laudable Practice

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all them that with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him; Have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins; confirm and strengthen you in all goodness; and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The quietly beautiful words of the absolution in the traditional Prayer Book Holy Communion hold together two of the forms of absolution discussed by John Shepherd, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796): In this form, the declaratory and precatory absolutions are happily united ... Shepherd's description of these two forms captures their significance for Anglican communicants over the centuries: The former part consists of God's merciful promise of pardon to true penitent believers. In the latter part, the bishop or priest, in exact conformity to the sentiments and practice of the fathers, ...

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...

For some years now, it has been the custom on Laudable Practice to mark Thanksgiving in Canada by giving thanks for an aspect of Anglicanism in the True North. Today, as Canadian friends rejoice in the beauty of Fall, give thanks for the harvest, and enjoy family and home, my thoughts turn to a meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June 1788. Gathered were the Church of England clergy of the Province of Nova Scotia, assembled by their newly-appointed Bishop, Charles Inglis, for his primary episcopal visitation.  At the outset of his visitation charge , Inglis referred to his appointment by the King as part of a wider ecclesiastical policy for post-1783 British North America: Our gracious Sovereign, in His Royal wisdom, and pious solicitude to promote the best interests of religion in His American Dominions, hath been pleased to erect this Province into a Bishop's See, or Diocese, thereby intending to compleat the Polity of the National Church in this country, and to Supply a defect ...

In last Friday's post on Thomas Hobbes post-1660 conformity to the Church of England, we considered how - in Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes , published in 1662 - he reflected an influential current of Episcopalian criticism of the Interregnum church.  What, however, of Hobbes' return to England in 1651, and then his living peaceably under the Commonwealth and Protectorate? This, of course, was a key accusation against Hobbes, together with the supposed 'atheism' of Leviathan . Hobbes, however, could point to the example of a particular group of figures whose acted as he did under the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Addressing opponents of the Restoration, he said: Of the Bishops that then were, and for whose sakes (in part) you raised this War, there was not one that followed the King out of the Land, though they loved him, but lived quietly under the Protection, first of the Parliament, and then of Oliver (whole Titl...

In his sermon at the funeral of Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen 1618-35, Robert Baron - one of the Aberdeen Doctors, that school of eirenic divines encouraged by Forbes - addressed the issue of whether the faithful departed, before the resurrection of the body, shared in the fulness of glory: it is certayne, that the glorie and happinesse, which the dead, who haue died in the Lord, shal haue after the generall judgement, shall be greater extensive, in extention, nor it is now; and that because it shall be extended, or communicated, to their bodies also. But whether or not it shall be intensive greater, after the generall judgement; that is, whether anie farther degree of glorie shall be then given to their soules, it is not so certayne. For manie of the Ancients, and some judicious and orthodoxe Divines, doe thinke, that although they are now with Christ, in the companie or fellowship of the blessed Angels, and in an estate of vnspeakable joye; yet they haue not attayned, as yet, v...

As John Shepherd, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), reviewed various liturgies and the words of administration they used for the holy sacrament - in his discussion of the precatory nature of words administration - he turned to a perhaps surprising liturgical text: Samuel Clarke's private revision of the BCP , only published 45 years after his death in 1774. (It was also the revision of the Prayer Book adopted by King's Chapel, Boston .) Shepherd noted Clark's shorter form of administration: In the Unitarian, or what is called a Book of Common Prayer, reformed, when the priest delivers the bread, he says, "Take and eat this in remembrance of Christ," and when he delivers the cup, "Take, and drink this in remembrance of Christ."  We know that is to Clarke's revision to which Shepherd is referring not only because this is how Clarke shortened the words of administration. Shepherd uses the word ...

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...