Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

The Book of Homilies

Thomas Cranmer and others

Official sermons to be read in parishes where the clergy could not preach, on scripture, salvation, faith, good works, and obedience to authority.

The Book of Common Prayer

Thomas Cranmer · 1489–1556

One book putting the whole worship of a church — daily prayer, communion, baptism, marriage, burial — into the language of the people, with a lectionary that walks a congregation through most of the Bible in a year.

An Apology of the Church of England

John Jewel · 1522–1571

A defence arguing that the English church has not innovated but returned to the doctrine of scripture and the first six centuries, and that Rome is the departure.

The Thirty-Nine Articles

The Church of England

Doctrinal articles combining Reformed teaching on scripture, justification, and predestination with a conservative retention of episcopacy and the creeds.

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

Richard Hooker · 1554–1600

A defence of the English church against Puritan critics, grounded in a doctrine of law running from eternal law through natural reason to human custom.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

John Donne · 1572–1631

Twenty-three meditations written during a near-fatal fever, tracking the illness stage by stage — including the bell tolling for a neighbour and no man being an island.

The Sermons

Lancelot Andrewes · 1555–1626

Court sermons of intricate wordplay and close attention to the Greek and Hebrew, including the nativity sermon on the cold coming the wise men had of it.

The Divine Poems

John Donne · 1572–1631

Sonnets and hymns of argumentative, physical, and often desperate address to God — asking to be battered, and admitting he cannot repent without help.

The Temple

George Herbert · 1593–1633

A hundred and sixty short poems arranged as a walk through a church, recording a long argument with God that ends with the guest sitting down and eating.

The Sermons

John Donne · 1572–1631

One hundred and sixty sermons from St Paul's, on death, resurrection, and mercy, delivered by a former poet and courtier who had come late to orders.

The Liberty of Prophesying

Jeremy Taylor · 1613–1667

An argument that few doctrines are clear enough to justify coercion, that the Apostles' Creed suffices for communion, and that error held honestly is not damnable.

Private Prayers

Preces Privatae

Lancelot Andrewes · 1555–1626

A private prayer book woven almost entirely from scripture and the liturgies of East and West, arranged by the days of the week and the hours.

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living

Jeremy Taylor · 1613–1667

A rule of life for laypeople written during the suppression of the English church — on care of time, purity of intention, sobriety, justice, and religion.

Silex Scintillans

Henry Vaughan · 1621–1695

Poems of light, childhood, and the natural world, written in Wales after the death of a brother and the destruction of the church he loved.

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying

Jeremy Taylor · 1613–1667

How to prepare for death across a whole life rather than at the end of one, written after the deaths of his patron's wife and his own sons.

A Priest to the Temple, or The Country Parson

George Herbert · 1593–1633

A portrait of the ideal country clergyman — his house, his wife, his charity, his catechising, and his practice of walking his parish rather than staying indoors.

The Whole Duty of Man

Anonymous

A course of practical instruction on duty to God, self, and neighbour, divided into seventeen sections to be read through three times a year.

The Book of Common Prayer of 1662

The Church of England

The restoration prayer book, essentially Cranmer's with small revisions, imposed by an Act of Uniformity that ejected some two thousand ministers who would not use it.

A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

Mary Astell · 1666–1731

A plan for a religious college where women could study, pray, and teach, free from the marriage market — argued from the equal rationality of women's souls.

The Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England

Mary Astell · 1666–1731

A full statement of her own theology and philosophy, arguing that women must think for themselves and that submission in marriage is not owed to a tyrant.