"The grounds which Waterland lays down": the native High Church tradition against Newman and 'development'

From A Memoir of Joshua Watson, an extract from an 1846 letter to Watson by William Broughton, then the Church of England's Bishop of Australia, on Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine:

To make a candid confession to you ... I did not open it without some uncomfortable apprehensions as to the formidable assault which a writer of such high repute would make upon the towers and bulwarks of the Jerusalem from which he had fallen away. You may believe my assurance that I have really studied the book, reading it piece by piece with attention many times over; striving to make myself master as well of the general argument as of the several details. And now what shall I say? .... considered as a justification of a man's desertion of the Church of England for the purpose of joining the Church of Rome, it is the most inconclusive and unsatisfactory performance that it ever fell to my lot to examine.

The sum and substance of his argument appears to be, that the dictum of Vincentius, if it admit the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, cannot exclude the doctrine of transubstantiation and the like; it cannot condemn Aquinas and protect St. Athanasius. It is on this point that I would come to issue with them. My consolation is in thinking, after a very careful and, I trust, impartial scrutiny, that upon the grounds of Scripture, reason, and antiquity, the grounds which Waterland lays down as his basis, we may embrace and hold fast those blessed truths which our venerated mother, the Church of England, has given us to confide in; and yet may upon the same principle reject the errors which a pseudo-catholic system strives to obtrude upon us, as really satisfying the criterion of Vincentius. For myself, I feel much more composure since reading Mr. Newman's book. It allays all my apprehension of his ability to say anything which can seriously embarrass the advocates of the Church; it awakens in me a strong hope that it will rectify the views of many who have allowed themselves to be warped by his influence and example.

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Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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