Scripture, Preaching and Reformation Anglican Worship

BLESSED lord, which hast caused all holy Scriptures to bee written for our learnyng; graunte us that we maye in suche wise heare them, read, marke, learne, and inwardly digeste them; that by pacience, and coumfort of thy holy woorde, we may embrace, and ever holde fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast geven us in our saviour Jesus Christe.

                                                                   Book of Common Prayer, 1549

In his masterful book The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, Diarmaid MacCulloch writes:

…they [the reformers] insisted that the text should be available to all: it was the only road to faith in Christ, which was the only means of salvation. This central message of scripture must be explained constantly to humankind, now poised starkly and without the benefit of purgatory between heaven and hell, and the chief medium for doing it must be the sermon. The devotional world which they sought to construct was thus dramatically simpler than the rich and untidy fabric of medieval Catholicism, and at its centre, in place of the sequence of actions and formal texts which made up the mass, was the apprehension of a set of ideas by the Christian believer, fortified by constant access to the Bible in reading or in sermons. The emphasis had shifted from object and actions to words.[1]

It remains to be seen how, given this shift in the doctrine of Scripture, Cranmer and the other English evangelicals constructed this ‘devotional world’ in the corporate worship of the Church of England. Given that the Word of God, and not rites of the church, nor holy objects, is held to be God’s means to bring people to a saving repentance and faith, how would that shape the pattern and content of the new liturgy? What other innovations would be promoted in the service of this new theology? Four policies in particular were pursued. First, Cranmer offered the English people a feast of Scripture in the English tongue in his Book of Common Prayer, such that the Scriptures could scarcely be avoided. Second, the translation and distribution of the Bible into English went from being a cloak and dagger activity to be a government policy. Third, the architecture of churches was altered to ensure both the clear reading of Scripture and the prominence of preaching. And fourth: Cranmer and later reformers actively promoted and funded preaching and the education of preachers. This collection of policies was designed to ensure that whatever else one might say about Anglican worship thereafter, one would have to take note of the central place that the ministry of the Word, read and preached, had in it.

a)    Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer. An obviously prominent feature of the Book of Common Prayer published first in 1549 is the place it gives to the regular reading of the vernacular scriptures. It has been shown many times in the vast literature on the creation of the Book of Common Prayer that Cranmer used an array of pre-existing materials to compile his book, including the old Sarum rite. But what was strikingly new about the Book of Common Prayer was that it was in English – a clear intention thereby being signaled to the congregations of the land that they were actually being addressed in the new services.

In his preface to the 1549 book, Cranmer wrote:

And moreover, whereas s. Paule would have suche language spoken to the people in the churche, as they mighte understande and have profite by hearyng the same; the service in this Churche of England (these many yeares) hath been read in Latin to the people, whiche they understoode not; so that they have heard with theyr eares onely; and their hartes, spirite, and minde, have not been edified thereby.

The new, English words of the BCP would penetrate into the very souls of the hearers, via the portal of the ears. Without bare cognition at the very least, edification is impossible, clearly. The necessity for verbal intelligibility is paramount.

The introduction of a lectionary of set readings to go with the book was, as Cranmer explained, a revival of the practice of the ancient fathers. But something of the evangelical doctrine of Scripture was indicated by it, too:

here is drawen out a Kalendar…whiche is plaine and easy to be understanded, wherin (so muche as maie be) the readyng of holy scripture is so set furthe, that all thynges shall bee doen in ordre, without breakyng one piece therof from another.

That is: Cranmer’s endeavour was to present Scripture to the people entire, with as little selectivity and editing as possible, so that they would be able to hear the Bible as a whole, and so that they would be able to see how inter-connected the Bible is. Scripture, thereby, would be able to interpret Scripture. Cranmer ensured that the New Testament would be read through three times annually, and the Old Testament once – with a special place for the Psalms, which would be read through every month.

As Hughes Oliphant Old writes:

In England the reshaping of the lectionary found in the Book of Common Prayer was a genuine reformation of the ministry of the Word.[2]

The new prayer book with its lectionary was a deliberate inculcation of the Scriptures understood to be God’s instrument for the salvation of men and women. During the Elizabeth period, Richard Hooker would write:

The end of the Word of God is to save, and therefore we term it the word of life.  The way for all men to be saved is by the knowledge of that truth which the word hath taught .  .  .  .  To this end the word of God no otherwise serveth than only in the nature of a doctrinal instrument.  It saveth because it maketh "wise to salvation.[3] 

Two practical considerations were also relevant. In the first place, Cranmer could not guarantee that in many, or even most, parishes there would be an educated clergyman who could make informed decisions about the public reading of Scripture. Second, it would not be until the 1560s that English Bibles became freely available to the general public for their own private reading. The liturgy would have to be chief source of faith-formation.[4]

b)    The translation of the Bible into the vernacular for reading in church. The humanists and the evangelicals shared the deep desire to see the Scriptures translated into the vernacular languages of Europe – since they both believed that the intellect was not to be bypassed in the binding of a person to God. The translation of the Bible into English had been given its impetus by the remarkable and courageous work of William Tyndale, who was martyred by the henchmen of Henry VIII for his pains in 1535. Nevertheless, it was Tyndale’s work that was the basis of the first complete official English Bible, the Great Bible, which was guided to production by Myles Coverdale in 1538. The ‘Great’ Bible (sometimes also called the ‘Chained’ Bible) was so-called because of its great size and because it was frequently chained in place to prevent its theft. It was clearly a Bible designed for reading in the context of the liturgy. 

 At the same time, as Cranmer’s Preface to the second edition of the Great Bible makes clear, he envisaged the English Bible playing a central role in the individual spirituality of the English people, in the home and at labour as much as in church services. He there adopted his theme from a sermon by John Chrysostom:

Therefore saith he there, My common usage is to give you warning before what matter I intend after to entreat upon, that you yourselves in the mean days may take the book in hand, read, weigh, and perceive the sum and effect of the matter, and mark what hath been declared and what remaineth yet to be declared, so that thereby your mind may be the more furnished to hear the rest that shall be said. And that I exhort you (saith he) and ever have and will exhort you, that you not only here in the Church give ear to that that is said by the preacher, but that also when ye be at home in your houses, ye apply yourselves from time to time to the reading of holy scriptures.

The subsequent history of the English Bible is a fascinating tussle between the individual and the public reader. Cranmer is clear in his preface that while all people should have access to the Scriptures in their own language, and should be encouraged to meditate upon them constantly, not all readers are likewise skilled, competent and authoritative. In this way, he hoped to establish a line of authority – based on reasonableness - between the church’s Bible reading practices and the individual believer’s Bible reading. The publication of the cheap and popular Geneva Bible in 1560 – before any revision of the Great Bible could be made – took the reading of the Bible in English out of the hands of the authorities. Despite the publication of the Bishop’s Bible in 1568, it was not until the 1660s that the Bible that an English man or woman heard read in church was the same as the Bible that he or she read at home.[5]

c)    A new design for church buildings and furniture. Having a comprehensive programme of Bible reading at the centre of the Church of England’s worship might, however, be seen to be enough. Was there any need to add an to this emphasis on preaching? And certainly: if the laity could now read the Bible, was there any reason for keeping a separate, pulpiteering elite? We have already seen how the Reformation doctrine of the Word of God required not simply the reading of the Word but the preaching of the Word. It was, however, the case that the new liturgy did not find as prominent a place for preaching as had been seen in continental services. Indeed, by the time of Richard Hooker, a reaction against sermons was underway, with Hooker – who held the Cranmerian view that the Scripture was the divine instrument for a saving knowledge of the Truth - arguing against the Puritans that ‘Sermons are not the only preaching which doth save souls’.[6]

   

    It certainly crossed the minds of some that the elaborate pulpits of the English churches should disappear as reflective of the trappings of popery. With characteristic vigour, Latimer argued that the sermon could be delivered from any place at all, even from the back of a horse.[7] But this view did not prevail: as we have already noted, in line with their Continental colleagues, the evangelical reformers of England were not prepared to let go of the notion of a magisterial rank of believers whose better-educated opinions – while not infallible – were of more weight than others. As Wabuda puts it: ‘preaching still required a measure of inspiration that even the most careful readers lacked’.[8] 

The interior design of English churches came to reflect this teaching. The point was to make hearing, and not seeing, the main activity. The pulpit, once associated with the high altar, was now moved into the body of the church where it could be more readily seen and the words coming from it more clearly heard. The preacher was elevated above the people; sometimes far above the people. There was introduced into many churches a clear hierarchy of platforms. The reading desk was the place from which the clerk read the psalms. Higher than this was the place from which the prayers were recited by the minister. But higher still was the pulpit for preaching. Indeed, these were in some instances combined into a single ‘three-decker’ pulpit. It was a gesture that clearly communicated the presence and necessity of preaching, even when Scripture was to be read.[9]

English churches from the Reformation until the nineteenth century were designed chiefly as auditoria. The practice of reading Scripture aloud and of preaching sermons necessitated this design, which held sway until the gothic revival – itself a product of a particular (and very different) theology of worship.

d)    The promotion of preaching and preachers. We have noted already that the evangelical reformers saw preaching as the chief role of the ministry to which all others were subordinated. From the beginnings of the English Reformation on, Archbishop Cranmer had been aware of the need to promote effective evangelical preachers and to make provision for the training of a knowledgeable priesthood. Cranmer licensed preachers in a number of dioceses, and nominated men for particular parishes in the hope that they would gain a more regional influence through their preaching.

The need was as obvious as it was obvious as it was pressing, all throughout the sixteenth century. As Diarmaid MacCulloch writes:

For the first Reformers and for most of their Elizabethan successors, the ideal was for every church in the land to have provision for a sermon at all major acts of worship, and this demanded a huge redirection of effort within the ministry.[10]

Though there were some short-term solutions, such as the ordination of older men, the long-term strategy pursued in the Elizabethan era was to improve the quality of the clergy – the requirements for ordination were made more stringent, for example. By raising the age at which one could be made a deacon to 23 years, the time in which a man could undertake proper education prior to ordination was expanded. As MacCulloch notes, by the 1620s recruitment of clergy was almost entirely from university graduates.[11]

 

During the Elizabeth era tensions did, however, develop between the Puritan party, for whom a new weekly sermon was a non-negotiable, and the leaders of the church such as Archbishop Whitgift, for whom cathecizing rather than the liturgical act of preaching was the priority. In order to make space for preaching, the unofficial sponsorship of ‘lectureships’ sprang up, especially in market towns: local preachers-without-parishes. While this was not to the taste of many diocesan hierarchies, and certainly was the focus of serious conflict in the seventeenth century, there were cases in which this system of lectureships supplemented parish ministry quite successfully.[12]

 

These four strategies for implementing the Reformation theology of the Word in the worship of the chruch illustrate just how deep the change of theological understanding ran in the minds of the evangelical reformers. Worship was not, as they saw it, the human endeavour to please a distant deity. It was instead a response to a God who speaks; and the Word which the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit speaks is a Word which is a declaration of his great offer of grace and mercy towards sinners in Christ, who can thus approach him in humble confidence.

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[1] Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 4-5.

[2] Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, 7 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich. ; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 149.

[3] Richard Hooker, Izaak Walton, and Oxford University Press, The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, : Containing Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and Several Other Treatises; with an Index to the Whole. To Which Is Prefixed the Life of the Author by Isaac Walton, A new edition.. ed., 3 vols. (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press.), p. 85.

[4] Old, p. 159.

[5] For more on the Geneva Bible and its readers, see my piece on the Geneva Bible: Michael P. Jensen, ""Simply" Reading the Geneva Bible : The Geneva Bible and Its Readers," Literature and Theology 9, no. 1 (1995).

[6] Hooker, Walton, and Oxford University Press, p. 76.

[7] Wabuda, p. 105.

[8] Ibid., p. 106.

[9] James F. White, "Prayer Book Architecture," in The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer : A Worldwide Survey, ed. Charles C. Hefling and Cynthia L. Shattuck(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 108-9.

[10] MacCulloch, p. 96.

[11] Ibid., p. 98.

[12] Ibid., p. 100.