After 'National Apostasy': how Old High Church political theology survived revolution

On the first Sunday after Trinity 1840, William Jacobson ascended the pulpit in the parish church of Iffley, Oxford, where he was perpetual curate.  The day had been appointed as one of thanksgiving for the recent deliverance of Queen Victoria from an attempt on her life.  At the outset of the sermon, Jacobson gave voice to a well-established High Church emphasis:

For, remember, however much the form of government may be permitted to vary in different countries, whatever be the alterations in the working and administration of government which may be thought (and thought at times with the best reason) necessary and desirable in the same country, as one generation comes into the place of another, the duty remains as binding as ever, 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers'. The doctrine of Scripture does not vary with the changes and modifications which man's wisdom dictates: There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God'. 

Only 8 years after the conclusion of the 'constitutional revolution' which had dismantled the architecture of the Anglican confessional state - and 7 years after Keble's charge of 'National Apostasy' - the traditional Old High Church understanding of obedience within the polity was here being restated, without any sense of controversy or contradiction.  And, as again was traditional, this was understood as having particular significance for Anglicanism:

The duty of loyalty and obedience to civil rulers, in general, the duty of praying for them, in particular, are then among the plainest and most bounden duties of all who profess and call themselves Christians. And the Church, to which it is your high privilege to belong, faithful to her trust, has made full provision for inculcating the obligation and assisting the discharge of both duties. 

In his sermon, Jacobson gave an example of the continued relevance of the vision of constitutional order set forth in the state prayers of the Book of Common Prayer:

And scriptural, eminently scriptural and catholic as we have reason to bless God our Common Prayer Book is, often as this has been acknowledged even by those who have on other grounds felt bound in conscience to dissent from us, it was never perhaps in any case more strongly and clearly shewn how scriptural and how catholic our services are, than when the final separation of the British settlements in North America from the mother country, now more than sixty years ago, rendered it necessary for such of our brethren there as continued to adhere to our Communion, to make certain alterations in those very prayers of which we have just been speaking. It is at once astonishing and pleasing to see how extremely slight, how entirely verbal and formal the alterations were which the convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America was constrained to adopt; and that, though the change in government and policy was so great and so universal.

Even in the American Republic, then, there was a need for the theology of the state embodied in these prayers, with the prayers for the President and the Congress in PECUSA's BCP 1789 differing little from the 1662 prayers for Monarch and Parliament.  This example of the American Republic, however, should not lead us to think that Jacobson was indifferent to constitutional form.  His subsequent description of the British Constitution was couched in terms that would have been routinely heard from High Church pulpits in the generations before the 'constitutional revolution':

And surely, situated as we are, our Kings and Queens acting as nursing-fathers and nursing-mothers to the Church,—with a well-balanced Constitution —living under the sanctions of law,—not the caprice of a Ruler,—the rights of all orders, even the humblest, carefully maintained,—and the duties of all, even the highest, rigidly enforced,—we ought to feel no difficulty, no backwardness, in complying with the exhortation of the Apostle: we ought to be forward and hearty in offering our prayers and thanksgivings for all who are in authority over us.

I have previously suggested that Keble's famous sermon of 14th July 1833 was part of a wider trend of High Church 'National Apostasy' sermons in the face of the 'constitutional revolution'.  Jacobson's 1840 sermon suggests that, after the initial shock of 1828-32, an Old High Church political theology of constitutional order quickly re-asserted itself.  His reference to Protestant Episcopalianism in the United States is indicative of how deeply rooted this theology was in the Anglican experience, surviving even the rupture of the Revolutionary War, and being restated amidst the new constitutional order which followed.  What is more, however, his description of the British Constitution in 1840 suggests that an Old High Church understanding of British constitutional order was not overturned by the 'constitutional revolution' and the end of the Anglican state, but was neither inappropriate nor incoherent post-1832, persisting with vigour and popularity.

This does suggest a significant resilience in the Old High Church tradition.  The crisis of 1828-32 was not a death knell.  Or, to put it another way, the charge of 'National Apostasy' did not resonate and - apart from some Tractarian infatuation with the Jacobitism of the Non-Jurors - had little relevance after 1833.  When the perpetual curate of Iffley preached on that First Sunday after Trinity in 1840, he gave voice to an enduring Old High Church vision of British constitutional order, stronger, more widespread, and with deeper roots than the charge of 'National Apostasy'.

(The first photograph is of the state of Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace, depicting her coronation.  The second is of the Parish Church of Iffley, Oxford.)