laudable Practice

That Sermon VII in Volume V of Paley's Works , on the text Matthew 16.26, is entitled 'The Terrors of the Lord', is certainly suggestive of the subject matter: it addresses, as Paley puts it at the sermon's opening, "the positive pain and suffering" known after death, when "happiness and reward" are forfeited. Of the various Paley sermons considered in recent weeks, this is surely the most striking.  We are, after all, talking about a sermon by the great author of Natural Theology , the celebrated divine of the late Georgian Church, assailed by evangelicals and Tractarians alike for embodying the lazy, luke-warm formalism of his era. Once again we see how this caricature - of the man and the church of that age - is nonsense. It is a profoundly serious Christianity heard from Paley in the pulpit. What is more, we know from Louis Coulson's 2011 study To Edify and Delight: Introducing the Sermons of Gilbert White of Selborne - that good Parson Whit...

As we proceed with our readings from the sermons of William Paley, week by week it is increasingly clear that the lazy stereotypes of both Paley and Georgian Anglicanism are deeply unserious. By contrast, we are seeing in Paley's sermons a serious Christianity. Today's reading, from Sermon VI in Volume V of Paley's Works - 'Our Dearest Interest To Be Parted With Rather Than Endanger Our Salvation', on the text Matthew 5.29 - demonstrates how Paley explicitly understood Christianity to require self-denial in the interests of our salvation. "Our real pleasure and happiness" was not to be found in - to again use Newman's caricature of Georgian Anglicanism" - "false cheerfulness" but, rather, in the reality of salvation and the life everlasting: Every sound plan of religion, and consequently the plan of the Gospel, is only putting men in the best way of promoting their own happiness, and providing for their own interest. It is on our own ac...

Today's reading from Paley's sermons - from Sermon V in Volume V of his  Works ,   'This Life a State of Probation', on the text Psalm 119.71 - is again an example of the 'serious Christianity' evident in his sermons. The closing lines of this extract particularly point to how Paley sought to encourage and exhort a Christianity very far removed indeed from both the 'empty formalism' and 'false cheerfulness' allegations routinely levelled against Georgian Anglicanism by its 18th and 19th critics, and still routinely heard in 21st century Anglican circles: They are the severest, the sublimest, perhaps the most meritorious, of which we are capable: I mean patience and composure under distress, pain, and affliction; a steadfast keeping up of our confidence in God, and our dependence upon his final goodness, even at the time that every thing present is discouraging and adverse; and, what is no less difficult to retain, a cordial desire for the happine...

As we proceed with weekly readings from Paley's sermons, it is clear that - contrary to critics of Georgian Anglicanism in general, and of Paley in particular - that his sermons embody a serious Christianity. Today's reading from Sermon IV from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Neglect of Warnings ', on the text Deuteronomy 32.29 - again demonstrates this. The call to conversion and the reality of divine judgement are explicit in this extract: Neglecting warnings is not the way to obtain God's grace: and God's grace is necessary to conversion ... We call our preservations escapes, not preservations; and so we feel no thankfulness for them: nor do we turn them into religious cautions. When God preserved us, he meant to warn us. When such instances, therefore, have no effect upon our minds, we are guilty before God of neglecting his warnings. Most especially if we have occasion to add to all other reasons for gratitude this momentous question, What would have bec...

We are reaching the end of Harvest Thanksgiving season. Since mid-September, churches across these Islands have been decorated with agricultural produce, 'Come, ye thankful people, come' has been heartily sung, and, we have prayed, in the words of the Church of Ireland collect, "you crown the year with your goodness". It is a season that I thoroughly enjoy. I delight in walking into the parish church and seeing it decorated for harvest. Musically challenged as I am, I gladly join in the harvest hymns. After my own parish's Harvest Thanksgiving, I try to ensure that I attend Evening Prayer in other local parishes on the Sundays when they observe Harvest Thanksgiving. I drink deeply of this season. But am I merely indulging in Victorian nostalgia? The tired trope that Harvest Thanksgiving is a 'Victorian invention' has been previously addressed on Laudable Practice . Officially published Forms of Prayer and Thanksgiving throughout the 18th century gave than...

From Sermon III from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Fear a Religious Principle ', on the text Proverbs 14.16 - another example of how Paley's preaching contradicts notions of what Newman described as the "false cheerfulness" of Georgian Anglicanism. As this extract demonstrates, it is "seriousness", not a lazy cheerfulness, which we see in Paley. Note, too, how Paley is explicit about the call to be "disciples of Christianity" and entirely unembarrassed about Christ's words regarding riches. This, in other words, is serious Christianity. Ease, and prosperity, and wealth, and pleasure, and gaiety, and diversion, are sadly unfavourable to the impressions of religion; they are not inconsistent with these impressions; to say that, would be to say more than the truth; but they are adverse to them. "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven;" that is, one either intent upon acquiring riches, or addicted to the ple...

Beginning last week this series exploring the sermons of William Paley, I pointed to the significance of Paley's role as an exemplar of Georgian Anglicanism. In that first extract we saw in Paley, entirely contrary to Newman's lazy prejudice, the serious, austere piety of Georgian Anglicanism. Now in Sermon II from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Why Men Resist and Put Aside the Thoughts of Religion ' - we see the same austere seriousness: And to every argument and every plea which may be offered, or which may pass in our minds in favour of putting aside the thoughts of religion, this single string of conclusions is an answer: 1. That it is by religion alone that a sinner can be saved. 2. That religion can have no effect where it has no influence. 3. That until we come to think, to ponder, to ruminate upon religion, it is impossible that we should acquire its instruction; and still more impossible, that we should feel its power, its authority, its rule and direction...

Today marks the beginning of another new series on Laudable Practice - readings from the sermons of William Paley. In recent months I have pointed to a convincing call to ' Revisit Paley ' and his theology, rescuing it from the enormous condescension of Anglican posterity. I have also suggested that Paley represents something of the austere piety that New Georgians should cherish. In Sermon I from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Meditating Upon Religion ', on the text Ps. 63/7 - we see how Newman's view, that that the "animating principle" of Paley's Christianity was "false cheerfulness ... ill-founded hope ... blind charitableness" is, quite frankly, nonsense.  Rather than Newman's charge, we see something very different indeed in this extract from Paley. His is indeed an austere piety, a weighty understanding of the Christian religion, with no "false cheerfulness". Indeed, elsewhere in this sermon, Paley will declare, ...

DS: "In the 18th century, if you were part of the Virginian gentry, your Anglicanism was very austere and restrained." TH: "I like that in Anglicanism." In a recent episode of The Rest is History , discussing George Washington, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland sounded as if they were recruiting for the ' New Georgians '. An 'austere, restrained Anglicanism', after all, could very well act as a summary for that which New Georgians seek. It is a description which brings to mind places that the New Georgian soul will cherish. Places like The Middle Church , in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country. Old St Stephen's, Fylingdales , North Yorkshire. St David's, Manordeifi , Pembrokeshire.  St Andrew the Apostle's, Bayvil , Pembrokeshire. Pohick Church , Virginia. Old Wye Church , Maryland. Christ Church, Lancaster , Virginia. Old Trinity Church on Maryland's Eastern Shore.  Old St. Edward's Church , Clementsport, Nova Scotia.  Old Holy T...

... that the rule of Divine government is one of benevolence, and nothing but benevolence ... sentiments of this character are evidently the animating principle of the false cheerfulness, and the ill-founded hope, and the blind charitableness, which I have already assigned to the man of the world. So said John Henry Newman in his 1832 sermon ' On Justice, as a Principle of Divine Governance '. It may, of course, be due to my rather engrained prejudice against Newman and his tiresome, perpetual angst, particularly in the 1830s, but one does get the impression that benevolence and cheerfulness were not exactly welcome guests in Newman's mind. The phrase "false cheerfulness" is directed by Newman against William Paley's Natural Theology  (1802). My initial reaction, however, is to - admittedly rather unfashionably - instinctively warm to and be grateful for the vision of benevolence and cheerfulness in Paley's great work. In his 2024 paper ' Revisiting Pa...