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On Becoming Anglican: Emerging Anglican Thought in the Works of Thomas Traherne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

Denise Inge
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Abstract

The writings of Thomas Traherne (1637–74) are explored as a source of and model for the idea of Anglicanism. In his concern for a middle way between Roman Catholicism and reformed Protestantism (including interest in Calvin as well as the Fathers), his concern for a national Church, and in emphasizing the importance of a common liturgy, Traherne anticipates what has characterized the later global Anglican Communion and important aspects of what has been seen as characteristic Anglican theology.

Keywords

Thomas TraherneAnglicanismScripturetraditionreasonChurch of EnglandPuritanism
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 8 - 28
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Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2015 

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Footnotes

1.

Denise Inge (d. 2014) was an Honorary Senior Fellow in Early Modern Studies at the University of Worcester and renowned scholar of Thomas Traherne who left this article substantially complete. It has been prepared for publication with the assistance of her husband, Bishop John Inge.

References

2. See J. Smith, ‘Thomas Traherne’, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 55, p. 205; D. Inge, Thomas Traherne: Poetry and Prose (London: SPCK, 2002); D. Inge, Happiness and Holiness: Thomas Traherne and his Writings (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2008); and Inge, D., Wanting Like a God: Desire and Freedom in the Works of Thomas Traherne (London: SCM Press, 2009).Google Scholar

3. See Smith, ‘Thomas Traherne’, p. 205.Google Scholar

4. Lewis, T.T. (ed.), Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley (London: Camden Society, 1854), pp. 111, 119, 132–133.Google Scholar

5. Register entry for ordination, 20 October 1660, Oxon. RO, Oxford diocesan papers, d. 106.Google Scholar

6. See ‘A Sober View of Dr Twisse’, particularly sect. VI and VII, in J. Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne I (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005), pp. 77–86.Google Scholar

7. See ‘Rogation’, ‘Poem for Pentecost’, ‘Prayer for All Saints Day’, ‘A Prayer of Thanks for Mary’, in Inge (ed.), Happiness and Holiness,pp. 297–303.Google Scholar

8. ‘To the Reader’, introduction to A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of GOD in Several Most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the Same, first published by Hicks, 1699, in J. Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne IV (Cambridge: Brewer, 2009), p. 318.Google Scholar

9. See Eales, J., Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Glasgow: Hardinge Simpole, 2002), pp. 182, 192–193; and the anonymous A True and Full Relation of the Officers’ and Armies’ Forcible Seizing of Divers Eminent Members of the Commons House, December 6 and 7 1648 (London, 1648), Thomason Tracts E476 (14) 3–11.Google Scholar

10. ‘A LETTER Written by a LADY to a Romish PRIEST upon her Return from the Church of Rome to the Church of England’, in J. Smith (ed.), The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works Series II, Part 4 Volume 7: Susanna Hopton I (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), p. 124.Google Scholar

11. Hereford County RO, registrar's files, 1673/488 and 1667/349.Google Scholar

12. J. Smith, ‘The Ceremonial Law’, PN Review 25.2 (1998), pp. 22–28.Google Scholar

13. See, for instance, the introduction to Christian Ethicks in which Traherne promises to ‘lead his reader into the way of Blessedness’, or the title page of Commentaries of Heaven written for the ‘Satisfaction of Atheists and the Consolation of Christians’.Google Scholar

14. ‘To the Reader’, p. 319.Google Scholar

15. ‘Select Meditations’, I.82, in J. Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne V (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013), p. 255.Google Scholar

16. ‘Select Meditations’, I.85; The Works of Thomas Traherne V, p. 258.Google Scholar

17. ‘Select Meditations’, III.25; The Works of Thomas Traherne V, pp. 310–11.Google Scholar

18. ‘Article’ in J. Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne III (Cambridge: Brewer, 2007), p. 233.Google Scholar

19. Roman Forgeries, or, A true account of false records: discovering the impostures and counterfeit antiquities of the Church of Rome, by a faithful son of the Church of England (London: Printed by S. & B. Griffin for Jonathan Edwin, 1673), p. 28.Google Scholar

20. Roman Forgeries, p. 108.Google Scholar

21. Nabil Matar, ‘A Note on Thomas Traherne and the Quakers’, Notes & Queries 28.1 (1981), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

22. D. Inge, ‘Thomas Traherne and the Socinian Heresy in Commentaries of Heaven’, Notes & Queries 54.4 (2007), pp. 412–16.Google Scholar

23. Wells, S., What Anglicans Believe (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011).Google Scholar

24. What Anglicans Believe, p. xvi.Google Scholar

25. J. Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne I, p. 78. It should be noted that Traherne has, in the past, been dismissed by some as a ‘poet of felicity’ who had a very thin conception of sin. This is a thesis which certainly could be argued persuasively from some of his writings – notably the Centuries. However, the large corpus of work discovered in 1999 makes clear that this is a very inadequate reading of Traherne. See ‘Sin and Salvation’, in D. Inge, Happiness and Holiness, pp. 144–52.Google Scholar

26. Cocksworth, C., Holding Together (London: Canterbury Press, 2008), p. 228 and pp. 240–41.Google Scholar

27. Wells, What Anglicans Believe, p. 46.Google Scholar

28. A. Ridler identifies this as coming from Bodleian MS. Lat. Misc. F. 45 in her introduction to Traherne: Poems, Centuries and Three Thanksgivings (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. xv. This is a notebook that belonged to Traherne's brother Philip but contained material in Traherne's hand with some poems signed, as was this one, in an uncharacteristic ‘T.T.’Google Scholar

29. On Traherne and sin see n. 24 above and P. Grant, The Transformation of Sin: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Traherne (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974); on Traherne, Irenaeus and heresy, see the introduction to Roman Forgeries.Google Scholar

30. Rowell, G., Stevenson, K.Williams, R. (eds.), Love's Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. xxv.Google Scholar

31. Lines 272-74, 284-89 from the poem at the end of ‘The Kingdom of God’; ch. XXII of Ross (ed.), Works of Thomas Traherne I, p. 375.Google Scholar

32. ‘The Person’, in D. Inge, Happiness and Holiness, p. 88.Google Scholar

33. ‘The Celestial Stranger’, in Inge (ed.), Thomas Traherne: Poetry and Prose, pp. 112–14.Google Scholar

34. Centuries of Meditations, IV 8; Ross (ed.), Works of Thomas Traherne V, p. 144.Google Scholar

35. Sykes, S., The Identity of Anglicanism (New York: Seabury, 1978), p. 90, quoted in Wells, What Anglicans Believe, p. 61.Google Scholar

36. Cocksworth, Holding Together, p. 45.Google Scholar

37. ‘Article’ in Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne III, p. 233. Brackets mine.Google Scholar

38. ‘Article’ in Ross (ed.), The Works of Thomas Traherne III, p. 233.Google Scholar

39. Anthony A. Wood, in ‘Burton, Hezekiah’, Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885–1900).Google Scholar

40. Title page of Roman Forgeries.Google Scholar

41. Ramsey, M., From Gore to Temple (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1960), pp. 169–170.Google Scholar

42. Rowell et al., Love's Redeeming Work, p. xxxi.Google Scholar

43. Rowell et al., Love's Redeeming Work, p. xxxi.Google Scholar

44. Ross, The Works of Thomas Traherne I, p. 78.Google Scholar

45. Ramsey, M., The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1935), pp. 219–220.Google Scholar

46. D. Ford in Inge, Wanting Like a God, p. xii.Google Scholar