page_title: Lancelot Andrewes
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Lancelot Andrewes / Legacy
context_page_description: Lancelot Andrewes was an English bishop and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, of Ely, and of Winchester and oversaw the translation of the King James Version of the Bible. In the Church of England he is commemorated on 25 September with a Lesser Festival.
context_section_description: Two generations later, Richard Crashaw caught up the universal sentiment, when in his lines "Upon Bishop Andrewes' Picture before his Sermons" he exclaims:
  This reverend shadow cast that setting sun,
  Whose glorious course through our horizon run,
  Left the dim face of this dull hemisphere,
  All one great eye, all drown'd in one great teare.
  Andrewes was a friend of Hugo Grotius, and one of the foremost contemporary scholars, but is chiefly remembered for his style of preaching. As a churchman he was typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan and the Roman positions. A good summary of his position is found in his First Answer to Cardinal Perron, who had challenged James I's use of the title "Catholic". His position in regard to the Eucharist is naturally more mature than that of the first reformers.
  As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person. There is a real change in the elements—we allow ut panis iam consecratus non sit panis quem natura formavit; sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam immutavit. (Responsio, p. 263).
  Adoration is permitted, and the use of the terms "sacrifice" and "altar" maintained as being consonant with scripture and antiquity. Christ is "a sacrifice—so, to be slain; a propitiatory sacrifice—so, to be eaten." (Sermons, vol. ii. p. 296).
  By the same rules that the Passover was, by the same may ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of them; for to speak after the exact manner of divinity, there is but one only sacrifice, veri nominis, that is Christ's death. And that sacrifice but once actually performed at His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the beginning; and ever since repeated in memory to the world's end. That only absolute, all else relative to it, representative of it, operative by it ... Hence it is that what names theirs carried, ours do the like, and the Fathers make no scruple at it—no more need we.(Sermons, vol. ii. p. 300).
  Andrewes preached regularly and submissively before James I and his court on the anniversaries of the Gowrie Conspiracy and the Gunpowder Plot. These sermons were used to promulgate the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.
  His Life was written by Whyte (Edinburgh, 1896), M. Wood (New York, 1898), and Ottley (Boston, 1894). His services to his church have been summed up thus: (1) he has a keen sense of the proportion of the faith and maintains a clear distinction between what is fundamental, needing ecclesiastical commands, and subsidiary, needing only ecclesiastical guidance and suggestion; (2) as distinguished from the earlier protesting standpoint, e.g. of the Thirty-nine Articles, he emphasized a positive and constructive statement of the Anglican position.
  His best-known work is the Preces Privatae or Private Prayers, edited by Alexander Whyte (1896), which has widespread appeal and has remained in print since renewed interest in Andrewes developed in the 19th century. The Preces Privatae were first published by R. Drake in 1648; an improved edition by F. E. Brightman appeared in 1903. John Rutter set some of those prayers to music. Andrewes's other works occupy eight volumes in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1841 – 1854). Ninety-six of his sermons were published in 1631 by command of Charles I, have been occasionally reprinted, and are considered among the most rhetorically developed and polished sermons of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Because of these, Andrewes has been commemorated by literary greats such as T. S. Eliot.
  Andrewes was considered, next to Ussher, to be the most learned churchman of his day, and enjoyed a great reputation as an eloquent and impassioned preacher, but the stiffness and artificiality of his style render his sermons unsuited to modern taste. Nevertheless, there are passages of extraordinary beauty and profundity. His doctrine was Hi
caption: Portrait of Andrewes by Hollar
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