years, was an early departure from the Anglican Catholic Church mainly because of tensions over the Affirmation, Churchmanship, and the new Constitution and Canons. By contrast to most other Continuing Anglican bodies, the UECNA, whilst acknowledging the historical value of the Affirmation as a diagnostic of the problems of PECUSA in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, relies on the older formularies - the Prayer Book, Articles, and Homilies - to form it theology and practice. This gives us a certain freedom that other Continuing Churches do not have to explore the character of Anglicanism in America

One of the things that I have become intrigued by recently is the position of Episcopacy in the Protestant Episcopal Church during its formative stages from 1782 to 1789. White's Case of "The Episcopal Churches in the United States of America Considered" and the early General Convention Journals see this being worked out in real time. What is very clear about White is that he is a definite Episcopalian who values the institution, but in the emergency situation that existed 1782-87, he could see his way clear to preserve the substance of episcopacy without insisting on the historic succession. It is also clear from White's writings that he saw authority in the American Church as being of the bottom-up variety, noting that in America parishes existed but no dioceses, for example,

"In England, dioceses having been formed before parishes, a church supposes one common flock, subject to a bishop and sundry collegiate presbyters; without the idea of its being necessarily divided into smaller communities connected with their respective parochial clergy; the latter having been introduced some considerable time after the conversion of the nation to the christian faith. One natural consequence of this distinction, will be to retain in each church every power that need not be delegated for the good of the whole. Another, will be an equality of the churches; and not, as in England, the subjection of all parish churches to their respective cathedrals."

This led him to advance the following structure for the Church:

Vestries send their clergy and elected lay delegates to a local convention. White's language in 'The Case' does not delineate these as being State Conventions, but,

"In each smaller district, there should be elected a general vestry or convention, consisting of a convenient number (the minister to be one) from the vestry or congregation of each church, or of every two or more churches, according to their respective ability of supporting a minister. They should elect a clergyman their permanent president; who, in conjunction with other clergymen to be also appointed by the body, may exercise such powers as are purely spiritual, particularly that of admitting to the ministry; the presiding clergyman, and others to be liable to be deprived for just causes, by a fair process, and under reasonable laws; meetings to be held as often as occasion may require."

Three or more of these district conventions were to be gathered together into a regional body which,

"The assemblies in the three larger districts may consist of a convenient number of members, sent from each of the smaller districts severally within their bounds, equally composed of clergy and laity, and voted for by those orders promiscuously; the presiding clergyman to be always one, and these bodies to meet once in every year."

This middle tier of Synodical Government did not in the final scheme approved in 1789, and even the modern provinces of TEC do not have a representative Convention in the way intended here. This middle tier of government may have been provided for in the Constitution of the PEC in the Confederates States where it states there shall be 'diocesan, provincial, and general Councils' but at the time this was written (1862) it was an aspiration for the future not a present reality.

Lastly came the General Convention, which seems to have been intended to have only limited powers given the principle of retain authority at the lowest practicable level ennunciated earlier in the document, and reiterated here,

"The continental representative body may consist of a convenient number from each of the larger districts, formed equally of clergy and laity, and among the clergy, formed equally of presiding ministers and others; to meet statedly once in three years. The use of this and the preceding representative bodies is to make such regulations, and receive appeals in such matters only, as shall be judged necessary for their continuing one religious communion."

Taken as a whole, the document conceives of a fully representative form of Church Government, presided over by elected Presidents who will in the end become the bishops of the newly independent Church. Also, in its bottom-up approach to power, it is close in its principles to the Federal Constitution that was drawn up at the same time. However, White's proposal was modified before it became law, as it were. In the various versions of the Constitution that appeared between 1785 and 1789 the following levels of government were instituted,

1. Parishes elected lay representatives and sent their clergy to a State Convention. This body elected one of the clergy as president. There would be two houses - clergy and laity.
2. Each State Convention elected four clergy and four laity to sit in the General Convention, and this body elected one of the clergy to be its President. Likewise there would be two houses, and the concurrance of both is neccessary for legislation and resolutions to pass.

As bishops became a reality, the Constitution was amended so that bishops sat and voted with the clergy, and that one of the Bishops presided. This scheme was adopted by the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873/4 in an attempt to calm the rising clericalism of the late 1800s, whilst in the PECUSA it was quickly modified to accommodate the concerns of the New England delegates who were to join the Convention during the second session of 1789. These were lead by Samuel Seabury, who had definite opinions about the role of bishops that were somewhat higher than those of White and a majority of the delegates from the Middle and Southern States. In order to mollify Seabury, the second 1789 version of the Constitution is modified to allow for the creation of a separate House of Bishops,

"The Bishops of this church, when there shall be three or more, shall, whenever general conventions are held, form a house of revision, and when any proposed act shall have passed in the general convention, the same shall be transmitted to the house of revision, for their concurrence. And if the same shall-be sent back to the Convention, with the negative or non-concurrence of the house of revision, it shall be again considered in the General Convention, and if the Convention shall adhere to the said act, by a majority of three-fifths of their body, it shall become a law to all intents and purposes, notwithstanding the non-concurrence of the house of revision; and all acts of the Convention shall be authenticated by both houses. And in all cases, the house of Bishops shall signify to the Convention their approbation or disapprobation, the latter with their reasons in writing, within two days after the proposed act shall have been reported to them for concurrence, and in failure thereof it shall have the operation of a law."

As can be seen, even with the influence of Seabury, the amount of independent power conceded to the bishops was extremely limited, and to all intents and purposes maintained the division of powers so beloved of 18th century American political thinkers.

[Next - Part II - The Episcopal Office]

A Republican Episcopate

An Anglican or rather Episcopalian Episcopate was not established in the American Colonies until the 1780s, and much of the theoretical basis was worked out by the Rev. William White of Philadelphia (1748-1836) who was Rector of the United Parishes there. A supporter of the Patriot Cause, he had served as chaplain to the continental congress at one point, and when hostilities ceased in 1781, he turned his mind to preserving what was left of the Church of England in the newly independent Colonies.

He drew attention to the matter by writing a pamphlet, “The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered” which argued for the continuation of the Episcopal Church in the former colonies and provided an outline scheme for its governance. Later, he joined with others in calling for a General Convention in association with the annual meeting of the Widows and Orphans Fund to discuss the constitutional arrangements for the reorganized Church. The Revolutionary War had left the Church reduced in numbers, with about a third of her ministers having left for Canada or England, and it incurred considerable enmity on basis of it being the Established Church of the former colonial power. If it were not to disappear, swift action was needed, and the first of a series of General Conventions met in 1785 to hash out the discipline and worship of the new Church.

To revert to White’s ‘Case.’ The work makes interesting reading in that he has no qualms about adapting the institutions of the Church to suit the American experience. For example, White recognizes the historical priority of parishes over dioceses in North America, by contrast to the Mother Country were dioceses predated parishes. This caused him to write,

“One natural consequence of this distinction will be to retain in each church (parish – PDR) every power that need not be delegated for the good of the whole. Another, will be an equality of the churches; and not, as in England, the subjection of all parish churches to their respective cathedrals.”

This priority of parish over diocese also suggests that the property of the Church belongs in the first instance with the Parish and its Vestry, and that the fundamental unit of Church administration is the parish, rather than the diocese.

Having established the basics, White then elaborates proposing a three-tier system of government with District, State, and Continental Conventions which is oddly reminiscent of Ussher’s proposals of 1641. At the lowest level, White suggests that each parish, or union of parishes, send equal numbers of lay and clerical representatives to a district convention. The presiding officer of this Convention was to be a minister elected permanently to the post. They in turn were to send equal numbers of lay and clerical representatives to State Conventions, again with a minister as president, to take order for the Church within each State or Commonwealth, or possibly several states together. Finally, these middle level Conventions would send delegates to the Continental Convention which would legislate on those matters in which it is necessary for the Church to have uniformity across the Continent. White, being a good son of the Revolution, conceives that only such matters as cannot be handled at the local, or lower levels, be delegated to the middle- and upper-tier Conventions.

White’s scheme is nowhere near fully worked out, but the barebones of the Protestant Episcopal Church’s constitution can be seen in germ in what the future Bishop proposes. His vision of Church government is very much bottom-up, rather than top-down, and in this is echoes the general sentiments of the newly born Republic with regards to its governmental institutions. When it comes to Bishops, White disposes of many of the common American objections quite briefly,

“In the minds of some, the idea of the episcopacy will be connected with that of immoderate power; to which it may be answered, that power becomes dangerous, not from the precedency of one man, but from his being independent. Had Rome been governed by a presbytery instead of a bishop; and had that presbytery been invested with the independent riches and dominion of the Papal See; it is easy to conceive, of their acquiring as much power over the Christian world, as was ever known in a Gregory or a Paul.

Then of too hard and fast a connection between kings and bishops, he writes,

“It may be further objected, that episcopacy is anti-republican; and therefore, opposed to those ideas which all good citizens ought to promote, for securing the peace and happiness of the community. But this supposed relation between episcopacy and monarchy arises from confounding English episcopacy with the subject at large. In the early ages of the church, it was customary to debate and determine in a general concourse of all Christians in the
same city; among whom the bishop was no more than president.”

He appeals to the history of the Church before the Constantinian Compromise. He also makes short work of objections to the title of bishop suggesting that if such a name be found offensive president, superintendent, or overseer be used instead.

The most radical part of the scheme was what he proposed to do if the historical succession could not be secured. Citing Hooker, Ussher, Burnet, and Hoadly on the admissibility of presbyterial ordinations in emergency, White proposes what is in effect an Episcopate without the historic succession to allow church government to continue in good order. Whether these presiding offices of the Convention would have ordained until such time as the Historic Episcopate can be secured is left unclear. Something similar occurred some 80 years later in the Free Church of England where Benjamin Price exercised oversight as “bishop” without having been consecrated. White concludes that, in the emergency then existing,

“All the obligations of conformity to the divine ordinances, all the arguments which prove the connexion between public worship and the morals of a people, combine to urge the adopting some speedy measures, to provide for the public ministry in these churches; if such as have been above recommended should be adopted, and the episcopal succession afterwards obtained, any supposed imperfections of the intermediate ordinations might, if it were judged proper, be supplied without acknowledging their nullity, by a conditional ordination resembling that of conditional baptism in the liturgy; the above was an expedient proposed by Archbishop Tillotson, Bishops Patrick, Stillingfleet, and others, at the revolution, and had been actually practised in Ireland by Archbishop Bramhall. [Nicholson’s “Defence of the church of England,” Introduction.]”

White’s scheme is practical and pragmatic, and as providence would grant, the English bishops stirred themselves and secured an Act of Parliament allowing them to consecrate bishops without exacting the oaths to the Crown. As a result, White and Provost were consecrated to be Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania and New York respective, and James Madison (of Augusta Co.) was consecrated as Bishop of Virginia in 1790. The General Convention accepted Samuel Seabury’s Scottish Consecration in 1789 allowing a unified, Episcopal Church to emerge, albeit one without the Methodists. White’s view of the episcopate was decidedly republican – they were elected presiding officers with limited clearly defined power, not imperial prelates. Their material needs were to be provided for by their remaining in the parishes which they already held, and conducted such Episcopal business as came their way alongside their parochial duties.

Over the next few years, a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing occurred in which the Constitution of the General Convention was worked out. Until the 1789 Convention, it was going to be a unicameral body in which the clergy voted as one house, and the laity as the second. The president of the General Convention was to be a Presiding Bishop, and there was no Episcopal veto. To accommodate Seabury, the General Convention of 1789 agreed to the creation of a House of Bishop when three of more were present, and gave them a veto, which could be overturned by a four-fifths vote of the Delegates.

What White proposes is a distinctively American or Republican episcopate shorn of the trappings of the English Establishment focussing solely on its spiritual functions. White clearly sees the bishop of a given area as being the minister of one of the larger parish churches, elected by the lay and clerical members of the local Convention. The bishop presides over that body and other organs of the Church and with performs with the necessary administrative functions of Church whilst retaining his traditional rights to confirm and ordain. This is not a ‘high mitre’ Episcopate, but one focussed on the well-being of the Church as it seeks to re-establish itself in the young Republic.

Evangelicalism in the PECUSA

I think it would give a lot of American Anglicans a bad attack of the vapours if you told them that there was once a very influential Evangelical Movement in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Certainly, given that history tends to be written by the victors, its contribution to the life of the Church has been all but air-brushed out by the Anglo-Catholic, and Broad Church historians that have produced the standard works on the history of the Episcopal Church. Curiously, apart from the early chapters of Allen Guelzo's "For the Union of Evangelical Christendom" and Diana Hochstedt Butler's "Standing Against the Whirlwind" (OUP 1995), the subject has not been much studied, so much of what I have to say here is gleanings from either 19th century publications, such as "The Life of Alfred Lee, 1st Bishop of Delaware," or from books which focus on wider Evangelicalism.

Traditional church historians tend to date the start of the Evangelical Revival in the Episcopal Church to 1811 which saw both the consecration of Alexander Viets Griswold (1766-1843) as Bishop of the Eastern Diocese - a grab bag of New England States unable to support their own bishop - and the ordination of William Meade (1789-1862) to the diaconate. This is more of a matter of convenience than anything else, as there had been Evangelicals in previous generations starting with the Great Awakening of the 1740s and 50s. Perhaps the best known of these are Isaac Milnor, who had originally been a Methodist, but was ordained by Bishop White in 1789, and Richard Channing Moore (1762-1841), who was originally a doctor, but was converted in his early twenties and sought ordination in the Episcopal Church, achieving prominence, first as a New York Rector, then as Bishop of the Church in Virginia. Moore's ministry reflected the activist streak in Evangelicalism, as he spent the winters preaching at the Monumental Church, Richmond, and then rode circuit in the summer, confirming, and preaching in courthouses, lent churches, and in abandoned Anglican structures. Assisted by the like of William Meade, and W.H. Wilmer, the PEC in Virginia began to rise from its deathbed. However, Virginia was not the only beneficiary of Evangelical activism. After a spat with the High Church Bishop Hobart of New York, Philander Chase moved to Ohio and organized the Church there, serving as bishop for fifteen year, before resigning and moving on to Michaigan and Illinois. These pioneers saw their function as to found the basic institutions needed to sustain the Church - school, college, and seminary - and as a result Virginia Seminary, and Bexley Hall came into being to support the Evangelical cause in the Mid-Atlantic States and Ohio respectively.

If the 1810 and 1820s were seedtime, then the 1830s were a time of harvest. The consecration of William Meade as Assistant Bishop of Virginia, Charles McIllvaine as Bishop of Ohio, B.B. Smith as Bishop of Kentucky, Leonidas Polk as Bishop of the Southwest, and Stephen Elliott as Bishop of Georgia meant that third of the bishops consecrated in the 1829-41 were Evangelicals, and this trend was to continue through the 1840s, and into the 1850s. Predictably, the Evangelicals concentrated on the four Cs of Evangelicalism - Christ, the Cross, Conversion, and Causes - producing a version of Episcopalianism that accorded well with the sensibilities of the American middle class, and this in turn produced steady, even spectacular growth. However, it wasn't to last, not just because of the rise of Tractarianism, but because there was an incidious threat to Evangelicalism from within the Protestant tradition. Higher Criticism of the Bible.

Higher Criticism had developed in Germany around 1800, and it applied a whole battery of philolgical, historical, and literary techniques to the Bible. However, the dominant note was that of rationalism - a mindset where if it seemed improbable, it was improbable, and had to be either explained or explained away. American Evangelicals who had grown up in a pre-critical bubble were ill-equiped to face this. The usual response was to either accept the German theories about the origins of the Old Testament, and later, the New uncritically, or else to flee to fundamentalism, though Fundamentalism with the capital-F did not develop until the 1920s. The rot set in for the Episcopal Evangelicals in the 1860s when some of the next generation of leaders, such as Phillips Brooks, embraced Higher Criticism, and increasingly, the Social Gospel with the result that the old moderate Calvinism of Evangelical Episcopalianism was slowly eroded. Evangelical-leaning seminaries such as Episcopal Theology School, Bexley Hall, and Philadelphia Divinity School increasingly embrace the liberal stance on the Bible, with only Virginia Seminary lagging behind. The departure of some strong conservatives such as G. D. Cummins and James Latané to the Reformed Episcopal Church in the mid-1870s also did not help, but it was not decisive. Episcopal Evangelicals, assaulted by Tractarianism, Ritualism, Schism, and Higher Criticism, increasingly look like yesterday's news in a religious environment which increasingly valued form over content in line with the consumerism of urbanizing America.

However, Evangelicalism did not die out, though it was increasingly of the liberal sort having affinities with the less confessional sections of Lutheranism accepting, but not really embracing, the insights of Higher Biblical Criticism whilst still preaching Christ, the Cross, and Conversion, and retaining the same old commitment to causes. Perhaps the best known of these 'liberal' Evangelicals in the mid-twentieth century was the Rev. Samuel Shoemaker, whose landmark ministry at Calvary Episcopal Church, New York, has largely been forgotten in favour of his work with Alcohols Anonymous.

Unfortunately, what calls itself "Evangelicalism" in the Anglican/Episcopal Churches in the USA today is not really a linear descendent of the old Evangelicalism, or even of mid-century Liberal Evangelicalism, but rather it is the product of the interaction of Low Church Episcopalianism and the Charismatic Movement in the 1970s and 80s. This makes it 'wobbly' when compared the old Evangelicalism as exemplified by some of the 'conservative woke' elements in the ACNA and elsewhere.

Is Anglicanism Reformed?

The very title of this post will give some folks the vapours, as they have been brought up in the Post-Tractarian World in which, if Anglicanism is seen as Reformed at all, it is with a small 'r' that is immediately followed by the word Catholic. No-one on the Reformed side of Anglicanism would actually disagree with this, but they would define Reformed in more stringent terms than merely knocking a few mediaeval barnacles off the ark of salvation.

The argument that Anglicanism belongs to the Reformed family of Churches starts with the nature of the English Reformation itself. Unlike many of the German principalities, England had a slow reformation - lasting from approximately 1533 to 1604, though the main phase ended in 1571 with the publication of the final version of the Articles of Religion. However, before we run off with the idea that the Articles had fundamentally changed their character, it has to be remembered that the 1563 version of the Articles was also in the Reformed camp, as were the Forty-two Articles of 1553 which preceded them. You would have to go back to the unpublished Thirteen Articles of 1537/8 before you found a Lutheran statement of faith produced by English Churchmen, and even then it is very hesitant, being the product of Thomas Cromwell's pro-German policy in the run-up to the Cleves marriage.

If one looks at the two main confessional documents of the English Reformation, the (39) Articles of Religion, and the Book of Common Prayer, a series of proposition emerges that definitely put the Church of England into that strand of the Augustinian Theological tradition which we call "Protestantism" and furthermore, to put it into the subset known as "Reformed." So let us spend some time looking at these formularies in turn.

The Articles
The 39 Articles have a fairly extensive pre-history in that Cranmer had been working on a confession for the English Church on-and-off since 1536. However, one factor one has to contend with is that Cranmer himself evolved theologically throughout his adult life from a humanist Catholic, to a 'Lutheran' to someone who held a theological position that may be labelled 'Reformed.' The question when looking at statements of faith, sermons, and other documents that come from his pen is 'when?' Cranmer was cautious in his public pronouncements avoiding make controversial statements until he thought he had the full support of those in authority over him. It seems likely that Cranmer moved from the Lutheran to the Reformed camp somewhere before 1545, but as late as 1548, in response to the need for a reformation catechism, he allowed the publication of the Catechism of Justus Jonas, a Lutheran work. However, the 1549 BCP show the influence of Bucer and Melanchthon so that, even though the format is very conservative, the doctrinal passages, such as the exhortations in the Mass, already show the influence of the Rhenish Reformers. Cranmer certainly seems to have openly favoured the Philippist/Reformed camp during Edward VI's reign. With Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer, Fagius, and Jan Laski all active in England together with native Reformed sympathizers such as Nicholas Ridley, John Hooper, Rowland Taylor, Hugh Latimer, Miles Coverdale, and Cranmer himself, the Edwardine Church took on a markedly Reformed hew. This move certain left its mark on the Forty-two Articles of 1553. The 39 Articles of 1563/71 differ little from the 42 Articles of 1552 except for a slight softening of the wording of certain articles, and the removal of certain references which had lost their topicality by 1563. In principle, the Articles of 1563 are best described as being concerned firstly in establish the broad catholicity of the English Church (Articles 1-8); its acceptance of Augustinian theology (Articles 9-18); its Protestant critique of Rome (Articles 19 to 24); its acceptance of the Reformed variant of the Augustinian theology of the Sacraments and Ministry (Articles 25-33); and finally with the particular concerns of the English/Anglican Church in terms of the relationship of Scripture and Tradition, and Church and State (Articles 34-39). In many respects it is the influence of Bucer, Bullinger, and Melanchthon which is strongest, rather than that of Luther or Calvin. I would basically describe the Articles of Religion as being 'moderate Reformed' meaning that have a positive and dynamic understanding of the sacraments, which aims to maintain the positive aspects of sacramental teaching without getting bogged down in scholastic speculation. It is actually in its teaching about the Lord's Supper that the Articles show their moderate Reformed pedigree most clearly in that they affirm the 'Real, Spiritual Presence' or 'Virtualism' of Bucer, Calvin, and Melanchthon, rather than the more subjective views of say Bullinger, or the realist version of Sacramental Union with its dependency on the concepts of communication idiomata, and ubiquity a beloved of Lutheran Orthodoxy, though it is perhaps closer to the latter in intent. In other respects, such as their position on Justification, Election, and the Authority of the Church the Articles walk a line between the Reformed and Lutheran positions in the hopes of building a Protestant Consensus. In most respects, though, the Articles of Religion line up theologically with their Reformed contemporaries, the Belgic Confession, and the Second Helvetian Confession. However, their spirit is alien to the Rationalist theology of the eighteenth century as they require the reader to engage positively with concepts such as Predestination to Life, Baptismal Regeneration, and the Spiritual, Real Presence, which were common in the later sixteenth century, but were nonsense to the Rationalist and Latitudinarians. Modernists find their high view of Scripture difficult to take, whilst Anglo-Catholics find them insufferably Protestant and either try and explain them away (Tract XC), or more honestly, simply apply a razorblade to them.

The Book of Common Prayer
If, theologically, the Church of England was more-or-less at one with the German strain in the Reformed tradition, she showed a good deal of independence in her liturgy. One suspects that the Puritans were correct in their assessment that if Bloody Mary had not come along Cranmer would have made further changes, but God in His providence ordained otherwise, and what the Puritans 'got stuck with' was a modified version of Cranmer's second BCP of 1552 which suited Elizabeth I's purpose of creating a Protestant National Church. Before I get into the details I think we do need to dispose of some myths.

The first of these is that the 1549 BCP still 'catholic' whilst the 1552 is 'protestant.' On the face of it this would seem to be true, but it has to be remembered that the Exhortations were an integral part of the Liturgy as conceived by Cranmer, and therefore the 1549 already contains the 'True Presence' Eucharistic theology which the mature Cranmer had embraced at some point prior to 1549. Cranmer also abolished the Gregorian Canon, the Offertory and the major Elevations which were seen as the underpinnings of Transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass by the Reformers. In a very real sense 1549 is a Protestant liturgy that tries to hide the fact, whilst 1552 makes its Reformed and reforming credentials much more apparent.

In the last 30 years a consensus has emerged that the old story that Elizabeth I would have preferred the 1549 BCP to be reintroduced in 1559 has largely been disposed of. The minor changes in the 1552 were intended to reconcile "Lutherans" and cultural conservatives (to import a modern concept) to the Settlement. Thus the Queen and Council agreed to a temporary retention of Mass vestments and much of the old paraphernalia of worship to reconcile conservative laymen to the Settlement. In the end, Elizabeth was perhaps forced to move faster than she intended, and the net effect of the policy decisions of 1558-1565 was to create the two worship traditions within Anglicanism - the Court tradition which governed worship in the Chapel Royal. the Cathedrals and Collegiate Church, and a more obviously Reformed parish church tradition. These two traditions were to coexist for the next 300 years until major elements of "Cathedral" worship were imported into the Parish Churches in the mid-Victorian period.

The 1552, 1559 and 1662 BCPs both blend Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed elements. Much traditional material was retained for the old service books even though it was often reworked, so for example, the Breviary was abridged and reworked into Morning and Evening Prayer, whilst the traditional Latin Litany was reworked, along the lines of Luther's Litany into the version we have in the BCP today. Cranmer was very often the 'filter' through which continental ideas were incorporated into English practice, and in particular he seems to have drawn on a variety of Lutheran and moderate Reformed texts. Most folks are familiar with the idea that Cranmer and his Committee used the 'Simple and Religious Consultation' drawn up for Archbishop Herman von Weid by Martin Bucer and Philip Melanchthon as one of his major sources for the 1549, and I also believe it is well-known that both Martin Bucer, and Peter Martyr Vermigli offered critiques of the 1549 which did much to guide the 1552 revision. However, Cranmer did not allow his own sense of what was 'proper' to be overwhelmed by his advisors, and at least so far as Morning and Evening Prayer were concerned apart from the addition of a penitential introduction the conservative tone remained. The Baptismal Office received some adjustments such as the omission of chrism and the Chrisom (christening robe) but the most radical changes were to the Communion Service.

The 1549 had preserved much of the old structure of the Mass, the only significant omissions being the Gradual, the Offertory prayers, and the old Canon. This relatively traditional service had had inserted into it the 1548 Order of Communion immediately before the reception of the sacrament. This consisted of an Exhortation, General Confession, Absolution, Comfortable Words, and that masterpiece of Cranmer's, the Prayer of Humble Access. The Order of Communion had contained most of the Reforming material in the 1549 Communion Service, but in 1552 a far more radical approach was taken with Cranmer and his associates taking the traditional material and blending it to produce a new service similar in shape to the sort of Reformed Liturgy that Bucer had produced in Strasburg in the 1530s and early 1540s with features of Bucer's Reformed service, such as the Decalogue, now appearing in the English BCP. I will examine the relationship between the Liturgical work of Cranmer and that of Bucer in a future post, but for the time being I will be content with the following observations.

The Traditional Fore-Mass is considerably rearranged. Instead of the Collect for Purity, Introit, Kyrie and Gloria we now have the Collect for Purity, the Decalogue with an expanded Kyrie as the response to each Commandment. The traditional Collects, Epistles and Gospels are largely retained as they had been in 1549, the Creed and Sermon follow in their accustomed place, and then after the collection of alms, the Prayer for the Church Militant occurs, reflecting both the custom of the Mozarabic Rite, and, closer to hand, the practice of the Reformed Church in Strasburg. On most Sundays the service could conclude at this point with one or more collects and the blessing. As the people were unaccustomed to frequent communion, and the rule was now 'no Mass without Communicants' this meant that weekly celebration of the Eucharist soon became the exception rather than the rule. As a result it became necessary to give warning of when there would be a Communion, and two exhortations are provided for this purpose, one of which originally appeared in 1549.

When the Lord's Supper was celebrated the next item was an exhortation to self-examination and worthy Communion. This fencing of the Table was typical of Reformed practice, though Cranmer's exhortation owes as much to Lutheran sources as to Reformed. Then comes the Invitation and General Confession followed by the Absolution and Comfortable Words. Cranmer makes one of his rare literary slips here reversing Bucer's order by putting the Absolution first. The Preface survives as was common in Lutheranism, as does the Sanctus. Then follows the Prayer of Humble Access which in this position becomes very obviously a prayer for worthy participation in the mystery rather one directed towards worthy reception of the elements. The Eucharistic Prayer then follows, and consists of little more than a brief statement of why the church does this, and the Words of Institution. In 1552 and 1559 there were no manual acts. Communion followed by the Lord's Prayer then follows. The Eucharistic Prayer is completed by either the Prayer of Oblation or the Prayer of Thanksgiving, then the Gloria in Excelsis is said, and lastly the priest dismisses the congregation with a blessing. One thing that is truly notable about Cranmer's Eucharistic rite is that it places communion in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer to further reinforce the idea that it is first and foremost a communion service, and to emphasize that the real presence is not localized in the bread and wine, but is actualized through faithful participation in the mystery. It was actually a bit of a master stroke when the 1549 and 1559 words of administration were combined in 1559, as its balance of realist and symbolist language neatly expresses the Bucerian understanding of the Eucharist that Cranmer had embraced in the 1540s.

It can be seen from this that the principal reason that Anglo-Catholics of all stripes have done their best to either abrogate, or remodel and reinterpret the Eucharistic rite Cranmer left the Church is that its view of the Eucharist falls into the Reformed type. Structurally it shares similarities with the Dutch and German Reformed liturgies which are just too obvious to deny; however, these similarities are obscured by the removal of traditional elements such as the Preface and Sanctus from continental forms.

I have not yet sufficiently researched the Baptismal Office, but my preliminary investigations have shown that the sort of very positive language that one sees in the Prayer Book concerning baptismal regeneration is anything but foreign to mid-16th century Reformed theology. Bucer, Bullinger, Calvin, and Vermigli all had a high view of baptism - perhaps so high as to surprise their 21st century followers if they were to investigate the matter. However, I shall have to leave this aside for a future article.

It may be seen from the above notes that the two main forms we have inherited from the Reformation period, the Articles of Religion, and the Book of Common agree theologically with the German-Swiss and Rhenish Reformed traditions, though they are to some degree at odds with the Scottish tradition. In the main the differences between the late sixteenth century Church of England, and the Reformed Churches of Zurich, Basle, the Rhine Palatinate, etc., were of governance and custom not theology. Therefore, all attempts to "unprotestantize" the Anglican tradition are by definition unhistorical in their basis.

Theological Foundations - The Articles of Religion

The theological foundations of Anglican were long accepted to be the Bible, the Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. To a greater or lesser extent modern Anglicanism, even in some of it relatively conservative manifestations, often bypasses or radically reinterprets several or all of these. As a result Anglicans have become very confused about their identity. The Articles are probably subjected to more revisionist treatment than the other three put together simply because a lot of modern Church-people think they are irrelevant, or have definite reasons for not wishing to accept that Anglicanism ever held the theological position held by framers of the Articles, so perhaps it is time for me to give a page or two to the History of the Articles of Religion (AOR).

The text of the AOR that you have in your 1662 BCP is that of 1571 when the Articles reached their present form. The version used in the USA is a very light revision of the 1571 text made in 1801. This, apart from the omission of Article XXI - Of the Authority of General Councils and the deletion of the Athanasian Creed from the text of Article VIII, do not differ theologically from the Articles of 1571. This suggests that at the very least the leadership of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1801 were prepared to accept the theology of the English Reformation as it was then understood. The years immediately after 1801 saw an upswing in Evangelicalism (the old sort, not what passes for Evangelicalism today) which if anything strengthen the adherence of the Protestant Episcopal Church to the Reformation by creating a party that consciously sought to maintain and propagate Reformed theology. There can be little doubt that for most of the nineteenth century the dominant theology of the Evangelical Party in the PECUSA was that of Old Princeton, and that tradition was carried on well into the twentieth century by the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. Whilst Princeton theology is at some distance from the Reformation - it represents a sort of early nineteenth century redaction of Reformed Scholasticism - it was a good deal nearer the mark than the Latitudinarian theology of the eighteenth century. But what about the Articles in their original context?

It may be stating the blindly obvious but the Articles had a long gestation. The first attempts to write an English Confession of Faith come within a couple of years of Henry VIII's break with Rome with the Wittenberg Articles, the Thirteen Articles leading to the Ten Articles of 1538, which attempt to take a middle road between the Humanist influenced by conservative Catholicism of Henry VIII and the Augsburg Confession, and these Articles probably represent the high water mark of Lutheran influence in England. The Ten Articles lasted less than two years before being replaced by the reactionary Six Articles of 1540, and there matters official rested until after Henry's death in January 1546/7, though the pressure on Protestants eased somewhat after the crisis of 1542/3. After Henry's death Cranmer and his circle produced "some Articles" in late 1547 that were intended to pave the way for reform, but it was not until late 1552 that a full English Confession was produced in the form of the Forty-Five Articles that Cranmer submitted for comment and revision, and which were approved by Parliament in June 1553 by which time their number had been reduced to forty-two. The ink scarcely had time to dry on these before Edward VI died, and the full scale reversion to Catholicism often referred to as the Marian Reaction takes place.

The Articles that were produced in 1552 were very similar to those produced ten years later, though they contain several articles specifically condemning in Anabaptist heresy, which were felt to be unnecessary at the later date. They are organised in the way that had been traditional since the time of Peter Lombard in that they begin with the doctrine of God. Gerald Bray in "The Faith We Confess" divides the Articles into the following sections; the Catholic Articles - 1 to 9; the Protestant Articles 10 to 34; and the Anglican Articles 35 to 39. I would go a little further and divide the Protestant Articles into those which apply to all Protestants - basically 10 to 23; and those which are more specifically Reformed 24 to 34. Not every article fits neatly into its assigned category, for example, all protestants would accept the teaching contained in Article 32 - Of the Marriage of Priests, but at least this scheme gives us pegs on which to hang the structure of the Articles.

The Articles themselves are very largely a product of the interplay between domestic and continental reforming forces. In the end, the teachings of Wycliffe only find a place in the Articles in as far as they reflect the ideas of later Reformers. Wherever possible Cranmer and his colleagues avoided taking sides in the dispute between the followers of Luther and those of Zwingli, Bullinger, and Bucer. For example Article 17 - Of Predestination, uses language that would not have been unacceptable to Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, or Bullinger. When considering the sacraments, the Articles commit themselves to the Swiss camp, but not vehemently so. Bucer's language about a spiritual real presence is there, as is language reminiscent of Bullinger's understanding of the Baptism. On the whole they are conciliatory without loosing sight of the fact that the principle influences with England were committed to Reformed theology, but from whence did they get this reformed theology?

There can be very little doubt that Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Holgate, and the other protestant minded clerics of the 1530s and 1540s were a pretty independently minded bunch. Unlike the Scots who soon traded the Scots Confession of 1560 for the admittedly superior Second Helvetic Confession, the English Church seems to have displayed a certain insularity whilst still being engaged with the European mainstream of Protestant thought. We are told that Cranmer read slowly with a pen in his hand ready to mark any passage that caught his eye, and there is evidence of the same thoroughness in the other Reformers. Yet at the same time as they were engaged in their own studies of the Scriptures and of the early Fathers, they were reading the current Reforming literature, and corresponding with Reformers in Germany and beyond. The reign of Edward VI afforded Cranmer the opportunity to invite a number of these theologians to take shelter in England in the wake of the Schmalkaldic War. Bucer, Fagius, Laski, Occhino, and Vermigli all spent time in England and Fagius and Bucer were doomed not to survive the cold winters of Cambridge. Datheen, the Dutch Reformer also spent one of his periodic exiles in England 1551-53, and a number of lesser lights passed through England in the hopes of gaining patronage and employment during these years.

This all came to an end quite suddenly in July 1553 when Edward VI died of tuberculosis. The botched attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne implicated Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley in treason to a greater or lesser extent, and these architects of the Article of Religion perished in the flames of Mary's persecution of Protestantism. Some of the rising generation of evangelical leaders laid low in England during Mary's reign, such as Matthew Parker and John Whitgift. Others scattered to the Low Countries, Germany, and Switzerland with appreciable numbers settling in Basle, Emden, Frankfurt, Geneva, Strasburg, and Zurich. This enabled the Reform-minded Englishmen, and women, to see the Reformed Church at work at close quarters. The preference for Reformed cities indicates the degree to which by 1553 Lutheran influence had waned in England. Men like Barlow, Coverdale, Cox, Grindal, Sandys, and Whittingham were already familiar with Reformed ideas before their exile, and tended to gravitate towards the cities where these ideas were practiced. Bucer's influence made Strasburg attractive, whilst Bullinger's made Zurich the natural home for others. Geneva attracted a small but vocal exile contingent which included John Knox, Pilkington, and Whittingham. Knox, of course, went back to his native Scotland to provide the moral and intellectual leadership to the Reformation there, whilst Pilkington and Whittington, along with Scory and Coverdale, to some degree provide the link between the exiles and Puritanism.

Bloody Mary died in November 1558 and was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth. Attempts have been made to depict Elizabeth as everything from a closet Catholic to an agnostic, but in as much as she had any strong religious views they were the product of the circle that educated her which included Sir Thomas Cheke and William Grindal (brother of the later Archbishop.) Both Cheke and Grindal were sympathetic to Reformed theology, and indeed, Cheke eulogized Bucer after his death in 1551. Matthew Parker, another member of the Bucer circle at Cambridge, also seems to have had an association with Elizabeth that predates her accession. It would reasonable to assume from her education and associations that she favoured the sort of moderate Reformed settlement that emerged between 1558 and 1571. Elizabeth's choice of Bishops seems to confirm her preference for moderate men. Matthew Parker went reluctantly to Canterbury; Thomas Young to York; Edmund Grindal to London where he was reluctant to discipline the proto-Puritan element among the clergy; Robert Horne to Winchester; and James Pilkington to Durham where he did his best to push Protestant views in an Catholic-leaning environment. Other prominent sees went to men like Richard Coxe, who had led the Prayer Book faction in Frankfurt, and Nicholas Bullingham who seems to have been a reliable upholder of the settlement even though he was a lawyer not a theologian by training.

After re-establish the use of the BCP in 1559, and cleansing churches of much of their remaining Popish imagery from 1560 onwards, official attention then turned to the establishment of a confession of faith. Cranmer and Cheke's 42 Articles of 1553 were the obvious starting point. Of the 42 three were removed as being redundant, and Article 7 re-written with most of the 'donkey work' of revision falling on Matthew Parker and John Jewel. The combination of Parker and Jewel ensured there would be no radical alterations in the Articles. Parker had lain low during the Marian reaction, whilst Jewel had ended up in Zurich. Elizabeth I suppressed Article XXIX as being offensive to Lutherans until 1571 at which point the present English text, albeit without Charles I's somewhat peculiar preface of 1628, became the primary summary of the Church of England's teaching. In theology and outlook they smack more of Bucer's Strasburg, or Bullinger's Zurich than either Wittenberg or Geneva. They avoid speculative points wherever possible, and it is only by close comparison to the First (1536) and Second (1564) Helvetic Confessions, the Belgic Confession (1561), and the Scots Confession (1560) that their moderate Reformed tone can be detected.

The Articles have proved a remarkably enduring document, and have been endlessly interpreted, misinterpreted by way of commentary down the centuries. Although large parts of the Anglican Communion have decided to relegate them to the category of an historical document, some provinces, for example, Nigeria continue to regard them as important in defining the nature of Anglicanism. Although some Continuing Church, such as the ACC have bypassed the Articles of Religion, other continuing Churches such as the United Episcopal Church, and the Reformed Anglican Church continue to see them as significant statements that encompass the basic framework of Anglican theology.

The Old High Church Ethos

Ethos is a word that seems to have been popularized, at least in Church of England circles, by the Rev. John Keble. It refers to that combination of ideas, principles, practices, and precepts that guide an organisation or individual very often as an unspoken or unwritten code which everyone seems to follow, but cannot quite define. Although the word was popularized by a Tractarian, it is without doubt that there was an ethos guiding the Old High Churchmen as well. At its worst, it was not much more than seemliness, at best, it could provide the basis for a very deeply felt religious experience, but not one that wore its heart on its sleeve. Much of this stemmed from where the old High Churchmen were educated, and where they liked to 'hang out.' They were creatures of the older Public School, the Oxbridge College, and the Cathedral Close created an atmosphere where public worship and private devotion were valued, but display was very decidedly not welcome. Even in the country vicarages to which they were preferred after completing their University careers and serving their curacies, they cultivated the same conservative principles with the same reserve and seemliness that had been so much part of their environment growing up. You could almost say that they originated by their way of living the jibe, "Change? We're Anglicans, we don't do change!" The fact that they were Establishment Men was both a blessing and a curse to the Old High Churchmen. The curse side of it was that they were too much associated with Toryism, but in a sense that was a defect of a virtue. The Old School Tories were paternalistic, and at least in theory, believed firmly that the rich a responsibility to the poor, and that every man was bound together in a mutual interdependence in which every man in his station contributed something to the stability and prosperity of the nation. Unfortunate in the 1820s and 1830s this made them look like agent of repression, as the new industrial middle class started to want to claim their share in the government of the country. This dismantling of the Anglican Parliament in 1828/9 followed by the Reform Act of 1832 put High Churchmen rather too publicly in the position of being the opponents of Reform, and this brought down a good deal of hostility on the Church. However, the wisest of them realised that the Church needed to put their house in order before the Whigs did it for them. As a result, a series of Ecclesiastical Commissions led principally by Charles Blomfield, the Bishop of London, piloted through a series of moderate reforms, equalizing the income of the Bishops, making provision to equalize the population of the various dioceses, streamline cathedral chapters, and making arrangements for the augmentation of the income of the poorest parishes, whilst at the same time making it easier for the Bishops to divide overly large parishes, and build new churches. The Tractarians for the most part opposed this sort of common sense reform, not so much because they opposed reform per se, but because the Old High Churchmen chose to do it through Parliament, rather than wait for the creaking machinery of Convocation to be revived and reformed. It took them a while to adjust to the consequences of the Reform Act, and a government that was no long theoretically, as well as practically, Anglican. In the end they compromised with the new realities, sighed for the old certainties, but made sure that the new were as little inconvenient as possible. They also believed that the State was by definition Christian, and in the case of England, Anglican. When it came to their faith, they took it from the Bible, the Prayer Book, and the Articles of Religion, seen through the writings of men like Daniel Waterland, all of which tended to inculcate a rather studious, sturdy, and sacramental Protestantism. That does not mean to say that they were not unaware of the Catholic roots of Anglicanism. Van Mildert was probably the man who made Charles Lloyd aware of how much the Prayer Book owed to the Breviary, and he in turn passed that knowledge on to the Tractarians. Van Mildert also believed that the English Reformation had made the Church of England Protestant in order that it 'might be more fully and properly catholic.' For the Old High Churchman the Reformation was both a rediscovery of Biblical theology - a theology which was supported and illuminated by reference to the Early Fathers, and also a time when the abuses of the Middle Ages were sloughed off. They shared the Latimer and Ridley as heroes with the more Evangelical brethren, but they also revered Laud and Charles I as high principled, if occasionally wrong-headed, martyrs to the cause. The eighteenth century had shorn services of some of the Beauty of Holiness that the Laudians had insisted upon in the 1620s and 30, and their Caroline Successors had revived at the Restoration in 1660. Copes had fallen into disuse except at Westminster Abbey by the late 1760s, and had the occasional use of incense to sweeten church buildings had disappeared by the 1780s, but old customs such as bowing at the Holy Name (in the Creed, at least, if not elsewhere), at the Gloria Patri, and to the Holy Table when entering and leaving the Church still survived widely. High Churchmen tended to cultivate Church Music, though they were often somewhat hampered by the life tenure customarily extended to organists and lay clerks, and they made some early, if ill-advised attempts to put their cathedrals into better repair. They also restored parish churches. Both churches in my home town received considerable attention in first two decades of the 19th century long before the rage for church restoration hit c. 1850, and it is not unusual to see significant work done in the years immediately following the Napoleonic Wars. Where it is hardest to pin down High Churchmen is on the subject of what constituted their personal religion. In one sense the proverbial archetypal Georgian sermon text "To fear God, and to keep His commandments; that is the whole duty of man" would cover the greater part of it. They were brought up as Christians, they believed it was their duty to be Christians, and to that end they worshipped, prayed, and gave alms. They even gave thought to missionary work through SPCK and SPG, and the education of the poor through the National Society. In that respect, their religion had a very practical cast but even this was hidden behind a shield of reserve. They hoped that folks would be led to a more sincere profession of Christianity by quiet example, rather than by preaching, exhortation, and that favourite Evangelical weapon, the tract. Perhaps illustrative of the difference of attitude is the shock of the then Evangelical J. H. Newman at seeing his new friend, the High Churchman, John Keble slip a copy of 'The Whole Duty of Man' into a draw rather than leaving it around to do people good. Although both went on to other things, most famously, the Tracts for the Times, the incident is illustrative of the difference between the Evangelicals and the Old High Churchmen in the 1820s, and also the basically unassuming, and reserved cast of the Old High Church spirituality.