William Laud: Church

“I was borne and baptized in the bosome of the Church of England established by Law; in that profession I have ever since lived, and in that I come now to dye; This is no time to dissemble with God, least of all in matter of Religion; and therefore I desire it may be remembred, I have alwaies lived in the Protestant Religion, established in England, and in that I come now to dye. What Clamours and Slanders I have endured for labouring to keepe a Uniformity in the externall service of God, according to the Doctrine and Discipline of this Church, all men know, and I have abundautly felt.”

William Laud

Speech http://downloads.it.ox.ac.uk/ota-public/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A43/A43512.html on the scaffold at Tower Hill before his execution (10 January 1645)

God , Religion , Time , Law

“Ever since I came in place, I laboured nothing more, than that the external public worship of God (too much slighted in most parts of this kingdom) might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of opinion, that unity cannot long continue in the Church, where uniformity is shut out at the church door.”

William Laud

Speech at his trial (12 March 1644), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume IV: History of Troubles and Trial (1847), p. 60

God , Parting

“For my care of this Church, the reducing of it into order, the upholding of the external worship of God in it, and the settling of it to the rules of its first reformation, are the causes (and the sole causes, whatever are pretended) of all this malicious storm, which hath lowered so black upon me, and some of my brethren.”

William Laud

Source: Speech in the Star Chamber at the censure of John Bastwick, Henry Burton and William Prynne (16 June 1637), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI: Part I (1847), p. 42

God

“Now though in nature the Commonwealth go first; first men, before religious and faithful men; and the Church can have no being but in the Commonwealth: yet in grace the Church goes first; religious and godly men, better than men; and the Commonwealth can have no blessed and happy being, but by the Church. For true religion ever blesses a State: provided that they which profess it do not in their lives dishonour both God and it.”

William Laud

Sermon (19 June 1621), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume I: Sermons (1847), p. 6

God , Faith , Religion , Nature

“Never were there more gross absurdities, nor half so many in so short a time, committed in any public meeting; and for a National Assembly never did the Church of Christ see the like.”

William Laud

Source: Letter to the Marquis of Hamilton (3 December 1638), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI—Part II. Letters—Notes on Bellarmine (1857), p. 547

Time , Christ

“You cannot have a greater desire to conform Ireland to the Church of England, than I (and this with as seeming great a desire of the King) to conform Scotland to the Church of England.”

William Laud

Source: Letter to Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (8 October 1638), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VII—Letters (1860), p. 489

“The time was, before this miserable rent in the Church of Christ—which I think no true Christian can look upon but with a bleeding heart—that you and we were all of one belief. That belief was tainted, in tract and corruption of times, very deeply.”

William Laud

Source: A Relation of the Conference betweene William Lawd...and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (1639), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume II: Conference with Fisher (1849), p. 141

Time , Heart , Thinking , Christ