"The cleansing fount set open": Horsley on the Sacraments

Part of the purpose of laudable Practice is to act in a small way as a means of ressourcement for the 18th century High Church tradition, drawing attention to the theological and spiritual richness of a tradition routinely overlooked or dismissed within Anglicanism. Extracts of works from a range of figures have therefore been shared on this blog: Waterland, Secker, Van Mildert, Mant, those from the Hackney Phalanx. Now we turn to Samuel Horsley (b.1733, consecrated to the episcopate 1788, d.1806). F.C. Mather's excellent study of Horsely, High Church Prophet: Samuel Horsley and the Caroline Tradition in the Later Georgian Church (1992), demonstrated how Horsley embodied the vitality of the High Church tradition in the later 18th century.

Here in a sermon on I John 5:6 (Sermon IX in Volume One of his sermons), Horsley echoes Augustine's reading of the blood and water pouring forth from the Crucified Lord's pierced side as the fount of the Sacraments. This deeply patristic reading (also found in Chrysostom) exemplifies the sacramental richness present in the 18th High Church tradition, contrary to the historiography established by Tractarianism.

All the cleansings and expiations of the law, by water and animal blood, were typical of the real cleansing of the conscience by the water of baptism, and of the expiation of real guilt by the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, and virtually taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's supper. The flowing therefore of this water and this blood, immediately upon our Lord's death, from the wound opened in his side, was a notification to the surrounding multitudes, though at the time understood by few, that the real expiation was now complete, and the cleansing fount set open.

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