"Grace does not give us new faculties, and create another nature": Jeremy Taylor against the Weird

There has not been an 'against the Weird' post on laudable Practice for some months, so it is perhaps a good time to return to the theme (see the original post which introduced this occasional series). A key theme has been heeding how Laudian and Old High Church sources provide a critique of the "radical rejection" and acceptance of cultural marginalisation advocated by proponents of counter-cultural 'Weird Christianity'.

Below, Jeremy Taylor in An Apology for the Liturgy (1649) powerfully rehearses the core of the Laudian and Old High Church refutation of appeals to the 'Weird', expounding the implications of the dictum that 'grace does not destroy nature'. It is through ordinary habits, means, and actions - not the mystery cult - that we are ordered to our supernatural end:

For it is a rule of the School, and there is much reason in it, Habitus infusi infunduntur per modum acquisitorum, whatsoever is infused into us is in the same manner infused as other things are acquired, that is, step by step, by human means and co-operation, and grace does not give us new faculties, and create another nature, but meliorates and improves our own. And therefore what the Greeks called habits, the Christians used to call gifts, because we derive assistances from above to heighten the habits, and facilitate the actions, in order to a more noble and supernatural end. And what Saint Paul said in the Resurrection, is also true in this Question, That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and then that which is spiritual. The graces and gifts of the Spirit are postnate, and are additions to art and nature. God directs our counsels, opens our understandings, regulates our will, orders our affections, supplies us with objects and arguments, and opportunities, and revelations in scriptis, and then most when we most employ our own endeavours, God loving to bless all the means, and instruments of his service, whether they be natural, or exquisite.

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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...

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