Self-isolation, Day Twelve, being the Feast of Lancelot Andrewes


This song speaks to me of a gentle and not-unpleasant autumnal melancholy, of daylight retreating and a new briskness in the air.

It has nothing at all to do with Lancelot Andrewes. It's just been in my head lately.

Lancelot Andrewes -- defender of Anglicanism, scourge of Calvinism, wielder of long sentences -- was bishop, successively, of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester in the first quarter of the 17th century. James VI and I put him first on the list of divines appointed to compile the Authorized Version. He wrote sensibly about the Eucharist:

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.

He does have a tendency just to slip into Latin as one slips into a pair of comfortable shoes, so here's that last sentence all the way in English:

There is a real change in the elements—we allow that the bread, once consecrated, is not the bread that nature formed; instead, it is bread that blessing has consecrated, and in consecrating, has also changed.


 T.S. Eliot admired Andrewes and quoted from one of his Christmas sermons at the beginning of "Journey of the Magi."


He is best-known today, perhaps, for his Preces Privatae, "Private Devotions." I conclude this post with a Litany for the morning.

LITANY

GLORY be to Thee, O Lord, glory to Thee.
Glory to Thee who givest me sleep
to recruit my weakness,
and to remit the toils
of this fretful flesh.
To this day and all days,
a perfect, holy, peaceful, healthy,
sinless course,

Vouchsafe O Lord.

The Angel of peace, a faithful guide,
guardian of souls and bodies,
to encamp around me,
and ever to prompt what is salutary,

Vouchsafe O Lord.

Pardon and remission
of all sins and of all offences

Vouchsafe O Lord.

7

To our souls what is good and convenient,
and peace to the world,

Vouchsafe O Lord.

Repentance and strictness
for the residue of our life,
and health and peace to the end,

Vouchsafe O Lord.

Whatever is true, whatever is honest,
whatever just, whatever pure,
whatever lovely, whatever of good report,
if there be any virtue, if any praise,
such thoughts, such deeds,

Vouchsafe O Lord.

A Christian close,
without sin, without shame,
and, should it please Thee,
without pain,
and a good answer
at the dreadful and fearful
judgment‑seat
of Jesus Christ our Lord,.

Vouchsafe O Lord.

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