laudable Practice

From Bishop Bull's sermon ' The Middle State of Happiness or Misery ', an extract which can function as an exposition of the quiet, trusting piety of the Prayer Book Order for the Burial of the Dead, expressed in the invocation of Revelation 14:13 at the graveside, the Lord's Prayer, and the prayer following: Almighty God, with whom do live the  spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity ... It is this "place of full security" that Bull sets forth, to our comfort: This discourse is matter of abundant consolation to all good men, when death approacheth them. They are sure, not only of a blessed resurrection at the last day, but of a reception into a very happy place and state in the mean time. They shall be immediately after death put in the possession of paradise, and there rejoice in the certain expectation of a crown of glory, to be bes...

In his sermon ' The Middle State of Happiness or Misery ', Bishop Bull addressed the Lord's promise to the penitent thief: "Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise". Of particular significance is Bull's obvious reverence for the Jewish context in which the words were spoken and heard, and his quite beautiful description of Jewish piety regarding the relationship between the paradise of the post-mortem state and "the blessed garden". Paradise, that blessed garden: here is the abode of the souls of the righteous after death and before the general resurrection on the last day. That, in Saint Luke's account of the Passion, Our Lord took up the words of Jewish belief and piety regarding the abode of the righteous after death, establishes - as Bull declares - Christian doctrine on the post-mortem state, affirmed also in the Creed's declaration of the Lord's ascension into heaven at the end of the forty days: let us consi...

From Bishop Bull's sermon ' The Middle State of Happiness or Misery ', an extract illustrating how Wisdom 3:1 was understood as summarising the Scriptural hope for the post-mortem state, over and against the teaching of purgatory: even in the Old Testament, we have a full testimony given to this truth, that the soul subsists after the death of the body, by Solomon, where, describing man's death and dissolution, he saith, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."  Whereas man consists of two parts, body and soul, the condition of these two, when a man dies, will be very different: for the body being at first taken out of the dust of the earth, and so of a corruptible constitution, shall go back into the earth again, and moulder into dust; but the soul, as it is of another and more excellent original, (as being at first inspired immediately by God Himself into the body,) shall not perish with the body,...

From Bishop Bull's sermon ' The Middle State of Happiness or Misery ', an extract rejecting both the doctrine of purgatory and speculative theories about the post-mortem state, resting instead in a conventionally Reformed understanding of "the plain doctrine of the Holy Scriptures", with no need to go beyond the "modesty of the apostolic Doctors". Bull here echoes how the Prayer Book Burial of Dead - a graveside prayer of which is quoted in this extract - rests in the promises of Scripture and eschews fanciful speculations: I have shewn you, that the Apostolic writers were wont to express the different place and state of good and bad men presently after death, by this and the like phrases, that they went to their "own proper, due," or "appointed places": that is, to places agreeable to their respective qualities, the good to a place of happiness, the wicked to a place and state of misery ... I have now said all that I can think necess...

For today's post, another extract from an 1818 sermon by John Lonsdale, associated with the Hackney Phalanx, on the occasion of the death of Queen Caroline. Lonsdale here challenges stereotypes of the late Georgian Church promoted both by Tractarians and evangelicals, with their accounts of a Church and a dominant theology exclusively defined by natural theology and moralising sermons. In stark contrast to such narratives, Lonsdale - in the midst of a sermon for a time of civic and national mourning - appeals to "the far surer guide" of revelation in order to give a vibrant exposition of the final judgement and the life everlasting: Nor will Reason ever permit us to entertain such unworthy notions of God's attributes, (for I will not suppose the case of direct Atheism) as to believe that he may have impressed our nature with these feelings and faculties merely to deceive us; to buoy us up into a vain imagination that we have another state to look to, after the curtai...

‘Then we will see face to face’: the life of the world to come At the early Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, 2022 I Corinthians 13 “We look … for the life of the world to come.”  Week by week we declare this in the Creed we profess at the Eucharist. It is, however, probably one of those aspects of the Christian Faith that many of us shy away from. There has been a tendency, stretching back over the last century, for Christians to focus on those aspects of the Faith that are primarily concerned with the life of this world, not the life of the world to come.  We want others to know, in the words of the Christian Aid slogan, that Christians ‘believe in life before death’. But, while it is obviously important to remind ourselves of our commitment as Christians to the life of this world, we fail to say something of foundational significance if we avoid the Creed’s declaration: “We look … for the life of the world to come”. Words from Saint Paul in our epistle read...

Above all we praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, the true paschal lamb who was sacrificed for us; by dying he destroyed our death; by rising he restored our life ... The above is the proper preface for Easter in the Church of Ireland BCP 2004.  There are a number of significant contrasts with the 1662 preface but what has particularly caught my attention this Easter is the final line.  1662 ends with "and by his rising again hath restored to us everlasting life" (emphasis added).  Indeed, this is also seen in the equivalent preface in the CofE's Common Worship, TEC's BCP 1979, and Canada's BAS.  Ireland 2004, however, appears to be embarrassed by the idea of connecting the Resurrection with  everlasting life. That said, perhaps Ireland 2004's Easter preface does have the merit of more accurately reflecting the contemporary emphasis in much theology and Easter preaching, what we might describe as the 'we believe in ...