laudable Practice

A final extract from Mant's An Explanation of the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer . The Church gives no countenance to the mixing of water with the sacramental wine. Her authority for so doing, in King Edward VI.'s first book, was subsequently withholden, and has not been revived. To revive it now were a dangerous, and offensive, innovation.  Mant's opposition to the mixed chalice may seem to represent a rather antiquated approach to Anglican liturgy.  After all, what can possibly be wrong with a practice that has patristic precedent and which, as a result of later 19th century Anglo-catholic practice, has become quite common within broader Anglicanism? Two reasons come immediately to mind. Firstly, in rejecting the revival of the mixed chalice, Mant was standing in continuity with normative High Church tradition.  Yes, examples may be pointed to of Laudian and High Church clergy using a mixed chalice (that is, water mingled with wine in the chalice prior...

... perjury is not a good way to start a ministry. Harsh but necessary words from Angela Tilby in last week's Church Times concerning the Declaration of Assent taken by candidates for holy orders in the CofE.  What particularly attracted my attention to the column was her focus on the Articles of Religion, recounting her panic and confusion when at her pre-ordination retreat the bishop asked her to explain her understanding of Article VI. Tilby continues: It shocks me now that, even thought I had been worshipping in the Church of England from the age of five, had been confirmed at 16, and had been a Reader for ten years, I still needed prompting to be able to give an account of one of the most fundamental of the Thirty-Nine Articles. It is hardly surprising that such a context resulted in a widespread dismissive approach to the assent required of candidates for holy orders: Twenty-odd years ago ... the precise details of the legal framework for ministry were unimportan...

From a ' Charge to Candidates for Holy Orders ' in Richard Mant's An Explanation of the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer .  Here Mant reaffirms the traditional High Church understanding of decency and uniformity in the face of what was then emerging Ritualism.  Specimens of these objectionable rites will occur to you in the innumerable and reiterated gesticulations of the officiating priests, and the variety and continual changes of the sacerdotal vestments: in the exorcisms and chrisms used in holy baptism : in the reserving, carrying about, lifting up, and worshipping of the consecrated bread and wine in the holy communion : in the kissings of the pax, and the creepings to the cross: in the telling of beads: in the hallowing of bells: in the  multitudinous bowings and crossings of the person : in the sprinklings of holy water : in the ringing of little hand bells, and the lighting of numerous candles, and the burning of incense during divine service :...

In two charges to his clergy in 1842, Richard Mant, Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, addressed "certain publications, under the title of 'Tracts for the Times,' which have of late been the subject of much public discussion".  Mant's Charges - published under the title The Laws of the Church, the Churchman's Guard against Romanism and Puritanism - were a superb example of how High Church bishops used their episcopal charges to refute Tract XC and restate the Old High Church tradition in the face of Tractarianism's misreading of the tradition. In these extracts from the Charges, Mant points to how Tractarianism had abandoned "affectionate attachment" to the native piety and native constitution of Anglicanism, a defining characteristic of the High Church tradition.  From the Charge to the clergy of Down and Connor, June 1842: Be it our second caution, that, in our extreme reverence and affection for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church...

The woods and pastures are joyous in their abundance now in a season of warmth and much rain. We walk amid foliage, amid song. The sheep and cattle graze like souls in bliss (except for flies) and lie down satisfied. Who now can believe in winter? In winter who could have hoped for this? - Wendell Berry, 'Poem IV, Sabbaths 1998', in Given: New Poems . Long days, the deep green of the landscape, birdsong echoing from early morning, warmth and light lasting long into the evenings.  We are now in the joyous abundance of Summer. What are the characteristics of a Prayer Book Summer?   Feasts at beginning, middle, and end Today, of course, is St John Baptist's Day, a feast traditionally associated with Midsummer.  We are now in the season of long days, warmth, and growth.  The Prayer Book Gospel for the feast echoes with the themes of light and life: whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us; to give light to them that sit in darkness and in ...

The voices and ideas of the losers - of those who remained loyal to England during the American Revolution - are virtually unknown. The opening page of Gregg L. Frazer's God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy's Case against the American Revolution (2018) reminds us that despite the very significant historical research over the last few decades into the Loyalists, the popular narrative has remained unchanged.  The 'Tories' are still routinely dismissed as a small minority of elite, self-interested, placeholders.  The reality of the struggle between Loyalist and Patriot was radically different.  As historian Robert Calhoun has stated, "The Revolution was in some respects a civil war", with "large numbers" serving in Loyalist military units, and Loyalism embracing a range of perspectives with significant roots in colonial society, from "principled loyalism", to "accommodating loyalism", and a "doctrinaire toryism ...

On this Thursday after Trinity Sunday (let the reader understand), an extract from the Charge given by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, in July 1843.  The Charge was entitled 'Rubrickal Conformity the Churchman's Duty'.  In this section of the Charge, Mant - a traditional High Churchman - critiques the Tractarian claim that the movement was restoring adherence to the rubrics (a somewhat ironic claim, of course, in view of later developments).  Refuting this dismissal of pre-1833 Anglican experience, Mant points to a vibrant tradition of what he terms "ritualists", by which he means those who expounded the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer: There are some, indeed, who would fain establish a connexion between a faithful submission to the Church's authority, and the peculiarities of that system of religious opinion, which has, within the last ten years, been the occasion of so much commotion in the Church, and against which I of late g...

In yesterday's post I mentioned James Bassnett Mills.  Today, an extract from another of his works, A History of the Christian Priesthood (1835), a traditional High Church defence of the apostolic three-fold order. It suggests how utterly flawed is any notion that Anglicanism needed Tractarianism in order to be reminded of "the real ground on which our authority is built, OUR APOSTOLICAL DESCENT" ( Tract I ). It has also been proved, upon scriptural authority, that these Bishops were exclusively invested with the right of ordination; there being not a single passage of Scripture that speaks of ordinations by Presbyters. It follows, therefore, that the office of the Apostolate or Episcopal order is essential to the perpetuity of the Christian ministry. All authority to minister in the Church is derived from Christ, and there are but two ways in which this authority could have been delegated by him to his ministers; either by the continual and visible i...

The clergymen of the city and neighbourhood, though very well inclined to promote High Church principles, privileges, and prerogatives, had never committed themselves to tendencies which are somewhat too loosely called Puseyite practices. They all preached in their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them. Such was the description given by Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers of the High Church clergy of Barsetshire.  That reference to preaching in black gowns captures a feature of Anglican life and the High Church tradition almost entirely lost during the late 19th century.  Dr. Sacheverell's famous 1709 sermon ' The Perils of False Brethren, Both in Church, and State ' was delivered in a black preaching gown, as were the sermons of Parson Jonathan Boucher in the parish of Queen Anne, Maryland, and Keble's Assize Sermon and Newman's Plain and Parochial Sermons.  And it was, of course, the established custom of numerous High Church parsons in thei...

... while the Athanasian Creed or Quicunque vult piles it on (I’d commend the latter for your meditation later today). ...  I think this because of a line in the Athanasian Creed, one of the great statements of faith we hold to. The above are short extracts from two Trinity Sunday sermons ( here and here ) which appeared on my Twitter timeline yesterday and today.  I accept, of course, that the Athanasian Creed appearing in two (three, if I include my own) sermons does not suggest a revival in the use of this Creed.  That said, both of the above preachers are at the younger end of the age spectrum and are at the outset of their respective ministries.  Both sermons, rather than pointing to the Athanasian Creed as an embarrassment to be avoided, invoked it a witness to the deposit of Faith.  It is possible, then, that after a lamentable, enforced absence, Quicunque Vult is back, an expression of a significant theological shift described by John Milb...

It is in the same spirit that the most precise and systematic of all the Creeds, the Athanasian, is rather, as the form of it shows, a hymn of praise to the Eternal Trinity; it being meet and right at festive seasons to bring forth before our God every jewel of the Mysteries entrusted to us, to show that those of which He gave us we have lost none - John Henry Newman,' The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us ', Parochial and Plain Sermons , Vol.2.22. God the Father, the First Person in the Trinity, is especially called the Maker and Creator of the world, because He is the First Person, the Root, the Fountain, the Beginning of all: as the holy Creed says "He is made of none, neither created, nor begotten" - John Keble, Sermon XL for Trinity Sunday , Sermons for the Christian Year . Equally, or even more, I should think it fatal to relegate the Athanasian Creed into some corner, to be acknowledged by one knows no...

God, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit .. . - from the collect for Whitsun week. Through Jesus Christ our Lord; according to whose most true promise, the Holy Ghost came down as at this time from heaven with a sudden great sound, as it had been a mighty wind, in the likeness of fiery tongues ... - from the Proper Preface for Whitsunday, and six days after. The use of the evocative "as at this time" in the Whitsun collect and preface has a range of meanings enriching the observance of the festival.  It situates the celebration of the feast and its octave in sacred time, as the Homily for Whitsunday declared: And hereof this feast hath his name, to be called Pentecost, even of the number of the days.  For, as St. Luke writeth in the Acts of the Apostles, when fifty days were come to an end, the disciples being all together with one accord in one place, the Holy Ghost came suddenly...

I don't know what it is, but I'd always felt that there was this interconnectedness in nature long ago ... Without it, nothing is sacred any more and we lose that fundamental understanding of the need for harmony - balance - with nature - HRH The Prince of Wales, The Telegraph Magazine , 9th June 2019. Today is the first of the Whitsun Ember Days, falling at the beginning of summer.  What the Prayer Book terms "The Ember Days at the Four Seasons" mark the beginning of each season with "Days of Fasting, or Abstinence".  As the seasons turn, our dependence upon land and weather, our relationship with day and night, finds expression in days given over to prayer and fasting, seeking blessing for the season that lies ahead.  Here, then, is a way of restoring that "harmony ... with nature" urged by Prince Charles as an essential aspect of renewing our care for the environment, a recognition of our dependence upon the created order. At Whitsun Embe...

... touching the frequency of the Communion, the Parson celebrates it, if not duly once a month, yet at least five or six times in the year; as, at Easter, Christmasse, Whitsuntide, afore and after Harvest, and the beginning of Lent. George Hebert, A Priest to the Temple, or The Country Parson , Chpt. XXII. The curate reported in 1682 that, in obedience to commands from the bishop, he had given notice before Whitsun communion, 'and to stir them up to their duty, I did read the second exhortation ...'. Episcopal Visitation return, Parish of Caversham, Diocese of Oxford, 1683, quoted in Donald A. Spaeth, The Church in an Age of Danger: Parsons and Parishioners, 1660-1740 . I administer the Holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper the first Sunday in every Month, and also on the Usual Festivals, namely, Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide.  Episcopal Visitation return, Parish of Axminster , Diocese of Exeter, 1744.  I read prayers and adminstered the Holy Sacrament t...

There seems to be a question here, whether best the Comforter come, or not come; that is, whether any Whitsuntide or no? The question of His coming grew out of another, of Christ's going; whether best Christ go or not go, that is, whether any Ascension day or no. The Apostles were all mainly against His going, and so opposed hard against the Ascension. But here Christ resolveth the point thus: if they were against the Ascension, they lost festum Paracleti , a feast which they might not miss out of their calendar; and so with promising them this, persuades them to beat with that; to yield to the Ascension in hope of Whitsuntide. Which two feasts are both in the text, and the two main points of it ... Christ's going, that is the Ascension; the Holy Spirit's coming, that is Pentecost, the day which we now celebrate ... one to make amends for the other. And you will observe it as usual. After Christmas day, and the poor estate of Christ's birt...

Howsoever we make it, sure it is that all the rest, all the feasts hitherto in the return of the year from His Incarnation to the very last of His Ascension, though all of them be great and worthy of all honour in themselves, yet to us they are as nothing, any of them or all of them, even all the feasts in the Calendar, without this day, the feast which now we hold holy to the sending of the Holy Ghost. Christ is the Word, and all of Him but words spoken or words written, there is no seal put to till this day; the Holy Spirit is the seal or signature ... A testament we have and therein many fair legacies, but still this day nothing administered ­ 'The administration are the Spirit's.' In all of these of Christ's there is but the purchase made and paid for ... livery and seizin, that is reserved till this day; for the Spirit is ... 'the earnest' or the investiture of all that Christ hath done for us. Lancelot Andrewes, Whitsund...

What is particularly striking about Wordsworth's pastoral letter is it joyous affirmation of the vitality of the ordinary practices and rhythms of Anglicanism.  Against the Puseyite attempt to "recommend private Confession as a regular practice" and thus "strangely to pervert" the teaching of the Prayer Book, Wordsworth celebrates Anglicanism's native piety.  A central feature of the Pastoral is the re-assertion of the classical High Church teaching on the efficacy of the absolution at Mattins, Evensong, and Holy Communion: it is evident that the Church of England intends that the words publicly pronounced by the Priest in Absolution should be regarded as having power to convey a comfortable assurance to those who are conscious to themselves of sin and also of sincere faith and repentance. She expressly calls each of these forms an Ahsolutlon; and her intention is to certify every penitent and faithful person there present, and confessing his sins ...