Lancelot Andrews, or Andrewes: a learned English theologian; one of the most illustrious of English prelates; born in London, Sept. 25, 1555; educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was one of the chaplains of Queen Elizabeth, who appointed him Dean of Westminster. He was one of the divines selected to translate the Bible under the auspices of James I., and became Bishop of Chichester in 1605. In 1609 he was translated to the see of Ely, and appointed a privy councilor; was considered the most learned English theologian of his time, except Ussher, and had a high reputation as a pulpit orator. His works, though uncritically edited and but fragmentary, place him in the front rank of English theologians. He became Bishop of Winchester in 1618; he was the author of religious works, among which was a “Manual of Private Devotions and Meditations for Every Day in the Week.” In polemics he assailed Bellarmine in his “Responsio ad Apologiam,” a treatise never answered. On Nov. 23, 1600, Andrews preached at Whitehall his memorable sermon on justification, maintaining the evangelical view as opposed to the Sacerdotal. Andrews, in the Lambeth Articles, which mark an epoch in English Church history, adopted the doctrine of St. Augustine as modified by Aquinas. Died in London, Sept. 25, 1626.

  He was an unimitable Preacher in his way; and such Plagiaries who have stolen his Sermons could never steal his Preaching, and could make nothing of that whereof he made all things as he desired. Pious and pleasant Bishop Felton (his Contemporary and Colleague) indevoured in vain in his Sermon to assimilate his style; and therefore said merrily of himself, “I had almost marr’d my own natural Trot, by endeavouring to imitate his artifical Amble.”

  Old Mr. Sutton, a very learned man of those dayes, of Blandford St. Maries, Dorset, was his school fellowe, and sayd that Lancelot Andrewes was a great long boy of 18 yeares old at least before he went to the university…. His great learning quickly made him known in the university, and also to King James, who much valued him for it, and advanced him, and at last made him bishop of Winchester, which bishoprick he ordered with great prudence as to government of the parsons, preferring of ingeniose persons that were staked to poore livings and did dilitescere…. He had not that smooth way of oratory as now. It was a shrewd and severe animadversion of a Scotish lord, who, when king James asked him how he liked bp. A.’s sermon, sayd that he was learned, but he did play with his text, as a Jack-an-apes does, who takes up a thing and tosses and playes with it, and then he takes up another, and playes a little with it. Here’s a pretty thing, and there’s a pretty thing!

  Indeed, he was the most apostolical and primitive-like divine, in my opinion, that ever wore a rochet, in his age; of a most venerable gravity, and yet most sweet in all commerce; the most devout that ever I saw when he appeared before God; of such a growth in all kinds of learning, that very able clerks were of low stature to him…. In the pulpit, a Homer among preachers.

  A man far more learned in patristic theology than any of the Elizabethan bishops, or perhaps than any of his English contemporaries except Usher.

  The sermons of Bishop Andrews exemplify, very pertinently, the chief defects in style that have been attributed to the writers of his period; while to these they add other faults, incident to the effusions of a mind poor in fancy, coarse in taste, ingeniously rash in catching at trivial analogies, and constantly burying good thoughts under a heap of useless phrases. Yet, though they were corrupt models, and dangerous in proportion to the fame of the author, it is not surprising that they made the extraordinary impression they did. They contain, more than any other works of their kind and time, the unworked materials of oratory; and of oratory, too, belonging to the most severe and powerful class. There is something Demosthenic in the impatient vehemence, with which the pious bishop showers down his short, clumsy, harsh sentences; and the likeness becomes still more exact, when we hear him alternating stern and eager questions with sad or indignant answers. His Latin quotations, though incessant, are always brief: his field of erudite illustration is prudently confined; and his multiplied divisions and subdivisions, being quite agreeable to the growing fashion, may have helped to increase the respect of the hearers for the great strength and ingenuity of thought which the preacher so often showed. There is often much aptness in the parallels which it is his besetting fault to accumulate so thickly, and to overdraw so grotesquely; and an overpowering effect must sometimes have been produced by the dexterous boldness with which, anticipating an adverse opinion or feeling, he throws it back in the teeth of those who were likely to entertain it.

  The Church of England contains no name more truly venerable than that of this good prelate. For polish and suavity of manners he was excelled by no gentleman of the court; in piety, by no anchorite of better times and purer days. In the discharge of all the duties of religion, he so walked as to be an illustrious exemplar to his flock and to the church of God. James I. had so high an opinion of his abilities, that he employed him to answer Bellarmine’s Treatise against his own Defence of the Right of Kings. He was also a favourite with Charles I. Casaubon, Cluverius, Vossius, Grotius, Peter du Moulin, Barclay, and Erpenius were among his correspondents. Lord Clarendon regrets that he was not raised to the primacy on the death of Archbishop Bancroft. Thus respected in life, he was not less honoured at his death, by a Latin elegy from the author of “Paradise Lost.”

  Each sermon of Bishop Andrewes might furnish a diffuse writer matter for an entire treatise. No one can read them without being fairly bewildered and astonished at the vast stores of thought and learning which are poured out almost recklessly before him. But with regard to manner the case is different. Bishop Andrewes’s manner is in the highest degree peculiar. He tortures, twists, and twirls his subject about, so that one can hardly imagine that he could have been listened to with becoming gravity. Sometimes he indulges in puns and curious plays on words; sometimes by an extraordinary jumbling together of English, Latin, and Greek words, he produces the most curious effect; so that we are tempted to say that as these sermons are the richest and most copious in matter, so are they the worst in style and manner of any that have ever obtained a more than passing celebrity. We feel persuaded that the Bishop of Winchester must have been “followed” by many of the courtiers not for edification but for amusement; that his oddities must have furnished them with a stock of good stories, and that King James often enjoyed a hearty laugh over these congenial facetiæ…. There are few more eminent names in our Church history than that of Bishop Andrewes…. For more than twenty years regarded as without question the leading divine of the Church of England.

  Both the learning and ability of Andrews, indeed, are conspicuous in everything he has written; but his eloquence, nevertheless, is to a modern taste grotesque enough. In his more ambitious passages he is the very prince of verbal posture-masters,—if not the first in date, the first in extravagance, of the artificial, quibbling, syllable-tormenting school of our English pulpit rhetoricians; and he undoubtedly contributed more to spread the disease of that manner of writing than any other individual…. Many a “natural trot” Andrews no doubt was the cause of spoiling in his day, and long after it. This bishop is further very notable, in the history of the English Church, as the first great asserter of those semi-popish notions touching doctrines, rites, and ecclesiastical government with which Laud afterwards blew up the establishment. Andrews, however, was a very different sort of person from Laud,—as superior to him in sense and policy as in learning and general strength and comprehensiveness of understanding.

  Lancelot Andrewes, the most devout and, at the same time, the most honest of the nascent High Church party of that period, lamented alike by Clarendon and by Milton, was Dean for five years. Under his care, probably in the Deanery, met the Westminster Committee of the Authorised Version of James I., to which was confided the translation of the Old Testament, from Genesis to Kings, and of the Epistles in the New. In him the close connection of the Abbey with the School reached its climax.

  In redundant display of learning he goes beyond even Jeremy Taylor; and his word-play is after the manner we have illustrated from Ascham and Lyly.

  Andrewes was eminent in three capacities: (1) As a prelate. Few men have more happily combined the various qualities which contribute to make a great prelate than Andrewes. His principles were most distinct and definite, and from these principles he never swerved. He was a thorough English churchman, as far removed from Romanism on the one hand, as from puritanism on the other. He never interfered in public affairs, either as a privy councillor or in any other capacity, except when the spiritual interests of the church seemed to him to be at stake; and then, in spite of his constitutional modesty, he spoke out boldly and to the point. His learning was unequalled. From his childhood to his death he was an indefatigable student; his multifarious business as a public man was never allowed to interfere with his studies. He made a rule of not being interrupted, except for public or private prayer, before dinner-time (12 o’clock); when he was intruded upon, he would say “he was afraid he was no true scholar who came to see him before noon.” The result was that he made himself master of fifteen languages, if not more, while his knowledge of patristic theology was quite unrivalled…. (2) As a preacher, Andrewes was generally held to be the very “stella prædicantium,” an “angel in the pulpit.”…. (3) As a writer. Andrewes published but little in his lifetime, though his works now fill eight 8vo volumes in the “Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.”

  I must not, however, pass from this topic without some attempt to do justice to the signal benefit which Newman conferred by his admirable translation of Bishop Andrewes’s “Private Devotions.” It was indeed an invaluable boon, for which all of us, but the clergy especially, cannot be too thankful. O! that he had clung to Bishop Andrewes as his guide not only orandi, but credendi!

  Andrewes may be said with truth to have been one of the most learned and holy men by whom the Church has ever been ruled. His sermons—quaint, erudite, humorous, and spiritual—were the delight of his own age. His prayers have been constantly brought out in new editions, and have been the companions of the piety of two centuries. His controversial writings laid the foundation of the Anglican position as it was expressed and defended by the divines of the rest of the century. The special characteristic of his work was its appeal to primitive antiquity and the resort for interpretation to the historical formularies of the undivided Church. The strength of the appeal which he made to the intelligence of his own and the next age lay in the fact that he spoke to the heart no less than to the head.