"A plain and joyful duty": Old High Church political theology in a post-Reform world
Jacobson's sermon begins with what may seem like a rupture. He accepts the difficulties of "various minds" with the Prayer Book's other State Services, those for 30th January, 29th May, and 5th November:
The Services of other State-Holidays may be one sided in their views, and inflated in their expression; and though the narrowness of prejudice and the exaggeration of language may admit of much extenuation, if the circumstances under which they were originally drawn up are taken fairly into account, we may still lament that they are so much occupied with the anger and bitterness of the past, that the thankfulness of the present was diluted and enfeebled.
This may be taken as recognition of the dismantling of the Anglican confessional state by the 'constitutional revolution'. Against such a background, the provision of the other State Services "jars on many a mind", particularly if it is intended "to continue them indefinitely".
But is this the rupture we might initially assume? Jacobson goes on in the sermon to imply that the changes of the 'constitutional revolution' were not the threatened 'National Apostasy':
if concessions, from which the worst consequences were augured, have been found to involve practically far more of good and far less of evil than was considered possible, these are all blessings which it is especially well to remember, and well to be thankful for to-day.
Instead, "the Apostolical Church in these realms" (to use words from Keble's famous sermon), was flourishing in the post-Reform context:
Without at all abandoning her defences, or in any way compromising her dignity, she has come, within our own experience, to be alert and aggressive, at home and abroad, making provision as she may for the ever-multiplying wants of our home population, and organizing her government and discipline to the utmost limits of the empire.
Similarly, the Realm was experiencing "many striking symptoms of national vigour and wealth".
This being so, the liturgical focus of High Church political theology shifted to the Accession Day service:
In whatever light various minds may be disposed to regard the other occasional Services which have from time to time been appended to our Book of Common Prayer, we must all feel that, in the Service appointed for this day, we have a plain and joyful duty ... none can be so captious as to take exception against the celebration of this anniversary.
This service now became the vehicle for expressing the traditional gratitude of High Church political theology for the blessing of constitutional order:
a general expression of thankfulness for national mercies generally, such as this day's Service embodies, involving as it does and must, an acknowledgment of absolute dependence on God's good pleasure for the first bestowal and the continued enjoyment of them, together with a confession of our own unworthiness of them, is a duty which must carry its own commendation to every mind, a duty to which the summons can never be unwelcome.
Included in this, Jacobson states, was a very traditional expression of thanksgiving for "the importance and value of hereditary government, and a fixed order of succession":
we ought not to be unconscious of, or unthankful for, the great blessing of that provision which is made for certainty and immediateness in the succession, which ensures that we shall never be without a Sovereign, that there can be no delay, no disputing, no suspension of the executive functions of the monarchy.
What is more, Jacobson concluded the sermon with a very traditional High Church image of sacral monarchy:
To the crowned Sovereign, to whom this day's solemnities must come, as the anniversary of his admission into Holy Orders comes to the minister of God's Word and Sacraments.
Such language was common in High Church pulpits in the generations before the 'constitutional revolution'. Its use here by Jacobson - and taken alongside the language in his earlier 1840 sermon - points to a High Church political theology successfully negotiating the post-1832 constitutional context, retaining and reasserting key characteristics and commitments. This is again suggestive of the Old High Church tradition's ability to survive the shock of 1828-32 and the undoing of the constitutional settlement which it had previously defended with vigour. Within the new, reformed constitutional settlement, Old High Church political theology continued to offer a resonant vision of the gift of constitutional order in the polity and the ordering of common life.
(The picture is of the statue of Queen Victoria in front of St Paul's Cathedral, London.)
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