The thesis concerns an aspect of poetic imagination in the works of 17th century metaphysical poets and examines the way these poets were influenced by the Church of England. In addition, it identifies elements of Anglican spirituality in their works. The first section analyzes the concept of Christian spirituality and the specifics of Anglican spirituality. Anglican spirituality is closely linked with the historical origins and development of the Anglican Church. In the second section, there is a description of poetic imagination and the relationship between poetics and spirituality. The thesis describes the concept of so-called metaphysical poets. The works of three selected authors are examined to identify poetic expressions of general, theological issues. Theological themes emphasized in Anglican spirituality are compared with those expressed in metaphysical poetic imagination. The aim of this thesis is to find the role of poetics in general, theological discourse.

The "beauty of holiness," the ceremonialist agenda of the Laudians during the Personal Rule of King Charles I (r.1625-1649), was in many ways a serious shift from and challenge to the devotional and theological ethos that had dominated the Church of England since the 1570s. So stark was this shift that scholars today regularly cite the rigid enforcement of the "beauty of holiness" as one of the precipitating causes of the English Civil Wars that broke out in 1642. The rise of Laudianism, then, and its claim on the character of the nation's established church, the church's devotional life, and England's confessional identity, was no small matter. Perhaps the most understudied aspect of the Laudian movement was the way this circle of clergy argued that their program for the church was neither a challenge nor, for that matter, innovative. Recent historians have described how the Laudians used various rhetorical strategies to present their vision as perfectly orthodox, a mere restatement of old-fashioned principles and practices long enjoyed since the happy reign of Queen Elizabeth (r.1558-1603). Developing arguments from scripture, from the practice of the early church, or simply the more obvious need to worship God with reverence, the Laudians shifted their apologetic strategies depending on the moment. This project considers in detail a particular Laudian strategy - the appeal to precedents from the Elizabethan church. In addition to reflecting on the malleable nature of history in the early modern period and on the character of what one might call the rhetoric of conservatism, this project reveals the power of the image of Elizabeth Tudor in seventeenth century religious polemics. This dissertation is concerned not so much with Puritans, but rather with two groups who both claimed to be conformists and who both based that claim on adherence to Elizabethan principles. Both Laudians and, as one scholar describes them, "old style" conformists both claimed ownership of a legitimating Elizabethan past and thus ownership of a normative identity. At a broad level, my research seeks to understand a moment of religious and social change and how that change was persistently negotiated by recourse to history. My goal is to consider the way the Laudians appropriated the image of Elizabeth for their own designs. This examination does not end with the reign of Charles, however. The Laudian claim of true conformity and denial of innovation did not end when civil war erupted in 1642 or even when the king was executed in 1649. One finds this historical claim in the mouth of Archbishop William Laud at his trial for treason. Likewise, one finds during the Cromwellian Protectorate in the 1650s the rise of full historical enterprises, not simply the invocation of history in polemic. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, works by the Laudian historian Peter Heylyn were ready for Royalist consumption and, as one might suspect, they offer an interpretation of the past that legitimates the Laudian program and brands its opponents as foreign and dangerous. This type of literature was polemic under the form of history. Yet we cannot casually dismiss such arguments as simple propaganda. We must understand them instead as alternative readings of the past, stories that contemporaries told themselves and which worked to confirm a particular vision of the world. My project, in sum, will offer an assessment of the way historical claims functioned within the discourse of religious and political legitimacy at a time of intense religious and political strife. My concluding argument is that the tradition known as Anglicanism, while it had a long gestation, was born not in the reign of Elizabeth or even in the early Stuart period, but rather at the Restoration in 1660 when Charles II came to the throne and a particular vision of what it meant to be a loyal conformist achieved canonical status.

The period of tumultuous religious reformation during which George Herbert lived demanded of people a strict adherence to the paradigmatic structures that prescribed the ways in which public displays of religious conviction were to be manifested. The freedom, indeed the necessity, to doubt is taken for granted by the modern reader, but for Herbert it was a matter of spiritual life and death. As country parson, he diligently labored to guide his parishioners, administer the sacraments, and exemplify the “right path.” This persona—reinforced by necessarily performative, faith-demonstrating actions—is continually destabilized by the experience of doubt, which leads Herbert to address his own persistent despair at the absence of God through poetry. His masterful use of the structural and thematic patterns of the Psalms in many of the poems of The Temple draws on the rich tradition of lament in contrast to the prescriptive, ideological agendas of the Book of Common Prayer and the Common Lectionary which privilege faith. The poems demonstrate an extensive knowledge of the epistemological foundations and history of both official Church doctrine and of medieval mystical thought and become a tool for exploring the paradoxes of human existence. His philosophical and rhetorical engagement with the Christological and ecclesiastical theology specific to Dionysian mysticism demonstrates the intensity of Herbert’s preoccupation with Divine absence and his near obsessive search for the ideal apophatic presence, that silent, knowing-unknowing that defines oneness with God. Nowhere are Herbert’s existential dilemmas more evident than in Memoriae Matris Sacrum, a sequence of poems written immediately following the death of his beloved mother, which reveals an inner life of the poet that his more controlled poetic voice of The Temple often conceals. These elegiac poems, written in Latin and Greek, show the poet as a “mourning child” and lay bare his most intimate fears about the constancy of his own faith and the uncertain terms of Christian death and resurrection embodied in the sacred ritual of the Eucharist. The poetic closure often ascribed to Herbert’s poems in fact disguises the nature of spiritual and psychological dilemmas which remain for Herbert persistent and unresolved.

This thesis offers an assessment of the Edwardian Reformation and its significance for the wider development of English Protestantism by examining the liturgical reforms of the period. The central question that this thesis grapples with is, how did Edwardian reformers apply their theological concept of the 'church' as an invisible spiritual body of believers to the task of reforming the visible temporal institution of Tudor England? The overarching argument of this study is that, in the eyes of the reformers, the formal liturgy of the Church of England, as defined by the Prayer Book, formed a nexus between the temporal and spiritual realms so that the invisible Church was given visible expression in public worship. This meant that Tudor men and women could actively participate in the spiritual communion of saints through the tangible experience of church services, especially through the sacraments and by observing the Sabbath. The examination of the relationship of mid-Tudor evangelical ecclesiology and liturgical reform presented in this thesis allows us to understand the Edwardian Church on its own terms. It challenges some long-held assumptions about the figures and events of the period, and their combined effect on later developments in English Protestantism, which continue to colour historiography. By taking a fresh approach to seemingly well-known texts, such as the Book of Common Prayer, this thesis argues that the relationship of ecclesiology and liturgical reform was a central feature of the Edwardian Reformation, an aspect of the period that has not been widely acknowledged in recent scholarship. A different ecclesiological theme is investigated through the lens of liturgical reform in each chapter to show how significant the doctrine of the church was to mid-Tudor reformers' goals in terms of ecclesiastical structure and practical ministry.

The Prayer Book of the Church of England reached South Africa as a part of the establishment of the British Administration at the Cape. In its new environment it obviously required some revision. The Book of 1662 reflected the political and social conditions of its time. lt was designed for a Church not immediately concerned with missionary work amongst heathen peoples but directly established under the Crown. The circumstances of a Church in the colonies, particularly when the colonies became self-governing, required some modernisation of language, some omission and adaptation of old prayers and some addition of new ones. Yet the Church appears to have been wary of attempting anything more than this, and it was especially reluctant to make any revision which might imply a doctrinal change. The consecration prayer in the liturgy -'our incomparable liturgy' - was particularly sacrosanct by virtue of long use and the accretion of sentimental associations. Revision of this part of the book would naturally be slow and hesitant and this is the revision with which we are concerned - the most interesting and important part of the history of the South African Prayer Book. Chapter 1, p. 6.

Somewhere is most general histories and outlines of English literature, the greatness of the King James Bible and its influence on all of English literature since 1611 have been pointed out. Unquestionably, all men of letters in the English language since that time have known of the King James Bible; and many of them may have been decidedly influenced by its tradition of cadenced prose and its prose figures. The great deal of research would have to be done in order to establish conclusively the influence of the Prayer Book upon all writers from 1549 to the present time. If this thesis stimulates any other worker to make a study in the general problem, it will have far exceeded its present purposes. For this approaches only one small aspect of the problem. Samuel Johnson is an obvious subject for such a study, because he attended the Church of England;1 he knew the Prayer Book well;2 in fact, he was such a good Church of England man that Boswell records in the Life at least two occasions when Johnson was offered a position in the Church.33 Furthermore, Johnson was preeminently a prose writer and used an ornate style. This combination of devoutness and literary ability makes of him ripe material for an investigation of the influence of the Prayer Book on an English writer. There is another reason why Johnson should make a good subject for study. He lived in an age that was a part of the same Renaissance tradition that produced the Bible and the Prayer Book. In fact, it has been pointed out that Johnson was the last of the great Renaissance humanists.4. The problem that this study attempts to solve, then, is "Did the Book of Common Prayer have any influence on Samuel Johnson's prose style?" Although many other problems have arisen in the course of this work, no attempt will be made to solve any of them; showing that the Prayer Book did influence at least part of Johnson's writing will be the single purpose of this paper