And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Malachi seems to bear this out: Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. The prophet continues, as rendered by the ESV (the Authorized Version differs), Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?

It may seem, then, that holy Scripture teaches more than two sacraments, perhaps even seven. Of ‘those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction’, the Thirty-Nine Articles cite this difference: they ‘have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.’ This lack notwithstanding, the Scriptures do teach that marriage actually accomplishes something in the sight of God, indeed (one may say) by the agency of God.

Like holy orders, but also like coronation, marriage is a politically efficacious covenant that (if valid) God ratifies, and for which he gives grace, especially if it’s contracted between Christians. By the sanction of God, something real happens. The king becomes head of a nation, the husband head of a household; with God’s help they rule out of the love that their offices require.

But the sacraments, properly called, are spiritually efficacious with faith, the others only temporally so. At death, bishop is no longer bishop, king is no longer king, husband is no longer husband, for death has dissolved those bonds of earth that distinguish even male and female; for in Christ, says the Apostle – that is, spiritually – there is no male nor female. But the spiritual sacraments (or gospel sacraments), despite likewise being ministered at the hands of men, having also effectually signified union with Christ, with promise attached to that effect, have prevailed beyond death: therefore these are the two, baptism and the supper of the Lord, that we properly call sacraments.

The myth was most forcefully promulgated by Lutheran theologian and biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias (1900–79). But Mary Rose d’Angelo says in ‘Abba and “Father”: Imperial Theology and the Jesus Traditions’, Journal of Biblical Literature 111, no. 4 (1992), 615–16, also drawing on a 1988 article by James Barr, ‘ ʾAbbā Isn’t “Daddy” ’,

Jeremias began almost at once to retreat from the claim that ‘abba’ had the same connotations as ‘daddy’. In a sense, Barr’s title (but only his title) misrepresents Jeremias. Even as Jeremias acknowledged that the word was in common use by adults and was used as a mark of respect for old men and for teacher, he continued to stress the origins in babytalk and the consequent intimacy as a special component of Jesus’ use of the word. This meaning seems to have been the basis on which he regarded Jesus’ use as absolutely distinct from the Judaism of his time.

The NT itself gives quite a different reading of ἀββα. Each of the three occurrences of ἀββα in the NT is followed by the Greek translation ὁ πατήρ, ‘the father’. This translation makes clear its meaning to the writers; the form is a literal translation – ‘father’ plus a definite article – and like abba can also be a vocative. But it is not a diminutive or ‘babytalk’ form. There are Greek diminutives of father (e.g., πάππας), and the community chose not to use them.

Likewise, J. R. Daniel Kirk suggests that Jesus’ use of ʾabbā in the garden of Gethsemane puts Christians into the cross-bearing role of the suffering servant, hardly a warm and fuzzy position. If Barr et al. represent the best scholarship on the biblical and extrabiblical use of ʾabbā, I hope that efforts to equate it with daddy are due to ignorance and not to a wilful refusal to let go of a sentimental doctrine.

Referring to God the Father as Daddy is not suggested by holy Scripture, nor can any pragmatic appeal to heightened religious feeling surmount the utter want of warrant in Scripture. Just as the elements of our worship ought to be driven by biblical concerns, and we have no right to do in worship whatever strikes our fancy – for which reason we don’t burn incense to God as an offering or worship him through the image of a golden calf – the use of daddy about God is, in my view, an illegitimate part of Christian piety, to be expunged from our devotional vocabulary.

Far too long has love for God been divorced from reverence and godly fear, and far too often has the Name of Jesus suffered abuse in Christian mouths. The refiner’s fire is a wholesome thing, the appearance of the Sun of righteousness in our hearts, to be welcomed by those who love God, but even so the proper response is awed reverence, not pretentious familiarity. Perhaps some imagine that Moses, David and especially the apostles looked like modern charismatics in their intimacy with God. Yet even St John, the beloved disciple, as shown in his Apocalypse, shows no signs of informality toward God, but appears much the same as the prophets of the Old Testament in his reverence.

By devoting ourselves to the spirit of the biblical models without taking one example slavishly as the divine-right template for the ages, I hope, we’ll have a piety founded on the word of God and not on the unsanctified fancies of our hearts. This will not lessen God’s glory but allow it to shine more clearly. And surely such an outcome is desirable to all who long for the glory of God to be seen among the nations.

* * *

I set out to speak, dear friends, of something so visible to the eyes that it bears little explanation, but so invisible to the heart, perhaps, that no mere words can fully explain it. My speech owes to its subject anything it has of value, and to your attention it owes its effect, for my lips do but recall some images to the eyes of your minds. Lift up your eyes, and you will see the wonder of the expanse above; lower your gaze, and nothing will so impress you as the depths of knowledge below. There is nothing to invent anew, but to be moved by the glory of the Lord; there is nothing I can more cleverly express than that which compels my heart to the praise of his holy Name. There can no scholar swim the depths of knowledge and not see what little he knows; there can no atheist look up to the heavens and not wonder at its expanse. What I declare to you now is just what I cannot but hear declared to me: Christ the Saviour of the world.

The heavens, says the Psalmist, declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. The Sun is thousands of times greater than the Earth, and the star Aldebaran thousands of times greater than that, and the star Betelgeuse thousands of times greater still, so great that when its time came to die its supernova would be visible even by day. Yet even the greatest star, without a path and a destiny, is all but lost in the depths of the cosmos. The great spaces speak to me with voiceless voice: though silent, they press upon me more than the grandest and deepest words. These are great expanses; they go on and on in every direction. In the words of the mathematician Pascal, ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.’

I know that some maintain a studied scepticism, wishing to cloak their unbelief. Exceeding true duty to facts, they demand more to satisfy their need for geometrically rigorous proof. Perhaps this is you today. ‘If God appeared to me right here and spoke’, you say, ‘then I might believe.’ No, you who are rich, you who insist on your riches, you would not believe even if the dead came back to life. You have already taken a posture of judgement over God, just as if, like a compass and a straight edge, he sits before you on the table to be taken up as a tool, or else as a toy for your amusement. Even if you believed in God as you now may believe in Brownian motion or the efficacy of radiocarbon dating, this belief would be no good: to the majesty of God it would be but a mockery. But if you will listen, God himself is speaking every hour of the day, and every minute of the hour, and every second of the minute, and every infinitesimal fraction of a second, and no one can hide this from you. You who will not hear, you are encompassed with the word of God, and you live within the pages of his book, and every one of your days is recorded blacker than ink; and yet you say you see nothing, hear nothing and know nothing. To your blindness the scroll of the sky has nothing but garbled words, and to your stopped ears the music of creation is nothing but a muffled mess. But now the dumb creatures are made ‘witnesses and preachers of the glory of God’: and if you hold your peace, even the stones will cry out in your place. Do you protest ignorance of the God of whom all nature bears witness? Do you insist?

Listen to the cosmos, how it declares the wisdom of God. Hear the law of nature, how even in the smallest things it encodes the word of God. You can go nowhere to leave it: There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. What are you, O man? You are without excuse, for the Lord has spoken in the music of the spheres, and in the very count of the heavens is the reason of his mind, and in the very harmony of voices is the concord of his voice. His speech is their speech, and his words are their words, and his voice is their voice.

What his mind conceives, he accomplishes, and all nature marvels. When the water flows, when the fire burns, when the sky opens, when the earth quakes, it is God’s word that sanctions it. When the nations rise, when the kingdoms fall; when the gods of Egypt are shamed with plagues but Israel is delivered from Egypt; when Sodom is destroyed but repentant Nineveh is spared; when whoring Israel is carried off but Judah is saved from Sennacherib; when Babylon destroys Jerusalem but Nehemiah rebuilds it; when the Jews crucify the Son of God but Titus destroys their city; when Diocletian attacks the Church but Constantine takes up the Cross; when Alaric plunders Rome but Attila turns back; when Constantinople falls but Lepanto stops the Turk; when Spain gains power but its Armada is wrecked at sea, it is God’s hand that moves. The history of the earth is a sign of his presence. When you read the book, does your heart hear what the author is telling you?

The thundering skies are his; the thundering water is his. With the heat of the Sun he dissolves the mist; with the circuit of the Moon he eclipses the Sun; with the shadow of the Earth he hides the Moon; with a pouring of rain he floods the Earth. Every thing that we ascribe to impersonal forces, every rotation of the Earth, every revolution of the Moon, every explosion of the Sun, every conception of new human life, is caused by God, the first mover of all things.

Now here is a mystery: that God, for his love, uses even the gravitation that pulls me down to pull my gaze up to him. By bringing my knees to the earth, he lifts my heart to the heavens. I now think upon this God above, who exists eternally as love itself, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost in perfect unity. The Son is the radiance of God’s love, who rejoices to give forth the glory of his Father. In eternity the Father loves him and delights in him and gives the Holy Spirit to him, and through him and for him the Father made the world, and so the world itself exists as a labour of love. Yes, God is love, and the world is the overflow of his heart. Is it possible to conceive of anything greater than the majesty of his love? Does my heart not unite with the heavens to declare his glory?

In these heavens, says David, hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. In the heavens, we are told, is a tabernacle for the Sun, who goes forth from horizon to horizon. Can you imagine now the sight of God, who is from everlasting to everlasting? Do you now tremble at his presence, which tabernacles among the hearts of men? O Christian, do you tremble to know that his glory burns within your very heart? Nothing can hide from the heat of the Sun, and nothing can hide from the blazing heat of God’s heart. If the grass withers before the Sun at high noon, if the morning flowers fade in the heat of his eye, what will our hearts do before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father?

Consider what it means for God to live inside you. If Apollo is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoicing to race across the sky, the Son of God is even more so. Rejoicing to run the race of human life, he came as a Bridegroom from heaven, with all the eternal power and authority of God. So he who was the very Word of God, the very law of the universe, the very foundation of all things, the beginning and the end, took upon himself to deliver man.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. The law of the Lord is good and perfect; the law of the Lord is the Son of God himself. The Son of God, begotten by the Father before all ages, is reason himself, unchanging, perfect, eternal, the principle of all principles. In him is contained all wisdom, all knowledge, all riches, all wealth and power and glory. Without him, the heart cannot rejoice, and the eyes have no light. Without him, the world is a wretched dunghill. Without his life, the world is swallowed up in death. Without his justice, the world destroys itself with its sinful judgements; but the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Weigh the speech of everyone who speaks, and see if there be any speech superior to the word of God. The Word of the Lord created heaven and earth out of nothing; the word of man takes air and sound but creates nothing. The Word of the Lord is sufficient in itself; the word of man is contingent on a thousand other things. The Word of the Lord is eternally sure; the word of man is corrupt and unreliable. Between the words of men and the word of the Lord there is no comparison.

This is the light that pierces every darkness, the Sun to whom all hearts are open and all desires known, from whom no secrets are hid. To his mind is all knowledge fathomed, and to his eye are all mysteries disclosed. The Muslims say that God is closer to man than his jugular vein, and I tell you, God is even closer than that. If you yourself can see so much inside your own heart, what is there that he cannot see? What mysteries are there that you have yet to discover, and what hopes, and what dreams, and what fancies, and what delusion, and what presumption, and what pride, and what lust, and what cruelty, and what defilement? Lay open your mind to yourself, and consider how much more is plain before the sight of God.

Do you envy your neighbour? Do you hope to gain his property? Do you delight in slanders against him? Do you love to hear the latest gossip about his sins? Do you say about him what you suspect is not completely true? Do you air your grievances against him without attempting to solve anything? Do you say nothing to keep him from losing what he has? Do you sell to him what you know is bad for him? Do you keep silent because you want his marriage to fail? Do you tempt him and hope to humiliate him? Do you objectify him in your thoughts? God sees it all, and he knows how many ways you twist logic to convince yourself that all you do is pure and blameless. He is true and righteous: even when you deceive yourself, you cannot deceive him. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

But what misery it is to forsake this law! See what our hearts devise in the privacy of closed doors. Look what the word of man creates when it pretends to the place of the word of God. We fill the world with famine, sickness and death, and warring against God we war against ourselves, inventing new, improved, more efficient ways to kill ourselves. Ah, what clean lines our progress traces when we are masters of ourselves and know to put God in his place! But can we not see? He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and their condition is poor and miserable.

And yet, what good is there in knowing, when this knowledge cannot save us from misery? It is a misery upon misery to know our own faults and find ourselves at heart unwilling to change even when we have resolved to do so. The law exposes what a lie it is to say, ‘A little water clears us of this deed.’ And so we know from the law what death and destruction man brings upon himself, but we love it too much to stop, even as we know it brings no lasting pleasure.

Think of Macbeth and his crimes, which Shakespeare has cast for us into high drama. Macbeth is not even under the illusion that the moral law sanctions the murder of a king. He only says to himself as he comes up to the deed, ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’ When Macbeth cannot wash himself clean of his crime, he can only go deeper and deeper. Having killed the king, he keeps going. He cannot stop. The killing of the king has set other things in motion that cannot be otherwise. Tracks must be erased with more tracks; bloodshed must be covered with bloodshed. So the king is killed, then Macbeth’s friend Banquo, then another noble’s wife and children, faster and faster, with no time for reflection.

You are Macbeth; I am Macbeth. The carnage cannot stop now: the show must go on. We must keep killing, and it will not stop. We are out of control; it is out of control; there is no going back.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

So time goes, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and in the blink of an eye it is all done. Faithless in our deeds, we have nothing but death, death and death.

But faithful Christ gives life. We think it impossible to believe, but there we have it. To us the law adds misery to misery, because it tells us our unhappy condition; but to him who is righteous the law is a treasure, adding riches to riches. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. Now, look upon him who delights in this law. See how the law does not condemn him, for in him there is nothing false. See how it gives him joy, for his hands are not defiled with blood but pure and happy, and his lips are not bitter with lies but sweet with honey and the honeycomb. The stars are fair, and their music is his delight. He is at peace with them, and he admires the craft of their making: the logic of their motion is beautiful, and the poetry of their song is graceful and sweet. He enjoys the works of God because his life is blameless.

Should these not be the riches we enjoy? The world is beautifully made. To live according to the natural ways, and not to twist ourselves out of shape, should be a treasure and a delight. From goodness should come goodness; from beauty should come beauty. Sometimes it does. So much beautiful music has been made, so many beautiful tapestries have been woven, so many beautiful scenes have been painted, and so many beautiful words have been said. We think this should move us to do the good that everything is meant to do.

But we remember ourselves. Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. My brethren, Jesus Christ understands our errors. He is the Son of Man, who can sympathize with our weaknesses. He, the Son of God from everlasting to everlasting, through whom all things were made, has taken upon himself our entire humanity, to be a man like us in everything but sin. That every part of us might be saved from the gall of death, he has recapitulated our every part in his own person. He has suffered our temptations and not been mastered by them. He has been tempted with hunger, he has been tempted with pride, he has been tempted with worldly wealth and power, and he has stood fast against it all. Instead, he was thirsty as he hung on the Cross, he was stripped naked and humiliated as he hung on the Cross, and he held back from calling on the power of twelve legions of angels as he hung on the Cross. He who hung the earth upon the waters was hung upon that Cross, where the curse of the law came to die, that all who would look upon him might have life. As he was thirsty, so he promises to refresh us; as he was uncovered, so he promises to wash our secret sins away; as he hid the power that made all life, so he promises the power of life by the Holy Spirit. This promise is given in Holy Baptism; this promise is given in Holy Communion; this promise is given for you to take with faith, that the love which made the stars might be yours as well.

Christ’s promise is real and powerful: what the Psalmist asked has now been realized. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Jesus Christ is upright and innocent of all transgression. The sins that have had dominion over us have no dominion over him, for though they killed him and enclosed his body to rot in a tomb, he has broken the seal of death and come out with a body that will die no more.

And Christ offers us a share in his victory: when we believe, we are united with him and all his blessings, and God the Father sees us as he sees his own Son. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, God delivers to our souls the gift of the life that that is found in Christ. In this visible sign and pledge, as surely as we receive with our mouths the holy tokens in remembrance of him, he assures us ‘that we come to share in his true body and blood through the working of the Holy Spirit’, and ‘that all his sufferings and his death are our own as certainly as if we had ourselves suffered and rendered satisfaction in our own persons.’ In him we have righteousness, if we do not scorn him, if we believe in his holy Name. In his clean flesh is our unclean flesh made clean, and from our corrupted flesh is made an incorruptible flesh. Our hearts, our brains, our mouths, our hands, our feet, all are made new in his image. In his obedience to God is the hope and prayer of the Psalmist fulfilled: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

You who are baptized and bear the name of Christ, the promise of Christ is fully yours. ‘Take this’, he says: ‘this is my life-giving body.’ Receive him thankfully, believing that God loves you for his sake, and you will have the life that he has. He is yours today if he receive him with faith. And you who are among us today, unbaptized but studying the word of God, hear the holy gospel of God’s love. See if there be anyone like our Lord Jesus Christ, and believe and be baptized. Trust in him and take his promise, and he will never leave you.

In short, the reformation under Jehu was like that under Henry King of England; who, when he saw that he could not otherwise shake off the yoke of the Roman Antichrist than by some disguise, pretended great zeal for a time: he afterwards raged cruelly against all the godly, and doubled the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff: and such was Jehu.

When we duly consider what was done by Henry, it was indeed an heroic valour to deliver his kingdom from the hardest of tyrannies: but yet, with regard to him, he was certainly worse than all the other vassals of the Roman Antichrist; for they who continue under that bondage, retain at least some kind of religion; but he was restrained by no shame from men, and proved himself wholly void of every fear towards God. He was a monster, and such was Jehu.

Calvin’s attitude toward Edward VI was quite different. As Edward was called ‘our Josiah’ in a letter to Calvin, so Calvin also encouraged him to imitate that young king of Judah in reforming the country according to the word of God.

Yes, Henry VIII was notoriously unreliable in his support for reformation in the Church, and he may have been motivated much more by avarice and power-lust than virtue, but both the Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer are a Reformed representation of the faith. That the English Reformation was directly precipitated by Henry’s desire to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragón is of little consequence to this reformation’s legitimacy on the whole, because it was led by not just Henry himself but also other men with different – and biblical – goals.

Doctrine and Ecclesiology

I believe the Thirty-Nine Articles taken in their literal and grammatical sense, not in the monstrous way invented by John Henry Newman in Tract 90. The Church of England and the other Anglican churches are Protestant churches, standing rightly against the detestable enormities of the papacy, which imposes upon the Church, on pain of excommunication, strange doctrines neither heard of nor countenanced by the apostles and the fathers of the Church, these doctrines including works of supererogation, sacerdotal succession from the Apostles, transubstantiation in the Lord’s Supper, the cult of the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived immaculate. All such unreformed doctrines I abhor and abjure, believing holy Scripture to be sufficient for all things necessary to salvation.

God is the maker of his own Church. Invisibly he does this by Holy Ghost alone, through faith, and visibly by incorporating those who profess the faith into the earthly communion of believers, constituted in its profession by hearing the word and partaking of the sacraments. Outside of the visible Church, who professes the faith of Christ, there is no ordinary possibility of salvation; as Calvin says (Institutes 4.1.7), ‘Just as we must believe, therefore, that the former church, invisible to us, is visible to the eyes of God alone, so we are commanded to revere and keep communion with the latter, the visible church.’

On baptism, I am strongly pædobaptist, holding that children of believers are members of the covenant, and in baptism are given the seed of faith, though inwardly we cannot know whether they be chosen by God to grow into adult faith and to persevere in that faith. Because election is hidden and baptism is revealed, those who are baptized and do not disclaim the faith are unreservedly to be called Christians. Like most orthodox Anglicans, I take a Receptionist view of the Lord’s Supper, as articulated and documented by Daniel Waterland in A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist; as for Zwinglianism, I consider it discredited both by the Old Testament use of the word memorial and by the usage of St Paul himself, who says, The cup of blessing which we bless [i.e. for which we bless God], is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

Regarding the proper order of the Church, I support synodical episcopacy (on the model proposed by Abp Ussher) in a comprehensive church, not the agree-to-disagree fragmentation that now marks the Church. In this church, it is fitting to have a standard prayer book with some tolerance for scruples of conscience, as well as to retain the offices of bishop, priest (presbyter) and deacon, the first of which is a plene esse sign of the Church’s catholic unity in Christ, guarding undefiled both the word and the sacraments. For reasons of good order, I have some reservations about Whitefield and Wesley, especially Wesley for ordaining ministers without a bishop’s authority; at the same time, I acknowledge that they did stir up a church whose piety in many places had become lukewarm, though I also maintain that the Methodists are schismatics.

Ceremonial and Ornaments

Holy Communion should be celebrated at the north end of the table, with two candlesticks or none, and the paten and chalice on the credence table until the Offertory. Ministers should typically wear a cassock, surplice, academic hood, preaching scarf (tippet) and preaching bands; a bishop should wear, instead of a surplice, a rochet and a modest black chimere. I think many Anglican churches have been too quick in adopting coloured stoles and especially chasubles, though a decent cope can be quite edifying.

Ideally, the congregation also makes simple bows of the head at the holy Name of Jesus and upon entering and leaving a church sanctuary, as well as profound bows at the waist at the Incarnatus clauses in the Nicene Creed (through and was buried), at the end of the Sanctus, and after the Prayer of Consecration. Likewise, the sign of the Cross, which is also in use among Lutherans with no theological difference, and also remains a part of the ministration of Holy Baptism – and thereafter is a sign of our baptisms, by which we bear on our bodies and souls the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost – ought to be a matter of individual discretion, not frowned upon as a popish devotion.

As a sign of continuity with the earlier practices of the Church, I have a slight preference for plainchant (Merbecke?) and polyphonic anthems; in cathedrals and collegiate churches, I am quite pleased to hear choirs sing Anglican chants by Tallis and others. If incense be used (probably for a high feast day), I think it edifying to have incense pots on the floor, without the superstitious censing of persons and especially of things.

— Jonathan Swift, in ‘The Sentiments of a Church of England Man’

Not all will think it legally simple to change the oath. One Legitimist – and Legitimism, it seems to me, has a high regard for the rule of law and existing constitutional principles in succession – discusses what he thinks to be the fundamental principles of the French succession. Of these, by far the weakest stipulation, not even comparable to the Salic Law, is that the King of France be Roman Catholic (‘the Sovereign must practise the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion’). Unlike Britain, which is bound by the Act of Settlement passed by the English Parliament in 1701 to exclude all Roman Catholics from the royal succession, France has never passed a law to block anyone’s succession to the throne on the grounds of his being a Protestant. No law, then, actually requires that the King of France be a Romanist.

Some may object that the Protestant Henry IV, despite being reconciled with Henry III, did in fact convert to Roman Catholicism. This historical fact, however, is strictly limited to the practicalities of the time and therefore can have no legal force today, any more than a riot now long past can give us binding legal principles. For similar reasons, no constitutional principle against excise taxes on whiskey can be derived from the Whiskey Rebellion that shook the United States during the Washington presidency and led eventually to the repeal of the strongly resented tax.

There are yet more pointed historical facts that nevertheless cannot impinge on the actual constitutional principles that govern France. These are the events of 1593 that pressed Henry IV to finally renounce his Protestant faith, keeping the promise he had made to his Romanist subjects on 4 August 1589:

A new danger had arisen with the gathering of delegates to a [Catholic] League Estates General. For the first time, a significant body of Catholic opinion was prepared to set aside the Salic Law and elect a new ruler. With the possibility of the Spanish Infanta being elected queen of France, Henry’s procrastination was no longer a rational choice.

Unlike armed rebellion, these historical facts involve legal opinion and therefore must be taken more seriously. Still, the threat of a change to the succession law is decidedly not the same as a real change to the law, nor can it recognized as a binding principle of the royal succession. The most it tells us is that the Salic Law can indeed be set aside legally if this be found necessary, and that such a change may be motivated by the desire to ensure that the French succession passes to a Romanist, parallel to the British desire to ensure that the British succession goes to a Protestant. In legal fact, however, no religious requirement has legally been made, and even a repeal of the Salic Law would not establish any requirement that the King of France be a Romanist.

Perhaps Henry IV of France will yet have a Protestant successor. Even though this runs against the grain of ultramontane clericalism common among French Legitimists, I certainly hope it will come to pass. There really should be no constitutional crisis.

If He breathed into us our soul, but framed not our body (but some other did that), neither bow your knee nor uncover your head, but keep on your hats and sit even as you do hardly. But if He hath framed that body of yours, and every member of it, let Him have the honour both of head and knee, and every member else.

Likewise for bowing the head at the holy Name of Jesus, which looks forward to the day when every knee will bow at that Name: it honours God with the body, and it urges the whole heart to acknowledge him more fully, that he may make its paths straight.

À la couronne est attaché le serment de défendre la couronne contre l’ambition des puissants et de la garder fidèle à l’Église romaine.

To keep the crown faithful to the Roman Church, huh? While I do believe in restoring the Bourbons (whose current scion is Louis XX, Duke of Anjou) in a constitutional monarchy, and they are indeed Romanists, I see nothing attractive in being Romish on principle. This loyalty to Rome would seem to have its Protestant counterpart in Britain, but the British coronation order of service calls for closer attention:

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel?

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?

Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?

These oaths appear in exactly their logical order. God’s law and gospel take the highest precedence, followed by the lawfully established Protestant religion of the realm, specified in England as the Church of England with its doctrine, worship, discipline and government.

Having read the religious obligations of the British crown, let us see their equivalent in France. As documented in Du sacre des rois de France, de son origine et de la Sainte-Ampoule (C. Ballard, 1825), 79–80, the last French king to have a coronation promised, in the name of Jesus Christ, these four things:

1. de faire conserver en tous temps, à l’Église de Dieu, la paix par le peuple chrétien (‘to have maintained in all time, in God’s Church, peace among the Christian people’);
2. d’empêcher les personnes de tout rang de commettre des rapines et des iniquités de quelque nature qu’elles soient (‘to stop persons of all rank from committing rapines and iniquities, of whatever nature they be’);
3. de faire observer la justice et la miséricorde dans tous les jugemens, afin que Dieu, qui est la source de la clémence et de la miséricorde, daigne la répandre sur moi et sur vous aussi (‘to have justice and mercy observed in all judgements, that God, the source of clemency and mercy, may deign to spread them upon me and upon you too’);
4. de m’appliquer sincèrement, et de tout mon pouvoir, à exterminer, de toutes les terres soumises à ma domination, les hérétiques nommément condamnes par l’Église (‘to apply myself sincerely, and to the utmost of my power, to exterminate, from all the lands subject to my dominion, the heretics specifically condemned by the Church’).

This is what we currently have as the basis of any revision. Most people today will recoil at the thought of exterminating heretics for what they believe, since it denies freedom of conscience, but I think there is something worth keeping in the fourth promise: as a supporter of orthodox religion, the king should indeed exemplify the best of orthodox faith, and by the justice of his ways he should persuade heretics to leave behind their denials of the truth. To a Protestant such as myself, this is the way to fulfil the law in charity rather than tyranny.