laudable Practice

As we proceed with our readings from the sermons of William Paley, week by week it is increasingly clear that the lazy stereotypes of both Paley and Georgian Anglicanism are deeply unserious. By contrast, we are seeing in Paley's sermons a serious Christianity. Today's reading, from Sermon VI in Volume V of Paley's Works - 'Our Dearest Interest To Be Parted With Rather Than Endanger Our Salvation', on the text Matthew 5.29 - demonstrates how Paley explicitly understood Christianity to require self-denial in the interests of our salvation. "Our real pleasure and happiness" was not to be found in - to again use Newman's caricature of Georgian Anglicanism" - "false cheerfulness" but, rather, in the reality of salvation and the life everlasting: Every sound plan of religion, and consequently the plan of the Gospel, is only putting men in the best way of promoting their own happiness, and providing for their own interest. It is on our own ac...

November. It is the month of the departed - All Saints' Day, Remembrancetide, "the quick and the dead" of Advent Sunday. As the days of late Autumn shorten and grow colder, with the trees now bare of leaves, Winter approaches, and another year's end draws nigh, signs of mortality surround us.  It is a time, then, to profitably read old funeral sermons. Perhaps after a late afternoon walk, the sun low in the sky and sunset not far off. The crunch of walking on fallen leaves. A nip in the air. Then we sit down and mull over words once preached in times past, when an earthly life had ended. Doing so can remind us of the virtues that are to be nurtured in this transitory life. Of what, when the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, is a life well lived. An old funeral sermon I often turn to is that given by Jeremy Taylor in 1657, at the funeral of Sir George Dalston . Dalston was Cumberland gentry, an old Royalist who had served the King in ...

On this eve of Reformation Day, I turn to words from John Jewel's controversy with the Roman Catholic apologist Thomas Harding , in which Jewel challenges the denial of the Cup to the laity. As he does so, we see in Bishop Jewel's argument the power and significance of this key Reformation practice.  Harding's case for denying the Cup to the laity fundamentally rested on his interpretation of the fact that only the apostles were present in the Upper Room for the Last Supper. Bread and Cup were only required for priests. A half-communion was appropriate for the laity, therefore, for they were absent from the Upper Room. No, proclaims Jewel. For the Lord's Supper is for all the Church, the whole Body of Christ. The Sacrament is to be common to all the people of God, clergy and laity. Christ's Blood was shed for all. Christ's Blood is spiritually partaken of by all in our salvation. The Cup is to be commonly administered to all: Herein standeth that mystical unity,...

Having warned how the death of Bishop Forbes was a moment of foreboding for the Church and Kingdom of Scotland, Alexander Scrogie, one of the Aberdeen Doctors, in his sermon marking Forbes' funeral, turned to happier times - Forbes' 1618 appointment as Bishop of Aberdeen. Scrogie notes that this episcopal appointment was not sought by Forbes: Thereafter, his calling to the Episcopall dignitie, was rare, and examplarie, without his knowledge, or seeking, directlie, or indirectlie, sine ambitu and vsurpation, hunting after places and preferment, as manie doe, thorow ambition, and loue of gayne and glorie, not awayting the LORD'S calling. What is most striking about this comment is the use of the term 'episcopal dignity' to refer to the office of bishop. To those in the Church of Scotland in 1635 opposed to episcopal order and ideologically committed to government by presbytery, the term would have been regarded as encapsulating the ministerial imparity and hierarchy ...

Having considered how precatory forms of absolution were normative in the Christian East, John Shepherd, in his reflections on the Prayer Book's absolutions, in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), then highlights the normative form of absolution in the liturgical texts of the Latin tradition: It were an act of injustice, not to observe, that in the annual course of the offices of the Romish church, a considerable variety of absolutions are found, all running in the precatory form. Of their general tenor, a judgment may be formed from the following specimens, which in the Breviary frequently occur. I. "May Almighty God have mercy upon you, pardon your offences, and bring you to everlasting life." 2. "May the Almighty and merciful Lord grant us pardon, absolution, and the remission of our sins. 3. "O Lord Jesus Christ, hear the prayers of thy servants, and do thou who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy...

Today's reading from Paley's sermons - from Sermon V in Volume V of his  Works ,   'This Life a State of Probation', on the text Psalm 119.71 - is again an example of the 'serious Christianity' evident in his sermons. The closing lines of this extract particularly point to how Paley sought to encourage and exhort a Christianity very far removed indeed from both the 'empty formalism' and 'false cheerfulness' allegations routinely levelled against Georgian Anglicanism by its 18th and 19th critics, and still routinely heard in 21st century Anglican circles: They are the severest, the sublimest, perhaps the most meritorious, of which we are capable: I mean patience and composure under distress, pain, and affliction; a steadfast keeping up of our confidence in God, and our dependence upon his final goodness, even at the time that every thing present is discouraging and adverse; and, what is no less difficult to retain, a cordial desire for the happine...