Newman and the significance of Anglican practices

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, particularly valued by the High Church tradition.

In his The Oxford Movement in Practice, George Herring states:

What the Tractarians of the earlier period sought to achieve was a ceremonial that was explicitly Anglican, derived from the Prayer Book, the Canons of 1603, and precedent such as the Laudians of the seventeenth century; a ceremonial which was intended to be adopted by all Anglicans irrespective of theological viewpoint or party.

The extent to which such ceremonies were "explicitly Anglican" is seen when we consider that they were all part of the Elizabethan Settlement, maintained by Elizabeth's Injunctions and the BCP 1559.  Thus, for example, the Injunctions insisted "whensoever the name of Jesus shall be in any lesson, sermon, or otherwise in the church pronounced, that due reverence be made of all persons young and old". 

What is more, Newman's defence of such ceremonies shared none of the sectarianism and party-spirit of later Ritualism, with its insistence on "restoring that Catholic Form of worship" (a phrase used by a Ritualist in 1867, quoted by Herring), a "long deep sleep" having descended upon Anglicanism since the Reformation. By contrast, Newman offers a quite traditional High Church defence of the ceremonies of Anglicanism. Indeed, he sounds positively Hooker-like at this point:

Religion must be realized in particular acts, in order to its continuing alive ... There is no such thing as abstract religion ... Recollect, then, that things indifferent in themselves become important to us when we are used to them. The services and ordinances of the Church are the outward form in which religion has been for ages represented to the world, and has ever been known to us.

Above all, this sermon by Newman suggests nothing of a 'restoration' of what has been supposedly lost.  The assumption throughout the sermon is that these "ceremonies or practices" are a settled part of Anglicanism.  The challenge comes not from those seeking supposed 'restoration' of what has been lost, but rather from those attacking settled Anglican ceremonies and practices, "when profane persons scoff at our forms":

In these times especially, we should be on our guard against those who hope, by inducing us to lay aside our forms, at length to make us lay aside our Christian hope altogether.

To use a phrase employed by Nockles, Newman was here contending "for the Laudian ideal of uniformity and order" - what Newman himself described, in very traditional High Church language, as "the decencies of worship" - an understanding undermined and rejected by the "sectarian tendency" of Ritualism. 

There is much here in the early Tractarian Newman's defence of Laudian uniformity for contemporary Anglicans to heed.  Common Prayer necessarily includes common, shared ceremonies and practices (as Cranmer emphasised, "for a decent order in the Church"): reverent, not overwhelming the liturgy, and native to Anglican piety.  Removing or undermining these shared ceremonies and practices is no harmless exercise, as they shape and give expression to belief and devotion.  These simple practices - for example, kneeling to receive the Sacrament, bowing at the Lord's Name, reverence for the parish church - have significance because they are "the living form, the visible body of religion".  To devalue or remove the practices is to aid secularization because the practices embody the Faith.  As Newman states, they are to be valued "lest, stripping off from us the badges of our profession, we forget there is a faith for us to maintain".