"Your eternal, spiritual welfare": Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures, the Old High tradition, and 'secular advantages'

On a number of occasions, laudable Practice has drawn attention to the pre-1833 Old High tradition robustly affirming the divine institution of the Church and renouncing any reliance for its claims upon establishment status e.g. Horsley in 1790, Spry in 1816, Lonsdale in 1827, and Perceval in 1831. This refutes the suggestion made in Tract One that the 'Two Bottle Orthodox' relied on "secular advantages" - "Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions". The evidence from the pre-1833 Old High tradition is quite clear that such a claim was entirely erroneous.

This is also explicit in Thomas Le Mesurier's 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism. Ending the first lecture, Le Mesurier makes it abundantly clear that establishment status and temporal interests are not his concern when it comes to defining the claims of the Church, what Tract One called the Church's "divine mission":

Still less is it my wish to say any thing which may bear upon that alliance between church and state, from whence is derived or rather by which is secured, that portion which the former inherits of wealth and of worldly honour; and which may be suspected to have caused much of the jealousy, to which she has been exposed. If it should be necessary to touch upon it, I shall not forbear, but it will be my wish to steer clear of any thing like formal discussion on that head. The appeal which I shall make, I would wish to be directed exclusively to your consciences, as followers of Christ and servants of God. I would have you consider the question not as it may affect any temporal interests of your own, or of the civil community to which you belong; but as it may concern your eternal, and spiritual welfare.

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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...

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