'The straight, right-onward path of virtue': a Hackney Phalanx sermon on the moral life shaped by the Commandments

Today we continue with the series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx. In this extract from a sermon on 2 Kings 5 on the actions of Gehazi, servant of Elisha. Here we see a Hackney Phalanx sermon emphasising a characteristic Old High concern with a moral life shaped by the Commandments and the spiritual dangers arising from the absence of this concern.

The history forcibly illustrates another important truth, that vices seldom go single, but one transgression commonly opens the way to another. The love of money, especially, is, as the Apostle says, "the root of all evil." The commandment has said, "Thou shalt not covet." But he did covet. Gehazi disobeyed that precept, and having so done, he was brought under a kind of necessity of breaking two other commandments of the decalogue. The presents which he obtained at the hand of Naaman, he got by fraud, and so he transgressed the eighth commandment, "Thou shalt not steal:" and also, both to procure this object of his desire, and to keep it when procured, he spake falsely, and so transgressed the ninth commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

How much better then is it to keep innocency? When once you deviate from the straight, right-onward path of virtue, no one can tell how many doublings you will have to make; no one can tell into what numerous offences you may fall; into what temptations you are leading yourselves; no one can tell, how long you may wax worse and worse; how perilous therefore your condition is! and no one can tell whether you may recover the straight way, that leadeth unto life, even for ever.

You see therefore, in general, what an evil sin is how it deforms and defiles the world; that it is contagious in its nature; that it spreads over the moral frame of the universe, eating, as it goes, like a canker, and tainting all it touches, like the leprosy.

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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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