Hear what comfortable words

From Eight Sermons Preached before the University of Cambridge at Great St Mary's (1831) by Hugh James Rose, associated with the Hackney Phalanx, a wonderful example of how a distinctive part of Anglican liturgy - the Comfortable Words - shaped a native Eucharistic piety:

But to the penitent, the believer, the faithful, humble, Christian, what are her words of consolation and of comfort? Does she not call with her voice of love to all the weary and heavy laden to come and lay down their burden there? Does she not speak of love by which the Father gave up the only beloved to die for the world? Does she not bid the guilty but repenting heart that doubts if that sacrifice, could be made for one so stained with guilt, remember that He came to die for sinners? Does she not bid us remember that He that died for sinners, lives for them, prays for them, offers up their prayers to the eternal Father? Does she not call upon us to lift up the heart that is cast down under the sense of sin, to give thanks, as it is meet and right to do, for the victory which has been won for us, and 'with angels and archangels and all the glorious company of Heaven, to laud and magnify' him that has conquered Death and Sin for us?

Sermon I

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