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Bible Encyclopedias
Lancelot Andrewes
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or Book on the oath of allegiance. After his translation to Ely (1609), he again controverted Bellarmine in the Responsio ad Apologiam, a treatise never answered. In 1617 he accompanied James I. to Scotland with a view to persuading the Scots that Episcopacy was preferable to Presbyterianism. In 1618 he attended the synod of Dort, and was soon after made dean of the Chapel Royal and translated to Winchester, a diocese which he administered with loving prudence and the highest success. He died on the 26th of September 1626, mourned alike by leaders in church and state.
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 distinguished in many fields. At court, though no trifler or flatterer, he was a favourite counsellor in three successive reigns, but he never meddled much in civil or temporal affairs. His learning made him the equal and the friend of Grotius, and of the foremost contemporary scholars. His preaching was a unique combination of rhetorical splendour and scholarly richness; his piety that of an ancient saint, semi-ascetic and unearthly in its selfdenial. As a churchman he is typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan and the Roman positions. He stands in true succession to Richard Hooker in working out the principles of the English Reformation, though while Hooker argued mainly against Puritanism, Andrewes chiefly combated Romanism. 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 t 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). As to reservation, "it needeth not: the intent is had without it," since an invalid may always have his private communion. Andrewes declares against the invocation of saints, the apparent examples in patristic literature are "rhetorical outbursts, not theological definitions." His services to his church have been summed up thus: - (I) 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.
Literature.-Of his works the Manual of Private Devotions is the best known, for it appeals to Christians of every church. One of the many good modern editions is that by Alex. Whyte (1900). Andrewes's other works occupy eight volumes in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1841-1854). Of biographies we have those by H. Isaacson (1650), A. T. Russell (1863),(1863), R. L. Ottley (1894), and Dean Church's essay in Masters in English Theology. See also W. H. Frere, Lancelot Andrewes as a Representative of Anglican Principles (1898; Church Hist. Soc. Publications, No. 44).
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Lancelot Andrewes'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/l/lancelot-andrewes.html. 1910.
