laudable Practice

From A Vindication of the Church of England (published posthumously in 1719) by George Bull (received episcopal orders in 1651, during the Interregnum; Bishop of St. Davids, 1705-10), another significant feature of Trinitarian minimalism - the belief that Baptism in the Name of the Holy Trinity and the Trinitarian doxology in the liturgy is sufficient to sustain saving Trinitarian faith: for as long as the sacrament of Baptism, as it was appointed by Christ to be administered, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, shall continue in the church, (that is, whilst the church shall continue,) as long as the doxology, or glorification of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost together, (which was received in the catholic church in the very age that trod upon the heels of the apostles, as appears from the testimony of St. Justin Martyr and others,) shall retain a place in the Liturgy and public offices of the church, so long shall we not want a clear proof, and a practical evidenc...

On this Thursday after Trinity Sunday, laudable Practice offers extracts from leading Laudians highlighting how observance of Corpus Christi does not cohere with the eucharistic theology and - no less significant - piety of the classical Prayer Book tradition. The point of these extracts is not to critique our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic tradition in their celebrations of Corpus Christi, reflecting the distinctives of that tradition's eucharistic theology. It is, rather, to encourage a faithful confidence in the classical Prayer Book tradition not including the observance.  The absence of the observance of Corpus Christi in the classical Prayer Book tradition is no weakness, no unfortunate oversight, no Protestant 'excess'. Rather, it witnesses to a rich, dynamic eucharistic theology and vibrant sacramental piety, rooted in patristic teaching and practice in a manner demonstrably not the case with medieval Latin and Tridentine devotions. On this basis Laudi...

If we had to point to a key classical text for an Anglican 'Trinitarian minimalism', it would surely be in the 1662 Catechism : What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief?  Answer. First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me, and all the world; Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me, and all mankind; Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the elect people of God. This summary of the Apostles' Creed is a sufficient statement of Trinitarian faith. This is a  sufficient  account of the Articles of Belief, what is necessary for salvation. Notice what is missing from this summary. There is a complete absence of doctrinal Trinitarian terminology. Such terminology is not required for saving faith. In his 1655 An Exposition of the Catechism of the Church of England , William Nicholson - appointed Bishop of Gloucester in 1661 - gave expression to a significant conviction of Trinitarian minimalism. The Holy Trinity i...

In Edward Stillingfleet's A Discourse in Vindication of the Trinity (1697) - an eirenical work which sought to bring a close to Trinitarian disputes in the post-1688 Church of England, while reaffirming orthodox Trinitarian faith against the Socinians - we can detect something of the Trinitarian minimalism seen in, for example, Taylor and Tillotson. Above all, Stillingfleet states that Trinitarian faith is not dependent upon the dogmatic language of the Athanasian Creed, but upon the witness of holy Scripture: But after all, why do we assert three Persons in the Godhead? Not because we find them in the Athanasian Creed; but because the Scripture hath revealed that there are Three, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; to whom the Divine Nature and Attributes are given. This we verily believe, that the Scripture hath revealed; and that there are a great many places, of which, we think no tolerable Sense can be given without it, and therefore we assert this Doctrine on the same Grounds, on wh...

In his 1693 sermon ' Concerning the unity of the divine nature and the B. Trinity ', Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, repeated a critique of scholastic definitions of the Trinity also seen in the works of the Cambridge Platonists, Jeremy Taylor, and other Latitudinarians: I desire it may be well considered, that there is a wide difference between the nice Speculations of the Schools, beyond what is revealed in Scripture, concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity, and what the Scripture only teaches and asserts concerning this Mystery. For it is not to be denied but that the Schoolmen, who abounded in wit and leisure, though very few among them had either exact skill in the H. Scriptures, or in Ecclesiastical Antiquity and the Writings of the ancient Fathers of the Christian Church: I say, it cannot be denied but that these Speculative and very acute men, who wrought a great part of their Divinity out of their own Brains as Spiders do Cobwebs out of their own bowels, have s...

Continuing with extracts from The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761), we turn to its discussion of how the strictures of the Book of Homilies regarding imagery are to be understood in the context of the use and custom of the Church of England since the Reformation. The Ornaments of Churches quotes Sir Joseph Jekyll, a leading parliamentarian of the early 18th century, who became Master of the Rolls (a judicial role) in 1717.   I believe it will be admitted, that no more is intended by that Subscription, but that the Doctrine contained in the Homilies is right in the Main, and not that every Sentence of them is so: For in this last Senfe, I believe, never any Divine subscribed the Articles [regarding the Homilies], and it will be hard to name any Preacher or Writer of Note, who has not contradicted some Passages or other in them; nay as to one, the general and  approved P...

Last week we considered John Shepherd's reflections on The Grace in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796). While The Grace does, of course, conclude Morning and Evening Prayer, we have not yet quite finished with Shepherd's commentary. He turns to the 18th century practice of metrical psalms being sung in parish churches after the conclusion of Matins: In our church it is customary to sing a few stanzas of one of the two authorized translations of the psalms, after the Morning Prayer and Litany are ended, and again, before the Sermon. In these instances, the introduction of psalmody is proper, and in some degree, even necessary. Without something of this kind, the transition from the Litany to the office of the Holy Communion; and from the Nicene Creed to the Sermon, might appear too sudden and abrupt. Evidence of this practice is found in older editions of the Book of Common Prayer. For example, my copy sma...

On this Ember Wednesday, an extract from Bishop Beveridge's sermon 'Ministers of the Gospel, Christ's Ambassadors '. Beveridge, one of those identified by Hampton as a leading Reformed divine in the post-1662 Church of England, here articulates a key and consistent characteristic of Conformity in the long 18th century: the conviction that the episcopal constitution of the Church of England was an apostolic order.  This was not a negative judgment on the circumstances of the continental non-episcopal Reformed churches. In another of his sermons, Beveridge refers to "this or any other reformed Church", phrasing which quite clearly refuses any 'unchurching' of non-episcopal churches. Indeed, we might argue that the very confidence Beveridge demonstrates in the constitution of the Church of England allowed for generosity towards non-episcopal Reformed churches .  Beveridge's sermon, however, does exemplify how the episcopal succession and the Ordinal...

There has been a significant revision of the historical understanding of Richard Hooker in recent decades.  The 19th century conception of Hooker as the architect of an 'Anglican via media' has been replaced by a much more historically compelling account of Hooker the Reformed theologian. This has led to some conservative evangelical Anglicans claiming Hooker for themselves, often invoking Nigel Atkinson's  Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason . While Atkinson provided a somewhat unsophisticated summary of more recent Hooker research, he did aid conservative evangelical Anglicans in apparently rediscovering Hooker. Missing, however, from this newfound conservative evangelical enthusiasm for Hooker the Reformed theologian is the context established by serious Hooker research. As Hooker scholar Torrance Kirby has brilliantly demonstrated, 'Reformed' was a deeply contested category in Hooker's Elizabethan Church of England. Likewise,...

But in the Gospel, the spirit is given without measure; first powred forth upon our head Christ Jesus; then descending upon the beard of Aaron, the Fathers of the Church, and thence falling like the tears of the balsam of Judea upon the foot of the plant, upon the lowest of the people. And this is given regularly to all that ask it, to all that can receive it, and by a solemn ceremony and conveyed by a Sacrament: and is now, not the Daughter of a voice, but the Mother of many voices, of divided tongues, and united hearts, of the tongues of Prophets, and the duty of Saints, of the Sermons of Apostles, and the wisdom of Governours; It is the Parent of boldness, and fortitude to Martyrs, the fountain of learning to Doctors, an Ocean of all things excellent to all who are within the ship, and bounds of the Catholike Church: so that Old men and young men, maidens and boyes, the scribe and the unlearned, the Judge and the Advocate, the Priest and the people are full of the Spirit, if they be...

A William Beveridge Whitsun sermon - from a collection of Beveridge sermons published in 1712 - makes the suggestion that when the apostolic community gathered on Pentecost, they did so to celebrate the holy Sacrament: But the great thing they did whensoever they met together, was to receive the Sacrament; so that their coming together was still upon this Account, Acts 20. 7, where by breaking of Bread we are to understand the Sacrament, as also wheresoever it occurs in the New Testament, because the principal thing in the Sacrament, even the Death of Christ, is signify'd by breaking of the Bread; and therefore saith the Apostle, 'The Bread which we break is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ'? 1 Cor. 10 16. Neither did they content themselves with receiving the Sacrament now and then, but it was their daily, their continual Employment, Acts 2. 42, 46. And therefore we cannot doubt but that on the Day of Pentecost when they met together, they did that which was the...

Having reviewed how, in his  The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), Henry Charles Groves - a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - demonstrated the  'Calvinist consensus' on the Eucharist in the early 17th century Church of England, we now turn to Groves' account of how Laud understood this consensus emerging from the Reformation of the Church of England: But it is not Dr. Pusey alone who has thus departed from the mode of speaking used by our forefathers. We find the same thing in all the rest of his school. Mr. Keble, for example, wishing to make some point out of Bertram's [i.e. Ratramnus] book, is met by the troublesome fact that Bishop Ridley found that author so - Calvinistic, I suppose we are to call it - that he translated it. How is he to get over it? By a simple assertion: "Ridley, whose sentiments on Christ's Presence in the Eucharist are known to have differe...

We now reach John Shepherd's thoughts, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), on the closing prayer at Matins and Evensong, The Grace. It is, of course, a slightly amended form of the Apostle's closing words in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians:  In consequence of turning the words addressed by Paul to men, into an address to God, you was necessarily changed into us, and the word evermore was added. That the Apostolic words are amended to become "an address to God" indicates that The Grace is indeed a prayer: It is not strictly a Benediction, or blessing. It is rather an intercessionary prayer, wherein the priest implores a blessing for himself, as well as for the congregation. Though it is pronounced by the minister alone, the congregation ought mentally to address it to God. The church has made it, and calls it a prayer, and therefore the minister is directed to kneel.  There is some signif...

While The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761) ended its survey of the place of imagery in the Church of England since the Reformation with an account of the return of dignified, modest imagery in the Restoration Church , consideration of the criticism levelled at the depiction of the Crucifixion in the window installed in St. Margaret's begins with a footnote referring back to the 1640s. Critics of the window deemed it 'superstitious'. The footnote points to how this echoed the iconoclasm of the 1640s: During the civil Wars indeed, such pretended Abuses were assigned as Reasons for demolishing all such Windows. As a rebuke of such iconoclastic arguments of the 1640s, the footnote turns to a 1645 sermon by "an eminent Divine of Oxford thus delivered his Sentiments to the learned Audience of that University". The preacher was Jasper Mayne, who was sequestered under ...

The backlash against New Theism has been swift. And, strangely, most of it hasn’t come from humanists and atheists, but from what one might call established Christians. George Pitcher's comment on the recent flurry of articles on 'cultural Christians' in the United Kingdom highlights the oddest feature of this phenomenon: the most intense opposition to the very idea of 'cultural Christians' comes from Christians. It is almost as if the failure of the New Atheist movement - and this is what 'cultural Christians' at least partly represent - comes as a disappointment to some of the theological despisers of cultural Christians. Perhaps this emerges from a desire for a combative, confrontational relationship between Church and Culture, rather contrary to the Apostolic exhortation that "we may lead a quiet and peaceable life". Sectarian existence, after all, can be a rather more heady experience than the quiet, peaceable, modest Anglican (or Presbyteria...