"Without God, and without His Church": the National Apostasy sermon and the High Church critique of 1827-1832

But especially happy are we, who can exult in being nurtured in the pure and Apostolic church of England and Ireland.

The words are from a sermon in 1829 by John Jebb - chaplain to, and nephew of, Jebb, Bishop of Limerick - entitled 'Religious Patriotism nurtured in the House of God'.  It is quite striking to read the sermon alongside Keble's 1833 Assize Sermon, because of the shared commitment  - in Keble's words -to "the cause of the Apostolical Church in these realms".

A central characteristic of this "cause" in both sermons was the traditional High Church understanding of the unity of Church and State, proclaimed afresh in a context in which challenges to this order were very evident.  Jebb stated the necessity to preserve this order:

that our Church and State may ever preserve inviolate, their necessary and harmonious union.

Keble pointed to it as fundamental to the British constitution:

having for centuries acknowledged, as an essential part of its theory of government, that, as a Christian nation, she is also a part of Christ's Church, and bound, in all her legislation and policy, by the fundamental rules of that Church.

For both Jebb and Keble, the unity of Church and State was fundamental to a rightly ordered society.  As Jebb states:

For it should be our settled and firm persuasion, that Religion is the truest treasure of a state; that no public honour, and, consequently, no public happiness, of any permanence, can exist, without that which is the basis of all real honesty, the word of God and without those means, which Christ himself has ordained, to be the means of propagating that word; a faithful and uncorrupted church.

Keble likewise emphasised this on the basis of the text for his sermon, from I Samuel:

That portion, in particular, of the history of the chosen people, which drew from Samuel, the truest of patriots, the wise and noble sentiment in the text, must ever be an unpleasing and perplexing page of Scripture, to those, who would fain persuade themselves, that a nation, even a Christian nation, may do well enough, as such, without God, and without His Church. 

The "religious patriotism" of Jebb's sermon was a celebration of the particularity of the Anglican constitution in Church and State: 

as Jerusalem was the centre and the pride of the favoured nation of old, so this kingdom is the glory and praise of Christendom; purified by an uncontaminated worship, and flourishing under an unequalled civil polity.

Such ecclesiastical patriotism and celebration of particularity were also evident in Keble's sermon:

we have ill learned the lessons of our Church, if we permit our patriotism to decay, together with the protecting care of the State.

Both preachers highlighted the relationship between the relationship between the understanding of justice in a rightly ordered society and the established Church.  For Keble, of course, this was an obvious statement for an Assize sermon:

The very solemnity of this day may remind them, even more than others, of the close amity which must ever subsist between equal justice and pure religion; Apostolical religion, more especially, in proportion to her superior truth and exactness. It is an amity, made still more sacred, if possible, in the case of the Church and Law of England, by historical recollections, associations, and precedents, of the most engaging and ennobling cast.

The same point is also to be found in Jebb's sermon:

That church, or rather, God through that church, had taught them that justice is a sacred thing; that gravity, knowledge, diligence, and integrity, and the imitation of His divine example, are enjoined by the Judge of the Universe, on those to whom the lives and properties of men are entrusted.

The similarities between the sermons are noticeable and derive from a shared commitment to the High Church tradition's vision of the unity of Church and State expressed in the Anglican constitution.  This leads to another reason for the similarities.  Keble's sermon was delivered in 1833, after the series of upheavals which had, for many contemporaries, undone the Anglican constitution.  As J.C.D. Clark states, "seen from the viewpoint of the clerical intelligentsia, Repeal, Emancipation, Reform and the seemingly imminent consequences of these things" overthrew the Anglican State and heralded "the imposition of revolutionary liberalism on the Church".  Hence Keble's warning that the Church was now faced with the prospect of "infringement on Apostolical Rights", no mere hyperbole when we consider Clark's reminder that as a result of the constitutional upheavals of these years, "For a decade, the Church was menaced with disestablishment", while successive Liberal ministries "flooded the bench with Liberal clergymen (in so far as they could be found) chosen for their political acceptability in the new era".

It was against this background that Keble warned of national apostasy:

The point really to be considered is, whether, according to the coolest estimate, the fashionable liberality of this generation be not ascribable, in a great measure, to the same temper which led the Jews voluntarily to set about degrading themselves to a level with the idolatrous Gentiles? And, if it be true anywhere, that such enactments are forced on the Legislature by public opinion, is APOSTASY too hard a word to describe the temper of that nation?

Jebb's 1829 sermon, by contrast, was delivered in the midst of the upheavals.  He too, however, also warned against the threat of national apostasy, and did so using language at least as strong as Keble:

But woe be to this nation, when it forsakes the way of its godly forefathers! Woe be to those, who will slight the manifest privileges with which God hath hitherto distinguished this people! ... For then, be assured, our candlestick shall be removed from where it stands, and the blackness of darkness shall succeed, if, with multiplied warnings of ungodly nations before our eyes, and the immutable judgments of the Almighty determinately revealed to us, we proceed not, with all our heart and soul, in the race that is set before us, where our path is so plain; if, notwithstanding all our knowledge, we persist in a wicked indifference but, may God create a right spirit within us, and avert the deadly curse!

Keble's 1833 sermon, when placed alongside Jebb's 1829 sermon, looks much less original and much more like an expression of an established High Church critique of the constitutional upheavals assailing the Anglican constitution.  Newman's judgement, therefore, becomes at least questionable:

The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the Assize Sermon in the University Pulpit. It was published under the title of "National Apostasy." I have ever considered and kept the day, as the start of the religious movement of 1833.

National apostasy would seem to have been no new charge from High Church pulpits amidst the upheavals of these years.  And rather than anticipate later Tractarian suggestions that the Church should distance itself from the State, Keble concludes his sermon with traditional High Church exhortation: "submission and order and still duties", intercession for those in authority, "grave, respectful, affectionate remonstrance", and the undertaking of public and private duties with "piety, purity, charity, and justice".  Jebb's exhortation was distinctly similar:

Let us pray, as Catholic Christians, that the Universal Church may be strengthened, purified, and perfected; as British Protestants, that our own Church may have a special blessing; that Church and State may reciprocally invigorate and support each other; that every member of the same may discharge his duty, to the advancement of the public good, to the glory of God, and to the happiness of man; and that every thing may tend to the advancement of His everlasting kingdom!

Rather than "the start of the religious movement of 1833", Keble's sermon feels more like a conclusion, a closing expression of the High Church critique of the 1827-1832 assault on, and overthrowing of, the Anglican constitution.

A last similarity between the sermons.  Amidst the storm clouds, Jebb and Keble both pointed their listeners to the Church's hope.  Even as the Anglican constitution was besieged, even as the ramparts were overwhelmed, both sermons concluded by invoking the vision glorious.  Keble declared that "a true Churchman, he has that encouragement, which no other cause in the world can impart in the same degree: —he is calmly, soberly, demonstrably, sure, that, sooner or later, his will be the winning side, and that and that the victory will be complete, universal, eternal".  Four years earlier, Jebb had proclaimed:

And, though every attribute of our Heavenly Father, and every dispensation of his Providence, demand our praise, yet, this one consideration should make his chosen people joyful, that though, in this life, troubles, dangers, and sorrows may cloud their righteous course, they can still look to the heavenly Jerusalem: whither all the just shall, after time is no more, be led: even to the city of the living God.