'An humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart': penitence and the Prayer Book
Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy.
It is a gentle invitation. "Dearly beloved brethren" - not the Baptist's "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?". No, the Exhortation invites us to repentance gently, graciously, after the manner of Our Lord, in fulfillment of the Prophet's words:
A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.
The same gentle invitation is heard in the reminder that "the Scripture moveth us in sundry places". 'Moveth': it evokes how the Scriptures touch us in heart and soul, calling us to the One who is Good and True, so that we desire to repent. Repentance is not forced upon us with shock and awe. No, it is called forth from us, who are "dearly beloved", as the Scripture "moveth" us.
This does not at all mean that awkward, uncomfortable truth is avoided: "to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness". These words are addressed to all in the congregation:
And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican ...
There is no place for despising others as the Exhortation is read to us. We all alike are to stand with the Publican, "with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart":
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
The Exhortation calls to our heart, the seat of our loves and affections. Our disordered, misdirected, deceived loves and affections. Our hearts have turned aside to that which is not goodness, not truth:
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
But the Exhortation comforts us even as we are confronted with this reality, for He to whom we "confess our manifold sins and wickedness" is our "Heavenly Father".
Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children : even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear him.
And so the opening sentence of the Exhortation concludes with the assurance of "his infinite goodness and mercy". It is a simple but profoundly rich phrase of deep and enduring comfort. In his discussion of the theological vision of the Cambridge Platonists, Christian Hengstermann states:
the guiding convictions of Cambridge Platonism, namely its concern with the objective nature of divine goodness which not even omnipotent will can compromise in any way ... In reaction to the spectre of the theological voluntarism which they had imbibed in their childhood and youth, they came to espouse a theology based not upon God's unbounded omnipotence, but upon his universal and disinterested goodness.
When I read or hear the Exhortation proclaim "his infinite goodness and mercy", I sometimes think of how Cudworth, Whichcote, and Rust would have read and heard this phrase with a quiet joy. In the words of Whichcote:
And we find Men of narrow Spirits, have unworthy suppositions concerning God; rendring him as an Enemy to Humane Nature: And it is a thousand to one but in these Men’s Divinity, the Excellency of the Deity is soveraignty, and to do what he would. But nothing is more certain than that Infinite Goodness doth toward the whole Creation, what is to the full worthy Infinite Goodness to do. And whereas we see indulgent Fathers, that can compassionate their Children; that can deny themselves, that can undo themselves, for their Children: I account this kindness in them, but a Participation from God, and Resemblance of him. The best Notion that you can have of God is, that he is Good: That he hateth nothing that he hath made: And that he would not have any to perish.
Of course, my Reformed Conformist brethren can also read this sentence from the Exhortation with delight, recalling that Calvin referred to God's "exuberant goodness":
although our mind cannot conceive of God, without rendering some worship to him, it will not, however, be sufficient simply to hold that he is the only being whom all ought to worship and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of all goodness.
Such is a reminder of the eirenic, unifying nature of the Prayer Book, embracing the descendants of both the Cambridge Platonists and the advocates of Dort.
If the Exhortation's bracing realism confronts us with "our manifold sins and wickedness", challenging our culture's polite but deeply damaging deceit of 'follow your heart', 'be yourself', its proclamation of "his infinite goodness and mercy" binds up our wounds, addresses our fears, and enfolds us in faithful, abiding love divine.
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