Gildas Unbound
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gildasunbound.bsky.social
Gildas Unbound
@gildasunbound.bsky.social
14 followers 110 following 58 posts
No longer polemicising against the prelates of Britannia. Looking for new, worse, pastures
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gildasunbound.bsky.social
John Gauden, in a sermon to the Corporation of London, February 1660:
Churches should be governed… …not by the dominion and pomp, luxury and tyranny of bishops, nor yet by the factious and refractory humours of presbyters; much less by the schismatic sauciness of people, who cast off both bishop and presbyters; but by the fatherly gravity, prudence and eminence of godly and reverend bishops; by the brotherly assistance, and son-like subordination of sober and orderly presbyters, by the service and obsequiousness of humble and diligent deacons; and by the meek submission of Christian people to the care, monition, counsel, and respective superiority of every order; as sheep to their chief shepherd, and their assistants… John Gauden, Slight Healings of Publique Hurts (1660) [Sermon to the Corporation of London, February 1660]
March 28, 2025 at 10:48 PM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
Archie McBishopface?
February 7, 2025 at 2:57 AM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
Peter Smart, prebendary of Durham Cathedral, preaching against his bishop, John Cosin, for his popish innovations, July 1628. Sound opinions!

(8th of 12 articles of condemnation)
Eightly, hee enjoynes all the people to stand vp at the Nicene Creed, (a Ceremonie which your Church enjoynes not) which he commands to bee sung with Organs, Shackbuts, and Cornets, and all other instruments of Musicke, which were vsed at the Consecration of NAEVCHADONOZERS golden Image, (vnfit Instruments for Christian Churches where men come for to pray, and not for to chaunt, or heare a sound or consort of they know not what) Each who refuse to stand during this musicall Cries (which lasts for halfe an houre) Mr. COSENS himselfe hath gone and raysed them vp, during Diuine Seruice, to the great disturbance of all there present, bidding them to depart out of the Church, and nayling vp their pue doores in despite of the Deane and other Praebends, that so they might not come into their seates.
January 8, 2025 at 8:33 PM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
The pleasures of parish ministry, volume 737:

Joseph Etherington, curate of Dunham-nigh-Tuxford, writes to his Archbishop on 16 September 1704, informing him that a parishioner is using the chancel as a mason's workshop to install an illicit gravestone in the churchyard:
This is to signify to your Lordship that one Mrs. Flinton in my parish having without any consent brought a gravestone to be cut by the Communion Table in the chancel to the great hindrance of my doing the service of the Church and to the great offence of the communicants, by reason of the great interference that it has occasioned in that sacred place. And still obstinately continuing it there, tho' I never detained it or refused her to remove it out, but told her withall that she could not appropriate a place to lay it in the Churchyard (where there never was a precedent of any gravestone before without licence of the Bishop, order of the Court, and consent of the parson, paying the accustomed fees which are constantly paid to the neighbouring ministers, according to the opinion of Sir Edward Coke. Notwithstanding that, my advice is slighted, and obstinacy in her is encouraged by one who should be a peacemaker betwixt minister and parishioners, yet threatens to find fioo in her vindication (when he might better bestow it in the Church's reparations) and no terms of peace can be accepted, although I proposed to put the matter to reference to two clergymen, and would stand to their determination, and if it was not my due I did not desire it, and if it was why should I not have it? Nay rather than any trouble should come of it I propounded my willingness to accept of half of the dues (which my neighbouring ministers had) as an acknowledgement, for peace and quietness sake. But I find the more I submit, the more refractory she is, and nothing will please. She will not be friends with or reconciled to me, but has visited her malice and hatred at me by arresting me with a writ at the common law the last week ... begging Your Lordship's protection in the case and advice herein for peace betwixt us.
January 6, 2025 at 6:40 PM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
The CofE must kneel in penitence after a difficult year (for the Archbishops) says an archbishop.

Which made me think of that old Mad Magazine cartoon:

www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...
Lone Ranger: "Indians! Indians all around us! Well, Tonto, ol' kimosovee, it looks like we're finished!" Tonto: "What you mean…we?”
December 25, 2024 at 3:03 AM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
"Epistle to Dr Episcopus", on the occasion of the Archbishop of Canterbury's farewell speech in the House of Lords:
I honour Sydney Smith, who said it best “Episcopacy is divinely blest, it's just the bishops whose worth I question,” And in your case, I make no exception. Because you work in important buildings You shouldn’t think your ego needs gilding, spreading into the gothic space supplied, confusion of place, status, worldly pride. The “fighting young priest who makes the difference” was doubtful then, but now the recompense you sought, the pension, status, social clout is, to be honest, what it's all about. I hear you parrot business school pablum, MBA, smart-goals, targets, IBM— “We learn from the best that all the world gives”, Forgetting how often that world half-lives self-care, self-worship, greed, concupiscence. And shouldn’t we now abhor the offence of Judas, Simon Magus? believing that all valued things are bought, perceiving numbers to measure worth, and truth, and fact, that God blesses success and those who act— and not those whose prayers fall in stoney folds, and practice presence, with no safe footholds How can things look good from the bishop’s rest? live in, of all possible worlds, the blessed?
December 6, 2024 at 4:00 AM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
Bishops, giving a lead (in the 1640s):

(John Morrill, op. cit)
The bishops gave little formal lead either. They spent much of 1641-2 striving to preserve their secular powers—their right to sit in the House of Lords and to hold office—and several of them spent long periods in prison …In every diocese (with the partial exception of Exeter) the diocesan machinery collapsed in the winter of 1642-3, although the routine business of nominating and collating to livings did continue. It is unlikely that more than two or three bishops remained in their cathedrals, even in Royalist areas. Several were at Oxford but they made no joint statements and offered no joint advice to those troubled by the Covenant or the ban on the Prayer Book or the sequestration of their minister and the intrusion of a parliamentary nominee. Three bishops spent the war years quietly in London, two were in arms, but most retired to country livings and kept their heads low. The 1640s and 1650s may have seen a great flowering of Anglican devotional literature and doctrinal works but the leading figures were not the bishops. Such works as the bishops themselves did write were personal utterances, not formal statements.
December 2, 2024 at 11:10 PM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
The Church of England in the twenty-first century, finally conforming to the plans of the Presbyterian Rump Parliament of the 1640s:

John Morrill, ‘The Church in England, 1642-9’, in Reactions to the English Civil War 1642–1649, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1982).
What emerged was a four-tier structure. The ancient parishes were to remain as the basic unit, with the minister joined in the regulation of both worship and discipline by elders elected by all those parishioners who had taken the Covenant and who were not ‘servants that had no families’. Parishes were to be grouped into ‘classes’ (roughly the size of the old wapentake or hundred and comprising between ten and twenty parishes), and the classes in turn were to be grouped into provinces, one for each county and one for the city of London. Each parish was to be represented in the classis by its minister or ministers and by one or two lay elders, and each classis was to send clerical and lay nominees to the provincial assemblies. Finally there was to be a national synod whose actions were subject to ratification by Parliament.
December 2, 2024 at 11:09 PM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
Respect for the Apostolic Succession…
December 1, 2024 at 9:34 PM
gildasunbound.bsky.social
Current mood?
Statue in Metropolitan Museum of Art - John Fisher looking pensive Roman mosaic
November 16, 2024 at 5:01 PM