laudable Practice

These great and merciful benefits of God (if they be well considered) do neither minister unto us occasion to be idle, and to live without doing any good works, neither yet stirs us up by any means to do evil things: but contrariwise, if we be not desperate persons, and our hearts harder then stones, they move us to render our selves unto God wholly with all our will, hearts, might, and power, to serve him in all good deeds, obeying his commandments during our lives, to seek in all things his glory and honour - from The Homily of Justification . If one aspect of  The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition , edited by Samuel L. Bray and Drew N. Keane, captures the character of the project, it is the inclusion of The Homily on Justification in the Appendices.  Now, this is not to make a conventional, straightforward point about Cranmer, the Prayer Book and the Reformation's  sola fide .  Rather, I am suggesting a slightly different emphasis.  ...

Yesterday's post on the Laudian use of 'Lord's Supper' brought to mind an extract from Ratzinger's otherwise excellent essay 'On the Meaning of Church Architecture' in  Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life , referring to St Paul in I Corinthians 11: the separation of meal and Eucharist that Paul is attempting here had radical consequences above all for liturgical history.  The Christian form of the liturgy, what is distinctive about Christian liturgy, becomes detached from its native Jewish soil, in which Jesus handed it down.  Since then, as J.A. Jungmann has demonstrated, no one called the Eucharist the Lord's Supper again until the sixteenth century; it was simply named the Eucharist. Ratzinger, put simply, is wrong. In a  homily  on I Corinthians 11, Chrysostom applies 'Supper' to the celebration of the Eucharist: Consider, when the Apostles partook of that holy Supper, what they did: did they not betake themselves ...

Last week on Twitter I saw this question from a US commentator: Does anyone who's never been a Baptist call it the Lord's Supper? My immediate response was to point to Cranmer ('The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion'), Article 28 ( De Coena Domini ), and the Catechism ('the Supper of the Lord').   That, however, was too easy. What about the avant-garde and the Laudians?  Did they act like Baptists and called the Sacrament 'the Lord's Supper'? Yes, they certainly did. First, let us consider Lancelot Andrewes.  Here he is preaching on Isaiah 6:6 : there is such an Analogie and proportion, between the Altar and the Lords Table, between the burning Cole and Bread and Wine, offered and received in the Lords Supper ... So the element of bread and wine is a dead thing in it selfe, but through the grace of Gods spirit infused into it hath a power to heate our Soules: for the elements in the Supper have an earthly and a...

From a 1676 Lenten sermon by Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford, drawing together the themes of Lenten abstinence, Holy Week, and preparation for receiving the Sacrament on Easter Day: I beseech you also remember the faithful Promise of Christ. That if we ask, seek, and knock, this Grace will be given unto us. And never more seasonable than now to seek it; for you know, Lent is the holy time appointed by the Church for Fasting and Praying, and this ensuing Week is the Holy of Holies, and more especially requires it. How you have spent the former part, God and your own hearts best know; but if amiss, I, with St. Peter, beseech you, That the time past may suffice to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in Lasciviousness, Lusts, excess of Wine, Revellings, Banquettings, and such like. Very unfit for Christians at any time, much more in the holy time of Lent. We must therefore, according to St. Paul's Directions, earnestly endeavour to redeem the time past by great Hum...

Anthony Sparrow's Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer  (first published in 1655, re-printed numerous times thereafter) was the standard Prayer Book commentary in the Restoration Church of England.  In his notes on the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Sparrow points to "the Antiquity of this day", echoing a wider Restoration theme of " primitive Christianity revived ".  There is also more than a hint of this when he explains why the Church of England only retains the Marian feasts of the Purification and Annunciation, not the Assumption and her Nativity: "Our Church keeps only the Purification and Annunciation which are common to her and our Blessed Lord".  This roots the Prayer Book's Marian feasts in Christology, reflecting what would have been regarded as distinctive patristic Christocentric Marian understanding, in contrast with later developments. Sparrow's commentary, in other words, pointed to the Prayer Book...

With reference to the Athanasian Creed (commonly so called), we have removed the Rubric directing its use on certain days; but, in so doing, this Church has not withdrawn its witness as expressed in the Articles of Religion, and here again renewed, to the truth of the Articles of the Christian Faith therein contained - from the Preface to the 1878 Irish revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Amidst the debates in the disestablished Church of Ireland's concerning proposals for the revision of the BCP 1662, none was so fierce as that concerning the Athanasian Creed. The outcome - the Athanasian Creed was retained in the 1878 Book, the rubric for its liturgical use was removed, the text of Article 8 was unchanged - has the clear shape of a compromise.  But was it a compromise too far? From an Old High Church perspective, it might be thought that this represented something of a defeat.  Vigorous defence of the Athanasian Creed, after all, had been a characteristic of much...

From Tillotson's Sermon 'Of The Inward Peace And Pleasure Which Attends Religion': My design, at present, from these words, is to recommend religion to men, from the consideration of that inward peace and pleasure which attends it. And surely nothing can be said more to the advantage of religion, in the opinion of considerate men, than this. For the aim of all philosophy, and the great search of wise men, hath been how to attain peace and tranquillity of mind; and if religion be able to give this, a greater commendation need not be given to religion ... Now religion, and the practice of its virtues, is the natural state of the soul; the condition which God designed it. As God made man a reasonable creature, so all the acts of religion are reasonable and suitable to our nature: and our souls are then in health, when we are what the laws of religion require us to be, and do what they command us to do ... A great part of religion consists in moderating our appetites and passio...

On this anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Cranmer, words from his Answer to Gardyner (1551).  Contrary to those presentations of Cranmer which recognise him as a liturgist but reject his significance as a theologian, we see here that the root of the Prayer Book's historic ability to sustain a vibrant reformed catholic sacramental life was Cranmer's rich sacramental theology, and its joyous affirmation that "therefore is Christ present as well in baptism as in the Lord's Supper".  Or, in words from the excellent sermon at the Prayer Book Society Choral Evensong for this year's commemoration of the martyrdom, "the power of Cranmerian doctrine echoes in his liturgy".  And they be no vain nor bare tokens, as you would persuade, (for a bare token is that which betokeneth only, and giveth nothing, as a painted fire which giveth neither light nor heat,) but in the due ministration of the sacraments, God is present, working with his word and sacram...

Following on from yesterday's post , another example of High Church rejoicing in the Church of Ireland's adoption of the Articles of Religion in 1634, replacing the Irish Articles.  From Richard Mant's History of the Church of Ireland (1840), moving from lament to thanksgiving: the Reformed Church of Ireland ... the soundness of whose religious profession was also in some degree committed by incorporating with it the modern inventions of the Genevan reformer through the medium of the Lambeth Articles. But by the blessing of Providence this evil was not permitted to be of long continuance: being obliterated in the succeeding reign by a recurrence to “the Apostles' doctrine,” concerning God's will in man's salvation, as avowed in the professions of the early Christians, and perpetuated in the Articles of the Church of England. It is rather appropriate that this High Church celebration of the Irish Church's adoption of the Articles of Religion appeared in a wo...

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right - Judges 12:6. From Jeremy Taylor's sermon at the funeral of Bramhall , recounting the late Archbishop's work in securing the adoption of the Thirty-Nine Articles by the Convocation of the Church of Ireland in 1634, in place of the Irish Articles of 1614: He was careful ... to cause the Articles of the Church of England to be accepted as the Rule of publick confessions and persuasions here, that they and we might be Populus unius labii , of one heart and one lip, building up our hopes of heaven on a most holy Faith; and taking away that Shibboleth, which made this Church lisp too undecently, or rather in some little degree to speak the speech of Ashdod, and not the language of Canaan; and the excellent and wise pains he took in this particular no man can dehonestate [i.e. disparage] or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess that the Church of England is th...

It is usual to regard Ussher's  A discourse of the religion anciently professed by the Irish and Brittish (1631) as one of the earliest expressions of a Protestant narrative laying claim to Patrick and the primitive Irish Church.  Ussher's claim, however, is rather more specific than that: the religion professed by the ancient Bishops, Priests, Monks, and other Christians in this land, was for substance the very same with that which now by publike authoritie is maintained therein, against the forraine doctrin brought in thither in later times by the Bishop of Romes followers. In other words, Ussher portrayed the primitive Irish Church not merely as Protestant but as sharing the same characteristics as that of the Elizabethan Settlement: Augustinian, episcopalian, liturgical, and under the Royal rather than papal Supremacy.  Alongside affirming that "the Crowne of England hath ... obtained an undoubted right unto the soveraigntie of this countrey", Ussher contrasted t...

An excellent recent study of Tillotson's theology has suggested that "cultivating civility" was a significant part of the Latitudinarian sensibility: The message of Christian charity, delivered by Tillotson and his friends to the Englishmen who had experienced the national turmoil of the midseventeenth century, might have played not a small part in creating the comparative peace and stability of the next century.  This emphasis on the theological roots of civility, the ecclesiastical responsibility to promote civility, has surely some contemporary relevance in a cultural context in which religion is widely regarded as divisive, doing more harm than good.  A 2017 global survey suggested that 49% of people agree that religion does more harm than good.  In the United Kingdom, the figure is 62%.  As the report accompanying the survey stated, "Countries which are most likely to believe that religion does more harm than good tend to be in Western Europe". Almost cer...

... I stay Awhile within this church: its simple Furnishings, and storied windows say More to me of heaven than the pale Abstractions of theology. A day Spent in an empty church has been as full Of goodness as an age elsewhere. I feel Its peace refresh me like a holy well. Reading Malcom Guite's 'responsive poem' on Psalm 84 led me to think of how examples of his poetry could be considered as a poetic celebration of what laudable Practice has previously described as the Old High, New Low tradition: how the reserve and modesty of the Old High Church tradition can now appear to be 'Low'.  Guite himself echoes something of this when he says that this particular poem gives expression to "my love of the simple, ancient English parish church".  This simplicity has deep roots, as indicated in the account of the parish church given in the  Homily for Repairing and Keeping Clean of Churches : God's house, the church, is well adorned with places convenient t...