23/3/07 - English Literature - Doctrine and Devotion

1. A brief overview of historical and political debates about doctrine.

The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for Any Christian Man (1543):

1. the communion of one kind for the laity;
2. the celibacy of the priesthood;
3. the permanence of vows of chastity;
4. the benefit of private masses;
5. auricular confession;
6. transubstantiation.

"all and every person and persons inhabiting within this realm or any other of the Queen's Majesty's dominions, shall diligently and faithfully, having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, endeavour themselves to resort to their parish church or chapel accustomed ... upon every Sunday and other days ordained and used to be kept as Holy days, and then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of common prayer, preachings, or other service or God there to be used and ministered; upon pain of punishment by the censures of the Church, and also upon pain that every person so offending shall forfeit for every offence twelve pence, to be levied by the church wardens of the parish where such offence shall be done, to the use of the poor of the same parish...."
[Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity (1559)]

2. An introduction to different devotional practices and their effects upon the individual

Ten Stages to Election:


1. a consideration of the word, usually accompanied by some outward misfortune, ‘to break and subdue the stubbornness of our nature'.
2. a knowledge of the law (i.e. understanding of how good and evil are constituted).
3. awareness of his or her own sin.
4. he or she realises a hopeless condition and despairs of salvation and this is the point at which the reprobate languishes.
5. only the elect can progress to stage 5, discovering in their minds 'a serious consideration of the promise of salvation, propounded and published in the gospel.
6. God kindles a spark of faith in the elect's collective heart.
7. mental combat in which the soul must pit a 'fervent, constant and earnest invocation for pardon' against violent despair and doubt.
8. While stage 7 is never entirely resolved, the combat is assuaged by momentary feelings of assurance and persuasions of mercy.
9. Evangelical sorrow, i.e., 'a grief for sin because it is sin'.
10. God gives the subject 'grace to endeavour to obey his Commandments by a new obedience’.
[Summarised from William Perkins]

3. Some examples of how these issues were reflected in contemporary poetry, with reference to the ‘Fall’

Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear.
What! is it she which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore,
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she self-truth, and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travel we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to thee then
When she is embraced and open to most men.
[John Donne, Holy Sonnet 18]

"[women] were made of the rib of man, and that their froward nature showeth; for a rib is a crooked thing good for nothing else, and women are crooked by nature, for small occasion will cause them to be angry.

"Again, in a manner she was no sooner made but straightway her mind was set upon mischief, for by her aspiring and wanton will she quickly procured man’s fall. And therefore ever since they are and have been a woe unto man and follow the line of their first leader"
[Joseph Swetnam. The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, froward, and unconstant women, 1615]

• I Corinthians 14, vv.34-35 (Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church)
• I Timothy 2, especially vv. 11-12 (Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence).

"[In the Garden of Eden] had they instructions given them, and the lawe of life for an heritage. before them was laid both life and death, good and evill, with a freewill given them to take which liked them best. But their frailtie was such, that they, through a small intisement, chose the evill, and left the good: they left life, and chose death. Thus Lord, through sin and breaking of thy commandements, man lost the freewill that was given him in his creation, and purchased death to all his posteritie ... as by Adam, death came to mankind, so by Jesus Christ was mankind restored to life"
[Anne Wheathill. A Handfull of Holesome (though Homelie) Hearbs (1584)]

"… I have written this small volume, or little booke, for the generall use of all virtuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of this kingdome; … And this have I done, to make knowne to the world, that all women deserve not to be blamed though some forgetting they are women themselves, … speake unadvisedly against the rest of their sexe; … [like] evill disposed men, who forgetting they were borne of women, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a finall ende of them all, doe like Vipers deface the wombes wherein they were bred, onely to give way and utterance to their want of discretion and goodnesse. … they have tempted even the patience of God himselfe, who gave power to wise and virtuous women, to bring downe their pride and arrogancie. [Biblical examples] … As also in respect it pleased our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without the assistance of man, beeing free from originall and all other sinnes, from the time of his conception, till the houre of his death, to be begotten of a woman, borne of a woman, nourished of a woman, obedient to a woman; and that he healed woman, pardoned women, comforted women: yea, even when he was in his greatest agonie and bloodie sweat, going to be crucified, and also in the last houre of his death, tooke care to dispose of a woman: after his resurrection, appeared first to a woman, sent a woman to declare his most glorious resurrection to the rest of his Disciples. … All which is sufficient to inforce all good Christians and honourable minded men to speake reverently of our sexe, and especially of all virtuous and good women"
[Aemilia Lanyer, ‘To the Vertuous Reader,’ Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, 1611]