"Necessary For These Times".

The Homilies Appointed To Be Read In Churches, revised and introduced by Ian Robinson (Bishopstone, Herf., UK: Brynmill Press and Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society USA, 2006)

What could be a better gift from an independent editor-publisher than to restore to a floundering church one of its foundational books? This is what Ian Robinson, with the encouragement of the Reverend Peter Toon and the joint venture of Brynmill Press and Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society USA, has done in republishing the Homilies for the first time since 1859. As Robinson explains in a brief preface:

  During the first century of her separation from Rome, three English
  books were of supreme importance to the Church of England. The first,
  in a sense embracing the other two, was the English Bible, which from
  1539, still in the reign of Henry VIII, was given royal sanction so
  that versions close to Tyndale's could be freely read (if only
  chained in churches) throughout the land. The second, the Book of
  Common Prayer, had to wait for the death of King Henry, who was far
  too reactionary a theologian to have countenanced it. These two
  books, in the form of the 1611 Bible, in direct descent from Tyndale,
  and the 1662 revision of the Prayer Book (with the Articles of
  Religion and the Ordinal usually bound in the one volume), are still
  in daily use.

The third member of the triad, the Homilies, appeared in 1547, and went through two major expansions as well as many minor revisions in numerous editions, between then and 1623, after which there were many reprints.

What are the Homilies? And why are they, unlike the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, no longer in daily use, especially when in Article XXXV of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion that I find in my 1959 Canadian edition of the Book of Common Prayer (that I use, if not daily, at least weekly) the following:

  The second Book of Homilies, the several titles whereof we have
  joined under this Article, doth contain a godly and wholesome
  Doctrine, and necessary for these times, as doth the former Book of
  Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth; and
  therefore we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers
  diligently and distinctly, that they may be under standed of the
  people.

Briefly, the Homilies are two books of Tudor sermons "To Be Read in Churches" in which the incumbent minister was not licensed to deliver sermons. A Cambridge or Oxford degree was required in order to hold a license to preach. The first Book of Homilies, likely edited by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, appeared in 1547 within six months of the death of Henry VIII. Cranmer himself is thought to be the author of four of the twelve homilies in this book: "A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture," "Of the Salvation of all Mankind by only Christ," "Of the true, lively and Christian Faith," and "Of Good Works annexed unto Faith." These homilies contain Cranmer's essential thought on key matters of Reformed theology such as justification by faith. That the present Anglican/Episcopal church could have lost sight of these homilies is a disgrace. Cranmer's chaplain, Thomas Becon, is thought to be the author of the eleventh homily, "Against Whoredom and Uncleanness," while Cranmer's inclusiveness is reflected in the fact that he invited a later opponent, Bishop Edmund Bonner, and his chaplain, John Harpsfield, to contribute "Of Christian Love and Charity" and "Of the Misery of all Mankind," respectively. When the first Book of Homilies was banned under Queen Mary I, Harpsfield's "Of the Misery ..." was retained in a Roman Catholic book of homilies that appeared in 1555. In 1562, not long after Queen Elizabeth I's accession, a second book of twenty-three homilies appeared probably under the direction of Bishop John Jewel. A final long homily "Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion" was added in response to the northern rebellion of 1570. The Homilies were crucial expositions of the Christian way of life for the young Reformation Church of England but, as Robinson suggests, they can be as profitably read today as they were in the sixteenth century. Robinson's republication couldn't be more timely, for the Homilies are, indeed, as "necessary for these times" as for the times for which they were written. But how and why were the Homilies (last published under authority in 1623) lost?

John Donne, on one hand, spoke of the Homilies as "cold meat" (Sermons III, 338), though elsewhere he praised them (Sermons X, 93-4). (1) At the end of the seventeenth century, a later dean of St. Paul's and eventual archbishop of Canterbury, John Tillotson, thought of preparing a New Book of Homilies. (2) John Wesley's first manifesto (1738) was an abridgement of Cranmer's three sermons on justification by faith. Fifty years later Wesley wrote, "The book which next to the Holy Scripture was of the greatest use to them [Methodist Societies] in settling their judgment as to the grand point of justification by faith is the book of Homilies. They were never clearly convinced that we are justified by faith alone till they carefully consulted these and compared them with the sacred writings [the Bible]. And no minister of the Church, can, with any decency, oppose these, seeing that at his ordination he subscribes to them in subscribing to the thirty-sixth [sic] article of the Church." (3) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who read the Homilies in an edition issued by the newly formed Prayer Book and Homily Society, was impressed, (4) while R. H. Graves in The Homilies Re-Considered (Dublin 1826) defended them forcefully: "The language of the Homilies is perfectly intelligible to all ranks, and to the lower order, I believe (and I speak from experience) much more so than any modern publications. To those that seek for information without display, reverence for antiquity without superstition, zeal without innovation, close reasoning without subtilty, doctrine without metaphysics, morality without method-ism, in short the Gospel without human inventions; the nervous condensation, and bold simplicity of the Homilies will supply an almost inexhaustible treasure." (5) Thirty years later, John Griffiths's edition, from which Robinson takes his text, appeared. So, the Homilies were alive, well, and active in Christian life until, at least, the latter part of the nineteenth century.

It was not until the twentieth century that the Homilies were lost. Although in 1900 Professor W. E. Collins asserted the continued importance of the Homilies in his The Witness of the Homilies and Sir E. C. Hoskyns based a series of sermons in 1938 on them, (6) Marcus Donovan, in a 1941 article written with A. R. Vidler in Theology, offered the following opinion on hearing a ship's captain read the homily against adultery at Morning Prayer aboard a liner: "it is time that official action should be taken to disown them [the Homilies]; if printed at all, they should be put forward, not by the Tract Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), but as documents illustrative of the depth to which religion had sunk as a result of the Reformation." (7) Donovan's partial view looks now like the tip of an iceberg soon to surface as the New English Bible and other feeble contemporary translations, the Alternative Service Book, a number of emasculated hymnals, and most recently Common Worship. Like earlier Brynmill Press publications on Christianity, the present full edition of the Homilies opposes this sorry spate of late twentieth-century innovations.

The present edition of the Homilies gets the twenty-first century off to a better start in helping to return the Anglican/ Episcopal Church to its roots. Such a truly radical effort is required, so what could be better medicine for an ailing church than its own Homilies. In a sermon preached at St. George's Reformed Episcopal Church in Hamilton, Ontario, in October 2001, Robinson stressed the importance of the Homilies as "necessary for these times" in opposing the moral corruption of our present "celebrity culture."

So, why are the Homilies as valuable today as when they were written? Cranmer's "A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture" is unsurpassable as a recommendation for careful Bible study. As noted, John Wesley stressed Cranmer's persuasiveness on justification by faith and salvation "by only Christ." The thirty-six homilies, many in several parts, deal convincingly and intelligently with key elements in Christian living (for examples, "Christian Love and Charity," "Concerning Prayer," and "Against the Fear of Death") as well as with the significance of central events in the Christian year such as the Nativity, Good Friday, Easter Day, and Whitsunday. The Homilies are doctrinally sound, strongly argued, and clearly written and can bear hearing or reading more than once. It is easy to imagine them in effective use in their time as well as continuing to provide excellent sermons or sermon material for present-day preachers. Let me conclude with a representative example that allows you "to taste and see" how good the Homilies are. Here is Cranmer on justification by faith, which so impressed Wesley and convinced the members of the Methodist Societies:

  Because all men be sinners, and offenders against God, and breakers
  of his law and commandments, therefore can no man by his own acts,
  works, and deeds, seem they never so good, be justified and made
  righteous before God; but every man of necessity, is constrained to
  seek for another righteousness or justification, to be received at
  God's own hands, that is to say, the remission, pardon and
  forgiveness of his sins and trespasses, in such things as he hath
  offended. And this justification or righteousness, which we so
  receive by God's mercy and Christ's merits, embraced by faith, is
  taken, accepted and allowed of God, for our perfect and full
  justification. For the more full understanding hereof, it is our
  parts and duty, ever to remember the great mercy of God; how that,
  all the world being wrapped in sin, by breaking of the law, God sent
  his only Son, our Saviour Christ, into this world, to fulfil the law
  for us, and by shedding of his most precious blood, to make a
  sacrifice and satisfaction, or (as it may be called), amends to his
  Father for our sins, to assuage his wrath and indignation, conceived
  against us for the same. Insomuch that infants, being baptised and
  dying in their infancy, are by this sacrifice washed from their sins,
  brought to God's favour, and made his children, and inheritors of his
  kingdom of heaven. And they which in act or deed, do sin after their
  baptism, when they convert, and turn again to God unfeignedly, they
  are likewise washed, by this sacrifice, from their sins, in such sort
  that there remaineth not any spot of sin, that shall be imputed to
  their damnation. This is that justification, or righteousness, which
  St Paul speaketh of, when he saith, No man is justified by the works
  of the law, but freely, by faith in Jesus Christ. And again he saith,
  We believe in Christ Jesu, that we be justified freely, by the faith
  of Christ, and not by the works of the law; because that no man shall
  be justified by the works of the law.

The Homilies are not uniformly good. Robinson is right that the two longest, "Against Peril of Idolatry" and "Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion," are the two worst, and while much of "Of The State of Matrimony" is persuasive and valuable, I find its pervasive sexism hard to take. I offer the following suggestions for definition in the next edition of the Select Glossary: "repugned" (84), "contentation" (134), "diriges" (197), "month's minds" (197), and "trentals" (43, 197). Also, I noted two possible typographical errors: "com-mand-ments"/"commandments" (44, line 29) and "wthin"/ "within" (332. line 42).

(1.) See Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570): A Critical Edition, ed. Ronald Bond. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 23, passim. (2.) Ibid., p. 15 (3.) Ibid., pp. 15-6 (4.) Ibid., p. 17 (5.) Ibid., p. 24 (6.) Op. cit. (7.) Ibid., p. 25

JOHN FERNS is Professor Emeritus of English at McMaster University.