1. “Hear, Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly Digest”
One of the stained glass windows in the Chapel at King’s-Edgehill School depicts Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. It is based on Gerlach Flicke’s 1545 portrait of Cranmer which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. The painting captures the theological intent of the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer.
Cranmer is pictured reading a volume of the Epistles of St. Paul while before him on a table are two books, one title of which can be clearly seen. It is Augustine’s treatise De Fides et Operibus, on Faith and Works. As Diarmaid McCulloch suggests, this expresses the nature of the theological programme that underlies the enterprise of the Book(s) of Common Prayer. It would be about the primacy of the Scriptures understood through the best of Patristic scholarship, particularly Augustine; in short, a Protestant Augustinianism, as Ashley Null terms it, a distinct feature of the Reformed Theology of the Book of Common Prayer. Stephen Hampton argues that “the Reformed theological tradition is an essential ingredient in any conception of Anglicanism.” The Anglican Reformed tradition, he says, “continued to insist upon the evangelical teaching of justification by faith alone, upon the established scholastic way of expressing Trinitarian doctrine, and upon the broadly Thomist understanding of the divine nature which was shared by both Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians.”
That same intellectual and spiritual intent appears in a rather remarkable phenomena, the two Books of Homilies. Homilies refers to discourses delivered publicly; in short, sermons. The terms are more or less synonymous. These homilies or sermons were provided for the use of the clergy who were encouraged to read them at Divine Service. They are part of the reformed project in its sense of the centrality of the Scriptures and Doctrine. They also witness to a problem about literacy and education among the clergy and the desire to provide teaching in sound doctrine.
Article XXV of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion is unusual among reformed documents about doctrine and order in naming Homilies as belonging to doctrine and thus to the teaching life of the Church. It names the two books of homilies and provides the titles of the homilies contained in The Second Book of Homilies, though not the first. The First Book of Homilies was published in July 1547 just after the death of Henry VIII and thus in the early months of the reign of Edward VI; the second in 1563 during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Article speaks of them as containing “a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and necessary for these times” and judges them to be read in the Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people.” The phrase echoes Article XXIV about how “it is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God” for Public Prayer and the Sacraments to be administered “in a tongue not understanded of the people.” We are however not talking about street talk or slang but about what can be grasped and understood through instruction. Article XI, “Of the Justification of Man”, also refers to the Homily on Justification which is the third sermon in the First Book of Homilies, though entitled “a Sermon of the Salvation of Mankind, by only Christ our Saviour, From Sin and Death Everlasting.”
The first Book of Homilies was largely authored and produced by Cranmer. He wrote the first homily, “A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture”. It underscores the doctrine expressed in Article VI that “the Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation” and reveals one form of the reformed perspective of sola scriptura, properly understood here as pertaining to essential faith, to the things which are said to be necessary to be believed. The working out of what that means was the project of thinkers like Richard Hooker and John Bramhall and a host of others.
Hooker, drawing upon Cranmer, famously says:
“The end of the word of God is to save, and therefore we term it the word of life. The way for all men to be saved is by the knowledge of that truth which the word hath taught. And sith eternal life is a thing of itself communicable unto all, it behoveth that the word of God, the necessary mean thereunto, be so likewise. Wherefore the word of life hath been always a treasure, though precious, yet easy, as well to attain, as to find; lest any man desirous of life should perish through the difficulty of the way. To this end the word of God no otherwise serveth than only in the nature of a doctrinal instrument. It saveth because it maketh ‘wise to salvation.’” Hooker, Lawes, Bk. V, ch. xxi.3.
Cranmer offers a sound and solid way of thinking about the Scriptures in an attractive and moving fashion. There is, he says, “no truth nor doctrine, necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is, or may be, drawn out of that fountain and well of truth”. Scripture contains “God’s true word” and sets forth “his glory and man’s duty,” the duty to have knowledge of Holy Scripture. It is on this basis that one can appreciate the scripture centric character of the Prayer Book (it is 80% Scripture) and the system of reading which it contains. That system is really about a kind of credal reading of the Scriptures as derived from the Patristic period and then subsequently developed and completed over the centuries.
The Holy Scriptures contain, Cranmer says, “what we ought to do, and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God’s hand in length.” Right from the outset, the Scriptures, we are told, teach us about God as Trinity. “In these books we shall find the Father from whom, the Son by whom, and the Holy Ghost in whom, all things have their being and keeping up;” thus linking the Trinity with creation as a continuing event, its continuance. “And these three Persons to be but one God, and one substance.” From that knowledge of God as Trinity, “we may learn” through these books of Scripture, “to know ourselves, how vile and miserable we be;” and yet “also to know God” in his goodness. Cranmer quotes the great Patristic preacher John Chrysostom that “whatsoever is required to the salvation of man, is fully contained in the Scripture of God” and it is meant for all. Quoting as well Fulgentius of Ruspe in North Africa (late fifth, early sixth centuries), he notes that there is in the Scriptures “abundantly enough, both for men to eat, and children to suck” and that it is “meet for all ages and for all degrees and sorts of men.”
For the Scripture of God is the heavenly meat of our souls; the hearing and keeping of it maketh us blessed, sanctifieth us, and maketh us holy; it turneth our souls; it is a light lantern to our feet; it is a sure, stedfast, and everlasting instrument of salvation.
It is a significant phrase which Hooker picks up on. Scripture is a doctrinal instrument of salvation. “It giveth wisdom to the humble and lowly hearts; it comforteth, maketh glad, cheereth, and cherisheth our conscience.” Just so it speaks to the truth of our humanity as self-conscious, responsible and spiritual beings.
“It is a more excellent jewel, or treasure, than any gold or precious stone; it is more sweet than honey or honey-comb; it is called the best part, which Mary did choose for it hath in it everlasting comfort.”
He sums up this part of the exhortation, itself a kind of encomium to the Scriptures: “The words of Holy Scripture be called words of everlasting life: for they be God’s instrument, ordained for the same purpose.”
Salvation in terms of everlasting life and comfort is understood in terms of the Trinity indwelling us. “He that keepeth the word of Christ, is promised the love and favour of God, and that he shall be the dwelling-place or temple of the blessed Trinity.” And all through the power of the Holy Spirit. Through the reading of God’s Word, he “that is most turned into it, that is most inspired by the Holy Ghost; most in his heart and life altered and changed into that thing which he readeth.” The emphasis on the change in us from vice to virtue or godliness is grounded in how the Scriptures teach us “to know God, how good he is of himself, and how he maketh us and all creatures partakers of his goodness”.
This sermon, like many others in the Books of Homilies, has more than one part to it. The second part emphasizes the idea that the knowledge of the Scriptures belongs to our Christian vocation. To know the Scriptures is not information but knowledge and wisdom, the idea of growing into what they proclaim. Here advice is given about how to read. “How readest thou?” Jesus asked the certain lawyer who was seeking to catch him out, only to be confronted through his own questions with the parable of the Good Samaritan and the ethical teaching about the love of neighbour in the form of the radical care of Christ for our humanity.
“Read it humbly, with a meek and lowly heart, to the intent you may glorify God, and not yourself, with the knowledge of it” and read it prayerfully. The second part of the homily also acknowledges that the Scripture is not without its hard parts as well as plain and easy ways yet indicates that God helps us either by enlightening our minds or by sending some learned person to teach us. “There is nothing spoken under dark mysteries in one place, but the self-same thing in other places is spoken more familiarly and plainly, to the capacity both of learned and unlearned.” It is, in short, for all and contains within itself, at least to some extent, its own interpretive principle.
But it requires attention on our part, attention that is really a kind of reflection and devotion. In a way we are meant to be like cows! “Let us ruminate, and, as it were, chew the cud, that we may have the sweet juice, spiritual effect, marrow, honey, kernel, taste, comfort, and consolation of them.” It is the comfort and consolation of our indwelling God through his Word and Spirit.
Cranmer’s Homily on the reading of the Scriptures simply expands upon the scriptural hermeneutic or interpretive principle so wonderfully expressed in his great Collect for Advent II. Our reading and study of the Scriptures is about praying the Scriptures.
Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Like the Collect, so too, Cramer’s homily largely draws from the words of Scripture itself. The sensibility is that the reading and proclamation of the Scriptures is the real form of preaching.
At the bottom of the Cranmer window in the Chapel are inscribed the words from the Collect. “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” It is all about being turned into what we read. It belongs to the disciplines of Lent that we read and meditate upon God’s holy Word, the very thing Cranmer’s first sermon so powerfully and so eloquently bids us do.
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church,
March 9th, 2023