George Herbert's Sacramental Puritanism

Abstract

The relationship in the early Stuart church between doctrine and discipline — between formal theological belief and outward matters including church governance, polity and ceremonial practice — is important for our understanding of George Herbert's devotional lyrics. Eucharistic theories which entertained notions of “real presence “ tended to support a sacerdotal style of divinity in which priest, ceremony and outward conformity were key features. Belief in the centrality of inward spiritual life, on the other hand, was reinforced by a theology in which the external elements are less effectual instruments than mere signs of a strictly invisible grace. This paper elucidates a sacramental poetics through which Herbert sought to reconcile the ideologically contrary imperatives of public ceremony and private religious devotion. The two are brought together successfully in The Temple, but this success consists largely in the drama resulting from the conflict the poems trace. Unmistakably inward in focus, Herbert's devotional enthusiasm is cultivated nonetheless through a fully sacramental and sacerdotal apparatus.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.