The Catholicity of Common Prayer

Those who esteem the old Prayer Book are used to sniping from opposite sides – from Catholics, it is too Protestant; from evangelicals, it is too Catholic. It’s a pattern of criticism that can be traced back to the recusants (nonconforming papal loyalists) and Puritans (nonconforming advanced Protestants) of the 16th century. Those apparently contradictory criticisms bring to light the true character of the via media or middle way of classical Anglicanism. In more recent thought, Anglicanism’s middle way is often thought to mean a muddled compromise of Protestantism and Catholicism – but nothing could be further from the mind of the classical Anglican divines. For them, the moderate quality of Anglicanism meant the principle set forth in the preface to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: ‘[I]t hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it’. This moderation meant a church that was firmly anti-papal and firmly anti-Puritan. With the Puritans (and against the Papists) it held to reformed evangelical orthodoxy on the doctrines of sin and grace, but with the papists (and against the Puritans) it maintained ancient Catholic forms and customs of liturgy