February 2008

Parish History Episode 82 - Doctrinal Drift

In 1549 Bernard Gilpin was an unbeneficed priest, living in London, and was a little over thirty years of age. He had already won a reputation as a fine preacher, and was much in demand, each Sunday preaching sermons in different city churches. Almost certainly he preached somewhere on Whitsunday, the first day on which the new prayer-book was used, and he may also have celebrated the Eucharist according to the new rite. We do not know what he thought of it; though, following his public debate with Peter Martyr, he seems to have been forced to reconsider the opinions he had advanced during that disputation.

Plenty of other people were voicing their opinions. In some areas of the country, notably Cornwall, Devon and Norfolk, the introduction of the new book led to armed revolt. But hostility to the new prayer-book came, in those counties, from very different angles. There were many who regretted the passing of the Latin Mass, which they had known all their lives, and who scorned the new-fangled service which had been brought in to replace it. There were others, almost certainly fewer in number, but often more vocal in expressing their opinions, who were dissatisfied because they felt that change had not gone far enough. Those people clamouring for more change tended to have the ear of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Indeed, some of them were Cranmer’s guests : exiles from their own lands, residing in lodgings in Lambeth Palace, and assisting Cranmer in his projects for reforming the Liturgy. These included Bernard Gilpin’s opponent, Peter Martyr, and also Martin Butzer of Strassburg and Jan Laski of Poland.

Each of these three men had become, at least in Eucharistic doctrine, far more radical than ever Martin Luther had been. But Butzer, at least, was far less hostile to the Pope than Luther. He may have disbelieved in the Real Presence (of Christ) within the Eucharistic Elements, but he was happy with the ritual of the Mass, and indeed desired re-union with Rome. The attitude of Butzer and some others was in some way prophetic of later Anglican “High Church” wooliness. They seemed to think that all that was required to heal the breach with Rome was a re-introduction of Roman ceremonial.

But Gilpin, after his debate with Peter Martyr, did understand that there were basic questions of Christian belief implicit in the statements of doctrine being freely bandied about over the nature of the Lord’s Supper. He had felt that Peter Martyr had in some ways bested him in argument. When his great-uncle, Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, came up to London, to attend a session of the House of Lords, Bernard met him, and brought up his doubts about the doctrine of Transubstantiation (the belief that the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, when validly consecrated by the priest, for administration to the believer, cease to be that which they had been, and become the very Body and Blood of Christ : a doctrine which he had defended against Peter Martyr), and the two men discussed the matter.

It appears that Bernard had assumed that this doctrine was, if not of Biblical origin, at least the belief of the primitive Church. Uncle Cuthbert, however, convinced him that this was not so. The Doctrine of Transubstantiation, according to Bishop Tunstall, had only been accepted as dogma by the Western Church during the pontificate of Innocent III, as a result of a decree of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and had then, later in the Thirteenth Century, become more closely defined in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Tunstall was saying in effect, “This doctrine is only three hundred years old”.

Bernard Gilpin seems to have been convinced by his great-uncle’s argument, but Cuthbert Tunstall was not altogether correct in what he told his nephew. The doctrine may have been only spelt out as dogma in 1215, but belief in it seems to have been widespread for centuries before that.

Few of the readers of this column will be able to cast their minds back to what I wrote in Number 25 of this Parish History, published in the “Signpost” of May, 2003. The article was headed “King David’s War”, and it records how, after overrunning most of Northumberland and County Durham in the course of his invasion of England (and probably destroying the new Norman church in Houghton, then barely thirty years old), King David I of Scotland crossed the Tees in 1138, but was halted by an English army just outside Northallerton. A battle ensued, known as “the Battle of the Standard”, in which the Scots were badly defeated. The battle took its name from the remarkable standard used by the English army.

I wrote:- Thurston assembled a feudal levy which met the Scots at Northallerton. ...He raised a standard in the centre of his battle line, which bore the banners of three popular Northern saints... and also a consecrated Host. The Scots advanced… but when they realised that the standard bore... the Body of Christ, their courage faltered, and their charge broke upon the shields of Thurston’s men. They fell back, and, heartened by the knowledge that the Presence of the Body of Christ was immediately above them, the English rushed forward upon the retreating Scots, and slew hundreds of them. Forget the resonance of “Old Testament” battles in which the Hebrews, fortified with some Divine assistance (e.g. Joshua halting the setting sun in its course, to enable his men to hunt down and slaughter the fleeing Amorites), win great victories over their enemies. Whatever really happened at Northallerton, it is obvious that the combatants on both sides, English and Scots alike, truly believed in a Real Presence existing within a Consecrated Host, over a century before Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica.

But perhaps Bernard Gilpin, Cuthbert Tunstall and Thomas Aquinas, not to mention the soldiery at the Battle of Northallerton, had, to some extent, missed the point. They had assumed, naturally, that the words spoken by Jesus had been correctly recorded by the Gospel-writers. They had also assumed that when Jesus, while breaking the bread before distributing it, and blessing the cup of wine, stated “This is My Body/My Blood”, He was referring to the Bread and Wine before Him.

But there were now some - including, apparently, Martin Butzer and Peter Martyr - who appear to have believed that Jesus was, at His Last Supper, through His Own impending death and sacrifice, inaugurating a new Force in the world. He was bringing in the Kingdom of God, which would be manifested first in the Church which would be formed by those who believed in His mission. The Feast of the Lord’s Supper, the Breaking of Bread, was, according to Ulrich Zwingli, the Reformer of Zurich, basically a “bare memorial”, a token, of Christ’s inauguration of His New Covenant, of His Church, which had come into existence at an earlier Pentecost, more than fifteen hundred years prior to 1549. This Covenant was renewed, so Zwingli claimed, every Sunday, in his church in Zurich, at the celebration, anew each week, of the Lord’s Supper. The Kingdom, which had been manifest before Jesus and His disciples then, would even now be manifest to any group of true disciples who met together, and who broke bread together in Faith and in Love.

At the Council of Trent such teachings were, unsurprisingly, condemned. They were also condemned by the spiritual heirs of Martin Luther, in Saxony, Sweden and elsewhere. But they still had resonance in the hearts of many scholars. Zwingli was now dead, but his ideas still inspired many. Increasingly, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was being drawn towards Zwingli’s teachings. The English Prayer-Book of 1549 had been influenced by what Zwingli had written, and Cranmer was now preparing a much more radical version of the Prayer- Book, which, he hoped, would for ever liberate England from what he now regarded as outworn and old-fashioned doctrines.

The Eucharist - the Mass, as it was then normally known - was one of the Seven Sacraments - the seven sacred things, which, as Thomas Aquinas had written, sanctify the Faithful. The other six are Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Matrimony, Ordination and Extreme Unction. Many of these Sacraments were “played down”, even in time neglected, by the Reformers, but the Sacrament of Baptism was to cause a great deal of controversy. A minority of radical preachers had arisen who denounced the whole idea of new-born infants being initiated into the Church, without their consent or even knowledge. All those who wished to follow Jesus, who wished to commit themselves to His service, to membership of His Church, should, these preachers averred, come forward when they had attained or approached adult status, to receive the Baptism of water and the Holy Spirit, in the manner in which Philip, Peter, Paul and others had administered the rite in New Testament times. Any ceremony performed on a newborn baby, purporting to be a baptism, was, these enthusiasts declared, null and void, for the infant could not have given consent.

The opponents of this view (the great majority of educated persons) pointed out that Baptism was necessary to save the soul of a dying baby, which would be destined for Hell, if it died unbaptised.. This cruel teaching is not directly Biblical, but originated with the writings of Augustine of Hippo, who had written a thousand years earlier, during the early Fifth Century, and had claimed that sin - “original sin”, as it became termed - was implanted into the human race as a consequence of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and was transmitted through sexual intercourse from one generation to another, and so became inherited by all men and women, even by infants who had committed no sins of their own and thus we all deserved to die, and would die, unless saved through participation in Baptism, and in other Sacraments.

That had been the teaching of the Western Church for a thousand years, and for the most part the Reformers did not attempt to overturn it. But a few did rebel against such teaching, and everywhere such “Anabaptists”, as they were known (the word means re-baptisers) were harshly persecuted and cruelly put to death.

A few came to England. Seymour’s policies of toleration seem to have been extended even to these reprobates, but after the Protector’s fall from power (which will be mentioned in next month’s article) the authorities in London began to proceed against Anabaptists.

The only non-violent religious dissenters (non-violent, as distinct from rebels taken in arms during the suppression of the rebellions in Norfolk, Devon and Cornwall, also to be described in next month’s article) to be put to death during King Edward’s reign were Georg van Parijs, a Flemish Baptist fleeing from the wrath of the Spanish Inquisition (the Spaniards then ruled Flanders), and Joan Butcher, a London housewife, who seems to have convinced herself, through her own reading, that the Western Church had been, in its baptismal policy, in error for a thousand years. John Dudley, who replaced Edmund Seymour as Regent, governing England on behalf of the boyking, Edward VI, thought otherwise, and ordered Joan Butcher to be burned.

Everywhere the firm ground of Christian doctrines seemed to be moving, and people were unsure of where they were standing. Many people were revising their beliefs, sometimes out of fear of being punished for heresy, sometimes out of their own conscience and convictions. The “Ship of Faith”, once so firmly grounded in the teachings of Holy Church, seemed to be coming loose from her moorings, and drifting God knows where.

After his debate with Peter Martyr and his discussion with his great-uncle, Bishop Tunstall, Gilpin was reading and pondering and praying, and wondering where the Spirit was leading him. Less learnèd men, and women like Joan Butcher, were also seeking the guidance of the Spirit, and some of them felt themselves to be led in strange directions.

Dick Toy

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