laudable Practice

In this Advent Ember Week, we return to Atterbury's 'A Sermon preached before the Sons of the Clergy', preached in December 1709. As the name of the charity suggested, many of its members were sons of those in holy orders - and not a few of these were themselves in holy orders. Reflecting this, the sermon rejoiced in what has been a characteristic of Anglicanism over centuries, the common experience of clergy being descended from clergy: If then others may be allowed to glory in their birth, why may not we? whose parents were called by God to attend on him at his altar? were intrusted with the dispensation of his sacraments, with the ministry of reconciliation, with the power of binding and loosing? were set apart to take heed to the flock of Christ, Acts xx. 28, over which the Holy Ghost made them overseers, and to feed the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood; to hold forth the word of life, to speak, to exhort, and to rebuke with all authority? Tit. ii. 1...

Francis Atterbury's ' A Sermon preached before the Sons of the Clergy ' was delivered on 6th December 1709, in the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, London. Atterbury, later Bishop of Rochester, was then Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. The Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy had been established in 1655, receiving its Royal Charter in 1678. It held a yearly festival in Saint Paul's in order to raise funds for poorer clergy, and the widows and children of deceased clergy. Atterbury's sermon referenced the season in which the event occurred: It is said of our Blessed Saviour (whose Advent we now celebrate) that he came Eating and Drinking, and that he went about doing good. I join these two Parts of his Character, because He himself often exerted them together, and made use of the One, as affording him fit Opportunities to abound in the Other. He disdained not to appear at great Tables and Festival Entertainments, that he might more illustriously manifest his Divine Ch...