laudable Practice

As I mentioned last week , a recent visit to The Middle Church this view of a simple, plain pew caught my attention. It somehow embodies the simplicity of Prayer Book worship that would have been known in The Middle Church, through the late 17th century, across the 18th, and into the 19th.  Part of such simple Prayer Book worship would have been metrical psalmody. A metrical version of the Psalter was usually bound with the Prayer Book and was a characteristic of Anglican worship across the 'long 18th century'. Bishops Bull and Beveridge extolled the practice of singing metrical psalms. John Shepherd in his Prayer Book commentary at the end of the 18th century described the singing of metrical psalms as "a pleasing and affecting part of divine worship". Into the mid-19th century , bishops urged the singing of metrical psalms, contrasting their sober character with the enthusiasm of the new hymns. It is almost certainly metrical psalmody to which Jeremy Taylor refer...

Over the past year or so, I have been revisiting the figure of Thomas Hobbes. Partly this is due to the late Sir Roger Scruton's  affection for Hobbes and recognition of his place in the conservative philosophical tradition. Close to the heart of Scruton's affection for Hobbes is a view I heartily endorse: Like Hobbes I remain attached to the idea of civil government and believe it to be in every way superior to the role of priests. In early 2025 I read Thomas Holden's Hobbes's Philosophy of Religion (2023), an excellent and convincing exploration of how the philosopher from Malmesbury understood theology and - much more importantly for Hobbes - piety. Holden defines Hobbes' understanding of the language and practice of piety as "fit and proper, a laudable and rational expression of reverence before the awe-inspiring power of the great cause": Hobbes holds that reason and proper piety require all seventeenth-century English subjects to participate publicl...

There is scarce, perhaps, to be found anywhere in Europe, a more learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men, than the greater part of the presbyterian clergy of Holland, Geneva, Switzerland, and Scotland. Adam Smith's comment in The Wealth of Nations (1776) would, of course, have somewhat offended those who knew the clergy of the Church of England in 1776, whose education, decency, and respectability was often commented upon. My point today, however, is not to address this. Rather, Smith's comment came to mind when reading the sermon preached by one of the Aberdeen Doctors, Robert Baron, at the funeral of Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen 1618-35. The learning of the Aberdeen Doctors, and their eirenic vision during a time of conflict in Europe and growing instability in the Three Kingdoms, reflected Forbes' ambition for the Church of Scotland: episcopally-ordered, eirenic, and deeply learned, centred around Scotland's five universities. In his sermon, ...

In his discussion of absolution in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), John Shepherd points to how the administration of the Bread and Cup in the Holy Communion is itself is a precatory form of absolution: The absolution, or as we now say, the sacrament of the Supper of the Lord is, in the Church of England, administered in a precatory form. At the delivery of the bread, the priest says, "the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and foul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." When the cup is presented, he says, "the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life: drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee, and be thankful." The words of administration, therefore, share the character and purpose of ...

Today marks the beginning of another new series on Laudable Practice - readings from the sermons of William Paley. In recent months I have pointed to a convincing call to ' Revisit Paley ' and his theology, rescuing it from the enormous condescension of Anglican posterity. I have also suggested that Paley represents something of the austere piety that New Georgians should cherish. In Sermon I from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Meditating Upon Religion ', on the text Ps. 63/7 - we see how Newman's view, that that the "animating principle" of Paley's Christianity was "false cheerfulness ... ill-founded hope ... blind charitableness" is, quite frankly, nonsense.  Rather than Newman's charge, we see something very different indeed in this extract from Paley. His is indeed an austere piety, a weighty understanding of the Christian religion, with no "false cheerfulness". Indeed, elsewhere in this sermon, Paley will declare, ...

Visiting The Middle Church during a heritage day on Saturday past, it was this view of a simple, plain pew that caught my attention. My thoughts turned to these words from Jeremy Taylor, in Ductor dubitantium (1660), words which capture the simple Prayer Book worship that would have been known in such pews of The Middle Church: For although significant ceremonies can be for edification to the Church in some degree, and in some persons; yet it is to be considered whether the introducing of such things does not destroy the Church, not onely in her Christian liberty, but in the simplicity and purity and spirituality of her religion, by insensibly changing it into a ceremonial and external service. To the Ceremonial law of the Jews nothing was to be added, and from it nothing was to be subtracted; and in Christianity we have less reason to adde any thing of ceremony, excepting the circumstances and advantages of the very ministery, as time and place, and vessels and ornaments and necessa...