ANDREWES AND THE FATHERS
Remember, O Lord, the brethren that stand round about us,
and are praying with us at this hour, their earnestness and ready mind.
Remember withal them that for reasonable causes are absent
and have mercy upon them and us according to the multitude of thy mercy, O Lord.
- From the liturgy of St. Basil
Andrewes was one of the most scholarly divines in Europe, being able to speak fifteen languages. When one reads his sermons and prays his Preces Privatæ one cannot help be maware that among his great loves were the writings of the Fathers and the Eastern Church liturgies.
In his correspondence to the French Calvinist Pierre de Moulin, Andrewes expressed his admiration for the early Fathers and his own commitment to the faith taught and upheld by them. It was they who had formulated the teaching of the early Church and guarded it against the early heresies. "The venerable Antiquity of those first Ages shall be ever [held] in greater esteem with me than the new upstart device of any whatsoever." His prayer was that "antiquity might be more and more [held] in esteem" by the present age. In his sermons Andrewes continually identified his own teaching within the context of the Fathers when he declared, "That what our Fathers and Elders in the Christian Faith bounteously employed on Christ; what they, I say." And, "I agree fully with the opinion of the ancient Fathers which are the most wise and the most learned." As Andrewes' Catholicism was much indebted to his knowledge and love of the Eastern Fathers and their liturgies it gave a comprehensiveness to his expression of the Catholic faith, never apparent in the pre-Reformation Church in England. Andrewes' library included the liturgies of SS. James, Basil and Chrysostom that had been published in Paris in 1560. He also possessed copies of the Triodion, (Lent and the three preceding weeks), Pentekostarion (Eastertide), and the Menaea (immoveable feasts). These books must have often been off his shelf as he refers frequently to these in both preaching and praying.I am going to approach this indebtedness to the Orthodox tradition under four headings.
1. The Liturgy
Anyone who has used the Preces Privatate. devotionally will be aware of its eucharisitc context. There are detailed prayers for every part of the Liturgy. His prayer of preparation with its emphasis on unworthiness and being "the singular great sinner" are based on the Liturgy of St. Basil while his prayer at the Offertory beginning with calling to mind the great act of the Incarnation of leaving "the throne of the glory of thy kingdom... to hallow us" incorporates parts of the Prayer of the Elevation before the Fraction and Communion in the Byzantine Liturgy (a combination of SS. Basil and Chrysostom) and the Great Intercession from the liturgy of St. Basil. His private prayer during the great Canon included the epiclesis, that is, invoking the Holy Spirit "to hallow the gifts that are set forth.” Hence his prayers followed the Orthodox who viewed "the Eucharist [as] a prayer addressed in Christ to the Father, and accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The epiclesis is therefore the fulfilment of the Eucharistic action". It also included the anamnesis, taken from the Liturgy of St. Basil. We, therefore, O Lord, in the presence of Thy holy mysteries,
Being mindful of
The saving passions of Thy Christ,
His Life-giving cross,
His Precious death,
His Three days burial,
His Resurrection from the dead,
His Ascension into heaven,
His Session at the right hand of Thee the Father,
His Glorious and dreadful return,
Humbly beseech Thee, that we receiving a part of Thy holy mysteries with a pure testimony of our conscience, may be united to the holy body and blood of Thy Christ.
Before receiving the Sacrament Andrewes’ prayer was in the words of Gregory but also in the Eastern spirit of acknowledging himself to be a great sinner.
Let me so receive these mysteries, that I may be worthy to be engrafted into Thy body,
Which is the Church;
That I may become one of Thy members,
And Thou my Head;
That I may remain with Thee,
And Thou with me;
That now, not I in myself,
But Thou in me,
And I in Thee,
May I for ever continue in an indissoluble bond of love.
His final prayer after the Blessing is that said in the sacristy at the end of the service in the Eastern rite.
Finished and perfected,
so far forth as is in our power,
O Christ our God,
is the mystery of thy dispensation.
For we have held the remembrance of thy death,
we have seen the figure of thy resurrection,
we have been filled with thine unending life,
we have had fruition of thine inexhaustible delight:
whereof in the world to come withal
be Thou pleased that we all
be accounted worthy.
The role of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist found favour too in a Pentecostal sermon as he bid his auditors to "invite the Spirit" in the words from St. James’ liturgy "Accipite verba, `take to you words,' ... Suscipite institum verbum, `receive,' or take to you `the word,' St. James word, `grafted into you' by the office of preaching. Accipite corpus, accipite sanguinem; `take the holy mysteries of His body and blood;' and the same, the holy arteries of his blessed Spirit. Take all these in one- the attractive of prayer; the word, which is `spirit and life;' the bread of life and the cup of salvation." Like his Orthodox brethren, he saw the Eucharist as a mystery of real "participation" in the glorified Body of Christ, the seed of immortality. In his own belief and teaching on the Sacrament there are consistent parallels. One of his emphasis was the fusing of the heavenly and the earthly. "You may see it clearly: there is in Christ the Word eternal for things in Heave; there is also flesh for things on earth. Semblably, the Sacrament consisteth of a Heavenly and of a terrene part, (it is Irenaeus's own words); the Heavenly - there the word too, the abstract of the other; the earthly - the element." Irenaeus' stated: "For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity." Even Andrewes' prayers upon entering church were taken from the Great Intercession of the East as found in the liturgies of SS. Basil and James as quoted above. Remember, O Lord, the brethren that stand round about us, and are praying with us at this hour, their earnestness and ready mind.Remember withal them that for reasonable causes are absent and have mercy upon them and us according to the multitude of thy mercy, O Lord.2. Theology
In his teaching of the Trinity Andrewes appealed to the Fathers especially the Cappadocian Fathers. In defending the use of the doxology for its antiquity, he quoted St. Basil. "And there, he flatly avoweth - which all the Christian world knew to be true, nor was there ever heretic found so bold as to deny it ... that the use of saying `Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,' this form of concluding Psalms, and hymns, and thanksgivings, was ever received, and retained in the Church from the beginning, as with us still it is." Some of his sermons also had direct references to the Orthodox liturgy. In his Passion sermon at St. Giles, Cripplegate, when preaching on Christ's suffering for us he declared this is why "the Greek Church prayeth `By thy unknown sufferings, good Lord deliver us.'"
It was not only a matter of quoting from the Fathers for verifying traditional customs and ceremonies that Andrewes constantly turned to them but he also did for theology. His theology in his sermons and lectures was more eastern than western. Like the Byzantine Church he accepted the Christian faith as the status quo upon which one comments but does not formulate extensively. Central to all his teaching was the purpose for man's creation - union with Christ, that is, that man can only be truly man when he participates in the life of God - a fusion of the human and the divine. The perfect fusion was in the Logos made flesh. "The Word, to shew His proceeding pure and merely spiritual; the Son, to shew that for all that it is true and substantial." Hence Andrewes' theology is strongly Christ centred in which His humanity is given considerable importance, but not at the expense of ignoring His divinity. He never ceased to be amazed of what God has done and the lengths he went to restore wretched mankind after he fell, so intricately expressed in his first extant Nativity sermon. "But when man fell He did all; made after him presently with Ubi es? sought to reclaim him, `What have you done? Why have you done so?' Protested enmity to him that had drawn him thus away, made His assumpsit of `woman's seed.'" Yet God did far more. He "sent after him still by the hand of His Prophets, to solicit his return. When that was not enough He "went after him Himself in person... He not only followed, but did it so with such eagerness, with such earnestness ...[that He] spared not Himself, but followed His pursuit through danger, distress, yea, through death itself. Followed, and so followed, as nothing made Him leave following till He overtook." So God humbled Himself by taking our flesh in the same manner as we humans. "He took not the person, but `He took the seed,' that is, the nature of man. Thus he was conceived, and stayed in "the womb of the Virgin [for] ... nine months," then as an infant, not able to "to speak a word", and growing up "in cold and heat, hungry and thirsty, faint weary" and ending his life with His body "black and blue, bloody and swollen, rent and torn". His conception went to "the root and repair" of our fallen nature. Our conception which had been "stained" through the first Adam was restored by the second Adam. Even before He was born God was not idle. "all the nine months He was in the womb ... He even eat out the core of corruption that cleft to our nature and us." By his conception "He and we become not only `one flesh,' as man and wife do by conjugal union, but even one blood too." The consummation of all this is that God can never "lay down... the nature of man - ... One we are, He and we, and so we must be." Since then "He seeth us daily in Himself, He cannot look upon His flesh but He must think upon us." Thus "our nature questionless is set in high favour with God. More importantly "since He dwelt amongst us, all may resort to Him - yea, even sinners." Andrewes' emphasis on Christ's body being truly human could be summed up in these words from Athanasius "He takes a body, a body which is not different from ours. He takes from us a nature similar to ours and, since we all are subject to corruption and death, He delivers His body to death for us." The most wonderful thing about the Incarnation is that God has never left us. He constantly dwells at our altars where we can be truly united with Christ, and constantly participate in the divine. "Now `the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body, of the flesh, of Jesus Christ?' It is surely, and by it and by nothing more are we made partakers of this blessed union." In the Sacrament "He might make the receiving of it by us a means whereby He might `dwell in us, and we in Him;' He taking our flesh, and we receiving His Spirit; by His flesh which He took of us receiving His Spirit which He imparteth to us; that, as He by ours became consors humanæ naturæ so we by His might become consortes Divinæ naturæ."
In this teaching of the fusing of the two natures Andrewes was very close to the Orthodox. How similar can be seen in this quotation from St. Gregory of PalamasHe [i.e. Christ] not merely clothed himself in a body. He also took a soul and mind and will and everything human, so that He might be able to be united to the whole of us, penetrate through the whole of us, and resolve us into Himself, having in every respect joined His own to that which is ours. ... For since it was not possible for us to ascend and particpate in that which is his, He comes down to us and participates in that which is ours. And so precisely does He conform to the things which He assumed that, in giving those things to us which He has received from us, He gives himself to us. Partaking of the body and blood of His humanity, we receive God himself in our souls - the Body and Blood of God, and the soul, mind, and will of God - no less than His humanity.God was never so beneficial nor bounteous in sending His Son into the world. So all good that comes to us, comes by Christ. "All the good that comes to us, as it comes to us from God, so it comes to us by Christ. God the Qui, Christ the per Quem. God the cause - from Him comes all, Christ and all. Christ the means - by Him comes all, God and all. All things from God, and nothing from God immediately, but mediante Christo." Like the Eastern Church Andrewes stressed that Christ is the Logos, the eternal Word which has always existed with the Father and the Spirit. "And this substantial Word of God, is that whereith St. John beginneth his Gospel. God created that which was not, but `the word was in the beginning'. Therefore it is verbum increatum: it made all things at the beginning." The Logos is the co-Artificer of all creation, skill and art, and thus the beginnings of Genesis and St. John's gospel were inseparable through the Word; the first as creator, and the second as redeemer of that creation. In this the Logos is the mediator "between God and his works in this Creation" as well as between God and man: Which became Man is the co-partner of creation as recorded in the opening verses of the first chapter in Genesis. The Logos "is like God in property and similitude of quality, and therefore is called, the lively and express character and graven Image, form and stamp of his Father, (Heb.1.3.)." In respect to His "Coeternity" Andrewes still following Hebrewes, states, "for as the light proceeded from the Sunne, so soon as ever the Sunne was, so did Christ, the Word, from eternity." Hence "he is called, the brightness of his Fathers glorie: So at what time God was, at that time the brightness of his Sonne appeared and shone from him." The Word as active in the Genesis account of creation is intricably linked with the prologue of St. John's gospel that relates the eternal Word becoming flesh as the Son of God. Hence the Word as the Son is the creator of the new creation restored by Him though His earthly habitation. So the Logos is the bridge between the old creation and the new. In Christ all things are made new. Indeed in describing creation, Andrewes in Orthodox mode, emphasised over and over again that it is the work of the three Persons, as well as unfolding the "mysterie of the Trinity". "For all was made by his power which is the property of God the Father; by his Wisdom, which is the property of the Son, by which all things were orderly disposed and distinguished; and by the riches of his goodness, which is the property of the Holy Ghost, by which all things were adorned and made perfect." Like the Orthodox he linked the Verbum factivum with creation and the incarnation. In one of his prebend lectures at St. Paul's cathedral, Andrewes suggested that the Father consulted both the Word and the Spirit on creation. The Word abides "in God, as skill, art, and cunning" - what should be "in a perfect work-man". So "his proceedings and manifestation in the Creatures as the skill of an artificer, proceedeth from him into his work, and there is to be seen: so the second person, the Word of God abideth for ever wholly in God, and dwelleth and resteth in his bosome, (Proverbs.2). And this, by this means passeth from God the Father, into his workmanship and Creatures, and is to be seen manifestly how wonderfull and glorious Gods word and wisdome and art is, by which he made all". As expressed in Hebrewes 1:2-3 "Christ by whom God made the Word, is there called a stamp, or graven form of his Father, and the brightnesse of his glory; so that now here is shewed the second stamp, and impression graven and formed in these works, in which the brightnesse of his Image may be seen, namely his power and wisdome etc."His teaching like the Orthodox was highly pneumatological. Thus he added it can be said "of His spirit which is inseparable and coequall with it: for as with our words our breath also proceedeth out of our mouths, in one action, and at one time: for ever the word and the spirit of God proceedeth from him together, to the perfecting of any work." They are indeed "indivisible". By His redemptive work the Word of God "is the generall mediator, not only between God and man in the work of redemption, but also between God and his works in this Creation: for after that the word of God was, he by whom all things had their being, and were that they are, and were set joynt and in order by him, then by the same verbum increatum proceeding from God". This redemptive work of the Word, cannot be separated from "that powerful working of the sanctifying Spirit, [through whom]... all things [were] new created, and set in right order and joynt again, being by Adams sin clean out of frame." Like the Eastern Fathers Andrewes emphasised the eternal co-existence and cohesion of the Three with the Spirit being the bond of love amongst them. Unlike the Western doctrine on the Trinity where there is only a relative distinction, the Eastern Fathers insisted on a cohesion as expressed as early as Basil: "As he who grasps one end of a chain pulls along with it the other end to himself, so he who draws the Spirit draws both the Son and the Father with It." And by Gregory of Palamas:This Spirit of the Word from on high is like the mysterious love of the Father toward the Word mysteriously begotten; it is that possessed by the Word, the beloved Son, toward the Father who begat Him; the Son does so insofar as He comes from the Father conjointly with this love, and this love rests naturally upon him. Like Gregory of Nazianzus he could say "When I say God, I mean Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
In affirming that the eternal Word did really take our nature upon him, and experience all our "wearinesse, grief, pain, mortality", he quips we have "a full stream" of testimonies "of the Fathers". "Basil: Behold I tell a wonder above all wonders, the great God was made a little child. And qui regrit sydera, ubira sugit, Born. He that governs the stars, sucked the breasts of a woman; Lord paramount of the whole world took upon him ye form of a man servant. Esunvit ...qui .. pascit (Augustine). He was hungry who gives all creatures food and nourishment. He thirsty with whom is the well of life; He dumb before his tormentors; who made both deaf to hear and dumb to speak; It would be endless to repeat but the truth of what they have scattered up and down in their writings concerning his humanity. Another example of his being more eastern than western is in his teaching on salvation. The orthodox doctrine of salvation is based, "not on the idea of guilt inherited from Adam and from which man is relieved in Christ, but on more existential understanding of both fallen and redeemed humanity. From the "old Adam", through his natural birth, man inherits a defective form of life - bound by mortality, inevitably sinful, lacking fundamental freedom from the prince of this world. The alternative to this fallen state is life in Christ, which is true and natural human life, the gift of God bestowed in the mystery of the Church." It is this approach that Andrewes basically adopted as he is more concerned with the restored life Christ gave; the first Adam brought us to death but the second gives life. The blood of Christ takes "away the stains of" sin. Whether we "conceive of sin as of some inward pestilent humour in the soul and conscience, casting us into ...immortal death," or "some outward soil in the soul", Christ cleanses the soiled soul firstly in the water "mixed with His blood" flowing from His side, and secondly in "a Cup with His own Blood." Thus Christ came "to repair our nature" and thus "all is given again really that in Adam ... we lost." echoing Gregory of Nazianzus, "we needed a God made flesh and put to death in order that we could live again." In Christ all shall live, although, as St. Athanasius states "we are dissolved for a time only, according to our bodies' mortal nature, in order the better to receive resurrection; like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish, but sown in the earth we shall rise again, since death has been brought to nought by the grace of the Saviour." Surely this is what Andrewes is saying in his Paschal sermon in Durham cathedral when he compared Christ's time "in the bowels of the earth" with that of Jonah in the belly of the whale. Both the heart of the earth and the whale yielded up "their dead, and deliver them up alive again." "The heart of the earth" brings "life", for although "the earth [is] dead for a time, all the winter - now when the waters of Heaven fall on it, shows it has life, bringing forth herbs and flowers again." 3. Preaching
Andrewes also quoted freely from the Fathers in his sermons. At Easter in his 1618 sermon in appealing to the Fathers for the celebrating of Easter being a time for peace and celebration rather than contention, he quipped, "We have a full jury, Greek and Latin, of them; and that, of the most chief and eminent among them: St. Basil, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Nyssen, Theophilus, Alexandrinus, Cyril, Chrysologus, Leo etc. ... I will give you a taste of one. It shall be Nazianzen, surnamed the Divine, and so one that knew what belonged to Divinity." He began his sermon: Easter day is come, God's own Easter-day; and again I say, Easter day, in honour of the Trinity; the feast of feasts, the solemnity of all solemnities, so far passing all other feasts, holden not only by or for men, but even in honour of Christ Himself, as the sun doth the stars.
honour of the Trinity; the feast of feasts, the solemnity of all solemnities, so far passing all other feasts, holden not only by or for men, but even in honour of Christ Himself, as the sun doth the stars. Another very early father, Ignatius in his epistle ad Magnesianos referred to it as the "queen of days", and a time to celebrate. From the hymns of the Fathers the primacy of Easter was also clear. Prudentius, Ambrose. Hilary, and Paulinus who lived with St. Augustine all proclaimed "Easter for a chief feast". From them too we know of the observance of baptising and communicating at Easter. "And then there was witness, especially evident in St. Chrysostom who when deposed was not allowed to enter a church, but when Easter day came, he was loathed to miss it, and accordingly used the "Thermas Constantini, ... the public bath of the city" for the celebrating of Easter "with a very great company, that would not forsake him." His 1620 Easter-day sermon with its theme of Christ appearing firstly not only to a woman but to "a sinful woman," Mary Magdalen, he quoted frequently from Origen, Augustine, Gregory and Bernard. For Easter, on the assurance of our own resurrection he turned to St. Gregory who had declared: "With assured faith I believe, and with free courage confess, that rise I shall, inasmuch as my Redeemer shall rise," for "`what he shewed in himself, He will perform in us; and what we see now in this example, then we shall feel in our own reward.'" In his 1604 Passion sermon from Lamentations 1:12, Andrewes appealed to the Fathers as interpreting this man of sorrows as Christ. So he preached:And this rule, and the steps of the Fathers proceeding by this rule, are to me a warrant to expound and apply this verse, as they have done before, to the present occasion of this time; which requireth some such scripture to be considered by us as doth belong to His Passion. In his sermon for Christmas 1616, he took as his text two verses from "one of the psalms selected by the primitive Church," (ps.85:10-11) for the Nativity which are "so still retained by ours as part of the office or service of this day, as being proper and pertinent to the matters of the feast". In expounding on this text he pointed out how insistent Augustine was that Mercy and Truth must meet, and Righteousness and Peace embrace one another, while Ireneaus revealed how the four met in Christ, and so as Bernard observed they are inseparable. In his Ash Wednesday sermons, Andrewes referred to Augustine to teach that the Church has always commanded fasting during Lent, and if we ignore the Church's teaching then as Augustine also said it will be difficult to escape "the unquenchable fire of hell". On the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost Andrewes preached: "The rule of the Fathers is - Hierome and Cyril have it - where the Holy Ghost was before, and is said to come again, it is to be understood one of these two 2 ways:- 1. Either of an increase of the former, which before was had; 2. Or, of some new, not had before, but sent now for some new effect." Yet it is in his 1617 Pentecostal Sermon that he pays the Fathers the greatest compliment. Explaining the effects of anointing by the Holy Spirit, Andrewes decribed how oil "soaks even into the bones... but it works upon the joints and sinews sensibly, makes them supple and lithe, and so the more fresh and active to bestir themselves. By virtue of the sweet odours mixed with it, it works upon the spirits and senses." In our search for knowledge "we spend much oil" to light "our lamps oft" Thus one of the ways we come " to our anointing now" is by books ... by the books of the ancient Fathers and lights of the Church, in whom the scent of this ointment was fresh, and the temper true; on whose writings it lieth thick, and we thence strike it off, and gather it safely." To the question why is the feast of Pentecost so important, Andrewes stated that as early as Cyprian in the third century has been so.St. Cyrpian is the first we find it in - that it was to hold harmony, to keep correspondency between the two testaments, the Old and the New. So it was at Christ's death we see. He was slain, not only as the Lamb was, but even when the Lamb was slain too: on the feast of the Passover, then was, `Christ our Passover' offered for us. Now, from that feast of the Passover, reckoning fifty days, they came to Sinai; and there on that day, the day of Pentecost, received they the law, ... by them called the feast of the Law. And even the very same day, reckoning from `Christ our Passover' fifty days, that the Law was given in Sinai, the very same day does the new `Law' here `go out of Sion,' as the prophet Isaiah foretold, `exibit de Sion Lex;' which is nothing else but the promulgation of the Gospel. ...
Sinai; and there on that day, the day of Pentecost, received they the law, ... by them called the feast of the Law. And even the very same day, reckoning from `Christ our Passover' fifty days, that the Law was given in Sinai, the very same day does the new `Law' here `go out of Sion,' as the prophet Isaiah foretold, `exibit de Sion Lex;' which is nothing else but the promulgation of the Gospel. ...On the feast of Pentecost then was given the Law of Christ, written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.To this does Chrysostom join a second harmony. That as under the law, at this feast, they first put their sickle to the corn -harvest, in that climate, beginning with them in this month - the first fruits whereof they offered at Easter; ... in like sort we see that this very day, the Lord of the harvest so disposing it. ... His first workmen, the Apostles, did put in their first sickle into the great harvest, `whereof the world is the field,' and the several furrows of it, `all the nations under heaven.' On the feast of Pentecost then second, because then began the great spiritual harvest.
this feast, they first put their sickle to the corn -harvest, in that climate, beginning with them in this month - the first fruits whereof they offered at Easter; ... in like sort we see that this very day, the Lord of the harvest so disposing it. ... His first workmen, the Apostles, did put in their first sickle into the great harvest, `whereof the world is the field,' and the several furrows of it, `all the nations under heaven.' On the feast of Pentecost then second, because then began the great spiritual harvest.To these two does St. Augustine add a third, taken out of the number, in the very name of Pentecost, and that is fifty. Which being all along the law the number of the Jubilee, which was the time of forgiving of debts, and restoring men to their first estates, ... which is [now] an act of God's most gracious general free pardon of all the sins of all the sinners in the world.
the very name of Pentecost, and that is fifty. Which being all along the law the number of the Jubilee, which was the time of forgiving of debts, and restoring men to their first estates, ... which is [now] an act of God's most gracious general free pardon of all the sins of all the sinners in the world.And no less fit ... Cyril applies excellently the thirtieth verse of the hundred and fourth psalm, `emitte Spiritum Tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terrae.' Showing there was first an emission of the Spirit into man at his creation, which being since choked with sin and so comes to nothing, this day there is here a second emission of the same Spirit into man, full to restore and renew him, and in him the whole mass of the creation. Nicholas Lossky in his work on Lancelot Andrewes has drawn many parallels between passages of Andrewes' sermons with various texts from the Greek fathers. One of the examples he took to demonstrate this was by commenting on "kinship", a frequent theme of Andrewes. He juxstaposed this rhythmical passage from the second Nativity sermon with some hymns from Orthodox Vespers for 25th December.All along His life you will see these two. At His birth, a cratch for the Child, a star for the Son; a company of shepherds viewing the Child, a choir of angels celebrating the Son. In His life, hungry Himself, to show the nature of the Child; yet feeding five thousand to show the power of the Son. At His death, dying on the cross as the Son of Adam; at the same time disposing of Paradise, as the Son of God. 1:22. Now the hymns:
O Lord, Thou art come to Bethlehem and hast made Thy dwelling in the cave. Thou who hast heaven as Thy throne art laid in a manger. Thou whom the hosts of angels attend on ever side hast come down among shepherds, that in Thy compassion Thou mightest save our kind. Glory to Thee!How shall I tell of this great mystery? He who is without flesh becomes incarnate; the Word puts on a body;...the Invisible is seen; He whom no hand can touch is handles and He who knows no beginning now brings to be. The Son of God becomes the Son of man: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and for ever.
In the Nativity sermon for 1619 with its text the angel's song, he presents this song very similar to that as part of Great Compline of the Nativity.
That Heaven and earth and men are to join in one concert; Heaven and earth first; Heaven on high, earth beneath to take up one hymn; both in honour of His birth - both are better by it; Heaven hath glory, earth peace, by means of it." In referring to the star engraven "on the cover of the canister wherein was the Sacrament of His body”, is a direct reference to the practice in Eastern Church in which the bread box has a "star" on its lid. In the eastern rite when the priest covers the bread with the `star,' he recites those words from St. Matthew, `And the star came, and stood over where the young child was.'" Andrewes also follows the Eastern fathers in interpreting the visit to Abraham under the oak of Mamre as manifesting the Trinity. Abraham began a line of those from the Old Testament who desired to see "my day". With the Eastern Fathers such as Irenaeus and Cyril together with Augustine, Andrewes interpreted this to mean Christmass day. 
4. Preces Privatæ
His admiration for the Fathers, as already suggested appeared in his own devotional book. The Preces is dotted with quotations from them. Each day is begun and offered in the words of SS. Chrysostom and James:That this day, and every day may come on perfect, holy, peaceable, healthful, and without sin,...
The pardon and remission of all sins, and of all trangressions, ...
That we accomplish the rest of our life in repentance and godly fear, in health and peace,...
A Christian end of our life, without sin, without shame, and, if Thou think good, without pain, and a good apology at the dreadful and terrible tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ,Grant, Lord we beseech Thee.
He adopted too the Orthodox sursum corda aspect of worship. So he could pray in the words of Liturgy of SS. James and Basil:Let us lift up our hearts unto the Lord, as it is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should in all, and for all things, at all times, in all places, by all means, ever, every where, every way,.
Make mention of thee,
Confess to Thee,
Bless Thee,
Worship Thee,
Praise Thee,
Sing laud to Thee,
Give thanks to Thee.
Creator,
Nourisher,
Preserver,
Governor,
Physician,
Benefactor,
Perfector,
Lord and Father,
King and God,
Fountain of Life and Immortality,
Treasury of eternal good things:
Whom
The Heavens, and the heavens of heavens,
The Angels, and all the Celestial Powers sing praise unto;
Uncessantly crying one to another,
(And we, base and unworthy we,
with then, under their feet,)
Holy, holy, holy."
Lord God of Hosts,
Heaven and earth is full of the Majesty of Thy glory.
In his intercessions Andrewes often prayed the Orthodox liturgies:
In the peace of God, let us pray
For the peace which is from above, and for the salvation of our souls;
For the peace of the whole world;
For the establishment of the Churches of God; and the union of them all;
For this holy peace; and all that enter into it, with faith and reverence;
For our holy fathers the Bishops; the venerable Presbytery, and Deaconry in Christ;
For this holy mansion; all this city and country; and all faithful people who dwell therein;
His final commendation at the end of each day also came from the Greek liturgy of St. Chrysostom:
"Let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life unto Christ our God:"
Undoubtedly Andrewes relied heavily on the Fathers and Orthodox liturgies to preach and to pray. They became very much part of his life, like breathing and eating.
