laudable Practice

Turning to Le Mesurier's third 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , we encounter an aspect of his lectures identified by Nockles : Anti-asceticism remained a feature of one element of Orthodox spirituality up to the eve of the Oxford Movement and beyond. It found expression in the High Churchman Thomas Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures in 1807. While too easily regarded by post-Oxford Movement Anglicans as evidence of the worldliness of Anglicanism during the long 18th century (which itself, of course, is a result of assault on the 18th century church by Tractarian histories), this critique of excessive asceticism - and of attaching too great a significance to ascetic practices - remains a wise and prudent aspect of Old High teaching.  It echoes the Apostle's rebuke of those who reject that "which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving" (I Timothy 4:2). As Le Mesurier emphasises, a determination not to give undue significance to ascet...

As we continue to read through John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we come to the versicles and responses after the Confession, Absolution, and first Lord's Prayer. Leaving aside the Gloria Patri for consideration next week, what is striking about Shepherd's treatment of these versicles is his explicit recognition of their eucharistic character.  This points to an important aspect of Sunday Matins as a main liturgy (as, of course, was the case for most of Anglican history). Prayer Book Matins and Evensong have a deeply eucharistic character, ensuring that both thanksgiving and anamnesis can be a significant part of Anglican liturgy where Matins was - and is - the normative Sunday liturgy.  These four Versicles, which we find in the most ancient Liturgies, are selected from that excellent repository of devotion, the Book of Psalms. The introduction of them here, after the Confession, Absol...

Joseph Hall (appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1627, translated to Norwich in 1641) appears early in Stephen Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England , as one of the "representative voices" of that tradition. Oddly missing from the book's bibliography, however, is Hall's 1623 sermon - when he was Dean of Worcester - to Convocation, ' Noah's Dove ', a statement of peaceable irenicism in a time of bitter theological controversy. The previous year, James VI/I had issued his 'Directions Concerning Preachers': That no preacher of what title soever under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, do from henceforth presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation or of the universality, efficacity, resistibility or irresistibility of God's grace. Three years after Hall's Convocation sermon, Charles I published ' A Proclamation ...

Following on from yesterday's post , which presented the case for PECUSA omitting the Athanasian Creed from its BCP 1789 and 1801 Articles of Religion, an extract from a Trinity Sunday sermon by Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie , Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City, 1824-27. Duffie, a convert to Episcopalianism from the Baptist tradition, stood firmly within the Hobartian tradition, the American expression of the Old High tradition.  It is this which makes his sermon particularly interesting, for here he gives a defence of the PECUSA decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from liturgy and Articles. Echoing a significant tradition of theologically orthodox thought in 18th century Anglicanism, with its roots in Taylor, he notes of the doctrine of the Trinity that it is "safest, in reference to so sublime a mystery, to speak in few words". On this basis, he defends the omission of the Athanasian Creed: such omission is understood, therefore, to serve rather than undermines Trini...

 ... one of the signal weaknesses of the American Prayer Book tradition. A recent article at the North American Anglican  addressed the absence of the Athanasian Creed from PECUSA's BCP 1789 and the 1801 Articles of Religion . It leads us to question if the decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from the liturgy and the Articles represented a serious rupture with the classical Anglican and Prayer Book tradition. Was it? The interpretation of the Athanasian Creed given by Taylor and Burnet would suggest otherwise. Affirming the catholic truth of the articles set forth in the Athanasian Creed, Taylor nevertheless counsels that this Creed has a secondary nature: For the articles themselves, I am most heartily persuaded of the truth of them, and yet I dare not say, all that are not so are irrevocably damned, because without this symbol the faith of the apostles' creed is entire, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; that is, he that believeth such a belief as is ...

Jonathan Swift's  sermon for Trinity Sunday  is another expression of the 'Trinitarian minimalism' evident in Anglican thought during the long 18th century. At the heart of the sermon is the conviction that the scriptural confession of the Trinity - "very short" - is sufficient "for any good Christian to believe": ... the great doctrine of the Trinity; which word is indeed not in Scripture, but was a term of art invented in the earlier times to express the doctrine by a single word, for the sake of brevity and convenience. The doctrine then as delivered in holy scripture, though not exactly in the same words, is very short, and amounts only to this; that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are each of them God, and yet there is but One God ... Therefore I shall again repeat the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is positively affirmed in Scripture: that God is there expressed in three different names, as Father, as Son, and as Holy Ghost; that each of t...

Burnet's  An exposition of the Thirty-nine articles of the Church of England  (1699)- which would become the most influential commentary on the Articles in the 18th century - gives expression to what I have (somewhat cautiously) described as a 'Trinitarian minimalism' evident in late 17th/early 18th century Anglicanism. In his discussion of Article I - 'Of Faith in the Holy Trinity' - Burnet refuses to probe too deeply into the mystery of the Trinity: Instead of going farther into Explanations of that which is certainly very far beyond all our apprehensions, and that ought therefore to be let alone ... Referring particularly to Matthew's account of the Great Commission, Paul's closing salutation in 2 Corinthians, and the threefold salutation to the churches in Revelation, Burnet points to another key feature of 'Trinitarian minimalism': "there are very full and clear proofs of it in the New Testament".  These are things that can only be of...