Lee Gatiss: The 350th Anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

http://leegatiss.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/the-book-of-common-prayer/

The Book of Common Prayer

This month sees the 350th anniversary of the official adoption of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662.

 

 

 

Last year we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. This year the history buffs and antiquarians are in joyful mood because it is the 350th anniversary of that famously Anglican date — 1662.

 

In these days of spiritual ignorance in the country and doctrinal laxity in the church, many Anglicans look back to former times with a certain degree of wistfulness.

 

Declining electoral rolls speak of a nation less focused on the things of God than seems to have been the case in centuries gone by when our ancient and airy church buildings must, we imagine, have pulsated with activity and vibrancy.

 

In a period of liturgical diversity and confusion, other Anglicans feel the disappearance of a uniform standard of worship across the denomination to be an incalculable injury, particularly as it permits both a lack of gravity in church services and the propagation (often) of dubious theology.

 

In an era of polarisation in ecclesiastical politics, with pressure groups and ‘turbulent priests’ disturbing the peace of the Church, the search for authoritative leadership to impose order on a fractious, wayward communion is an understandable desire.

 

One date lingers in the collective Anglican memory as suggestive of a golden era: 1662. Weren’t churches full in the seventeenth century? Didn’t the Prayer Book, hallowed by over a century of sacred use, ensure unity and uniformity in the public meetings of every English parish, with a reverent dignity and stylistic polish often wanting in modern expressions of church?

1662 is an emblem of the liturgical good old days.

 

Reformers

 

The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) was not actually invented in 1662. The first such book in English was edited by Archbishop Cranmer in 1549, under good king Edward VI.

 

It was quickly revised again and re-issued in an even more Protestant and Reformed version in 1552. So this year is the 460th anniversary of that second Edwardian prayer book too.

 

Playing a key role in the composition of that book was the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli. As Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Vermigli had a huge influence over Cranmer and Ridley and other English reformers, and was a great link between the English and Continental Reformations.

 

Vermigli, incidentally, died in 1562. So this year is also the 450th anniversary of this great man going to glory.

 

What Cranmer and Vermigli did with the Prayer Book was concentrate Reformed Protestant theology into a useable liturgical form. So that, from then on, every day in every parish, and every Sunday morning and evening, the English people (and soon the peoples of their far flung empire) began to pray in a new way.

 

The new Prayer Book was in English, ‘understanded of the people’, as the 39 Articles put it, not the Latin of the medieval Mass. It took the best of Augustinian medieval piety, translated it, and fed it into the spiritual diet of the English people, strengthened by the renewed emphases of the Reformers on salvation by grace alone, through faith alone.

 

Not only that, but the Prayer Book prescribed a healthy and robust diet of Bible reading and preaching for every church. If one follows all the set readings laid down in the BCP, one gets through the Bible once a year and the Psalms every month.

 

True worship

 

This exceeded the expectations of every other Church, whether in Rome, Wittenberg, or Geneva. So the Anglican Church had, from this moment, an emphasis on Bible reading and preaching par excellence.

 

This in turn shows us what the authentic Anglican understanding of church is. It is not, as so many would like to make it, merely a religious social club where we gather each week to celebrate ‘community’ — though community is important, and the corporate nature of the church in prayers and responses trumps our more modern individualism and performance mentality.

 

Church is not all about ‘me and my felt needs’ being met by a distant God, who comes down to give me a particular experience. Vermigli once complained of church services that ‘everything is so noisy with chanting and piping that there is no time left for preaching. So it happens that people depart from church full of music and harmony, yet they are fasting and starving for heavenly doctrine’.

 

So in the classic Anglican understanding of church as seen in the BCP, church is not to be centred on any earthly mediator, whether that is a celebrity pastor, a mediating priest or a worship band leader.

 

In 1662, church was about gathering to hear God speak through his Word, confessing our sins and our faith, and responding to the Spirit, in prayer for each other and for the world.

 

Lord’s Supper

 

The Reformers Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer all died as martyrs because they refused to submit to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass.

 

So-called transubstantiation — the changing of the substance of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper into the body and blood of Christ himself — was the great dividing issue of that era. Our Reformers refused to believe this, to teach this, or to countenance the superstitious practices that had grown up around it.

 

Why? Because they did not find such a doctrine in the Scriptures that they were now reading afresh. And in every case, it was this very thing which led to these martyrs’ execution. They literally went to the stake and were burned for their view of the Lord’s Supper.

 

But what did they put in the place of the Mass? What was it that they taught Anglicans to pray and to remember as they gather around the Lord’s Table?

 

They taught that the Supper is a divine instrument of assurance. There we confess ‘our manifold sins and wickedness’ to God. Then we are assured by the words of Scripture itself, that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ and that ‘he is the propitiation for our sins’.

 

Grace

 

We come to the table (not, notice, an altar), ‘not trusting in our own righteousness, but in God’s manifold and great mercies’. We come with nothing in our hands to receive God’s mercy. It’s all about God doing something, not us.

 

The movement of the action in the BCP liturgy is from God to us — God in his grace reaching down to us in our sinfulness. We simply take and eat, in remembrance of what Jesus has done. Read theologically, the 1662 service shows us that, although we are more wicked than we ever thought, we are also more loved by a merciful God than we ever dreamed.

 

The result is that, pastorally speaking, our consciences are assured of God’s love towards us in Christ, even when we’ve been most searingly honest about our shortcomings and failures.

 

We praise God that, ‘by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his Passion’.

 

1662 makes it very clear that what is going on at the Lord’s Table is not a sacrifice on an altar made by a mediating priest on behalf of the people, which has to be repeated again and again each week to be effective.

 

Finished work

 

That was the wrong message you got from the Mass. In the Mass something is offered to God. What the BCP says, however, is that Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice on the cross for us was utterly, completely and totally sufficient to pay for our sins. No additional sacrifices are necessary:

 

‘Almighty God, our heavenly Father, which of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption, who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world…’

 

All the language of us making a sacrifice is kept until after we’ve eaten. Only then do we pray that God would accept from us (to use the language of Hebrews 13) a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

So after we’ve fed on Christ in our hearts by faith, we offer and present to God not the bread and wine but ourselves (to use the language of Romans 12), as a holy and lively (or living) sacrifice.

 

There is of course more we could say about the BCP as it was definitively ordered in 1662. It was almost the same as Cranmer’s book, with surprisingly few alterations considering all that happened in the interim.

 

One thing that was specifically added in 1662 was a service for the baptism of adults or ‘those of riper years’, who may not have been baptised as infants during the confusions of the tumultuous Civil War period.

 

But, generally speaking, the book and liturgy remained unchanged: the same elegant expression of the profoundly liberating gospel. That is something to give thanks for in this 350th anniversary year.

 

This is an article I wrote for the Evangelical Times, Britain’s leading non-denominational evangelical Christian newspaper (published earlier this month). It is reprinted here with their permission.

Lee Gatiss: The Great Ejection of the Puritans

http://leegatiss.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/the-great-ejection-of-the-puritans/

The Great Ejection of the Puritans

Today is the 350th anniversary of the Great Ejection of the Puritans from the Church of England.

 

1662 may have been a significant year for the Book of Common Prayer. It was not, however, a good year for those to whom the gospel and a good conscience were more precious than the institutional church.

We can rejoice, as we think about the triumph of the Prayer Book and its glorious exposition of the Reformed faith in polished liturgical form. But we also need to remember that 1662 was the year that ‘evangelical’ Puritans were excluded from, and then persecuted by, the established Church of England because they could not accept certain aspects of the new religious settlement.

The main problem in 1662 was not with the Prayer Book as such, but with the terms of subscription to it. That is, the issue was what to do with those who in conscience could not agree to everything contained in that book.

Consensus

For a century or more, the Puritans, as they were called, had been calling for further godly reformation of the Church of England.

They were delighted with the Reformation, but they thought the English church ‘but halfly reformed’ compared to many Reformed churches on the Continent. The Elizabethan Settlement had not gone far enough for them in eliminating superstition and Catholicism from the church.

They wanted to push on with further reform, in response to God’s Word in the Bible. Such people were usually able to remain within the Church of England. How? Because there was a theological consensus between the official stance of the national church and these Puritans.

In general terms, they were all agreed on what the Coronation Oath calls ‘the true profession of the gospel … the Protestant Reformed religion’. Historians speak of a ‘Calvinist consensus’ in England, until at least the 1630s. With that general agreement on primary issues of faith and salvation in place, other issues were usually kept in perspective.

Those who did not conform in every detail of clerical vesture or ceremonial and had issues with phrases here and there in the Prayer Book, continued to play an active and prominent role within the Church of England, some of them at the highest levels.

Yet these people had been in charge of the national church during the Commonwealth and Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. They hadn’t all been in favour of chopping Charles I’s head off — many had vigorously protested against it — but they had helped to banish the high church royalist bishops and their prayer book.

Revenge

So when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he brought with him an Anglican episcopal hierarchy thirsting for revenge. They quickly established themselves in the royal court and grabbed hold of the levers of power.

The king wanted peace and toleration, but the bishops were in no mood for compromise. For much of 1661 they pretended to make concessions to the Puritans, but only until they were comfortable enough in their palaces and in Parliament to deal the Puritans a fatal blow.

The tide turned quite quickly. The bishops and their allies now had such strength that there was no longer any question of Puritans attaining a favourable compromise. The issue for the latter had become whether anything could be salvaged from the wreck of their hopes.

Some of our greatest and most internationally famous theologians were from the more evangelical, puritan sections of the church, but the consensus on primary issues was breaking down. And there was less appetite for tolerance on the part of those holding the reins of power.

Without uniformity and theological consensus on what the gospel is, the bishops looked to enforce outward conformity as their way to bring order to chaos. With a more liberal turn in theology at the Restoration, came a more ceremonial, Catholicising style of church.

It was the imposition of this which had helped cause the Civil War in the first place. Most famously, Archbishop Laud, the most prominent and disliked advocate of this anti-Calvinist movement, had been executed on Tower Hill in 1645 to popular applause.

The Puritans could never accept Laudianism. And hitherto had never been forced to, always finding that the Anglican formularies acted as a sufficient guard against the worst excesses of ceremonialism, superstition and persecution.

But now, things were different; the state decided to enforce uniformity across the board.

Act of Uniformity

The Act of Uniformity in 1662 required all ministers not merely to use the set forms of prayer — which may have allowed them some leeway in practice — but to swear an oath they could not in good conscience swear. They had to give ‘unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed’ in the new Book of Common Prayer.

This, lamented Richard Baxter, was ‘a weight more grievous than a thousand ceremonies, added to the old conformity, with grievous penalty’.

Furthermore, all ministers, lecturers, and even schoolteachers, had to declare themselves entirely in favour of this new political correctness; they had to swear an oath never to attempt to change anything in church or state!

They had to declare ‘that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king … that I will conform to the liturgy of the church of England as it is now by law established’ and renounce the oaths of the Solemn League and Covenant, swearing not ‘to endeavour any change or alteration of government either in church or state’.

What’s more, those who had taken the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ oath — that they would work hard to reform the church according to the Bible — had to renounce that oath and declare now that it was an illegal thing to promise in the first place.

All this, they felt they could not do. Why? Because it was saying in effect that the Prayer Book and Church of England were inerrant, whereas they only ever said such things about the unerring Word of God itself.

They did not want to perjure themselves, having made oaths to reform the church in Cromwell’s day; and they could not swear on oath that they agreed with every single word of the liturgy.

Great Ejection

Those with the levers of power in their hands sought to impose a new conformity to the Church of England, to which there could be no legally recognised exceptions whatsoever.

All this was to be enacted on St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662. A significant day, because it was the day that tithes and rents were due, in arrears, to the clergy. So if any clergy did not conform, they did not get paid and were unceremoniously thrown out of their vicarages, often into poverty.
Attempts were made in Parliament and Convocation to water things down — to provide for ejected ministers, perhaps give them more time and soften the terms of conformity. But these votes were all lost by small margins.

The King and the Lord Chancellor claimed to want a more lenient solution. But they were ignored by those voting.

In total, over 1800 ministers — about 20 per cent of the whole clergy — were forced to leave the Church of England in 1662. They were silenced from preaching or teaching by law. They were barred from positions in church or state and forbidden from meeting, even in small groups in their homes.
The penal code against these dissenters was often enforced with unnecessary brutality and malice. They were spied on, taken to court, fined, and sent to plantations in Virginia for hard labour.

Anglican persecutors could now appeal to a formidable legal arsenal which, potentially, made possible a puritan holocaust. Although the worst possibilities were never realised, 1662 began a persecution of Protestants by Protestants without parallel in seventeenth-century Europe. That was the tragedy of 1662.

Remembering 1662 today

There was a ‘Service of Reconciliation’ at Westminster Abbey in February to mark this anniversary, with CofE and URC ministers joining together in an attempt to ‘heal the memories’. But the established church still needs to face some big questions about whether this sort of thing could be repeated.

Will the Church of England again force its own members’ consciences to accept things they see as clearly unbiblical (such as women bishops or homosexuality)? Will it make no exceptions and tolerate no diversity from the current political correctness?

Will the Church of England again become an agent of persecution against Reformed and evangelical Christians? Those who dissent from the prevailing scepticism of the powerful few at the heart of church and government may yet find themselves in an unenviable position, similar to that of Restoration-era Puritans.

The ghosts of 1662 may yet return to haunt the Church of England. Please pray for those attempting to push the denomination back into the great central currents of Christian faith, and away from the dangerous rocks of current fads and baptised worldliness.

This is an article I wrote for the Evangelical Times, Britain’s leading non-denominational evangelical Christian newspaper (published earlier this month). It is reprinted here with their permission, to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Ejection today.

See also my little book The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans.

CANTAUR Williams, 7 Feb 2012: Reconciliation Service Re: 1662 Ejection of 2000 Clerics

Again, we missed this service in terms of the news.   It occurred last month.  In conclusion, the CANTUAR concludes:  "...in taste, catholic; in feeling, evangelical; in expression, scholarly; in doctrine, orthodox."  Given that, shall we have Westminsterian theology with the old Anglican Prayer Book?  Bizarre.

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/worship/sermons/2012/february/address-given-at-a-service-of-reconciliation,-healing-of-memories,-and-mutual-commitment-for-the-church-of-england-and-the-united-reformed-church

 

Worship at the Abbey

Address given at a Service of Reconciliation, Healing of Memories, and Mutual Commitment for the Church of England and the United Reformed Church

07 February 2012 at 6:15 pm

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and Metropolitan

Our Christian faith is something constantly growing, constantly moving towards greater maturity, a greater approximation toward the stature of Christ. And as we grow we need for our maturing, challenges that push us away from infantile faith. History is not short of those challenges. And the history we remember from the seventeenth century in this country abounds in such challenges. It is worth remembering that the events of 1662 marked a political as well as a religious watershed. That moment was the beginning of a new kind of political identity and a new kind of political idealism in this country – not simply the old ‘Puritan’ agenda but a new, focused, self-aware, minority Christian identity, very conscious of precisely this imperative to grow into maturity. In the centuries that followed it was those who followed ‘Old Dissent’ who were very often those most eager to stand for and push us towards a mature faith - yes, but also a mature presence in society.


It was a climate, intellectual and spiritual that produced extraordinary people, extraordinary imaginative writers and thinkers, extraordinary scientists, the world of the Dissenting Academies, the world of Doddridge and Watts, the world in which joy in the things of the mind and the heart helped people move into the space they believed had been cleared for them, the space of being free citizens, even at a time when the state and the established church had, let’s say, not quite caught up with that vision.


Indeed you could say that the vision was almost kidnapped by the Anglican oligarchs of the eighteenth century. 1688 was a moment when, with the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’, the Anglican establishment briefly but very effectively ‘borrowed the clothes’ of Dissent, and for the rest of its history told itself the story that history had been moving smoothly and inexorably towards the eighteenth century, when Anglicanism in its most rationalist and often least imaginative form appeared to be the ideal form of Christian identity in Europe if not the world. But however much we attempted to steal the clothes of Dissent, Dissent went on digging away at foundational questions of political liberty and theological exploration. It was and remained a challenge, a challenge to grow up, a challenge to critical questioning – but more than that, a challenge to reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ and to put behind those things in politics and in the Church which kept people infantile.


It’s not quite the same thing as the Methodist conscience. Methodism, as we know, was a relative latecomer to the world of Dissent in the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest Congregationalist writers of the twentieth century Bernard Lord Manning, in his wonderful book The Hymns of Wesley and Watts speaks of the difference in sensibility between ‘old dissent’, and new Methodism.


‘Let me put it this way. Charles Wesley in his hymns concerns himself mainly (I had almost written exclusively) with God and the soul of man: their manifold relations, their estrangement, their reconciliation, their union. Watts, too, concerns himself with this drama; but he gives it a cosmic background. Not less than Wesley, he finds the cross the centre of his thought: all things look forward or backward to the Incarnation and the Passion. But Watts sees the cross, as Milton had seen it, planted on a globe hung in space, surrounded by the vast distances of the universe. (Hymns of Wesley and Watts, London 1942, p.83)


That wonderful evocation of Isaac Watts’ hymnody reminds us of that—in the most positive sense—enlightened dimension to the world of classical dissent – seeing the great events of Christian history and revelation against the background of the universe, and yet in no way reducing Christian identity and Christian exploration to the dry rationalism of the Enlightenment. Indeed it’s during the eighteenth century that the thought world of Dissent in England and Wales—at least as represented in its most enduringly powerful hymn writers—moves more and more away from the temptations of Unitarianism, of a reductive approach to thought and prayer, rediscovering and deepening all the time its roots in the classical and essential doctrines of Christianity.


And I turn again for illumination to Manning. Manning is writing specifically about Congregationalism – and I have to say writing in a fairly aggressively Congregationalist rhetoric about the inadequacy of all other forms of reformed Christianity! But speaking of one of the great classical Congregationalist hymn books, he says: ‘It reflects purely and clearly that mind which we should like to think is the Congregational mind: in taste, catholic; in feeling, evangelical; in expression, scholarly; in doctrine, orthodox.’ (op cit, p.110)


That splendid evocation of the heart of a classical, reformed Christian identity in this country tells us a great deal about the manifold gifts of God given to the life of church and nation here by the Reformed tradition, unified so blessedly forty years ago.


But that characterisation by Manning could apply to so much that the world of reformed British theology has given us in the last century or so. Think of the great scholars and writers of the English reformed tradition; John Oman, H H Farmer, C H Dodd, John Whale and, of course, the great Bernard Lord Manning himself. All of them explorers not of a ‘mere Christianity’ in a narrow and impoverished sense, but all of them building on a very deep foundation of Christian essentials: the incarnation and the passion (as Manning says) seen located on a globe viewed against eternity; the wondrous cross in the midst of the whole world of nature.


And it’s that cosmic vision, that positive enlightenment shot through with incarnational and passional faith, that binds itself to and shows itself in the constant commitment to political freedoms and political maturity which is no less a precious part of the legacy of this tradition.


Well, in spite of these centuries of questioning from Dissent you will have noticed that episcopacy, not to say monarchy, are still in place. Westminster Abbey has not changed as much since the seventeenth century as some might have liked! But episcopacy and monarchy have been changed forever by the questioning presence of English dissent, chastened by history and theology. Whatever the bishop or the monarch might be today, they cannot be what they were in the seventeenth century. They cannot be the tools of infantilising faith or political identity.


Because of the questioning gently but relentlessly pressed by our brothers and sisters in the Reformed tradition, we’ve had to discover how both episcopacy and monarchy, and many other features of the seventeenth century settlement, have to change and grow in order to serve maturity not to frustrate it.

And there is the challenge for all our churches and all our institutions – a challenge (dare I say it) as much to the United Reformed Church as to the Church of England; a challenge as much to the Society of Friends as to the Roman Catholic Church. How do our Christian institutions serve maturity rather than frustrating it? How do they build us up towards the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ? To look back with questioning and with gratitude at our history is to see what we must be prepared for if we really want to see our institutions serve that maturity.


We have to take a deep breath and expect to be challenged by one another. We have to assume that our discoveries will sometimes be painful and that they will not be without rupture and misunderstanding. But we have to trust that the irresistible pressure – and I use the word ‘irresistible’ in deliberate genuflection toward John Calvin here – within us of Christ seeking to be mature in us. That is what we celebrate in and through any number of conflicts ruptures and tensions. Can we as Anglicans bring what we have to bring to the ecumenical table without any empty hierarchical posturing? Can we even seek to persuade our Reformed brothers and sisters that it is possible to value tradition without being shrunk and infantilised by it?


Well, we have hope. We have grounds for confidence that the maturity of Christ is indeed at work in us. That dynamic towards the maturity of Christ brought together in the United Reformed Church different families of the Reformed tradition. That dynamic is still at work today and it is what we are praying for here tonight and what we are seeking to open ourselves to in the name of our common Lord and in the confidence of the Spirit poured out for us all to drink.


We began this evening by listening to some words of Richard Baxter, who wrote in one of his best-known and best-loved hymns: ‘He wants not friends that hath thy love’. Baxter, who reminded us that in friendship with God we learn the essence of how to be friends with one another, and the imperative of being friends with one another: Baxter who so loved George Herbert - something which I feel says a great deal for both of them.


Because it does seem that an Anglicanism deeply informed and shaped by George Herbert, and a Reformed identity deeply informed and shaped by Richard Baxter, could hardly be a more attractive proposition for our future. A friendly church, a church in which our shared friendship with God bound us more deeply together, in which our shared friendship enabled us to grow into maturity into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, something which allowed us to grow into a church together. It reflects purely and clearly that mind ‘which we should like to think is the Congregational mind:


May it be so; Amen.

7 Feb 2012: Reconciliation Service at Westminster Abbey for 2000 Ejected Clerics in 1662

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/press/news/news/2012/february/church-of-england-and-united-reformed-church-together-for-significant-service

08 Feb 2012

A Service of Reconciliation, Healing of Memories and Mutual Commitment for the Church of England and the United Reformed Church was held at Westminster Abbey on Tuesday 7th February 2012 at 6.15 pm.

The service marked the 40th anniversary of the inauguration of the United Reformed Church and the 350th anniversary of the ‘Great Ejection’ when Church of England clergy who could not accept the 1662 Act of Uniformity left their ministries.

The service was conducted by the Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, who said in his Bidding: ‘We bring into this moment what has preoccupied us today, in our Christian discipleship and our work, and in our engagement with God’s world. We also bring memories of the past. We bring glad memories of the service here forty years ago that brought Presbyterian and Congregational Churches into unity as the United Reformed Church. We bring sad memories of the deep pain and tragic division of our Nation in the seventeenth century, and especially of the events of the Great Ejection 350 years ago.’

He was joined by Ms Val Morrison, Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church who read from Isaiah 35.

The Address was given by The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and Metropolitan.

The Act of Penitence was led by The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, Primate of England and Metropolitan; and The Reverend Dr Kirsty Thorpe, Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church.

Geoffrey Streatfeild read from The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter (1615-91) and The Reverend Dr Michael Jagessar, Moderator-Elect of the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church read from A Farwell Sermon by John Oldfield (c1626-82) a Presbyterian ejected from his living in Carsington, Derbyshire.

The Venerable George Howe, Chaplain and Chief of Staff to the Bishop of Carlisle and Diocesan Director of Ordinands, read An Historical Testimony in the words of The Right Reverend Brian Duppa (1588-1662) Bishop of Salisbury (1641-60) and Bishop of Winchester (1660-62). Mrs Margaret Swinson, Vice-Chair of the Church of England Council for Christian Unity, read Ephesians 4: 1-16. The Reverend Dr David Cornick, General Secretary of Churches Together in England, read St John 17: 20-23
Testimonies were given by The Reverend Keith Hitchman, Pioneer Minister for River in the City, Diocese of Liverpool; The Reverend Timothy Meadows, Liverpool City Centre United Reformed Church; and The Reverend Ruth Whitehead, Minister, Whittlesford and Pampisford Local Ecumenical Partnership and Duxford United Reformed Church.

The Act of Recommitment was led by The Right Reverend James Newcome, Bishop of Carlisle; The Reverend Elizabeth Welch, Co-Chair, United Reform Church/Church of England Study Group; The Venerable Joy Tetley, Co-Chair, United Reformed Church/Church of England Study Group; and The Reverend Roberta Rominger, General Secretary, the United Reformed Church.

The service was sung by the Choir of Westminster Abbey conducted by the Organist and Master of the Choristers, James O’Donnell. The organ was played by Robert Quinney, Sub-Organist. The organ was played before the service by Andrej Kouznetsov, Organ Scholar.

See also:

The Order of Service (PDF, 659 KB)
The Archbishop's Address