Launcelot Andrewes and The Private Devotions

David Currie ⎮ Winter 2010

Dr. David Currie is a professor of Church History at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is also the Director of the Doctor of Ministry program. Although ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Dr. Currie worships regularly and occasionally preaches at The Anglican Chapel in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

David Currie, professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Director of the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) program, provides a semi-autobiographical reflection on Launcelot Andrewes’ contribution to his spiritual life and, ultimately, the church.

As a church historian, I recognize Launcelot Andrewes as an important figure: a leader of the group that we of the guild designate as the “Caroline Divines;” a “playa” in the court of King James I to use contemporary slang that he would have found abominable, even as most today find his sycophancy, particularly in the notorio

David Currie. Click the picture for more information about the DMin program.

us Essex Divorce Case, as abominable itself; and a linguist whose prodigious gifts contributed to the enduring beauty and exegetical accuracy of the English translation of the Bible authorized by his Sovereign that is still going strong as it approaches the end of its fourth century of continuous use.

As an Anglican, I respect Andrewes as a model ecclesiastic: a gracious and hospitable bishop who encouraged younger clerics and scholars and took a genuine spiritual interest in all; an able controversialist, defending the Church of England against Roman Catholic critics such as Cardinal Bellarmine; a learned preacher, whose pedantry may make his sermons relatively unpalatable to contemporary tastes, but whose style embodied a Homiletica Via Media (a homiletic middle way), more Bible than Rome but less brimstone than Geneva.

Ah, but it is as a sinner that I most revere Launcelot Andrewes and give a place to The Private Devotions reserved for only one other book –the top left drawer of my desk where I keep my Bible. This place would seem scandalous if the former did not primarily consist of the latter, arranged conveniently by day and topic to let Scripture shape prayer in a systematic yet soul-quenching way. Indeed, I might say that I owe my own soul to Andrewes and The Private Devotions; or to put it in a way that would scandalize my Puritan forebears (and current employers at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) a bit less –these were the means of grace God used to shed light and lead me on during my darkest night.

Let me expound, through an autobiographical story. If C.S. Lewis described himself at his conversion as the most reluctant convert in all of Britain, then I was the most reluctant PhD student in all Britain at my matriculation. I sensed a strong call to be a pastor, particularly as one seeking renewal in the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which I felt that PhD studies might deflect or even supersede. When a series of “surprising providences” backed me into a corner where even in my stupidity and stubbornness I had to admit that God was also calling me to further study, I reluctantly stepped out of pastoral ministry and into church history. After a few months of exchanging carrel for pulpit and rare book room for hospital room, I had spiraled down into a fairly deep depression.1

I convinced myself that I had deluded myself in pursuit of my vain ambitions, forfeited my call, and sealed up the heavens as brass. Prayer, which had mainly come easily, refreshed me greatly, and flowed naturally dried up like a nahal in the Negev in high summer. I had no words for God any more, which was just as well, since I assumed that God had no ear for anything an unprofitable servant like me had to say.

It was in this sorry spiritual state that The Private Devotions providentially came into my hands. The “providential” part is not a pious insertion, but reflects the circumstances of obtaining the copy that now resides in my desk drawer. I spied it in a pile of books that a Scottish pastor friend of mine was about to throw out and asked if I could have it. I had only the vaguest acquaintance with Andrewes and the book, but was mildly curious to see if anything good might come from south of the Tweed.

After leafing through it casually, I decided that I may as well use it for my own private devotions since I no longer had any words of my own to address the Almighty. Andrewes uses the 7 days of Genesis 1 to structure morning prayers for each day of the week divided into six parts: 1. Meditation & Adoration. 2. Confession of Sin. 3. Prayer for Grace. 4. Confession of Faith. 5. Intercession. 6. Thanksgiving. As a result, “whales & winged fowl” which had never been mentioned by me before became a regular part of my Thursday prayers –all the more appropriate since I constantly saw the latter and at least theoretically might see the former from our flat, whose lack of heat was made up for by its view of the Firth of Forth.

As week gave way to week, Andrewes rebuilt my vocabulary of prayer, primarily with Scripture (my only regret now is that I don’t have a copy in the Greek of which he originally composed his devotions!) but in ways I had never prayed Scripture before. Joshua’s list of Israel’s enemies whom they needed to displace to fully inhabit the Promised Land (3:10 and 24:11) became a list of the chief enemies of my soul –the 7 deadly sins, which Joshua’s God could give me victory over as he did of old. Here’s how Andrewes lays this out:

Defend me from

pride --- Amorite.

envy --- Hittite.

wrath --- Perizzite.

gluttony --- Girgashite.

lasciviousness --- Hivite.

covetousness --- Canaanite.

sloth --- Jebusite.

Give me

humility, pitifulness, patience

sobriety, purity, contentment, ready zeal.

One thing have I desired of the Lord,

that will I seek after;

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to behold the beauty of the Lord,

and to enquire in His temple. [Psalm 27:4]2

While some might accuse Andrewes of allegorical exegetical errors here, I think his interweaving of Scriptural types, classical spiritual forms, and direct Biblical quotation reflects a legitimate way to translate God’s Word into our prayer. These kinds of patterns abound with sufficient variety to prevent the end result from seeming formulaic. Clearly, Andrewes drew from whatever helped him express those groanings almost too deep for words and not from any artificial sausage grinder systematizing. You get the sense that he kept lists of certain categories such as times and postures of prayer that he probably kept adding to as he read Scripture. While the Book of Common Prayer is also reflected at times, particularly in the use of Scripture to shape prayer, the overall feel is different, in keeping with the difference between “common” and “private.” The Private Devotions are more telegraphic, less elegant, with longer lists than you could get away with even with 17th century congregations.

There is what might seem to be a typical Anglican emphasis on the Eucharist in a special section of Communion Prayers and Meditations, though the language is of the Lord’s Supper and not the sacrifice of the mass. Puritans would appreciate “An Act of Self-Examination before the Lord’s Supper”: “Have I penitence, grief, shame, pain, horror, weariness, for my sin? Do I pray, if not seven times as David, yet at least thrice, as Daniel?...If not on the ground, and in ashes, at least not in my bed? [ouch!]...Do I give, if not, as Zaccheus, four-fold, at least as the law commands, with the fifth part added? [double ouch!]...”3 More Catholic types could identify with “An Act of Prayer before the Lord’s Supper,” where Andrewes riffs on the Prayer of Humble Access and the words of the centurion in Matthew 8:8: “Lord, I am not worthy, I am not fit, that Thou shouldest come under the defiled roof of my soul…”4 Yet, both Puritans and Catholics could probably pray either prayer without violating their principles.

I have come to love some of Andrewes’ quirky prayers, such as “An Horology,” which is literally how to pray around the clock using Biblical temporal allusions, e.g.: “Thou, Who at the seventh hour didst command the fever to leave the nobleman’s son: if there be any fever in our hearts, if any sickness, remove it from us also.”5

Nonetheless, The Private Devotions seem to be best at the kinds of praying I needed most then, confession. Alexander Whyte attributes this to Andrewes’ personal penitence for being such a KJBK6 in general and for his role in the tawdry Essex Affair in particular, but this may be unduly filtered by Whyte’s excessive Caledonian embarrassment that the first Scottish Presbyterian monarch turned out to be such a scumbag.7 You don’t have to have wallowed in the worldly mire to the degree that Whyte purports Andrewes to have done to identify with him as a sinner, especially because Andrewes identifies his sins more Biblically than biographically. He also brings a wonderful theological sensibility to confession as in this Trinitarian opening to “Another Act of Deprecation”: “Father, the Creator, Son, the Redeemer, Spirit the Regenerator, destroy not me, whom Thou hast created, redeemed, regenerated.”8

With words such as these and more, Andrewes enabled me to be honest about my sin, identifying what was real and what I was whitewashing or projecting. In this truthfulness, I discovered true forgiveness and a renewed calling as well. Perhaps God could still hear, speak to, and use, even a reluctant PhD student whose idolatry of being a pastor was exposed…and forgiven. For this, I am deeply grateful to Andrewes and The Private Devotions; and while I no longer need his words to guide my words to God as desperately as I did in the depths of my depression, I still find my soul refreshed when we companion together in prayer, and am glad to have him close by there in the top left-hand drawer of my desk to be drawn out at any hour of the day, to express “all the thoughts of our hearts, words of our lips, deeds of our hands, paths of our feet.”9

1) For the gory details of my depression see David A. & Susan P. Currie, “Escaping the Swamp of Depression,” Leadership, Volume 13 (Winter Quarter, 1992), 100-105.
2) Lancelot Andrews and His Private Devotions: A Biography, A Transcript, and An Interpretation by Alexander Whyte [Click the link to access the book; all subsequent citations may be read from the online book] (London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, 1896), 97 [Biblical citation not in original].
3) Whyte, 227.
4) Whyte, 227.
5) Whyte, 156.
6) King James Butt Kisser.
7) Whyte, 31-32: “To myself one of the chiefest compensations and off-sets for the reign of James the First is this, that the Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes were continually composed…during the whole course of that so mischievous and insufferable reign.” (32)
8) Whyte, 176. Might this prayer even bring forgiveness to those who reduce person to function in misguided attempts to avoid “sexist” language for the Trinity?
9) Whyte, 88.