A Literary History of Ecclesiastical Writers

...nor are you built and decorated for theatrical display; you are not swollen with caskets of Relics Reliquiarum; physical remains of saints or objects they touched, which Cave suggests were gathered unscrupulously from everywhere scraped together from every side, nor are you gleaming with the immense splendor of crystal lamps. You are not proud of most elegant Images of Saints, refined by every art and at great price, which Epiphanius Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310–403 AD) was a Church Father famous for his opposition to icons and images in churches. once clearly affirmed could not be retained in the Church of Christ except against the authority of the Scriptures and our Religion. Every office of your Liturgy, your solemn formulas of Prayer, and the Rites and Ceremonies used in your sacred services—few in number, grave in their institution, and useful in their observation—all testify that your public worship is truly primitive, universal catholicum; used here in the sense of "universal" or "orthodox" rather than "Roman Catholic", pious, and worthy of God. In you, we admire and proclaim equally that ancient government received from the Apostles themselves: the Orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons succeeding one another. The power granted to you by the Lord you restrain within its proper limits; what belongs to Caesar, you give fully to Caesar, and what is God's, to God. A reference to Matthew 22:21, emphasizing the Anglican doctrine of Royal Supremacy and loyalty to the monarch. Within your walls, if anywhere else, the sacrosanct majesty of Kings is preserved inviolate, and each enjoys their privileges with no one envying and no one tearing them away. The ancient Canons hold their due honor with you, the better part of which you have transcribed into your Synodal Code Codicem Synodicum; the collected laws and canons governing the Church. To these, as much as modern times will allow, you entirely conform yourself, and you earnestly desire that the vigor of the former discipline be restored to its wholeness. To be brief: in you we behold the simplicity of the Cyprianic age renewed, the zeal and purity of the Constantinian era, and the beauty and good order original: ευταξίαν (eutaxian) of the Theodosian Cave refers to the eras of St. Cyprian (3rd century), Constantine the Great, and Theodosius I (4th century) as the gold standards of Christian history.—would that I could also add, its happiness. May the ancient faith, virtue, and simplicity flourish more and more within you; may your Laity be blameless in their morals and firm and brave in their faith; may your Priests be clothed in justice and adorned with learning, and may the British Clergy Clerus Britannus; Cave famously described the English clergy as "stupor mundi," the wonder of the world, for their scholarship. be, for all time as they have been until now, the wonder of the world. May you find the most serene King and all those placed in high authority to be favorable toward you, so that you may be protected by the defense of those for whose safety you daily pour out prayers to God, and that all your people may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and gravity. So vows, wishes, and prays from the heart,

Given in the College
at Windsor, October 4,
1688.