laudable Practice

As laudable Practice prepares for a two week summer break, returning on 13th July, words from Hooker, the Laws I.2.4 - one of those many glorious passages from Hooker that are a joy and delight to meditate upon: The general end of God's external working, is the exercise of his most glorious and most abundant virtue: which abundance doth show itself in variety, and for that cause this variety is oftentimes in scripture expressed by the name of 'riches'.  'The Lord hath made all things for his own sake.'  Not that anything is made to be beneficial unto him, but all things for him to show beneficence and grace in them.

From Arthur Philip Perceval's 1836 sermon ' The Case of Naaman ' (preached in the Chapel Royal), a rather good example of the sacramental vitality of the Old High Church tradition. Such teaching and piety (and see other examples here and here ) exposes how ridiculous it is to suggest that a "drab and spiritually barren environment" preceded the Oxford Movement. Oh thou afflicted soul, the fountain of Baptism is open for thee; wash, and the leprous spots shall disappear, and thy soul shall be clean: thou shalt cease to be the child of wrath, and shalt become the child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven . "Wash and be clean;" the fountain of repentance is open to thee. If, after being admitted by baptism to the title of their inheritance, thou hast done ought by sin to weaken thy title, "wash and be clean;" let the salt tears of sorrow fall upon those spots; God will have mercy upon thee, thou shalt be forgiven. "Wash and be cle...

Every time I enter into an #Anglican parish and ask to see a priest for confession, most vergers reply “Sorry, we are not Roman Catholics”... The confession to a priest is a sacramental practice LITERALY [sic] written in the Book of Common Prayer. This recent Tweet and the responses to it caught my attention.  The Tweeter went on to say: I’ve met a priest from the Diocese of London who never heard one confession in his life. 12 years of ministry... When it was suggested that in evangelical parishes someone would offer to "pray with you", the Tweeter responded: “Pray with you” ? Meanwhile I ask a priest to fulfil his duty ? Weird. What, of course, is weird is the assumption that private confession and absolution would be a regular ministry in the office and work of the vast majority of Anglican priests. In the 21 years since my ordination as a priest, I have been asked on only three occasions for what the Irish BCP 1926 terms "the benefit of absolution, together with sp...

Upon these Feasts; Christmas Day, the Epiphany, Saint Matthias, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Whitsunday, Saint John Baptist, Saint James, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Matthew, Saint Simon and Saint Jude, Saint Andrew, and upon Trinity Sunday, shall be sung or said at Morning Prayer, instead of the Apostles' Creed, this Confession of our Christian Faith, commonly called the Creed of Saint Athanasius, by the Minister and people standing -  BCP 1662 rubric for  Quicunque Vult , at Morning Prayer . In contemporary Anglican liturges (and, indeed, in the contemporary Roman rite), this feast of the birth of St John the Baptist would pass with one Creed being said, the Nicene Creed at the Holy Communion.  In the current context in the UK, with public worship not yet having resumed, if Common Worship Daily Prayer is used, or the Roman Liturgy of the Hours, no Creed will be said on this day. The contrast with the Prayer Book provision is stark: Athanasian Creed at Mattins, Nicene Creed a...

As part of a continuing series suggesting that Keble's Assize Sermon of 14th July 1833 belonged to a wider, established High Church genre of 'National Apostasy' sermons (see here  and here for previous examples), Arthur Philip Perceval's sermon ' On National Guilt ', preached at the Chapel Royal on 17th July 1831, stands as a rather striking evidence of this genre.   While Keble addressed the aftermath of the 'constitutional revolution' of 1828-32, with the reforming Whig administration reordering the Church of Ireland, Perceval's sermon was addressed in the midst of the revolution.  His particular target was the Sacramental Test Act 1828, the legislative action which commenced the undoing of the Anglican state: Look back three years, and remember what took place then: when, as a nation, we determined to honour those who, by profession, do dishonour God; and proclaimed to Him and to the world that we considered those who deny the divinity of our God...

When Tract Number 1 invoked "our apostolical descent" as the source of the Church of England's authority, rather than parliamentary establishment, and challenged its readers to "choose your side" between these, it was no new teaching and no new rallying cry.  As previously indicated , John Hume Spry's 1817 Bampton Lectures  had set forth the Church of England as a "divinely constituted society", with the episcopacy as "confessedly of apostolic origin".   Another example of Tract Number 1 reflecting common place Old High Church thinking is seen in Arthur Philip Perceval's 1831 Letter on the Subject of Church Reform , a response to a fellow cleric's Whiggish proposals amidst the upheavals of the 'constitutional revolution' of 1828-32.  Perceval here robustly rejects an Erastian understanding of the establishment, pointing to the apostolic authority of the Church of England and the rights of Convocation: I will proceed, ho...

From Secker's Sermon XCVI - from a series entitled 'An explanation and defence of the Liturgy of the Church of England' - on the pastoral wisdom of the petitions in the Litany against "sudden death" and for deliverance "in the hour of death, and in the day of judgement": We have indeed been blamed for praying against sudden death. But the whole Christian church hath done it from ancient time: and nature and reason, as well as religion, directs us to do it. Some, we own (and we wish they were many), may be always prepared thoroughly, in all respects, to die at any time. Yet even these may have cause to wish for warning of their death, on account of other persons. Their example under the approach of it will usually be very instructive; and their dying advice mere than ordinarily beneficial to their friends, dependents, and relations: whom also their being taken away at once may shock, to a degree, for  which they would he extremely sorry, whatever they mi...

Mostly these new traditionalists are Catholic. None are Protestant, which maybe isn’t surprising, since arguably classical liberalism and modern capitalism are Protestant projects. Or maybe Protestantism is too intellectually exhausted to produce serious political thinkers!?! So said a recent article in Providence , the journal of The Institute of Religion and Democracy. Let's begin with the suggestion that "Protestantism is too intellectually exhausted to produce serious political thinkers". A few Anglican names came immediately to mind.  (To save any debate about whether or not Anglicanism is Protestant - hint: it is - we can agree that for most of the 'new traditionalists', Anglicanism is indeed Protestant.)  Oliver O'Donovan.  Nigel Biggar. Rowan Williams.  Roger Scruton.  Each of these Anglican thinkers have made serious contributions to contemporary political theology.   To give some examples, Biggar's forthcoming What's Wrong with Rights addres...

A recent Earth & Altar post on Anglican identity caught my attention with its critique of an understanding of the Formularies as Anglicanism's 'centre': Another way to understand Anglican identity is to attempt to locate a fixed center of practice or belief, deviation from which is generally thought to be the reason for modern Anglicanism’s ecclesial woes. The most common “center” consists in the final shape of the documents of the Elizabethan Settlement, specifically the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with the 39 Articles, and the ordinals of the same. The final form of the homilies may be included for good measure. After a hundred years of discord in the wake of Henry VIII’s reign, it is supposed that the Church of England settled into the distinctive form, the true form, of its life: Catholic order, Protestant doctrine, and royal supremacy. In most modern forms of this, “cultural” tendencies of (usually) English genius are included. Unfortunately, what counts as “proper...

This extract from Secker's Sermon XXVII - with its characteristic High Church emphasis on Christianity as religion , as public cult - offers a useful rebuttal to those presently urging a 're-imagining of Church'. As a recent (and all too predictable)  Church Times article proposed, this would "release us, at last, from the prison of our church building", "liberate us from our habitual routines" of attending public worship, and allow a new focus on prayer via "Facetime, Whereby, or Zoom".  It may all sound edgy and trendy for clergy of a certain generation, but what it actually means is a withdrawal of the Church into the private sphere, an abandoning of public presence.  It would be spirituality, not religion. By contrast, Secker's sermon reminds us that the habitual routine of public worship is integral to Christianity as religion, to the Church as sign of and witness to public truth - "the Christian system of religion and virtue...

From Secker's Sermon I, on Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom": The danger of superstition is a very powerful reason, why religious belief and practice should be watched over, and directed right: but cannot possibly be a reason, why dissolute profaneness should be encouraged or suffered. Let rational piety be thoroughly established, and superstition falls of course. But if the former be rooted out, the latter will certainly grow up in its place. There is a natural bent in human minds to believe and respect an invisible power: and if it be turned aside from pointing, in a proper manner, towards its proper object, it will soon acquire some other form; probably an absurd and pernicious one. Infidelity promises great freedom and enjoyment of life: but in fact it proves, in proportion as it prevails, a state of madness and confusion, of perpetual danger from others, of discomfort and desperate resolutions within men's own breasts: and therefore...

When the newly disestablished Church of Ireland revised the Book of Common Prayer in 1878, it removed the 1662 form of absolution - "I absolve thee from all thy sins" - from the Order for the Visitation of the Sick.  In the words of the 1878 Preface : The Special Absolution in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick has been the cause of offence to many; and as it is a form unknown to the Church in ancient times, and as we saw no adequate reason for its retention, and no ground for asserting that its removal would make any change in the doctrine of the Church, we have deemed it fitting that, in the special cases contemplated in this Office, and in that for the Visitation of Prisoners, absolution should be pronounced to penitents in the form appointed in the Office for the Holy Communion. The background to this was the Tractarian insistence that the inclusion of this form of absolution in 1662 mandated regular and routine private confession and absolution.  So was its remova...

... all mention of it was omitted from the Prayer Book of 1549 and all subsequent books. Its observance was abrogated by 5 & 6 Edward VI., cap. 3, and its name was excluded from the table (1662) of 'all the feasts that are to be observed in the Church of England throughout the year.' Thus did the 1906 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline say of the feast of Corpus Christi.  It is, of course, factually correct.  This alone, however, does not explain why classical Anglican liturgy made no provision for the feast nor does it give a rationale for the refusal to do so.  Is it the case that any Anglican refusal to celebrate Corpus Christi is merely a case of a grim Protestant rejection of popular festivity, combined with a depressingly 'low' Eucharistic theology? Let me offer three reasons which might suggest otherwise. Firstly, the proper place for reflection on the gift of the Eucharist is the yearly celebration of the Paschal Mystery. The narrat...

It was nearly 7 years after Keble's 'National Apostasy' sermon when Christopher Wordsworth (future Bishop of Lincoln) preached his sermon ' The Grounds of Christian Loyalty ', at the Accession Day service on 20th June 1841.  As Nockles notes, Wordsworth was one of the Old High Churchmen who challenged the Tractarian invocation of the notion "drawn from the later Nonjurors that church and state were two distinct societies only accidentally brought into a condition of union".  In other words, the constitutional revolution of 1828-32 - no matter how much it shook the Old High Church tradition - "offered no ... excuse for the radical reshaping of the constitutional theory of church and state envisaged by the Tractarians". Wordsworth's 1841 Accession Day service offers an example of the post-1833 persistence of Old High Church political theology. At the outset of the sermon, Wordsworth invoked a classical Old High Church conviction - the polity c...

From Jeremy Taylor's Sermon XX, 'Of Christian Prudence' , Part I.  The sermon was preached during the Commonwealth period: "we are fallen into times that are troublesome, dangerous, persecuting, and afflictive". Against this background, Taylor insists that the natural desire to "preserve our lives and our estates ... for ourselves and our relatives", far from being incompatible with Christian Faith, is both a Christian duty and a means of working out our salvation. An "imprudence" which suggests these are not compatible undermines the Church's witness, turning "the whole religion into a forwardness of dying or beggary".  The "parts and offices of a holy life" are to be found in the normal, ordinary duties, responsibilities, and vocations of daily living, not in an imprudent pursuit of a Weird counter-cultural stance . It is an office of prudence to serve God so that we may at the same time preserve our lives and our esta...

If you are wondering about the title of this post, it is a phrase taken from Pius XI's 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii , criticising the decision of the 1930 Lambeth Conference to recognise as licit the use of artificial contraception by married couples: the Catholic Church [sic] , to whom God has entrusted the defence of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain. The wording of the encyclical came to mind when reading a recent piece on The North American Anglican which identified the pronouncement of the 1930 Lambeth Conference as abandoning orthodoxy and embracing "radicalism".  (The article's wider focus was a good and interesting case for the Oxford Movement's continuity with the 18th century High Church tradition, to which I hope to return in a later post). With this decision by the conference, ...