Little Laud to the Devil (Midweek)

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

“Little Laud to the Devil”

January 10, 2018

Today is the feast day of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633-45) and martyr.  Laud was King Charles I’s principal ecclesiastical advisor and administrator in the years running up to the English civil war.  Calvinism had become the standard of doctrine and liturgical practice in most parishes of the Church of England, though cathedrals and the royal chapels had retained the style of the pre-Reformation church, now in English and according to the Prayer Book.   Calvinists insisted that if a practice or doctrine were not found in the Bible, it should be rejected.  They questioned using written prayers, organ or choral music, congregational responses other than AMEN, and any understanding of the Eucharist as something more than a mere “ordinance” or memorial meal ordained by our Lord in the Last Supper.  They saw the use of cassock (long black tunic) and surplice (white robe) in church as a “Popish abomination.”  In general, they rejected the authority of bishops and the Episcopacy as “Romish prelates” who supported the “tyranny” of the Royals and the higher nobility.    

William Laud rejected what he and the Prayer Book called the “enormities of Rome” and the Pope.  But he believed that the Church of England’s claim to authority and truth depended its being a continuation of the Church of the Apostles.  This included the three-fold ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, the traditional and orthodox teaching of the undivided Church before the schism between the East and West (in 1054), and the proper and reverent administration of the sacraments of the Church.  He felt that as archbishop he had the obligation of trying to bring order and a degree of basic uniformity to religious practices in England and Charles’ other realms, Scotland and Ireland.  His effort to bring the Prayer Book to Scotland triggered the so-called “bishop’s war.” 

Laud took seriously Paul’s words that in worship, “all things be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40).    So when dispossessed peasants now living in the cities were stirred to mob violence by (unauthorized) Calvinist preachers and started smashing holy tables that had been returned to an altar-like orientation and position in churches, burning altar rails, or breaking into vestries and throwing all the cassocks and surplices down outhouse holes, Laud felt constrained to take action.  As archbishop of Canterbury, he was responsible for “keeping the King’s peace” in the churches, and so he had prominent Puritan preachers arrested, tried for “seditious libel” and punished in what that age’s laws considered appropriate ways (branding or defacement by cropping the ears or nose).  Those thus mutilated replied that the SL brands on their faces stood not for “Seditious Libel” but rather “Stigmata Laudis” (“the wounds of Christ imposed by Mr. Laud”) and said this was simply religious persecution by a tyrannical state and a King’s “wicked minister.”   

The turmoil would only increase, and finally broke into open warfare between the Parliament and the Crown over church practices, raising money through non-tax means unapproved by parliament, and a foreign policy that included a French Roman Catholic queen (Charles’ wife Henriette-Marie) and failure to support Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War.  The Puritan-dominated Parliament arrested Laud and charged him with treason, but prosecutors could not make a reasonable case against him.  So Parliament passed an Act of Attainder against him, legislating that he was guilty of treason.  Though pardoned by King Charles, he was beheaded on January 10, 1645.   King Charles himself was to be beheaded on January 30, 1649. 

Laud was a difficult man, testy and highly protective of his prerogatives and dignities.  Slight in stature and of somewhat common birth, and suspected of having an attraction for other men, he was an easy mark for his enemies.  King Charles I fired his court jester after he had poked fun at the Archbishop’s name and height in a table grace he gave at a dinner with Laud (whose name in Latin means “praise”): “Great praise be given to God and little laud to the Devil.”  One historian has said that Laud was the “greatest catastrophe ever visited on the English Church.” 

We honor him, however, because he was in fact a religious martyr, killed because of his trying to live out his beliefs.  Laud is the single person who probably is the most responsible for the Church of England (and all Anglicanism)’s rejection of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.  Laud, following biblical verses, believed that God wanted salvation for all, and that it was our abuse of free will that turned aside God’s grace.  Puritans labeled him an “Arminian,” after Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, who in like manner had rejected Calvin’s doctrine of double predestination (some to heaven and the rest to hell).    The highly emotional label was one way that radical Puritans found a way to legislate the execution of the Archbishop. 

“Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like your servant William Laud, we may live in your fear, die in your favor, and rest in your peace; for that sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, forever and ever.  Amen.”