A person could get lost in the history of St. Paul’s Cathedral (London). Just the famous Deans of St Paul’s is a venerable list of churchmen. Most readers will know Canon Henry Scott Holland from his “Death is nothing at all” quotation used at countless funerals. As for the building itself and the fire of London, I’ve seen multi-hour programs just on Christopher Wren and St. Paul’s that didn’t cover everything on the topic. So with no aim in mind of covering everything, I just plan on providing a little information on one of its most famous preachers: John Donne (it’s true he was of Old St. Paul’s not the building that graces the banner of this website, built by Wren).
He once preached vividly:
“There now hangs that sacred Body upon the Crosse, rebaptized in his owne teares and sweat, and embalmed in his owne blood alive. There are those bowells of compassion, which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see them through his wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light: so as the Sun ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. And then that Sonne of God, who was never from us, and yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers that soule (which was never out of his Father’s hand) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Father’s hands; For though to his God our Lord, belong’d these issues of death, so that considered in his owne contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery, which they had made upon his sacred Body, issued his soule, but emisit, hee gave up the Ghost, and as God breathed a soule into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed his soule into God, into the hands of God. There wee leave you in that blessed dependancy, to hang upon him that hangs upon the Crosse, there bath in his teares, there suck at his woundes, and lie downe in peace in his grave, till hee vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that Kingdome, which hee hath purchas’d for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood.” – John Donne
Donne has been a notable figure in Anglican history’s war going on since the Reformation. For those of Roman Catholic sympathies in the Church of England, Donne is a classic example of a true Catholic priest (a relation to St. Thomas More after all, and thus from a recusant family), his overly Roman theological tendencies are often cited to prove the point. Nonetheless Anglo-Calvinists just like Anglo-Catholics have a dog in the fight, since Donne also left some incredibly Protestant/Calvinist poems (Holy Sonnet XIV being the locus classicus). The wars picked up especially in the Oxford Movement and amongst the Roman Catholic revival in England from 1870-1950.
In any case, whichever side Donne falls on, I appreciate his writing (He’s similar to C.S. Lewis in many ways, the English don’t like to side too strongly on the Reformation it seems).
Just one of the many jewels of St. Paul’s (which if you want to be a true Anglo-phile you pronounce: “sint Pawhls”)