Part Seven. 120. The New Prayer Book. Archbishop Parker by William Paul McClure Kennedy (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1908).
Observations.
1. The Book of Common Prayer was the next difficult task before the Royal House and Parliament.
2. Notably, this was a debate amongst the elites and the ruling classes: these governed the masses, in England as elsewhere.
3. From Bishop Guest, a chaplain to Elizabeth, we learn that there was a "draft version" that went in the direction of the Continental Reformers. We believe that Guest was a Lutheran. We have learned that Miles Coverdale, formerly a Lutheran, was strongly Reformed in the Continental direction.
4. A letter from Sandys to Parker indicates the book had been “gone through” with no resemblances to those in Guest’s letter. Hence, there was a Reformed and Lutheran tension...prima facie.
5. Unfortunately, McClure does not amplify. These are critical details that are needed. We, Lord willing, shall repair to the primary sources of Sandys, Parker, Jewel and others, rather than rely on this 308-page brief. Also, more authoritatively, as a secondary work, John Strype.
6. McClure observes that Parker had been in London earlier in the year and may have had a hand in the “Reformed draft.” McClure calls them “extremists” betraying his long-noted bias, if not his own "extremism." (He uses it for the Continental Reformed and Papists.)
7. The second book of Edward, 1552, was adopted with these changes.
a. The Black Rubric was removed and the denial of “Real Presence” in the Lutheran sense. Popery's view was out of the question, although Feckenham makes a last ditch effort in Parliament to defend Romanism. Although, the XXXIX Articles will both remove the Papist and Lutheran senses. The "Black Rubric," disliked by Lutherans, favoured by the Reformed, would be restored to the BCP of 1662. Tractarians in the 19th and 20th centuries would jettison the whole Reformation context altogether---Lutherans, Reformed, and historic Anglicanism.
b. Ornaments: “...such ornaments of the Church and of the ministers shall be retained and the ministers thereof shall be retained and be in use as was in the Church of England by authority of Parliament in the second year of King Edward VI until other order shall be taken therein by the authority of the Queen’s Majesty under the great seal of England for Ecclesiastical causes or of the metropolitan of the realm.” This appeared in a rubric.
c. Clerics not conforming were to be deprived and imprisoned. Laity not attending church on Sundays and holy days were fined. Hence, a nation goes to Protestant prayers and theology.
d. Imagine such a nation! If there were one on the earth today, we might move there.
To be continued.
Part seven ended.
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