laudable Practice

We don't preach morality, we plant churches   - Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, Church Times , 2nd July 2021. Compare the Archbishop's comment with some classical statements of the Anglican tradition: The Wise Man saith, He that believeth in God, will hearken unto his commandments. For if we do not shew ourselves faithful in our conversation, the faith which we pretend to have is but a feigned faith: because the true Christian faith is manifestly shewed by good living, and not by words only; as Augustine saith, Good living cannot be separated from true faith, which worketh by love ... Now forasmuch as he that believeth in Christ hath everlasting life, it must needs consequently follow that he that hath this faith must have also good works, and be studious to observe God's commandments obediently - 'A Short Declaration of the True, Lively, and Christian Faith', Book of Homilies . Faith may not be naked without good works; for then it is no true faith ... If h...

With the publication of  On Eucharistical Adoration  in 1857, Keble's rejection of Old High Church eucharistic theology seemed obvious.  The work addressed "The question between a Real and Virtual Presence", dismissing the virtualism of the Old High Church tradition as "Virtual Presence and Real Absence".  Against this, Keble set forth "a Real objective Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, and that to be both eaten and worshipped, in Holy Communion".  This led Keble to a critique of Hooker which would have been unimaginable from the Old High Church tradition: The truth is, if one may venture to say it of one so wise, holy, and venerable, that on this subject, as on the Apostolical Succession, and some others, Hooker was biassed by his respect for Calvin and some of his school, in whose opinions he had been educated, and by sympathy with the most suffering portion of the foreign Reformers, so as instinctively and unconsciously to hide his eyes from...

... we have ill-learned the lessons of our Church, if we permit our patriotism to decay, together with the protecting care of the State. 'The powers that be are ordained of God,' whether they foster the true church or no. Submission and order are still duties - Keble's  Assize Sermon , 14th July 1833. Newman may have regarded the Assize Sermon as "the start of the religious movement of 1833", but what is most striking about the sermon is how it is an expression of - in the terms used by  Nockles  - "Orthodox [i.e. high church] political theology 1760-1833".  As Keble himself noted, the setting of the sermon embodied this: The very solemnity of this day may remind them, even more than others, of the close amity which must ever subsist between equal justice and pure religion; Apostolical religion, more especially, in proportion to her superior truth and exactness. It is an amity, made still more sacred, if possible, in the case of the Church and Law of Eng...

In the second volume of his 1817 collection of sermons - Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light" -  Richard Warner describes what sacramental life could be like in the pre-1833 Church of England.  Addressing how children should be nurtured in the sacramental life, he provides a rich account of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and of the Rite of Confirmation: We should bring them to God in Baptism, at the time appointed for their introduction into our holy faith: we should present them to Him at Confirmation, that they may there enter into a solemn personal covenant with the Lord, to fulfil all that was promised for them, when they were baptized: and we should lead them to the Holy Sacrament, that they may know and feel what their Saviour has done and suffered for their sake; may be drawn closer to him by this solemn ordinance; and obtain, there, supplies of his grace, to furnish them with strength to keep his commandments. By doing thus fo...

Today is the Twelfth, the celebration of the Williamite victory at the Boyne which secured the Glorious Revolution.  Wednesday is Bastille Day, the celebration of the French Revolution.  As such, it is appropriate today to recall how the Old High Church tradition rejoiced in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution, and regarded the French Revolution as a dangerous experiment, destructive of peace and liberties.  This itself should alert us to the liberality which led the Old High tradition to look upon the French Revolution with fear.  It was not a reactionary response, angrily opposing the overthrow of a supposedly divinely-ordained ancien regime .  Rather, the Old High Church tradition rejected the French Revolution because the governing order which emerged from it was hostile to and destructive of the ordered liberty which the Glorious Revolution embodied. A 1799 sermon by Jacob Mountain , Bishop of Quebec, exemplifies the thinking of the O...

It is very rare indeed to find a secular newspaper carrying discussion of the epiclesis.  It was, however, a feature of recent coverage of the covenant between the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama and the Cathedral Church of the Advent.  One report quoted the former dean explaining his decision to leave TEC for ACNA: Pearson’s views on liturgy rankled the diocesan headquarters. He was particular about the prayers said during communion, such as an epiclesis, a prayer calling on the Holy Spirit to consecrate the bread and wine used in the Eucharist. "Most of the Anglican Communion does not have this thing called an epiclesis," Pearson said. "... So, we were simply conforming to a tradition that the majority of the Anglican Communion observes." Another report referred back to a 2016 article by the former dean in The Living Church : In our context, we have elected to use the eucharistic prayer from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which has no epiclesis. As a congregation t...

It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her Publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it. Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, was the author of the Preface to the revision of 1662.  These opening words of the Preface almost certainly have their roots in an earlier statement by Sanderson, in his 1647 Oxford lectures On Conscience and Human Law :  but in this, as in many other debates, the mean between the two extremes seems to be the truer opinion , and safer to follow . In the 1662 Preface, Sanderson also applied this moderation and prudence to the description of the bitterly divisive events of the 1640s and 1650s, the civil wars and the Interregnum: the Preface refers to "the late unhappy confusions".  It would, of course, have been easy to give expression to a triumphalist Royalism and Laudianism.  Such a spirit...

Many thanks to The North American Anglican for publishing my essay ' Draw near with faith: Is closed communion historically Anglican? '. The essay seeks to be a response to issues raised by the (in the very best sense of the term) provocative ' Is open communion historically Anglican? ', highlighting that neither 'open' nor 'closed' work as appropriate descriptions of historic Anglican practice.  Rather, historic Anglican practice was shaped by a more Hookerian approach, "deeper and richer than vacuous 'open table' discourse, while also more explicitly focussed on the Christological center than can be the case with ‘closed communion’ practices". Below is the section of the essay which addressed the role of the Catechism and the Rite of Confirmation in giving expression to this Hookerian approach. ------ 'The solemn promise and vow of your Baptism': Catechism and Confirmation What, then, of the Prayer Book’s requirements regardi...

An 1817 collection of sermons by Richard Warner - Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light" -  articulated "the principles of the Established Church, as developed in our Prayer Book, and in the theological works of our most Orthodox Divines".  As such, the sermons provide an insight into the Old High mainstream of the English Church less than two decades before the emergence of the Oxford Movement.   Warner's description of "morning service" - Mattins and sermon - in the parish (which, let us not forget, was the customary main Sunday liturgy in Tractarian parishes for decades after 1834) emphasises how it provided a context for nurturing apostolical, orthodox faith and devotion: In no other connection of Christians, I may boldly say, is this advantage offered ... upon so great a scale; nor is it untrue, or illiberal to assert, that our Church alone gives the worshipper this large opportunity of drinking the stream of life at the fountai...

In 1828, Richard Warner , an English parson, published Evangelical Preaching, commonly so denominated: Its character, errors and tendency , a critique of "this new system of preaching, [which] is called, (with singular inconsistency) evangelical preaching".  Nockles in The Oxford Movement in Context , describes Warner as one of those "Orthodox churchmen in the forefront of campaigns of 'refutation of Calvinism'", an exponent of the 'Tillotsonian' character in the Orthodox school.  What is particularly striking about the work is its explicit defence of the style of preaching which was common in 18th century Anglicanism, only years before the Tractarians would commence their historiographical assault on the church of that century: That this style of spiritual teaching [i.e. of the evangelical preachers] has something wrong in it, may fairly be inferred, not only from its novelty, (for, in such cases, new and erroneous, are, usually, synonymous terms) ...

O Eternal God, through whose mighty power our fathers won their liberties of old; Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord - the collect for Independence Day, PECUSA BCP 1928. Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord - the collect for Independence Day, TEC BCP 1979. It is with some reserve that laudable Practice enters into the debate surrounding the TEC collect for Independence Day.  I am, after all, a loyal subject of Her Majesty the Queen.  I am an admirer of the Loyalist parsons Jonathan Boucher, Charles Inglis, and Samuel Seabury.  And "every particular or national Church hath authority t...