Author(s)Lee Gatiss
Date 5 March 2015

We may be tempted nowadays to leave the internal ordering of our church buildings to specialists, architects, or pressure groups who really care about the arcane details.

George Herbert, however, had the task of building the first church he served in as an ordained clergyman. The Lincolnshire village church to which he was sent had fallen down. He raised money from various sources and rebuilt it from scratch to be what his biographer Izaak Walton called, “the most remarkable parish church that this nation affords.”

For Herbert, however, the main issue in building a church is to apply the Bible’s teaching on orderly and edifying church meetings.

To that end, the church building itself should not be a distraction: well-kept, decorated with Scripture texts (not images and icons!), a place for reading (the authorities insisted that not only a Bible but Foxe’s Book of Martyrs had to be readily available in church), and a place for giving. It was not about investing everything in church with some kind of special holiness. What Herbert was aiming at was “desiring to keep the middle way between superstition and slovenliness.”

The year that George Herbert died was the same year that William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury (1633). After that point, church decoration, architecture, and furnishings became a touchstone of the theological and political struggle that would end in the British Civil Wars (see here on Laudianism). There is more to this issue than may at first meet the eye!

CHAPTER 13
The Parson’s Church.

The country parson has a special care of his church, that all things there be decent, and befitting his Name by which it is called. Therefore first he takes order, that all things be in good repair; as walls plastered, windows glazed, floor paved, seats whole, firm, and uniform, especially that the Pulpit, and Desk, and Communion Table, and Font be as they ought, for those great duties that are performed in them.

Secondly, that the church be swept, and kept clean without dust, or cobwebs, and at great festivals strawed, and stuck with boughs, and perfumed with incense.

Thirdly, that there be fit and proper texts of Scripture everywhere painted, and that all the painting be grave, and reverend, not with light colours, or foolish antics.

Fourthly, that all the books appointed by Authority be there, and those not torn or fouled, but whole and clean, and well bound. And that there be a fitting, and sightly Communion cloth of fine linen, with a handsome and seemly carpet of good and costly stuff or cloth, and all kept sweet and clean, in a strong and decent chest, with a chalice and cover, and a stoop, or flagon; and a basin for alms and offerings; besides which, he has a Poor-man’s Box conveniently seated, to receive the charity of well-minded people, and to lay up treasure for the sick and needy.

And all this he does, not as out of necessity, or as putting a holiness in the things, but as desiring to keep the middle way between superstition and slovenliness, and as following the Apostle’s two great and admirable rules in things of this nature: The first whereof is, “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40); the second, “Let all things be done to edification (1 Corinthians 14:26).

For these two rules comprise and include the double object of our duty: God, and our neighbour — the first being for the honour of God; the second for the benefit of our neighbour. So that they excellently score out the way, and fully and exactly contain, even in external and indifferent things, what course is to be taken; and put them to great shame, who deny the Scripture to be perfect.