Hooper, Vestments, and Anglican Generosity
John Hooper was burned at the stake February 9, 1555, one of 282 Protestants ordered killed by Mary Tudor in her five-year reign as Queen. Hooper is remembered as the "Father of Puritanism."
Puritanism is a nasty thing almost always when it is mentioned. C.S. Lewis’s demon Screwtape declared to his apprentice Woodworm that “the value we have given to that word [Puritanism] is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years.” The Puritans were profoundly committed Anglicans whom historian Patrick Collinson calls the “hotter sort of protestants.” Nigel Atkinson points out that their tendency was to out-reform the reformers, and he noted how John Hooper changed from the usual Reformation principle (that anything can be used, provided that it is not contrary to Scripture), to his insistence that anything used in worship must “have the express Word of God to support it.” This came to be called the Regulative Principle (as opposed to the Normative Principle). J. I. Packer came to love the Puritans and viewed them as the conscience of the English Reformation:
“The great Puritans were men of outstanding intellectual power and spiritual insight, in whom the mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God and a minute acquaintance with the human heart. All their work betrays this unique fusion of gifts and graces. They had a radically God-centered outlook. Their appreciation of God’s sovereign majesty was profound; their reverence in handling His word was deep and sustained. . .they understood the ways of God with men, the glory of Christ the mediator, and the work of the Spirit in the believer and in the church, more richly, fully, and accurately, perhaps, than any since their day.”
John Hooper spent the early 1540s in exile in Zurich with other Protestant exiles, and when he returned home he was appointed the bishop of Gloucester. But he refused the appointment and chose instead to spend a month in Fleet Prison rather than be vested with the “popish rags redolent of superstition” (Alec Ryrie). He came to believe that the vestments of the clergy were not matters of indifference (adiaphora) when they crudely display the church’s wealth and power, and mislead people into believing that the minister is a mediator who offers propitiatory sacrifices for their salvation. For Hooper, the gaudy Medieval robes communicated a theology that is not consistent with a Protestant understanding of ministers and Holy Communion that mean only to point people to Christ. He was finally persuaded that “vestments” are not a mountain to die on, especially if they kept him from opportunities to minister the gospel. Until his death he served faithfully as bishop in the Church of England.
There is a generosity in historic Anglicanism that distinguishes gospel issues from adiaphora (matters indifferent): essentials from nonessentials. This is the original "via media" of the Church of England. This generosity distinguishes the English Reformation from some other Reformation traditions. Nonconformist Puritans sometimes violated this generosity, prohibiting what was not specifically prohibited in Holy Scripture for fear that Anglicanism would spin into lawlessness. The generosity in Anglicanism is no less needed today than in the 16th century:
Oliver O’Donovan stated that “There was nothing particularly ‘middle’ about most of the English Reformers’ theological positions - even if one could decide between what poles the middle way was supposed to lie. Their moderation consisted rather in a determined policy of separating the essentials of faith and order from adiaphora . . . Anglican moderation is the policy of reserving strong statement and conviction for the few things which really deserve them . . . But it is precisely that, and not some supposed ‘middleness’ between Catholic and Protestant, which gives it a critically important role in twentieth century ecumenism.”
Anglicanism at its best is thoroughly biblical, theologically orthodox, pastorally generous, and liturgically beautiful. Considering Hooper on the anniversary of his death is a reminder of the “pastorally generous” part, and the unwavering English commitment to the gospel essentials, and generosity in matters for which biblical Christians can and will disagree.
(For anyone who is interested to know why J.I. Packer and many others like him have been so enamored with and shaped by the devotional writings of Anglican Puritans, we recommend The English Reformation and the Puritans by Michael Reeves, and Dane Ortland’s Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers.
Oliver O’Donovan, On The Thirty-nine Articles: A Conversation with Tudor Christianity
Nigel Atkinson, Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason
Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Settlement
Ed. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Puritan Papers Vol One 1956-1959
Alec Ryrie, The English Reformation: A Very Brief History
Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement