laudable Practice

'Everybody agrees that is the worst in Christendom.' This was the somewhat startling judgment of Mary II, when considering the decayed state of the Church of Ireland shortly after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. These are the words with which Patrick Little (editor) opens the volume of essays that is The Church of Ireland Under the Stuarts (2025). The essays, covering a wide range of subjects - from the role Trinity College Dublin to cathedral music, from the devotional life of the episcopalian second Earl of Cork during the Interregnum to the role of the bishops in the Irish House of Lords - might be considered as something of a revisionist response to the words of Queen Mary. The Church of Ireland which emerges from these essays has greater spiritual, intellectual, and cultural vibrancy than recognised in Old Hat accounts and enduring populist mythology. The intellectual and cultural vibrancy owed much to Trinity College Dublin, driving the "distinctiveness" of th...

Amongst the revisions to 1662 in the Church of Ireland's 1878 Book of Common Prayer , one is often overlooked. In 1662, in the Lessons Proper for Holy Days, we find the "Annunciation of our Lady".  In 1878 this became "Annunciation of B.V.M.". There was precedent for this. The 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension simply had "Annunciation". In  PECUSA's 1789 revision it became "Annunciation of Virgin Mary". 1878, therefore, was following a well-established pattern of omitting "our Lady". This was a wise revision. While there were some examples of 'advanced' opinion in the 1630s employing the term 'our Lady' - in particular, Mark Frank's Annunciation sermon - the term was not used in the ninety-six sermons of Lancelot Andrewes , edited by Laud and Buckeridge, and published by royal authority in 1636. Likewise, it is not found in Taylor's The Great Exemplar , even when it affirms Mary's perpetual virginity, ...

In many Church of Ireland parish churches, you will notice something about stained glass depictions of Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick, contrasting with much of his traditional iconography, is not wearing a mitre.  Nor is he wearing eucharistic vestments. His attire is simple, plain robes. He is identified as a bishop solely by the fact that he holds a pastoral staff. Many of these stained glass windows date from around 1932, marking the 1,500th anniversary of Saint Patrick's arrival in Ireland. It was a time of heightened tensions between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The triumphalist nature of the centenary celebrations of Catholic Emancipation in 1929 had led the Irish Times to note "too frequent suggestions" that the Church of Ireland represented "an alien creed, an alien culture and alien aspirations".  In late 1931 , the Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Joseph MacRory, publicly declared that the Church of Ireland had not exi...

It is not uncommon in the Church of Ireland for The Preamble and Declaration of 1870 to be invoked by evangelicals as a 'low church' document, almost as if it is a confessional expression of evangelical Anglicanism. The reality, however, is that The Preamble and Declaration is robustly Laudian in character. To illustrate this, I set out below the key statements from The Preamble and Declaration alongside excerpts from a 1630 sermon by the Laudian divine Giles Widdowes . The sermon was, according to its title, " concerning the lawfulnesse of church-authority, for ordaining, and commanding of rites, and ceremonies, to beautifie the Church ": it was, in other words, a thoroughly Laudian statement. The prominent Puritan polemicist William Prynne felt compelled to attempt to answer it, an indication of its significance as a Laudian statement. Setting The Preamble and Declaration alongside Widdowes' sermon not only reveals the character of this foundational document of...

I noticed a recent discussion on Anglican 'X' between a 1662 appreciator in the United States and a priest of the Reformed Episcopal Church who uses the PECUSA 1928 BCP. The 1662 appreciator pointed to BCP 1662 as "the standard for global Anglicanism". The Reformed Episcopal priest responded by saying that Anglicanism is "primarily expressed locally" rather than "globally" and that this therefore entails a nationally authorised liturgy, as opposed to any universal claim for 1662. As readers of laudable Practice will be aware, I have a great love of 1662. I had, however, no hesitation in agreeing with the "primarily expressed locally" view. Perhaps it is the Burkean in me, deeply sceptical of abstract claims for universal human authorities, removed from particular circumstances and polities. And then there is the voice of Jewel , affirming the rights and liberties of a national church: Yet truly, we do not despise councils, assemblies, an...

Bright the vision that delighted  once the sight of Judah's seer;  sweet the countless tongues united  to entrance the prophet's ear. It is a Church of Ireland favourite on Trinity Sunday (hymn 316 in our Church Hymnal). This, no doubt, has something to do with the author, Richard Mant, from 1820 to 1848 a bishop in two Irish sees. Mant stood solidly within the Old High tradition, evident from his anti-Enthusiast 1812 Bampton Lectures , his rejection of Ritualism , and his affection for Anglicanism's native piety . His hymn, then, is another expression of Old High piety: such hymns will now be the subject of an occasional series  on  laudable Practice . What particularly connects the hymn to Trinity Sunday? It does, after all, make no specific mention of the Holy Trinity or of the Three Persons of the Godhead. The answer lies in the scriptural passage contemplated by the hymn, the vision of the prophet Isaiah in the Temple (Isaiah 6). While not appointed as a le...

If you're in the United States you're probably the most likely to emphasize that you're part of the PROTESTANT Episcopal Church in the United States of America and you still refer to the 1979 BCP as the "New Prayer book" regardless of how old you are. And yes you probably would like an American Flag hanging behind the altar, all things considered. If you're in Britain you're the early service 1662 spoken service type. You have a strong sense of Christian duty, but you don't want to get into the messiness of "evangelism" or too much "liturgy" and you definitely don't want any of that High Church nonsense. For you, regular Sunday services are your main exposure to Morning Prayer, except for the four Sundays a year that you add communion on to it. It's certainly OK if your priest preaches more than 20 minutes, but they better not get too involved in how you're living your life or who you're voting for. In recent times, ...

In his 1872 primary visitation charge to the clergy and churchwardens of the Diocese of Peterborough, Bishop William Connor Magee set forth characteristically High Church concerns: "reviving daily Service", "the keeping of the great days in the Christian year", monthly Communion as "the minimum of Eucharistic privilege which should be provided in every Church", "Weekly communion [as] that at which we should all of us aim". Magee, however, was certainly no Tractarian. He was, rather, a late 19th century representative of what we can call the Old High tradition. This becomes particularly evident when, in the charge, he offers a robust critique of advanced Anglo-catholicism, what he terms "the exaggeration of the Catholic element" in the Church of England: This tendency of a false theory of Catholicity is only too plainly illustrated amongst us at this moment. The party in our Church which claims, I must say invidiously, the exclusive tit...

From a sermon preached in Ballymena Parish Church, County Antrim, on 31st August 1862, responding to Nonconformist commemorations of the bicentenary of the so-called 'Black Bartholomew', the anniversary of the Act of Uniformity 1662. The preacher was the Incumbent, the Reverend Edward Maguire.  Maguire noted that in his "dealings and intercourse with my Presbyterian and other dissenting friends in this and every other place, I have sincerely endeavoured to maintain peace, harmony, and good will towards all". However, "the causeless revival of the 'Black Bartholomew' controversy" had to be addressed in order to defend "my beloved Church from much unmerited obloquy and censure".  In the sermon, Maguire set forth the reasonableness and moderation of the provisions of the Act of Uniformity: In a Church which holds, and rightly holds, that Episcopal ordination is essential to constitute a minister of her sanctuary, it was not to be expected tha...