Anglicans From The United Kingdom

"God gave His children memory That in life's garden there might be June roses in December."

"Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was truly neutral even before America came into the war on an all-out basis."

"It is for you [Winston Churchill] to give the Orders & if they are bungled — except for the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury & the Speaker, you can sack anyone & everyone — Therefore with this terrific power you must combine urbanity, kindness and if possible Olympic calm. You used to quote:— 'On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme' [One can reign over hearts only by keeping one's composure.] — I cannot bear that those who serve the Country and yourself should not love as well as admire and respect youBesides you won't get the best results by irascibility & rudeness. They will breed either dislike or a slave mentality — (Rebellion in War time being out of the question!)"

"I think my Darling you will have to be very patient - Do not burn any boats - The P.M. [ H. H. Asquith ] has not treated you worse than Ll. G has done, in fact not so badly for he is not as much in your debt as the other man, (i.e. Marconi).* On the other hand are the Dardanelles. I feel sure that if the choice were equal you would prefer to work with the P.M. than with LI. G. - It's true that when association ceases with the P.M. he cools & congeals visibly, but all the time you were at the Admiralty he was loyal & steadfast while the other would barter you away at any time in any place. I assure you he is the direct descendant of Judas Iscariott [sic]. At this moment altho I hate the P.M, if he held out his hand I could take it, (tho' I would give it a nasty twist) but before taking Ll. G's I would have to safeguard myself with charms, touchwoods, exorcisms & by crossing myself - I always can get on with him & yesterday I had a good talk, but you can't hold his eyes, they shift away -You know I'm not good at pretending but I am going to put my pride in my pocket & reconnoitre Downing Street."

"Never talk rich, never talk poor, never talk money.”"

"The ascendant activity of the intellect, unaccompanied by a deep moral experience, must issue sooner or later in the shipwreck of the entire personality."

"I see this wicked creature ordained of God to punish us for our sins and unthankfulness."

"Above all things I wish God's glory and next the queen's safety."

"Now wheras I have alwayes noted your wisdome to have had a speciall care of the honor of her Majesty, the good reputation of our country, & the advancing of navigation, the very walks of this our Island, as the oracle is reported to have spoken of the sea forces of Athens: and whereas I acknowledge in all dutifull sort how honorably both by your letter and speech I have bene animated in this and other my travels, I see my selfe bound to make presentment of this worke to your selfe, as the fruits of your owne incouragements, & the manifestation both of my unfained service to my prince and country, and of my particular duty to your honour"

"Sir B. Bathurst sent me Ld Clarendons history last week, but haveing not quite made an end of ye first part, I did not unpack it, but I shall have that Curiosety now, to See this extraordinary dedication, which I should never have looked for in ye Second part of a book, & me thinks it is very wonderfull that people that dont want sense in some things, should be soe rediculous as to shew theire vanity."

"Charles I was] brought, by unaccountable administrations on the one hand, and by vile contrivances on the other, into the greatest difficulties and distresses throughout all his kingdoms; then left and abandoned by most of his servants, whom he had himself raised to the greatest honours and preferments; thus reduced to have scarce one faithful able counsellor about him, to whom he could breathe his conscience and complaints, and from whom he might expect one honest, sound, disinterested advice: after this, how he was obliged to take up arms, and to contend with his own subjects in the field for his crown, the laws, his liberty, and life; there meeting with unequal fortune, how he was driven from one part of the kingdom, and from one body of an army to another, till at last he was brought under the power of cruel and merciless men, imprisoned, arraigned, condemned, and executed like a common malefactor."

"He had excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic experience; but the infirmities of his temper detracted much from the effective strength of his abilities. Negotiator and courtier as he was, he never learnt the art of governing or of concealing his emotions. When prosperous, he was insolent and boastful; when he sustained a check, his undisguised mortification doubled the triumph of his enemies: very slight provocations sufficed to kindle his anger; and when he was angry he said bitter things which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but which others remembered many years. His quickness and penetration would have made him a consummate man of business but for his selfsufficiency and impatience. His writings prove that he had many of the qualities of an orator: but his irritability prevented him from doing himself justice in debate: for nothing was easier than to goad him into a passion; and, from the moment when he went into a passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far inferior to him in capacity. Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation, he was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had consequently a great body of personal adherents. The clergy especially looked on him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in some need, for he drank deep, and when was in a rage—and he very often was in a rage—he swore like a porter."

"It became normal to have at each of the major courts a resident “ambassador”—a word defined by the English poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton in a punning epigram as “a man sent to lie abroad for his country’s good.” Given the time required for travel, and the hazards en route—especially in an age of dynastic and religious warfare—permanent ambassadors offered a convenient substitute for personal summitry. And their detailed reports required the attention of specialist secretaries who oversaw foreign affairs, such as Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan London or Antonio Perez at the court of Philip III. Day-to-day diplomacy tended to slip out of the hands of rulers."

"In an age when so many memoirs, narratives, and pieces of history come out as it were on purpose to justify the taking up arms against that king, and to blacken, revile, and ridicule the sacred majesty of an anointed head in distress; and when so much of the sense of religion to God, and of allegiance and duty to the crown is so defaced that it is already within little more than fifty years since the murder committed on that pious prince by some men made a mystery to judge on whose side was the right and on which the Rebellion is to be charged."

"[H]e remains the Reformer par excellence of his own day, the Chief Advocate of the Working Classes, the Defender of the Poor, the Leader of the Educational Movement, an Administrator who endeavoured to exterminate the corruptions in the Civil Service, and an Ecclesiastic who proposed to widen the boundaries of the English Church."

"His little grace the Bishop of Canterbury, that great enemy of God and his people, his head was cut off on a scaffold on Tower Hill."

"He is an excellent man, for he is very just, incorrupt, and above all, mistaken by the erring world."

"That we have our Prayer-Book, our altar, even our Episcopacy itself, we may, humanly speaking, thank Laud... That our Articles have not a Genevan sense tied to them, and are not an intolerable burden to the Church, is owing to Laud. He rescued them from the fast tightening Calvinistic grasp, and left them, by his prefixed "Declaration", open. Laud saved the English Church... The English Church in her Catholic aspect is a memorial of Laud."

"I saw that the English Church had a theological idea or theory as such, and I took it up. I read Laud on Tradition, and thought it (as I still think it) very masterly."

"From these two volumes [Laud's Diary and The History of his Troubles and Trial] it may be said that the great Tory and Church movement which was so striking a feature of the age of Anne received no inconsiderable part of its strength. The great figure round whom the later Caroline divines, the eminent writers of the reign of Charles II and the learned and chivalrous non-jurors, clustered, was undoubtedly William Laud, in whom the Church principles which they held dear seemed to be personified and hallowed. The publication of Laud's Works, and particularly his Devotions, exercised on Church feeling a parallel influence to that exercised on politics by the immortal history of Clarendon."

"I have been entreated by Mr. Governor and the rest of the merchants of Exon, to make known unto yourself and the merchants of the towne how far I have waded in the prosecution of the suit unto the King and the Lords, for some course to be taken to suppress the Turks and secure the trades. I have, therefore, sent you herewith enclosed the copies of all the petitions which have been preferred... Unto this my Lord Archbishop (Laud) hee gave this answer, striking his hands upon his breast, that while he hath breth in his bodie he would, to the uttermost of his power, advance a business so necessarie and consequentiall, and has assured me that his Majestie would take such course as that within this twelve months not a Turkish ship should be able to putt to sea; and at the Board his Grace was exceeding heartie in the business."

"Do you know whom I find the most tolerant churchman of that time? Laud! Laud got Davenant made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously befriended Chillingworth and Hales. (There was some other case, which I forget.)"

"The greatest calamity ever visited upon the Church of England."

"His book against the Jesuit will be his lasting epitaph."

"[T]he Commemoration called forth a number of anonymous communications (mostly on postcards) which strangely recall the kind of thing with which Archbishop Laud had to deal; and show that the spirit which animated the fanatic of his day is by no means extinct... and nobody who is acquainted with such "libels" as are preserved in the Record Office or in Lambeth Palace Library will have any difficulty in recognising the resemblance:—... "You are doing the work of the great Whore of Babylon and leading them to the Pope as your Laud did. And you deserve the same recompense as he received from his righteous judges. Curse you.""

"Doctor Young the Lord Bishop of Rochester that Ordained him, finding his study raised above the Systems and Opinions of the age, upon the nobler foundation of the Fathers, Councils, and the Ecclesiastical Historians, easily presaged, "That if he lived he would be an instrument of restoring the Church from the narrow and private principles of modern times, to the more free, large, and publick sentiments of the purest and first Ages.""

"The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree with Mr. Hallam in reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the individual, indeed, we entertain a more unmitigated contempt than for any other character in our history. The fondness with which a portion of the church regards his memory, can be compared only to that perversity of affection which sometimes leads a mother to select the monster or the idiot of the family as the object of her especial favour."

"[H]e did court persons too little; nor cared to make his designs and purposes appear as candid as they were, by showing them in any other dress than their own natural beauty and roughness, and did not consider enough what men said or were like to say of him."

"[M]y care was against all underminings, both at home and abroad, of the established doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, for which I am now like to suffer. And I pray God that point of Arminianism, libertas prophetandi [the right to proclaim different opinions], do not more mischief in short time, than is expressible by me."

"I have nothing to do to defend Arminianism, no man having yet charged me with the abetting any point of it... [F]or the peace of Christendom, and the strengthening of the reformed religion, I do heartily wish these differences were not pursued with such heat and animosity, in regard that all the Lutheran Protestants are of the very same opinions, or with very little difference from those which are now called Arminianism."

"Ever since I came in place, I laboured nothing more, than that the external public worship of God (too much slighted in most parts of this kingdom) might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of opinion, that unity cannot long continue in the Church, where uniformity is shut out at the church door."

"So that ill praying in public contains almost all the mischiefs that ill preaching hath in it, over and above all the ill that is proper to itself: and so is the more dangerous sin: and therefore the Church cannot be too careful for a set and known form for public prayer; yea, and that enjoined too, so it be well weighed beforehand; though for preaching she leave a greater latitude. So upon consideration, I think there is more difference between a set form of prayer, and a set form of preaching, than that we are invited to the one, and not to the other."

"[A]lmost all of them say that God from all eternity reprobates by far the greater part of mankind to eternal fire, without any eye at all to their sin. Which opinion my very soul abominates. For it makes God, the God of all mercies, to be the most fierce and unreasonable tyrant in the world. For the question is not here, what God may do by an absolute act of power, would He so use it upon the creature which He made of nothing: but what He hath done, and what stands with His wisdom, justice, and goodness to do."

"For preaching is a speech to man for his edification and instruction in faith and good life. But prayer is a speech to God, to honour and worship Him, in the acknowledgment of His dominion over, and His bounty and goodness towards all creatures, but mankind especially. And therefore, though a man cannot take too much pains in that which he is to speak from God to man, lest he be proved a false relater; yet of the two, there should be more care had, what prayers he puts up for himself and the whole congregation, unto God; lest he be not only a false worshipper, but also, lest he suddenly and unadvisedly ask that, which may be hurtful unto all."

"For the other stuff which fills up this argument, that these 'changes and supplements are taken from the Mass-book, and other Romish rituals, and that by these the book is made to vary from the Book of England;' I cannot hold it worth an answer, till I see some particulars named... I would have them remember that we live in a Church reformed, not in one made new. Now all reformation that is good and orderly takes away nothing from the old, but that which is faulty and erroneous. If anything be good, it leaves that standing. So that if these changes from the Book of England be good, 'tis no matter whence they be taken. For every line in the Mass-book, or other popish rituals, are not all evil and corruptions. There are many good prayers in them; nor is anything evil in them, only because 'tis there. Nay, the less alteration is made in the public ancient service of the Church, the better it is, provided that nothing superstitious or evil in itself be admitted or retained."

"Tuesday, Simon and Jude's eve, I went into my upper study, to see some manuscripts, which I was sending to Oxford. In that study hung my picture, taken by the life. And coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying on the floor. The string being broken, by which it was hanged against the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in Parliament. God grant this be no omen."

"As for that in which he is quite mistaken, it is his inference, which is this: "That I should therefore consider carefully, whether it be not more Christian, and less brain-sick, to think that the pope, being S. Peter's successor, with a General Council, should be judge of controversies, &c., and that the pastoral judgment of him should be accounted infallible, rather than to make every man that can read the Scripture interpreter of Scripture, decider of controversies, controller of General Councils, and judge of his judges: or to have no judge at all of controversies of faith, but permit every man to believe as he list; as if there were no infallible certainty of faith to be expected on earth; which were, instead of one saving faith, to induce a Babylonical confusion of so many faiths as fancies, or no true Christian faith at all. From which evils, sweet Jesus, deliver us!" I have considered of this very carefully; but this inference supposes that which I never granted, nor any Protestant that I yet know—namely, that if I deny the pope to be judge of controversies, I must by and by either leave this supreme judicature in the hands and power of every private man, that can but read the Scripture, or else allow no judge at all, and so let in all manner of confusion. No, God forbid that I should grant either: for I have expressly declared, "That the Scripture, interpreted by the Primitive Church, and a lawful and free General Council determining according to these, is judge of controversies: and that no private man whatsoever is or can be judge of these.""

"[P]rivate spirits are too giddy to rest upon Scripture, and too heady and shallow to be acquainted with demonstrative arguments."

"Why, but the Roman Church and the Church of England are but two distinct members of that Catholic Church which is spread over the face of the earth. Therefore Rome is not the house where the Church dwells; but Rome itself, as well as other particular churches, dwells in this great universal house."

"Psal. cx. the people are said 'to offer their freewill offerings with an holy worship,' or 'in the beauties of holiness:' and though, perhaps, his Lordship will not allow of this translation, yet so far he may as to see the use of the phrase. And 'in the beauties of holiness,' (which keeps close to the original,) will please him less; since a barn with them is as good as a church; and no church holy with them, but that which is slovenly even to nastiness; but then 'tis void of all superstition."

"Thus I said, and thus I say still; for though the foundation be one and the same in all, yet a "latitude" there is, and a large one too, when you come to consider, not the foundation common to all, but things necessary to many particular men's salvation."

"Shall I be accounted an enemy by one part for opposing the papist, and accused for a traitor by the other for favouring and complying with them? Well, if I do suffer thus, 'tis but because truth usually lies between two extremes, and is beaten by both (as the poor Church of England is, at this day, by the papist and the separatist). But in this, and all things else, in despite of all malice, truth shall be either my protection from suffering, or my comfort while I suffer; and by God's gracious assistance I shall never depart from it, but continue at the Apostle's ward, 2 Cor. xiii. Nihil possum contra veritatem, I can do nothing against the truth; and for it, I hope God will enable me patiently to suffer anything."

"I have been informed that some masters come to St. Mary's, and stand or sit there bare in sermon time, not out of any devotion, but only to hide their hats... [R]equire every of them to look strictly to their several charges, and to assist you in all things according to the statutes in the university; in which if any man shall fail, I shall take it so much the worse from him, as there is greater necessity to hold up good order in the brokenness of these times."

"[N]o man can set a better state of the question between Scripture and tradition, than Hooker doth. His words are these: "The Scripture is the ground of our belief; the authority of man (that is the name he gives to tradition) is the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture." ... [W]e resolve our faith into Scripture as the ground; and we will never deny that tradition is the key that lets us in."

"Wednesday, Coronation-day, King Charles took his journey northward, against the Scottish covenanting rebels. God of His infinite mercy bless him with health and success."

"Never were there more gross absurdities, nor half so many in so short a time, committed in any public meeting; and for a National Assembly never did the Church of Christ see the like."

"Mr. Alex. Henderson, who went all this while for a quiet and well-spirited man, hath showed himself a most violent and passionate man, and a Moderator without moderation. Truly, my Lord, never did I see any man of that humour yet, but he was deep dyed in some violence or other; and it would have been a wonder to me if Henderson had held free. Good my Lord, since you are good in the active part, in the commixture of wisdom and patience, hold it out till the people may see the violence and injustice of them that would be their leaders, and suffer not a rupture till there be no remedy."

"You cannot have a greater desire to conform Ireland to the Church of England, than I (and this with as seeming great a desire of the King) to conform Scotland to the Church of England."

"The time was, before this miserable rent in the Church of Christ—which I think no true Christian can look upon but with a bleeding heart—that you and we were all of one belief. That belief was tainted, in tract and corruption of times, very deeply."

"For my care of this Church, the reducing of it into order, the upholding of the external worship of God in it, and the settling of it to the rules of its first reformation, are the causes (and the sole causes, whatever are pretended) of all this malicious storm, which hath lowered so black upon me, and some of my brethren."