laudable Practice

Having offered robust critiques of advanced Anglo-catholicism and neo-Puritan Evangelicalism, William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, in his 1872 primary visitation charge , turns his attention to "a third School of thought", the liberal stream within the Church of England. He described this stream as those who declared that "if the Church is to remain established she must learn to be less dogmatic, and to put herself more in accord with the 'liberal and enlightened spirit of the age'": And though we should be as far as possible from charging all of this School of thought with aiming at these results, yet we cannot fail to see amongst them tendencies in this direction - demands, for instance, for the abolition of all doctrinal tests for admission to the ministry of our Church; complaints of the too dogmatic character of our Creeds; proposals for the admission of any one and every one, schismatic, heretic, or unbeliever to her pulpits, or to a share in ...

"It is to be delivered into their hands." We have the unanimous testimony of the Fathers, that the communicants always received the elements into their own hands ... During the corrupter ages, when the sacramental bread and wine were believed to be the actual Body and Blood of Christ, a wafer was substituted for bread, and that was by the priest put into the mouth of the communicant, that no particle of the Body of Christ should be wasted or lost. And lest the blood should be  spilt, or any accident happen, the cup was totally withheld from the laity. At the Reformation the primitive practice was restored, and the Communion in both kinds delivered into the hands of the people. It is but a brief extract from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), addressing the 1662 rubric after the Prayer of Consecration and before administration of the Bread and Cup. What this extract suggests, however, is what was obscured i...

In the Year 1659, the Nation began to be very sensible of the Misery they had long groaned under, and were very earnest to relieve themselves from that Oppression, which had so long prevailed among them ...  Upon the Restoration, Mr. Bull frequently Preached at Cirencester, where there was a populous and large Congregation. With these words, Robert Nelson - in his 1713 The Life of Dr. George Bull - brings us to the Restoration. Bull who, as we have seen in recent posts, was a conforming Episcopalian, ministering in the Cromwellian Church during the final years of the Interregnum, continued to minister in his parish. This itself is an indication of how normal it was for conforming Episcopalian clergy to be serving in the Cromwellian Church, and then continue to minister at the restoration of episcopacy. Nelson notes that Bull at the Restoration was also regularly preaching at Cirencester, where his aged father-in-law was incumbent: The Choice of the Subjects which he discoursed up...

In a recent post addressing Jeremy Taylor's understanding of episcopacy at the Restoration, I sought to demonstrate that the maximalist Laudianism (to use Peter Lake's terminology) of his 27th January 1661 consecration sermon was not reflected in his attempts to reconcile both the political nation and his dioceses to episcopacy. Instead, I characterised these attempts as defined by the Hookerian Conformist case for episcopacy: an emphasis on the antiquity of episcopacy, but not making jure divino claims; the relationship between episcopacy and ecclesiastical and political stability, after "the late unhappy confusions"; and how the exalted claims of jure divino  presbytery contrasted with the fidelity of the bishops to the Royal Supremacy.  Taylor's deployment of the discourse of Hookerian Conformity placed him firmly within the Restoration Episcopalian mainstream. Laudian jure divino claims for episcopacy were not characteristic of how the restored Church and M...

Give grace, O heavenly Father, to all Bishops and Curates, that they may both by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively Word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments: And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace; and specially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear, and receive thy holy Word; truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life. Note what is not said in the Prayer for the Church Militant, what the late Sir Roger Scruton described as "the clearest and most moving of all Anglican invocations". There is no reference to "N. our bishop" or to the diocese, references which tend to be standard in the intercessions in contemporary Anglican eucharistic rites. Rather than this being a lamentable omission in 1662 and related rites, there is surely renewed reason to regard it is a wise recognition that the ecclesial centre of the Christian life is not the adm...

After providing a robust and weighty Old High critique of Ritualism and advanced Anglo-catholicism, William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, turns in his 1872 primary visitation charge turns to what he terms "ultra-Puritanism" within the Church of England. In classic Old High fashion, echoing the 18th century critique of revivalism, he points to those who undermind the role and significance of "the objective side of our religion" - particularly ordered apostolic ministry and the gift of the Sacraments - in favour of subjective individual experience: we may so exalt the idea of the Church National as to lose sight of, or even to deny, the existence of the visible Church Catholic. We may, in our recoil from the error of asserting a false centre of unity for the Catholic Church, pass into the extreme of asserting that it has no objective or historical unity whatever, and that the only unity of Christ's Church is the inward unity of the Spirit which joins indi...

When contemporary Anglican liturgists lament and bewail the 1662 Holy Communion, they often point to the Prayer of Consecration, regarding it is as infinitely inferior to patristic forms. John Shepherd, by contrast, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), sees continuity between the 1662 Prayer of Consecration and patristic forms. Both seek the same purpose: The form of Consecration in the ancient Church was a repetition of the history of the institution, together with prayer to God, that he would sanctify the elements of bread and wine by his Holy Spirit, and make them to become the Body and Blood of Christ, not by altering their nature and substance, but their qualities and powers; and by exalting them from simple elements of bread and wine, to become types and symbols of the Body and Blood of Christ, and efficacious instruments of conveying to worthy receivers all the benefits of his death and passion.  What at least partly ex...

But this emphasis [in Restoration Episcopalian accounts] on martyrdom, ejection and exile has obscured the extent to which prominent episcopalian conformists were subsequently prepared to defend their Interregnum careers, presenting their ministries in these years as evidence of steadfast commitment to both the Church of England and the king. By staying within the Church, ministers had acted as a bulwark against heresy and error, the last bastions of ‘true Protestantism’, and thereby worked to protect and to ‘undeceive’ the distracted laity - (re)shaping attitudes towards liturgy, episcopacy and even monarchy. William White, in ' Remembering Episcopalian Conformity in Restoration England ', thus reminds us that alongside the narrative of persecution and martyrdom promoted by formerly non-conformist Episcopalians at the Restoration, there was another narrative to be told, that of the Episcopalian Conformists in the Cromwellian Church. As we saw last week , George Bull was amongs...

In a recent post  I suggested that the 'Laudian maximalism' - 'no bishop, no sacraments' - of Taylor's 27th January 1661 sermon , at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops (including Taylor) for the restored Church of Ireland, is to be primarily understood as a response to the ecclesiastical and political context he faced at the Restoration. With episcopacy abolished in 1646, advocates of jure divino presbytery present and active in the north of Ireland, and the disorder inherited from the Cromwellian Church, Episcopalians required a robust, confident statement of the claims for episcopacy. Such a robust, confident statement needed to address the perceived failure of the moderate Hookerian conformist case for episcopacy, which was unable to withstand the deluge of the 1640s. Despite this, however, there is significant evidence that Taylor was prepared to nuance such Laudian maximalism when it come to the non-episcopal Reformed churches of the Continent...

At Parish Communion on the Third Sunday before Lent, 16.2.25 Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?” The words of the prophet Jeremiah, from our first reading, may sound like one of those awkward, rather grim Bible passages that it is best to skip past. On an overcast Sunday morning in February, with the world in a bit of a mess, a busy week ahead of us, and concerns about our health, or job, or family weighing upon us, we might understandably think that we can do without Jeremiah telling us that “the heart is devious above all else”. It sounds so very pessimistic, an unwelcome call to wallow in guilt, an encouragement to engage in an unhealthy obsession with human flaws. Part of the problem with this response, however, is that Jeremiah’s words are not unusual in Scripture. The Psalmist prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me”, a recognition that all is not well with the human heart, with o...

In today's post we come to a very fine Old High exposition of the catholicity of the Church of England, by William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, in his 1872 primary visitation charge . Magee reminds us that these claims to catholicity are not dependent upon general councils or, indeed, even the Creeds, for councils (as the Article 21 declares) "may err, and sometimes have erred", while the Creeds (in the words of Article 8) are received because "they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture":  So far from asserting the infallibility of general councils, she [i.e. the Church of England] categorically denies it. "General Councils, she declares, may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God." So far from admitting her subjection to their decrees "in things necessary to salvation," she declares that these "have neither strength nor authority," unless it may be declared (i.e. clearly shown)...

In his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd strangely appears to have little to say about one of the glories of the Prayer Book Holy Communion, the Prayer of Humble Access. Indeed, the short paragraph below is the sum of his thoughts: This address, the priest kneeling down at the Lord's table, offers up in the name of all them that shall receive the Communion. In ancient Liturgies we meet with prayers resembling this. Thus in the Liturgy ascribed to James, "We come to this divine mystery, unworthy indeed, but relying on thy goodness." And again, "we trust not in our own righteousness, but in thy mercy." But in no form extant, can the humble and devout Christian so fully, as in this, express his sense of his own unworthiness, and pray the gracious Father of all mankind, to have compassion upon his infirmities, to relieve his necessities, and to fulfil his desires. It is a short but yet significant par...

After recounting how Bull received holy orders from Skinner, the deprived Bishop of Oxford, Robert Nelson - in his The Life of Dr. George Bull - tells of how the newly-ordained Bull began to minister in a parish: When he was furnished with those Sacerdotal Powers, which are the Characteristick of a Presbyter, he embraced the first Opportunity the Providence of God offered for the exercising of them according to his Commission. A small Living near Bristol, called St. George's, presenting itself, he the rather accepted it, because the Income was very inconsiderable; it being very likely, that upon that account he would be suffered to reside without Disturbance from the Men of those Times, who would not think it worth their pains to persecute and dispossess him for 301. a Year. Now this, to say the least, is rather interesting, because Bull was now ministering within the Cromwellian state church. Two matters are not mentioned by Nelson. Firstly, we are not told how the living was se...