laudable Practice

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...

Last year's Christmas edition of the Spectator , reviewing books for the festive season, drew my attention to Jenny Uglow's A Year With Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer (2025).  Reading the concluding paragraph of the review, I was immediately attracted to the book: Writers who believe they have to travel the world, have great romances or wild adventures in order to publish a book should contemplate Gilbert White, who never went abroad, seldom ventured further than Alston, his nearest town, and had no adventures at all. Just quiet days in his garden listening to birdsong, counting his cucumbers and keeping an eye on Timothy the tortoise was material enough. In the introduction to her book, Uglow points to White as typical of the clergy of the Georgian Church of England: classically educated, generous to the poor but complacently sure of his place and proud of his country (p.6). While there is a hint of criticism in this description offered, I found it to be a plea...

Nor can that clamour of his adversaries make Mr. Hobbes think himself a worse Christian than the best of them. And how will you disprove it, either by his disobedience to the Laws Civil, or Ecclesiastical, or by any ugly action? Or how will you prove that the obedience which springs from scorn of Injustice, is less acceptable to God, than that which proceeds from fear of punishment, or hope of benefit? In his Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes , published in 1662, Hobbes challenges those who have condemned his philosophy as 'atheistical'. Against both doctrinal ideologues and Enthusiasts, whether those promoting high-flying notions of ecclesiastical authority or Calvinistical dogmas, whether those who unsettled the Church during the Personal Rule or those who did so in Interregnum, Hobbes set forth an alternative understanding of conformity to the Church of England: obedience to the constitutional and religious settlement, motiva...

We have seen how Alexander Scrogie, one of the Aberdeen Doctors, in his sermon marking the funeral of Bishop Forbes (d.1635), spoke foreboding words, seeing in the death of Forbes the removal of a much needed wise, prudent, moderating voice from the Church and Kingdom of Scotland. As the sermon continued, Scrogie again pointed to the forces threatening the peace of Church and Kingdom: And GOD, by the Prophet, hath for ever commended to the Church, David his Epitaph, and Funerall Song, of wicked Saull, and Ionathan his sonne. He decoreth them, as if God from Heaven had said, that the Captaynes of the Armies of Israell should not bee convoyed to the graue without honour, and teares. And, no lesse they who haue deserved well of the Church and Common-wealth; who haue put to flight the enemies, with the sword of their mouth, and of the Spirit; than they which haue slayne them with the mouth and edge of the Sword, and by Armies. Forbes and other eirenic voices used "the sword of their ...

Having demonstrated the deep patristic roots of the Prayer Book's use of declaratory and precatory forms of absolution, John Shepherd, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), then looks to the Christian East. Here he sees a further example of the scriptural and patristic understanding of absolution found in the Prayer Book: The form of the absolution of penitents, in the Greek church, is in a great measure left to the discretion of the penitentiary. The most common forms are, "Do thou, O Lord, remit, pardon, and forgive the sins committed by thy servants." 2. "May it please thee to absolve thy servants according to thy word." 3. "Do thou pardon, who art our good and gracious God." 4. "May our Lord Jesus Christ pardon all those sins which thou hast confessed before him to my meanness, as well as those which thou hast forgotten." 5. "O Lord, pardon thy servant, and be reconciled to him....

As we proceed with weekly readings from Paley's sermons, it is clear that - contrary to critics of Georgian Anglicanism in general, and of Paley in particular - that his sermons embody a serious Christianity. Today's reading from Sermon IV from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Neglect of Warnings ', on the text Deuteronomy 32.29 - again demonstrates this. The call to conversion and the reality of divine judgement are explicit in this extract: Neglecting warnings is not the way to obtain God's grace: and God's grace is necessary to conversion ... We call our preservations escapes, not preservations; and so we feel no thankfulness for them: nor do we turn them into religious cautions. When God preserved us, he meant to warn us. When such instances, therefore, have no effect upon our minds, we are guilty before God of neglecting his warnings. Most especially if we have occasion to add to all other reasons for gratitude this momentous question, What would have bec...