"The means of grace are not yet exhausted": Jelf's 1844 Bampton Lectures on ministration at the hour of death

Today we bring our extracts from Jelf's 1844 Bampton Lectures - An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England - to a close (the first extract was posted in late June 2022). At the end of the final lecture, Jelf portrays how the varied means of grace in Anglicanism shape and sustain a life of faith, hope, and love. In this extract he describes the means of grace at the hour of our death:

And so, at length, the day is far spent, and "the night cometh, in which no man can work." The hand of sickness and death is upon God's weary servant. Still, even then he is mindful that the means of grace are not yet exhausted; his spiritual friend and guide is once more at hand to warn, to support, to pray with him and for him; to receive, if he desire it, his last confession, and, by Christ's authority committed unto him, to "absolve" him "from all" his "sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost". Finally, he receives for the last time the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, and so, is now and ever, one with Christ and Christ with him. And so he departs in peace, the last sounds which his mortal ears, if God open them, shall hear, being the words of the Church's Commendatory prayer.

It is a quite lovely depiction of why we petition in the Litany to be delivered from "sudden death", that we might have these ministrations in the last days of our earthly life, that we might be delivered "in the hour of death". Note, too, the gentle, modest description of the parson in these ministrations: "spiritual friend and guide". As Jelf has previously reminded us in these lectures, sacerdotalism is no part of the Anglican understanding of the ordained ministry.

Those of us in provinces of the Anglican Communion in which the 1662 form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick has been (wisely) revised, should not be concerned in the light of Jelf's words. After all, he says elsewhere in this final lecture, ministerial Absolution is for "the quieting of the conscience, the pardon assured to repented sin" - this is given by the ordinary form of Absolution no less than by the special form used in 1662's Visitation of the Sick.

The means of grace sustain us in this earthly life. Then they pass away, when we are received - by the grace and mercy of God in Christ - into "our perfect consummation and bliss". And so the last word goes to Jelf, reminding us of that hope to which Old High piety orients us in our earthly pilgrimage:

May we not suppose, then, that when hope shall have been changed into certainty, and faith into sight, and grace into glory, that the means by which faith, and hope, and grace have been kindled and kept alive, shall likewise vanish away? When this mortal life shall have come to an end (to adopt and pursue a thought of St. Augustine's) there will be no need of the Holy Eucharist, when we shall ever be with the Lord, whose Body we have verily received by faith; nor of an Apostolical Ministry, when we shall be living in the blessed society of Apostles and Angels, and when we shall ourselves, every one of us, have been by "him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood," made "kings and priests unto God and his Father;" nor of the Holy Volume, when we shall see Him who is the Word, when we shall see face to face, and "know, even as we are known;" nor of preachers and evangelists, when we "shall be all taught of God;" nor of Confession and Absolution, when there shall be no more sin; nor of Prayer, when supplication shall be swallowed up in thanksgiving, and in the new song of the Lamb. The use of all these instruments shall have passed away. Yet still that life obtained in Holy Baptism, cherished by faith and obedience, and made more than conqueror, through Christ who gave it, over sin, and death, and the grave, shall endure through endless ages, in the holy city, the everlasting Church, the new Jerusalem, when "the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God."

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...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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