"They who travel in one company": a Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter, on the opening words of the Epistle of the day, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims". Yet again, we see an example of Old High preaching - warm, meaningful, spiritually serious - that undermines the Tractarian 'High and Dry' allegation.

Let us briefly trace this grand resemblance, which is to be completed between the spiritual progress of sincere believers and the former travels of God's ancient servants and elected people. The course of pilgrimage, in the Christian sense, consists, then, in the daily advancement of the reasonable mind to better measures of improvement, and to more elevated heights of expectation: it consists in the constant progress which is to be made in good attainments: and in acquiring clearer views of future happiness and glory. The pilgrimage which we have to fulfil, consists in leaving those things which are less worthy of regard, and in reaching forward to those things which lie before. It consists, more especially, in taking care constantly to remove from the dangerous and doubtful ways of error, ignorance, and vice ..."

In order to touch some points in this similitude, let us, consider, that they who travel in one company, and are bound to one place of destination, are under obligation to exercise a mutual care and attention, and to be ready to supply such aids as any of the number may require, to enable them to pursue the way with their companions. Thus, also, in the Christian train, there should be that close union, and that brotherly regard. Our Lord's Apostle keeps to the figure of the common lot of travellers, when he says "bear ye one another's burdens": that is, when any man's burden becomes too heavy for him, give aid to lighten it or to bear it for him. As you may be able, be ready always to bring others forward, and to succour them where they want assistance. Again, we find that the joint pursuit of one path, is apt to make men social, and to unite them in a friendly intimacy and regard. They who have travelled long together, will be endeared to one another by the memory of many common gratifications, or of many common hazards, as well as by the sense and recollection of mutual aids. So also should we learn by the first principles of Christian goodwill, to cherish a sincere regard for those who partake one lot with us, and who journey to one heavenly inheritance.

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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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