laudable Practice

An important reminder by Jeremy Morris in The High Church Revival in the Church of England (2016) that the nomenclature ' old High Church tradition' can be misleading.  The older High Church tradition, to which Nockles and others have drawn our attention, represented by Palmer and Burgon, amongst many others, is arguably misrepresented by the comparative word 'older', if that signifies a precursor which at some point in the early nineteenth century ceased to exercise much influence.  Far from being occluded in some way by the Tractarians, this more moderate and cautious form of High Churchmanship was if anything emboldened and challenged to assert its influence more widely.

From the author's Preface to the Eleventh Edition (1878) of E.H. Browne's (Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge 1854-64, Bishop of Ely 1864-73, Bishop of Winchester 1873-90) An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles - a confident summary of the High Church tradition, amidst the controversies provoked by Ritualism, emerging liberal theology, and Low Church neo-Puritanism: I have seen no reason to depart from the ancient, scriptural, Catholic faith of the English Church. I have seen no ground for accepting mediæval accretions, nor for doubting the soundness of primitive belief. 

From the periodical Plough , a description of the significance of Wendell Berry: Thus it is that a voice resolutely parochial and mundane has inspired so many readers . The voice that the culture has needed to hear is "resolutely parochial and mundane".  It is the parochial which delivers us from the deceitful, unhappy illusion that we are autonomous, disembodied entities, for the parochial roots us in flesh-and-blood communion, in the stability and physicality of place. It is the mundane which opens us to the life-giving, grace-filled rhythms of day and night, seasons and years, feast and fast, labour and rest, work and prayer, delivering us from the grim, joyless tyranny of homogenized time, dominated by soulless work and entertainment. Amidst a contemporary Anglicanism in which 'parochial' and 'mundane' are often words of criticism levelled at 'inherited church', we might propose the Wendell Berry Option - a joyful, confident, resonant l...

We sometimes meet with men, who ask why we observe these or those ceremonies or practices; why, for example, we use Forms of prayer so cautiously and strictly? or why we persist in kneeling at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper? why in bowing at the name of Jesus? or why in celebrating the public worship of God only in consecrated places? why we lay such stress upon these things? The words are from Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 2 , preached in 1835.  The sermon was entitled ' Ceremonies of the Church '. What is striking, of course, is that the ceremonies mentioned by Newman suggest nothing at all of the Ritualism that was to emerge over the next generation.  The use of the Book of Common Prayer, kneeling to receive the Sacrament, bowing at the Lord's Name, reverence for the parish church: this was not the stuff of Ritualism.  Rather, these were the quite ordinary practices of Anglican piety, par...

We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. It was an act of liturgical genuis when Cranmer took the Sarum post-Communion for the Annunciation and made it the BCP's collect for the feast.  To use words from Herbert's 'Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling on one day', the collect gathers into a few short lines the mystery of salvation: Th'abridgement of Christ's story, which makes one ... Of the angel's Ave, and Consummatum est. The collect also embodies how the reformed ecclesia Anglicana approached the issue of - to use a title from a John Henry Newman sermon (while an Anglican) - ' The Reverence Due to the Blessed Virgin Mary '. To begin with, the collect, of course, recognises the feast.  While c...

From a sermon by John Henry Newman, at Littlemore, late in his Anglican period.  It is a striking, beautiful recognition and description of "attachment" to the native piety of Anglicanism.  ... the public notes of the Church are not her only tokens, and a failure or deficiency in them here or there, is no argument that the Presence of Christ is away. Such a misfortune must, indeed, ever diminish her external power in the places where it is found, but not her influence at home; it may stint her growth, and obstruct her propagation; but her present fruit may remain on her, notwithstanding, with a firm hold. For, after all, what really and practically attaches any one to the Church, is not any outward display of magnificence or greatness, but the experience of her benefits upon himself. These private and special evidences of the Divine Presence I may have another opportunity ...

In the final chapter of The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village , Eamon Duffy refers to William Shepherd, a sometime Augustinian monk who conformed to the Elizabethan Settlement, becoming vicar of a small Essex parish. He quotes Shepherd defending the Book of Common Prayer (1559) as the "decent Rits of the church of Christ" (p.177). On this commemoration of the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer, that word "decent" has caught my attention.  It was a word Cranmer himself used in describing the rites and ceremonies of the reformed liturgy: this godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers (in ' Concerning the Service of the Church '); it is thought good to reserve them still, as well for a decent order in the Church (from ' Of Ceremonies '). It also appears consistently in documents which created a context for this liturgy.  The 1559 Elizabethan Injunctions directed: the holy table in every church be decently ma...

In a phrase shared by Eamon Duffy and Diarmaid MacCulloch , it was the "Tudor Church Militant".   Edward's Reformation, says Duffy, was "abrasive", to be contrasted with Elizabeth embracing "some of the deep rhythms of pre-Reformation religion". The recent online publication by Anglican.net of Thomas Becon's 1551 A Fruitful Treastise on Fasting is a reminder that, alongside the ruptures of the Edwardine Reformation, there was also a preservation of some of those "deep rhythms" mentioned by Duffy as characteristic of the Elizabethan Church. Becon's Reformed credentials were impeccable: a chaplain to Cranmer, contributor to the Book of Homilies, fled the Marian persecution, becoming a Canon of Canterbury Cathedral under the Elizabethan Settlement.  He certainly was not a forerunner of the 'avant garde conformists', as his 1559 The Displaying of the Popish Mass critiqued kneeling and recommended sitting to receive the S...

Today, a final extract from Bishop Christopher Bethell 's 1843 Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bangor .  Bethell was addressing the controversy provoked by Tract XC, noting the "unhappy bias" and "objectionable positions" set forth in that Tract, "eluding the critical and historical meaning of the Articles".  Against this, he points to how the Articles have authority in determining a Reformed Catholic - Augustinian - centre for Anglicanism.  And he does so by using them to critique a perhaps surprising figure, a theologian who Bethell and the High Church tradition held in great esteem:  Omitting all mention of Hoadly and Clark, and the writers of their school, I would refer to a Divine of much higher rank and reputation: I mean the eminently pious, learned, and eloquent Bishop Taylor. In the sixth chapter of his Unum Necessarium , and in some appendices to that treatise, he labours with much ingenuity and eloquence to evade and expla...

As yesterday was St Patrick's Day, here are words from Ussher's A discourse of the religion anciently professed by the Irish and British (1631).  Ussher sees in the texts to which he is referring the Augustinian understanding of Eucharist ("mystical and sacramental" as opposed to "the bread and wine ... converted into these things really "), prevalent in the Latin West until the latter part of the first millennium.  It also points to the vibrant Eucharistic understanding available within the Reformed ecclesia Hibernica . But, you will say; these testimonies that have been alleged, make not so much for us, in proving the use of the communion under both kinds, as they make against us, in confirming the opinion of Transubstantiation: seeing they all specify the receiving, not of bread and wine, but of the body and blood of Christ. I answer, that forasmuch as Christ himself at the first institution of his holy Supper did say expressly; This is my b...

In his 1843 Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bangor , Bishop Christopher Bethell - following the controversy surrounding the publication of Tract XC - refuted both the Low Church claim that the early Tracts propagated Roman errors and the suggestion, by the Tractarians, that such teachings "had been forgotten and lost" within Anglicanism until rediscovered by the Tracts.  (This characteristic Tractarian view has exerted a baleful influence on Anglican self-understanding.)  Against both, Bethell asserted the significance and vibrancy of the pre-Tractarian High Church tradition The statements of these questions contained in the earlier publications of the writers of the Tracts, and the arguments employed in support of them, are the same as those used from the time of the Reformation by the eminent persons who have been looked up to as the most learned and orthodox of our Anglican Divines. Many persons who have taken part in these controversies have treated the ...

In reflecting on the role of the Articles in The Episcopal Church in particular, and contemporary Anglicanism in general, this Tweet, and the associated thread, from @benjamindcrosby - a TEC postulant - is a good place to start: Alright, I have actually been convinced otherwise. According to our constitution and canons, he doctrine of TEC is determined by the Scriptures as interpreted by the Creeds, and by the Sacramental services, the Ordinal, and the Catechism of the 1979 BCP. Mea culpa! https://t.co/GFVCtZEhKW — Ben Crosby (@benjamindcrosby) March 12, 2019 This is indeed what the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church declare: Doctrine shall mean the basic and essential teachings of the Church and is to be found in the Canon of Holy Scripture as understood in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and in the sacramental rites, the Ordinal and Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer (Title IV, Canon 2). What are we to make of such a minima...

... such abstinence which hath been used in this Realm, upon the Frydayes and Saturdayes, the Embring dayes, and other dayes, commonly called Vigils, and in the time commonly called Lent - from an Act of the reign of Edward VI . "Fasting is serious religion."  So said Quodcumque in an important post last year: Whether it was the serious fasting of Islam or Pentecostalism I have been challenged by many to examine and experiment with my own practice of fasting, and to encourage others to try it ... If there is to be a renewal of the Catholic stream in Anglicanism perhaps it will begin when we once again practice this ancient discipline. And it is an ancient discipline enshrined in the classical Anglicanism of the Book of Common Prayer 1662.  At the 1661 Savoy Conference, the Puritans demanded "that there be nothing in the Liturgy which may seem to countenance the observance of Lent as a religious fast".  They utterly failed in their assault on the ...

From his 1843 Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bangor , Bishop Christopher Bethell - following the publication of Tract XC - responds to the "the state of excitement to which the writings and opinions usually called Tractarian, have given occasion", and in doing so asserts principles of the High Church tradition: In the first place they appear to have thrown (the phrase is, I believe, their own) themselves into a system, or, I should rather say, have been following the phantom of a system, which they call Catholic, and hold up to admiration as something infinitely superior to the imperfect and lifeless Catholicism of our own Church. For I cannot discover that they have any clear or definite notion of the system which they admire, or have drawn any precise line between Catholic truths and traditions, and Uncatholic errors and corruptions of doctrine and discipline. We must not, however, suffer ourselves to be led astray by the cloudy grandeur of this...

Quest. Whether, without all danger of superstition or idolatry, we may not render divine worship to our blessed Saviour, as present in the blessed sacrament, or host, according to his human nature in that host? Answ. We may not render divine worship to Him (as present in the blessed sacrament according to his human nature) without danger of idolatry: because He is not there according to His human nature ... He is present there by his divine power, and his divine blessing, and the fruit of his body, the real effective consequents of his passion: but for any other presence, it is "idolum," it is nothing in the world.  Adore Christ in heaven; for the heavens must contain Him until the restitution of all things.  And if you in the reception of the holy sacrament worship Him whom you know to be in heaven; you cannot be concerned in duty to worship Him in the host (as you call it).   From Jeremy Taylor's ' Three Letters to a Gentleman that was Tempted to the Communio...

As our times are there is more need to speak for fasting than against hypocrisy - from Lancelot Andrewes's  Ash Wednesday sermon, 1622, preached before the King at Whitehall. Andrewes again returns to the subject of the Lenten fast in his Ash Wednesday sermons of 1622 and 1623.  In 1622 , he commenced by summarising the previous year's sermon, "Our last year's endeavours": we omit not to fast. Not at other times; but not at this specially, when the Church, or rather God by the Church, her ancient order and custom calls us to it . He then addresses the text he has chosen from the Gospel appointed for the First Day of Lent, Moreover when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites . The accusation that fasting is inextricably bound up with hypocrisy he describes as belonging to the "policies of Satan": And will you see how compendious a way he deviseth to rid us clean of all hypocrisy? Thus: to keep no Lent, not to fast at all; and so he w...

Yesterday , Ash Wednesday, I quoted from Lancelot Andrewes's 1619 sermon before the King on the Lenten fast.  Andrewes emphasised how the reformed ecclesia Anglicana - contrary to Papalist allegations - retained the Lenten fast. He returns to the theme in in 1621 Ash Wednesday sermon before the King. Again, Andrewes emphasises the significance of the epistle and Gospel readings appointed for the first day of Lent in the Book of Common Prayer: The lessons which this day have been all speak to us of fasting. The lesson of the Old Testament, 'Turn to Me with fasting.' The lesson of the New, as you have heard, 'When you fast,' &c. All, either as the Epistle, telling us what we should do, 'fast;' or, as the Gospel, taking it for granted that we shall fast, and teaching us how to fast so as we may receive a reward for it at God's hands.  These being the lessons, this the tenor of them, by them there is intimation give us that the m...

Turn ye even to me, saith the Lord, with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning - from Joel 2:12-17, appointed for the Epistle on the First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday , BCP 1662. When ye fast ... - the opening words of the Gospel, S. Matthew 6:16-21, on the First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, BCP 1662. There is a false imputation cast on us, that we should teach there goeth nothing to repentance but amendment of life; that these of fasting and the rest we let run by, as the waste of repentance, no, that for fasting we proclaim a fast from it, and teach a penitence with no penal thing in it. That therefore this text by name, and such other, we shun and shift, and dare not come near them. Not come near them? As near as we can by the grace of God, that the world may know, and all here bear witness, we teach and we press both ... To take them as they stand. Fasting; which, were there nothing else but this...

To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’ Because we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those 'high mid-summer pomps' in which our Leader, the Son of Man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer - from C.S. Lewis, 'The Grand Miracle'. 'Lencten'.  It ...