laudable Practice

From Jeremy Taylor's A Dissuasive from Popery, Book II , Section VII, 'Of Picturing God the Father, and the Holy Trinity' (in Volume XI of The Works ). While Taylor here offers a standard Reformed critique of depictions of the Holy Trinity that had become the norm in the piety of the Latin West, his reference to "like three men talking to Abraham" - the imagery used in the popular Rublev icon - is worth particularly noting. Taylor describes such imagery as tending to "depauperate our understanding of God", reminding us that rejecting it was not (and is not) 'disenchantment' but, rather, an affirmation of the "adorable majesty" of the "divine essence". Against all the authorities almost, which are or might be brought to prove the unlawfulness of picturing God the Father, or the Holy Trinity, the Roman doctors generally give this one answer; that the fathers intended by their sayings, to condemn the picturing of the divine essen...

In their sermons for the annual 29th May thanksgiving, two Archbishops of Canterbury (one serving, one future) - the 'Latitudinarian' John Tillotson (1691-94) and the High Church Thomas Secker, described by Ingram , and criticised by some contemporaries, as the "Laud figure of the age" (1758-68) - revealed the extent of the ' unity and accord ' which shaped Anglicanism through the 'long' 18th century. The sermons point to a shared narrative regarding the most divisive periods in the recent history of the English church and state - the civil wars of the 1640s and the Revolution of 1688. They also indicate a common theological underpinning to this narrative, concerning providence, the necessity of government, and the blessings of civil peace. In his 1693 Restoration Day sermon , Tillotson commenced by stating the grounds for thanksgiving, in the words of the official title for the liturgy of the day "the Restoration of the Government after many Year...

Also the Holy Ghost: the Comforter. The Te Deum's daily reference to the Holy Spirit has a particular relationship to Pentecost.  Describing the Holy Ghost as "the Comforter" grounds our praise in the pentecostal experience.  As we are aware during this Whitsun week, the collect of Whitsunday petitions that we may "evermore rejoice in his holy comfort", echoing the Gospel of the feast: And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever ... But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. What is more, this is also anticipated in collect of the Sunday after Ascension Day - "send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us" - and in the Gospel: When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me...

From Discourse XXVI of Cambridge Platonist Benjamin Whichcote, 'That the Unity of the Church is carefully maintained by all those who are sincere Christians': 'Tis a great mistake in zeal for truth, to let it run out in some smaller matters, which have scarce been thought of by the whole series of Christians of all ages, but only of late. Some allege the severity of some of the ancient prophets, as Elijah, Elisha, and the Baptist. But the dispensation wherein such carriage and practice was not unusual, from extraordinary persons, is now changed into a new one, whose distinguishing character is charity. We are carefully to bridle all motions of distempered heat, the effects whereof are as unjustifiable, as itself. Christ hath made it the cognisance of his disciples, to love one another. This, of course, is characteristic of the Cambridge Platonists.  What comes next, however, is perhaps rather surprising: Archbishop Laud says, the church of England is not such a shrew to he...

This shews the great fault of the contempt and neglect of the sacrament of baptism, which was instituted by our Saviour as the solemn rite and ceremony of admitting persons into the Christian religion, and the means of making us partakers of this gift of the Spirit, and of all the blessed fruits and effects of it; so that this sacrament cannot be neglected or slighted, without great affront to the Christian religion, and contempt of one of the greatest blessings promised in the gospel. They that were admitted to the solemn profession of Christianity by baptism, were "made partakers of the Holy Ghost"; and this not only in the apostles' times, but in all after ages; for this "promise of the Holy Ghost was to them and their children, and to all that were afar off, even to as many as the Lord their God should call"; that is, to all that should embrace the Christian religion, and make a solemn profession of it in baptisın, in all succeeding ages to the end of the wo...

What hath been discoursed upon this argument, discovers the vanity of many men's pretensions to the Spirit. In a sermon on 'The Ordinary Influence of the Holy Ghost, on the mind of Christians', Tillotson (Sermon CC,  Works of Tillotson ,  Volume VIII ) sets out "The more ordinary and gentle influence of the Spirit of God, upon the minds of all those who believe and embrace the gospel". This "ordinary and gentle influence" begins with the Sacrament of Baptism: In a word, this gift of God's Holy Spirit is bestowed upon all those who by baptism are admitted into Christ's religion; and if it be cherished and complied with, and the blessed motions of it be not resisted and quenched by us, it will abide and continue with us, and produce those blessed fruits and effects which I have before mentioned.  The presence and activity of the Holy Spirit is "commonly very gentle and secret", in language echoing Taylor and later echoed by Secker : And ...

And because this profession of faith was made in baptism, whereby men are solemnly initiated into the Christian religion, hence it is, that this gift of the Holy Ghost is in Scripture promised, and said to be conferred in baptism: (Acts ii. 31) "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost". And (Heb. vi. 4) the apostle, speaking of those who had solemnly taken upon them the profession of Christianity, thus describes them"; Those who were once enlightened, (that is, baptized, for so baptism is frequently by the ancients called illumination) those who were once baptized, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost; implying, that this heavenly gift of God's Holy Spirit was conferred upon Christians in their baptism; and hence it is, that "baptizing with water and the Holy Ghost" were frequently pu...

The woes of the British Labour party have recently produced a series of critiques from those associated with Labour highlighting the party's failure to recognise the significance of national allegiance and patriotic sentiment.   As Tony Blair - Labour's most electorally successful leader in history - pithily put it: People do not like their country, their flag or their history being disrespected. He went on to explain that this was not an unthinking nationalism or blinkered reaction: The left always gets confused by this sentiment and assume this means people support everything their country has done or think all their history is sacrosanct. They don’t. But they query imposing the thinking of today on the practices of yesterday; they’re suspicious that behind the agenda of many of the culture warriors on the left lies an ideology they find alien and extreme; and they’re instinctively brilliant at distinguishing between the sentiment and the movement. They will support st...

From the  1834 Bampton Lectures  of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel), Sermon VI, addressing Justification "by Faith only".  Laurence took care to point to the Lutheran rejection of the allegation that sola fide encouraged "Enthusiasm", reducing faith to an individual experience of " an internal confidence, that his name is  written in the book of life", irrespective of repentance and good works.  After quoting Lutheran sources, he turns to Article 11: Both in their object and tendency perfectly accord; but the latter is,  if possible, more guarded than the former against the obliquities of Enthusiasm. Noting the Article's reference to the Homily of Justification, he quotes from the Homily to illustrate that "justified by Faith only" was not intended to deny the necessity of repentance and works: For when we are said, as the same  Homily remarks, to be justified by faith only, it  is not meant "that this our own act to believ...

Many thanks to the North American Anglican for publishing my essay ' Listening to the wise son of Sirach: the significance of the use of the Apocrypha in Tillotson's preaching '.  The essay suggests that his use of the Apocrypha points to Tillotson standing within a tradition of sapiential theology inherited from Hooker and the Cambridge Platonists. It is also a call for contemporary Anglicans to deepen their use of the Apocrypha as a means of renewing a sapiential preaching which can resonate with a contemporary culture seeking a meaningful, enduring wisdom. ------ Rather than explicitly locating Tillotson within a 'Latitudinarian' tradition – mindful that the meaningfulness of the category ‘Latitudinarian’ has increasingly been convincingly challenged – we might suggest that Tillotson’s use of the Apocrypha, with its emphasis on the Wisdom books, stands within a tradition of sapiential theology in the post-Reformation Church of England, derived from Hooker, sus...

With the easing of the Covid-19 restrictions allowing for a restoration of the normal parish worship schedule, I have been preparing for the return of parish Mattins by reading Mant's Notes (1820).  The Notes assembled commentary on the Prayer Book services from Old High Church sources of the 17th to early 19th centuries.  Reading the commentary on the Te Deum, it is interesting to note how the various sources point to this canticle as as providing an answer to Tertullian's jibe.  To begin with, we might consider how the Te Deum - with its Trinitarian and Christological emphasis - is an appropriate response to the First Lesson from the Old Testament: The propriety of singing or reading the Te Deum after the first lesson must be evident to every observer. The Scriptures of the Old Testament set before us God's exceeding great and precious promises, the rectitude of his moral government, and his wonderful dealings with his church and people from the earliest times. If we ...

You might have guessed, I’m more of a Pelagian than an Augustinian. It is not a line I would want to hear in any Anglican - indeed, any Christian - sermon.  It was, however, said in a recent sermon in Washington National Cathedral.  So what did the self-confessed Pelagian in the pulpit preach?   For John, human love is always derivative of the source, God’s love. And my friends, this is exactly why I struggle with the doctrine of original sin. If the divine image of God and God’s love is coded into our factory settings, why then should we, in our purest essence as newborns, why would we be stained with sin in all its wretchedness? How can an innocent child be birthed from sin, when the Bible tells us that we are birthed from love? I love this story, that the Celtic Theologian John Philip Newell tells of the fourth century Celtic monk Pelagius, who was convinced that when we hold a child immediately after its birth, when we feel the softness and smell the sweetness o...

From a 1671 collection of sermons by John Torbuck,  Extraordinary dayes, or, Sermons on the most solemn Feasts and fasts throughout the year , a sermon " On Holy-Thursday, Or the Ascension ". With Ephesians 4:10 as the text, the sermon opens by placing the Ascension within the outworking of the plan of salvation Here is the Highest ascent answering to the Lowest descent imaginable, and both in one and the same person. He that descended, is the same also that ascended, &c. This the Apostle speaks of Christ in his Exposition on that Prophetical Psalm the 68, proper for this day. His Descent we have already treated, from Heaven to the Earth, the lowest part of the world, at his Incarnation; from the surface of the Earth, into the Bowels thereof (the grave) at his passion. He descended from the bosom of his Eternal Father (that excellent Glory, 2 Pet. 1. c. 17.) into the lap of a poor Virgin: He that thought it no robbery to be equal with God, took to him humane nature and in...

During long months of the pandemic, millions of us turned to nature. Our research on the mental health impacts of the pandemic showed going for walks outside was one of our top coping strategies and 45% of us reported being in green spaces had been vital for our mental health. Websites which showed footage from webcams of wildlife saw hits increase by over 2000%. Wider studies also found that during lockdowns, people not only spent more time in nature but were noticing it more. It was as if we were re-discovering at our most fragile point our fundamental human need to connect with nature. So said the UK's Mental Health Foundation , introducing the theme of this year's Mental Health Awareness Week: nature.  This builds, of course, on an increasingly well-recognised body of research, ably summarised - with compelling personal accounts of mental health - by Lucy Jones in Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild (2020) and Isabel Hardman The Natural Health Service: how nature can...