"Reflecting the features of the primitive Church": An Old High Sermon during the Tract XC Controversy

Today, a further extract from R.W. Jelf's January 1842 sermon, The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent. Amidst the Tract XC controversy, and contrary to Newman attempting to force the Formularies into a Tridentine mould, Jelf points to the Anglican Formularies unambiguously rejecting Trent's errors and embodying a Reformed Catholicism, scriptural and patristic:

Thus she inculcates the value and necessity of Good Works, whilst she disclaims for them the smallest particle of merit. She inculcates Justification by Faith alone (per fidem - sola fide) "only for the merit (propter meritum) of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ", but "good works (she teaches us) do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith". She acknowledges "the services of Angels as ordained and constituted in a wonderful order", (Collect for St. Michael and all Angels) and commemorates the excellent graces of the Saints, and glorifies Christ in them, but she never invokes or worships either Saint or Angel. The spiritual presence of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist, and their being verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful, is taught us from our earliest years; but the carnal and fleshly presence implied in the doctrine of Transubstantiation is rejected "as repugnant to the plain words of Scripture". The Holy Scriptures are daily read; but no fabulous legends. Instead of extempore prayer, we have a liturgy retaining what is primitive and good, but "paring off all excrescences, and adventitious corruptions of after times" [quoting Bishop Bull]. She enjoins daily prayer and thanks giving in the house of God, and the frequent "shewing the Lord's death" in the holy Eucharist; she rejects in severe language the Romish doctrine of "the sacrifices of Masses".

Such Old High confidence and joy in Anglicanism's native piety became, of course, a defining contrast with the Ritualist adoption of Tridentine piety and doctrine. There was no need for foolish looks across the Tiber, for "our Church contented herself with reflecting the features of the primitive Church".

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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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