Chapter 7 - The Visible Church and Its Ordinances

Summary

This chapter analyses Andrewes’ account of the central ordinances of divine worship – preaching, prayer, the sacrament and the right conduct of the public worship of God. It argues that Andrewes produced a significant re-evaluation of the roles of those ordinances and practices in the life of the church and of the life of faith; one which downplayed the role of the word preached, and played up those of public prayer and, in particular, of the sacrament. For Andrewes, it was the sacrament that was at the centre of both corporate worship and the devotional life of the Christian; a view founded on his deeply incarnational and Trinitarian theology. As for the reverent conduct of divine worship, that was a natural, indeed a necessary, corollary of the divine presence in the church and the sacrament. All of which was presented as in stark contrast to, and indeed in reaction against, what Andrewes presented as the characteristic religious values and practices of the puritans.