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"Complete and faithful Scriptural preaching": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on the ministry of preaching

In the fifth of his 1844 Bampton Lectures, An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England, Jelf - one of those whom Nockles lists as the 'Zs', the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - concludes his reflection on the ministry of the Word as a means of grace by reflecting on the duty of preaching, particularly challenging evangelical preaching which failed to unfold the fullness of the Christian revelation.  He ends this section by - in a classically Hookerian, Laudian, and Old High manner - placing preaching within the context of "the entire service", that is, not exalting it above other ordinances:

If this be a true account of the work of an evangelist, that, surely, cannot be complete, and faithful, and Scriptural preaching, which measuring its scope by the narrow views or bigoted exclusiveness of the preacher or his flock, studiously sets forth a part only of the message, and either from inexcusable ignorance or from presumptuous self-trust, hides other no less necessary portions of God's truth. And those are liable to this charge, who either preach of morality independent of Christian truth, or of works of merit, or of faith without works, or of unconditional mercy, or of grace without means, or of Christianity without the Christian Church, or of the ministerial office without the Apostolical commission, or of regeneration without baptism, or of the Lord's Supper without a true spiritual participation amongst the faithful receivers of the body and blood of Christ; in a word, whoever preaches on any of these subjects to the actual or virtual exclusion of others. These are all instances of the partial delivery of truth, and they originate, if not in a wilful wresting of the Scripture, at least in its imperfect and unfaithful use, in the text without the context, in the letter without the spirit, in the particular view uncorrected and unbalanced by the general scope of the whole ...

He looks upon the entire service in all its details as setting forth the glory of God in Christ; and to declare His glory is to preach His Word. He will shew no undue regard for one part of his ministrations, or for an other; he will himself consider, and teach his flock to consider, the worship and the Word of God as different applications of the same principle, diversified operations wrought in us by the same one Spirit; the prayers, as faith embodied and quickened in utterance; the Lord's Prayer itself, as an epitome of the holy Volume; the Lessons, as faith taught by God; the Sermon, as faith explained and enforced by man; Holy Baptism, as signifying to us our profession; and (to pursue the thought of St. Augustine) the Holy Eucharist itself, as a sermon shewing the Lord's death and passion till He come.

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