ANDREWES, LANCELOT (
1555-
1626), English divine, was born in
1555 in
London. His family was an ancient
Suffolk one; his
father, Thomas, became master of Trinity House. Lancelot was
sent to the Cooper's free school, Ratcliff, in the parish of
Stepney, and then to the Merchant Taylors' school under Richard
Mulcaster. In
1571 he was entered as a Watts scholar at
Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge, where in
1574-1575
? he graduated
B.A., proceeding M.A. in 1578
?. In 1576
? he had been elected
fellow of Pembroke. In 1580
? he took orders; in 1581
? he was
incorporated M.A. at
Oxford. As catechist at his college
he read lectures on the Decalogue, which, both on their
delivery and on their publication (in
1630), created much
interest. He also gained much reputation as a casuist. After
a residence in the north as chaplain to Henry Hastings, earl of
Huntingdon, President of the North, he was made vicar of St
Giles's, Cripplegate, in
1588, and there delivered his striking
sermons on the temptation in the wilderness and the Lord's
prayer. In a great sermon on the 10th of April (Easter
week) 1588, he stoutly vindicated the
Protestantism of the
Church of
England against the Romanist
?s, and, oddly enough,
adduced "Mr Calvin" as a new writer, with lavish praise and
affection. Andrewes was preferred to the prebendal stall of
St Pancras in St Paul's, London, in 1589
?, and on [September 6th]
?
of the same year became master of his own college of
Pembroke, being at the time one of the chaplains of Archbishop
Whitgift. From 1589 to
1609 he was also prebendary of
Southwell. On [March 4th]
? 1590
?, as one of the chaplains of
[Queen Elizabeth]
?, he preached before her a singularly outspoken
sermon, and in October gave his introductory lecture at St
Paul's, undertaking to comment on the first four chapters of
Genesis. These seem to have been worked up later into a
compilation called The Orphan Lectures (
1657). Andrewes
was an incessant worker as well as preacher, and often
laboured beyond his strength. He delighted to move among
the people, and yet found time to meet with a society of
antiquaries, of which Raleigh, Sidney, Burleigh, Arundel, the
Herberts, Saville, Stow and Camden were members. In
1598
he declined the two bishoprics of Ely and Salisbury, as the
offers were coupled with a proposal to alienate part of the
revenues of those sees. On [November 23rd]
? 1600 he
preached at Whitehall a remarkable sermon on justification,
which gave rise to a memorable controversy. On
[July 4th]
? 1601 he was appointed dean of Westminster
? and gave much
attention to the school there. He assisted at the coronation
of James I. and in
1604 took part in the Hampton Court
conference. His name is the first on the list of divines
appointed to make the authorized version of the
Bible. In
1605 he was consecrated bishop of Chichester and made lord
almoner. In
1609 he published Tortura Torti, a learned
work which grew out of the Gunpowder Plot controversy and
was written in answer to Bellarmine's Matthaeus Tortus,
which attacked James I.'s book on the oath of allegiance.
After his translation to Ely (1609), he again controverted
Bellarmine in the Responsio ad Apologiam, a treatise never
answered. In
1617 he accompanied James I. to
Scotland with a
view to persuading the Scots that Episcopacy was preferable to
Presbyterianism. In
1618 he attended the synod
? of Dort, and
was soon after made dean of the Chapel Royal and translated
to Winchester, a diocese
? which he administered with loving
prudence and the highest success. He died on [September 26th]
?
1626, mourned alike by leaders in Church and state.
Two generations later, [Richard Crashaw]? caught up the
universal sentiment, when, in his lines "Upon Bishop
Andrewes' Picture before his Sermons," he exclaims:--
"This reverend shadow cast that setting sun,
Whose glorious course through our horizon run,
Left the dim face of this dull hemisphere,
All one great eye, all drown'd in one great teare."
Andrewes was distinguished in many fields. At court, though
no trifler or flatterer, he was a favourite counsellor in three
successive reigns, but he never meddled much in civil or temporal
affairs. His learning made him the equal and the friend of
Grotius, and of the foremost contemporary scholars. His
preaching was a unique combination of rhetorical splendour
and scholarly richness; his piety that of an ancient saint,
semi-ascetic and unearthly in its self-denial. As a churchman
he is typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan
and the Roman positions. He stands in true succession to
Richard Hooker in working out the principles of the Puritanism,
Andrewes chiefly combated Romanism. A good summary of his
position is found in his First Answer to Cardinal Perron,
who had challenged James I.'s use of the title "Catholic?."
His position in regard to the Eucharist is naturally more
mature than that of the first reformers. "As to the Real
Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of
it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously
investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ
we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One
Person. There is a real change in the elements--we allow ut
panis iam consecratus non sit panis quem natura formavit;
sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam
immutavit" Responsio, p. 263). Adoration is permitted,
and the use of the terms "sacrifice" and "altar"
maintained as being consonant with scripture and antiquity.
Christ is "a sacrifice--so, to be slain; a propitiatory
sacrifice--so, to be eaten" (Sermons, vol. ii. p. 296).
"By the same rules that the Passover was, by the same may
ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of
them; for to speak after the exact manner of divinity, there
is but one only sacrifice, veri nominis, that is Christ's
death. And that sacrifice but once actually performed at
His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the
beginning; and ever since repeated in memory to the world's
end. That only absolute, all else relative to it, reprerentative
of it, operative by it. . . . Hence it is that what names
theirs carried, ours do the like, and the Fathers make no
scruple at it--no more need we" (Sermons, vol. ii. p.
300). As to reservation, "it needeth not: the intent is had
without it," since an invalid may always have his private
communion. Andrewes declares against the invocation of saints,
the apparent examples in patristic literature are "rhetorical
outbursts, not theological definitions." His services to his
church have been summed up thus:--(1) he has a keen sense of
the proportion of the faith and maintains a clear distinction
between what is fundamental, needing ecclesiastical commands,
and subsidiary, needing only ecclesiastical guidance and
suggestion; (2) as distinguished from the earlier protesting
standpoint, e.g. of the Thirty-nine Articles, he emphasized
a positive and constructive statement of the Anglican position.
LITERATURE.--Of his works the Manual of Private Devotions
is the best known, for it appeals to Christians of every
church. One of the many good modern editions is that by
Alex. Whyte (1900). Andrewes's other works occupy
eight volumes in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology
(1841-1854). Of biographies we have those by H. Isaacson
(1650), A. T. Russell (1863), R. L. Ottley (1894), and Dean
Church's essay in Masters in English Theology. See also W.
H. Frere, Lancelot Andrewes as a Representative of Anglican
Principles (1898; Church Hist. Soc. Publications, No. 44).
Initial text from 1911 encyclopedia -- Please update as needed
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