laudable Practice

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday.  As with the sermons for Septuagesima and Sexagesima, Pott quite clearly is echoing the ancient themes of preparation for Lent, a season for the renewal and recovery of the covenant of grace: Let us remember too, that the covenant of salvation, of which we are called to be partakers, has its peculiar and appointed signs. It is accompanied by solemn sacraments, which form the special tokens of God's favour, and the pledges of those mercies which should hold the first place in our thoughts and desires. It is from covenanted promises, and from covenanted succours and supplies, that we must derive our confidence in all our course. These should be the chief topics of our careful study, through all periods of our transitory life: and then short and uncertain as that life is, it will become the happy ...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday. Preaching on the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, Pott echoes the ancient themes of Septuagesimatide, the call to prepare for Lent as a time to be restored and renewed, "by all the means of grace": To us, then, the clear inference from this whole view, is plainly this; that we must return back to the ground of faith and duty, from which the first pair departed in their day of trial, entailing many a consequence of their sad forfeiture upon us: we must learn, and indeed we are abundantly encouraged and enabled so to do, by all the means of grace, and the succours of redemption, to walk in faith, to embrace the word, obey the will, and trust in the mercies and the promises of God; to lean to no other motives of persuasion, and to rest upon no other ground of confidence or hope ... Let it then be...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Septuagesima Sunday. Pott powerfully captures the ancient theme of Septuagesimatide as orienting us towards the redemptive events of the Paschal season and the preparatory discipline of Lent, " that work of renewal and recovery by which the first righteous image of integrity may once more be renewed in us".  The sermon is a reminder of the deep liturgical spirituality which could be found in the pre-1833 High Church tradition: Let us look, then, with some sad reflections on the former state of man, which the text [Genesis 1:26 - the reading of Genesis, of course, traditionally commenced at Septuagesima] describes in terms so glowing and significant: but let us look also with good hope and with joyful confidence, to him in whom that image was restored, and concerning whose accomplished dispensations it is said so tr...

‘Of first importance’: turning towards the Paschal Mystery At the early Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday before Lent, 2022 I Corinthians 15:1-11 The season of Lent is approaching.  This Fourth Sunday before Lent begins a series of weeks in which we ready ourselves to enter into Lent. The liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, tells us that we are called to mark Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word”. It is right, then, that we ready ourselves, that we give time during these weeks to think about how we will observe Lent. But why? Why these Sundays before Lent, heralding the approach of the season? Why have forty days in the Spring of each year marked by prayer and abstinence, self-examination and the reading of Scripture?  The answer is found in today’s Epistle reading, Saint Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had receive...

From Cosin's A Collection of Private Devotions (1627), a description of the origins and purpose of Septuagesimatide illustrating the pastoral wisdom of having a time which prepares us for the fasting and discipline of Lent: Septuagesima (so called from the number of seventy) is a solemn beginning of a new office and a new time, wherein our Holy Mother the Church hath taught us, by calling to mind the time of the Jews' captivity from their country, the better to remember and bewail our own captivity from ours, even that heavenly paradise which God at first created for us. For which purpose the lessons of the Church Service (saith St. Bernard) are this day altered in their course, and the story of Genesis (where both our first happiness and our first miseries are described) is always begun to be read in Septuagesima. It is a time, therefore, that suddenly calls us back from our Christmas feasting and joy, to our Lenten fasting and sorrow; from thinking how Christ came into the w...