Tuesday, April 21, 2009

 

Anglicans and authority: William Beveridge

Although written around 1699, the first (incomplete) version of Discourse upon The Thirty-Nine Articles wasn't published until 1716, and this (complete) edition in 1840: Beveridge, William (1840) Ecclesia Anglicana Ecclesia Catholica or, The Doctrine of the Church of England consonant to Scripture, Reason and Fathers: in A Discourse upon The Thirty-Nine Articles agreed upon In The Convocation Held at London MDLXII, Oxford University Press, Oxford. (A bit of a mouthful!).

The clue here is very much in the title: it's about combining Scripture, Reason and the Church Fathers. There is a very strong argument from reason, and an enormous amount of footnoting in Greek, Latin Syriac and other languages. It's a work of considerable scholarship, though I think that much of the evidence presented would these days be felt to be weak, and sometimes misused. The care that is used, and the style of argument, can be seen in these excerpts from Article 6 (On the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation):

Thus we can see how careful the Fathers are to bring the canonical books into the scriptures, and truly they are as careful to keep the Apocryphal out. They acknowledge them, indeed, lawful to be read as we do, but not of the same authority with the former. (Beveridge, p. 286)
And thus we see how clear and express the Fathers are, not only in determining the same number of canonical books that is in this Article determined, but also in passing their judgment upon the Apocryphal books as this Article doth. Even that though the church reads them "for example of life, and instruction of manners," yet it doth not "apply them to establish any doctrine."

On a sidenote, the copy of the book that I borrowed from the relevant library seems to have been printed in 1840, had no other names in the borrowing list (it looks like it was acquired from the Lightfoot Library in 1977), and a good number of the pages had never been cut. Not a very popular book! That neither volume was fully cut means that I've not had a good chance to read it, and this is something I want to remedy. in particular, Articles 20 ("Of the Authority of the Church") and 21 ("Of the Authority of General Councils") deserve more attention than I could give them (as I couldn't actually open most of the pages...)

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Comments:
Honestly I have never got to grips with the 39 articles, being a Methodist they could be deigned to be irrelevant, but the covenant deems that this should not be so. I would be grateful if you would blog more fully on this.
 
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