"Our venerable Reformers": Jelf, the Old High tradition, and the Tract XC controversy

R.W. Jelf's January 1842 sermon - The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent - was preached amidst the Tract XC controversy. The contrast between Jelf's sermon and Tract XC was stark. While Newman sought to conform Anglican formularies to Tridentine doctrines, Jelf restated the Old High critique of "the aberrations of the Church of Rome". Demonstrating how "innovation by addition" resulted in the Roman Communion "maintaining and enforcing doctrines and practices which are not Catholic at all", Jelf overturned Newman's approach in Tract XC by calling for the Church of Rome to follow the example of the Church of England:

Yet, after all, it is painful thus to dwell upon the failings of a sister Church, which, amidst all her corruptions, has retained many Christian truths and holy practices in common with ourselves. Would God, that she would "remember from whence she is fallen, and repent, and do the first works". What might not Christendom have become, if, instead of setting herself obstinately against the purification of the temple, she had cooperated with ourselves in the blessed work of amendment! And even now, "if God peradventure should give her repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth", if she would repeal the Decrees of Trent, if she would purify her service-books, and rigidly deny to the creature the smallest portion of the worship due only to the Creator; if her Bishop, contenting himself with that "upper room" in the College of Bishops, which in honour of the Imperial City was conceded to him during many ages, and would lay aside the utterly groundless claim to universal supremacy, and that fearful name of "Universal Bishop", which, at the end of the sixth century, his own predecessor Gregory I himself denounced as "nomen istud blasphemiæ"; if these and similar reformations were conceded, she might become once more, what Christian Rome of the first ages was, a pure branch of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, and we might communicate with her in faith and good works, and in the extension of Christ's Kingdom, for she would have become identical with ourselves, having passed through the very process, by which we were called back by God's mercy to the place from whence we were fallen.

A footnote in Jelf's sermon indicates the fundamental difference between Newman's longing gazes across the Tiber and the Old High critique of Rome:

See Bishop Jewel's 'Replie to Harding', in defence of the Challenge at Paul's Cross; a work, in its main positions, unassailed and impregnable.

Newman had abandoned the English Reformation. Nockles notes that as early as 1837, "Newman was privately denouncing Cranmer and Jewel". By contrast, Jelf expounded the Old High reverence for the English Reformation. As Nockles puts it:

Old High Churchmen had never felt any dichotomy between their respect for antiquity and veneration of the Reformers. The appeal of the pre-Tractarian High Church campaigners was to revive 'the principles of the Reformation'.

We see this not least in the counsel given by Jelf to young admirers of Newman:

It is a mark of unsoundness in teaching, when young theologians, after a hurried perusal of some one or two of the Fathers, shall presume to sit in judgment on our venerable Reformers, who had many of them spent long lives in gathering the combined testimonies of those early writers, and digesting out of them a complete system of primitive theology.

Here, in other words, was a robust, vibrant alternative to Newman and Tract XC, rejoicing in the heritage of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana, not only free of any wistful looks across the Tiber, but - following the Old High tradition - entirely at one with the English Reformation's rejection of the papal supremacy and Tridentine doctrine.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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