"Let us search out fairly her real doctrines": a call from 19th century Canada for Anglican ressourcement

Let us not elevate ourselves into judges of our Church, but reverentially look up to her authority. Let us not bring preconceived and modern theories to pervert her language, either on the side of a supposed catholicism, or a supposed spirituality, or a supposed rationalism; but let us search out fairly her real doctrines,—in her Prayer-book,—in her Articles—in that especial Homily to which our articles refer us,—in the writings of those divines whose praise is acknowledged by us,—especially in the great Fathers of the Reformation, both those who put it in motion and those whom God gave us down to the time when the Reformation may be regarded as settled.

From a sermon preached by James Beaven, to the Synod of the Diocese of Toronto, 1857.

Although some commentators identify Beaven with bringing Tractarianism to Ontario (when he was appointed to King's College, Toronto), it is quite clear from this sermon that he belonged to the Old High Church tradition.  The critique of "supposed catholicism" (a possible echo of some High Church episcopal responses to Tract XC) and the unembarrassed reference to the Reformation were not signs of Tractarian sympathies.

Alongside the divines of the Reformation to Restoration, Beaven urges that their example is followed in heeding patristic teaching:

And as these great men themselves established their faith by an appeal to the writings of the early, undivided church,—so let us accustom ourselves to the same authority.

While Tractarians exalted Prayer Book over and against Articles, and low church Evangelicals Articles over and against Prayer Book, Beaven emphasised the need for allegiance to both:

we shall not, as some do, attach ourselves to the language of the Prayer-book, to the disparagement of that in the Articles; nor, as others, attach ourselves to that of the Articles, to the setting aside of that in the Prayer-book; but we shall take both as merely expressing different phases of the same truth, which is embodied equally in both.

Also noteworthy is the sermon going on to invoke the Old High Church virtues of conformity and uniformity, against incipient Ritualism:

But whilst I thus plead for adherence to our old customs as a bond of unity, I desire again to urge with the most forcible persuasion the folly of introducing new methods, new observances, new gestures, merely because they seem to the individual, whether minister or private worshipper, to be the appropriate expression of his own feelings, or what in his individual opinion is most suitable. St. Paul rebukes those in his day who desired to follow their own particular tastes in public worship, saying, "We have no such custom, neither the churches of God." And to indulge in such a tendency is surely the very opposite to the endeavour, to which we are bound by the most sacred obligations, to be joined together in the same mind and in the same judgement.

The sermon, in other words, is a good summary of the High Church tradition: Catholic and Reformed, Prayer Book and Articles, uniformity and conformity. That is not a bad agenda for contemporary High Church ressourcement.