laudable Practice

Returning to John Lonsdale's sermon at the 1824 consecration of Blomfield for Chester , we see again an example of how the Hackney Phalanx, bearers of the Old High tradition, viewed the episcopal office.  As with Lonsdale's sermon at an 1827 episcopal consecration, the  complete absence of sacerdotal language is striking.   And, again as with the 1827 sermon , there is the use of the language of "superintendence" to describe the episcopate. This is suggestive of the Hookerian moderation of the Old High understanding of the episcopate, reflecting how the Old High tradition sought to encourage episcopacy amongst non-episcopal continental Protestant churches.  Also interesting at the outset of the extract is the implication of a cautious, modest account as to how episcopacy was understood to exercise oversight in succession to the Apostles. Well may the Church rejoice, and honestly may she glory, (since ordinary now occupy the place of extraordinary aids) when she ...

Published in Latin, English, and French on 13th May 1644, ' The Declaration of the most Excellent and Potent Prince, Charles King of Great Britain, sent to the Protestant Churches beyond the Seas ' offers a significant insight into the Caroline defence of the Elizabethan Settlement.  In face of the Parliamentarian dismantling of the Elizabethan Settlement - beginning in 1643 and completed in 1645 - Charles addressed "the Protestant Churches beyond the Seas", presenting "the Anglicane Church" as the jewel of the Reformed Churches, its liturgy and discipline admired by those Churches beyond the Seas.  This was a classic Conformist understanding , shared by both Laudians and non-Laudians, and to be repeated by Conformist apologists after the Restoration (e.g. Durel's work being an obvious and significant example). Another feature shared by 'Reformed Conformists' and Laudians is the invocation of the Lutherans of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, togeth...

The commemoration of the Royal Martyr is an appropriate occasion on which to reflect on the oft-repeated suggestion that the Laudians supported 'absolutism'.  Leaving aside the fact that 'absolutism' is a notoriously ill-defined term, it may be rather more appropriately applied to some later Enlightenment monarchs who rejected the checks and balances provided by traditional communal and corporate institutions which early modern monarchies such as the Stuarts necessarily relied upon. I have previously pointed to a High Church vision of constitutional order with a mixed polity, derived from Hooker,  flowing Lancelot Andrewes, through the Laudians, and into the 18th century. Indeed,  Waterland's 1723 Restoration Day sermon and Swift's 1725 Royal Martyr Day sermon illustrate how this commitment to a Hookerian mixed constitution found expression in High Church critique of the Personal Rule.   What, however, of Laud himself, so often associated with the accusation o...

Many thanks to The Critic for carrying my article for Holocaust Memorial Day, calling for it to be observed by Christians as a day of lament and penitence.  At the heart of the article is the suggestion that A Commination in BCP 1662 (or the alternative penitential liturgies in other versions of the Book of Common Prayer e.g. Ireland 1926 ) be used by Anglicans on this day as an expression of our penitence. Holocaust Memorial Day confronts Christians with a shameful history of anti-Semitism, a history that was invoked by the instigators of the Holocaust and which motivated some in Nazi-occuppied territories to collude with this evil. The Church of England’s 2019 report on Christian-Jewish relations, ‘ God’s Unfailing Word ’, states that Christians over centuries “have used Christian doctrine in order to justify and perpetuate Jewish suffering”. The report continues to say that this “has fostered attitudes of distrust and hostility among Christians towards their Jewish neighbours,...

As part of  the series of weekly posts from  the responses to Tract XC by Old High bishops in the visitation charges of the early 1840s, today we continue  consideration of  the  charge given in 1842 by Henry Phillpotts  (Bishop of Exeter 1831-69). These charges are  a rich seam of Old High teaching.  The focus of these posts is not so much on the well-known critique of Tract XC articulated in the charges but, rather, on what these visitation charges reveal about the teaching, piety, concerns, and vitality of the Old High tradition nearly a decade after the emergence of the Oxford Movement. In today's extract, Phillpotts refutes those evangelicals who, in response to Tractarianism, adopted a low view of the sacraments (contrary, it must be said, to 18th century evangelicals such as Charles Simeon).  Phillpotts contrast such "ultra-Protestant" views - which he compares, in a footnote, to the sacramental teaching of Socinus (a point also made b...

... beseeching thee to inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant, that all they that do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity, and godly love. Cranmer wrote these words in the very midst of the passionate disputes and bloody violence of the Reformation divisions. The significance of the petition is perhaps illustrated by  Diarmaid MacCulloch's suggestion that "the Reformation might indeed be viewed simply as two centuries of warfare". Against this background, we might have a greater appreciation of the words of the author of this prayer, a man described elsewhere by MacCulloch as a "cautious, well-read humanist", with a warm commitment to "concord by discussion". It is this which may have been a source for the deeply eirenic quality of the petition in the Prayer for the Church Militant. This deeply eirenic quality also had profound theological depth whic...

In the preface to his The Psalter of David (1647), Jeremy Taylor provided a beautiful account of how praying the psalter could renew a bitterly divided Christendom in "the Communion of charity". Written amidst the violent confessional conflicts that marked the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in these Islands and as the viciously bloody Thirty Years War drew to a close, Taylor urged Christians to see in their shared praying of the psalms a means for "the advancement of an universall Communion".  Taylor's words continue to resonate, emphasising the significance of Christians across ecclesial traditions praying and reciting the psalter. It suggests that, as Anglican Christians, we can be closest, in "the Communion of charity", to our brothers and sisters across the Christian traditions - Gaelic-speaking Reformed congregations in the Western Isles of Scotland, ancient Benedictine monastic communities in the heart of Europe, Ethiopian Orthodox praying in church...