Anglo-Catholicism, Theological Labels, and the Caroline Divines (Part 2)

This is part two in the series, Anglo-Catholicism, Theological Labels, and the Caroline Divines. Click here for part one.

It may be argued that the Anglo-Catholic movement hasn’t preserved the theology or the ethos of the Caroline divines, and therefore there needs to be a revival of Old High-churchmanship or Classical Anglicanism. I agree that the ethos and the principles of the Caroline divines need to be revived in the modern Anglican context, although I think that generally this can be done within the Anglo-Catholic movement and party. It is clear that within the Anglo-Catholic movement, there has always been diversity of opinion, from the time of the Tractarians to the early 20th century. There have been some who have firmly stuck to the Anglican patrimony and heritage and some who have been sympathetic to Rome.

The Romanising party within the Oxford Movement largely converted with Newman or after the Gorham controversy, although some remained, and in the subsequent movement of Ritualism, many saw a “semi-Romanising” party, with some explicit Romanisers. It is true that there has been a Romanising segment of Anglo-Catholics since the Oxford Movement, although this isn’t inherent to the movement. An interesting case can be seen in William Palmer, who was initially involved with the Tractarians but became less fond of the movement due to certain perceived Romanising tendencies, as well as Pusey’s toleration of the “semi-Romanising” Ritualists. Palmer represents very much the conservative part of the broader 19th-century Catholic Revival, yet even he eventually admits in the 1880s that the Ritualist movement, in hindsight, wasn’t as damaging as he initially thought. He says: “I should myself have often been in favour of a sterner and more direct policy towards all who shared in semi-Romanizing and Ritualistic opinions, and whom Pusey conciliated; but my own opinions were proved to be faulty by the result; for by mild methods the Church has been saved from further disruption, and retains all the energies which a different mode of proceeding might have lost. And I also see that in proportion as time has proceeded, extreme and indefensible opinions have been gradually eliminated; that the Church has reaped the benefit of all which have been left; and that the truth has been gradually finding its level and assuming the ascendency,—in a word that the true principles of the Church of England have been more carefully studied, and more generally adopted; so that, in the long-run, the hope which I originally entertained that truth would eventually find its level in England has been happily verified to a great degree.”¹ Palmer also says that the greatest work against Roman Catholicism in the 19th century was by the Ritualist Richard Frederick Littledale.² Although the Ritualists may have been quite extreme in some cases, they didn’t damage the Anglican church overall with their implementation of Catholic ritual; in fact I would argue they revived a necessary part of Church life which needed to be revived since the Laudian movement.

I cannot speak well of the Ritualist influence entirely, as I believe it also has contributed to certain dispositions in Anglo-Catholics to be careless with how they approach the Anglican patrimony and liturgy. Regarding liturgy, it seems that initially many of the Ritualists and their followers ignored (I do not believe it was necessarily deliberate) the English traditions of the Book of Common Prayer, the 1603 Canons, the Ornament’s Rubric, and the custom of the Caroline divines, in favour of Roman ceremonial and usages. E.G.P. Wyatt argues in his tract, English or Roman Use?: “When the Church Revival started on its way in the last century, our own English traditions as to the conduct of Divine Worship and Ceremonial had been to a large extent forgotten. When it was desired to carry out the directions of the Prayer Book more exactly, and still more, when it was found necessary to supplement them owing to their giving insufficient guidance, it was thought that the easiest way to ascertain the pre-Reformation customs of the English Church was to imitate what was done in the Roman Church of the present day, as it was assumed that they must be, more or less, identical. The habit of consulting the custom of the Roman Church seems to have grown, and to have resulted, in many cases, not merely in supplementing the directions of the Prayer Book where necessary, but in adopting the Roman customs as a whole, and adapting the Prayer Book services to them as far as possible, in some cases directly overriding the rubrics in the Prayer Book.”³ I find that this was a weakness in the approach of some within the Ritualist and Anglo-Catholic movement. Yet, it isn’t grounds for rejecting the Anglo-Catholic movement or the developments of the Catholic Revival entirely. There were proponents of the English Use and Prayer-book Catholicism who advocated that the authoritative traditions and customs of the English Church were to be used with the Book of Common Prayer, and most of the ceremonial advancements of the Ritualist movement could be retained insofar as it accords with the Ornament’s Rubric. I will not delve extensively into this topic here, although there are multiple works that I suggest for those who are interested in this topic.⁴ The ultimate point this example aimed to illustrate is that within the Anglo-Catholic movement, you had those who advocated for following Roman custom and those who advocated for following Anglican custom. It could be argued that the English Use was an instance of reviving the principles of Caroline divinity against certain excesses in the Ritualist or Anglo-Catholic party, even though the English Use itself was an Anglo-Catholic movement.

Theologically, the Anglo-Catholic movement has advanced in certain instances away from the Caroline divines and from the Tractarians. A common example may be an unequivocal belief in transubstantiation, or a full acceptance of the Council of Trent. In such cases, it is necessary to revive the principles of the Caroline divines and the Tractarians to ensure that there is a solid foundation to stand on, as Anglo-Catholicism without the Caroline divines cannot stand. For Anglo-Catholicism to continue, it must embrace the stream of divinity that it originally aimed to preserve. Haddan argues “that if (as it seems) the only way of even hoping to bring about a reunion with other Churches be to revive in our own Church a living belief in her own Divine office and powers, in the reality of her Sacraments, in the Divine authority of her Creeds, in the authority and right office of her ministers, then the surest method of defeating such a result is the revival in her of errors long since rejected, and of practices deliberately laid aside. To be simply like Rome will not satisfy Rome, even could it be right to be like her where she is wrong. And to identify in men's minds the cause of Church authority and of dogmatic belief with Rome as she is, can only disgust and alienate intelligent and honest minds from the truth itself. In this present age they who will preserve faith must needs keep faith unburdened by accretions of error, and free to fight her battle with all the advantages of a good cause and of sound reason. We have held our position now for three centuries. And though it is not the position any Church would choose (for it is a position of isolation, although involuntarily so), yet it is not to be surrendered unadvisedly, or without any other changes in those who have isolated us than such as aggravate the unhappy facts that compelled isolation. And certainly, on the abstract merits of the controversy, reasons have yet to be produced sufficient to set aside the teaching of the old, and manly, and massive school of our great English divines.”⁵ I find that this quote excellently summarises the state of things. For the revival of the sacramental life of the Church in Anglicanism to continue, we must also be wary of adopting error from Rome unnecessarily. Muddying the purity that Anglo-Catholicism provides at its best in order to become more like Rome is counteractive. Rome will not accept an Anglican that is Roman in every way but isn’t in formal communion with the Pope. Unfortunately, as Haddan says, the approach of the Caroline divines may be a “position of isolation,” yet it is the only way to achieve the Catholic purity that the English Church has always sought.

The Romanising approach also unnecessarily causes more confusion in understanding Anglican identity, which is a major crisis in the current day. One of the possible causes of this modern confusion may stem from the idea that the Anglican formularies aren’t binding on Anglicans today. Some Anglo-Catholics argue that these formularies should be seen primarily as historical documents that illustrate what the English Church believed for only a time in her existence, and therefore modern Anglicans are free to dissent from them. Ultimately, this approach is not necessary as the Anglican patrimony has a strong Catholic interpretation of the formularies, and therefore, there is no need to ultimately reject them, although I may understand why some Anglo-Catholics feel the inclination to do so. It must then be emphasised that Rome is not more “Catholic” than our divines, yet this doesn’t preclude certain grievances that a true devoted son of the Anglican church may have with his own church. Archbishop Laud was very much distressed with the state of the Church of England throughout his life, and the Genevan spirit that had taken parts of the church captive needed to be rooted out. He was eventually martyred for his efforts, yet he always remained loyal to the English Church, as he said in his final speech: “I was born and baptized in the bosom of the Church of England, as it stands yet established by law; in that profession I have ever since lived, and in that profession of the Protestant religion here established I come now to die.”⁶

A figure that represents this approach of Anglo-Catholicism well is Vernon Staley, whose theological manual The Catholic Religion is arguably the most popular Anglo-Catholic theological manual that has been published. His approach was rather moderate but still firmly Anglo-Catholic. He was an advocate for the English Use and had a strong reverence for the Book of Common Prayer and the Caroline divines, and therefore represented the via media in its true and authentic form. Staley may not have been perfect in all of his theology, yet he shows that the Anglo-Catholic movement of the late 19th to early 20th century still had a strong contingent that remained loyal and firm in their Anglican identity. Therefore, I find it reasonable to conclude that through the likes of Staley, the stream of Caroline divinity continued and has continued down to the present day, and it wouldn’t be wise to ignore these great divines that have handed down this faith to us, though they may be relatively modern.

The Anglo-Catholic movement initially was a conservative movement that merely referred to the idea that one believed the Church of England had a valid claim as a true Catholic Church. The Caroline divines, therefore, were Anglo-Catholics. In the 19th century, Anglo-Catholicism initially entailed a recognition of the Church of England’s formularies and theologians as authoritative and Catholic. It required a devotion to the teaching of the Caroline divines as the standard exposition of Anglican faith and practice, which was being revived in the great Catholic Revival of the 19th century. The Anglo-Catholic party was a rather moderate party in hindsight, and although there has been a Romanising contingent in it since the Oxford Movement that has evolved and advanced over time, there is also the most glorious expression of the Christian faith found in that part of the movement which has remained loyal to its own patrimony and tradition.

1. William Palmer, A Narrative of Events Connected with the Publication of the Tracts for the Times (London: Rivingtons, 1883), 241.

2. Ibid., 291.

3. Edward Gerald Penfold Wyatt, English or Roman Use? (London: A.W. Mowbray & Co., 1913), 2.

4. Recommended works: 1) English or Roman Use?, by E.G.P. Wyatt. 2) The Ceremonial of the English Church, by Vernon Staley. 3) A Directory of Ceremonial, by the Alcuin Club. 4) The Ornaments of the Rubric, by J. T. Micklethwaite.

5. Arthur West Haddan, “English Divines of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in The Church and the Age: Essays on the Principles and Present Position of the Anglican Church, ed. Archibald Weir and William Dalrymple Maclagan (John Murray, 1870), 259.

6. “Documents of the Anglican Church.—No. I.,” The Churchman: A Magazine in Defence of the Church and the Constitution, 1842.