"War is amongst the most dreadful evils that can afflict a nation": a British sermon from the Revolutionary War

Continuing this short Remembrancetide series of extracts from wartime sermons of Anglicans across the centuries, today an extract from a 1781 fast day sermon during the Revolutionary War. The preacher, while a chaplain to the King and convinced of "the justice of our cause", explicitly acknowledged the evil of war, particularly when waged against those who previously shared the same allegiance. He went on to declare that victory does not erase the cost of war:

War is indisputably amongst the moſt dreadful evils that can afflict a nation; it is one of those scourges with which God chastises his sinful and rebellious creatures; an instrument of vengeance in the hands of the Almighty, wherewith he punishes the grievous sins and offences from time to time committed against him. If there be a circumstance that can render this destructive tyrant still more formidable, that can enhance his severity and double his terrors, it is doubtless that calamity in which we are ourselves at this period so unhappily involved; it is the melancholy consideration that we are opposing those with whom we have been so long and so intimately united; carrying our arms against those whom we have so long loved, cherished, and protected; that those who were once the objects of our esteem, tenderness, and affection, are now become the mark to which are bent all our hostile preparations ...

I repeat it, my brethren; let not any partial success bring on security, or indulgence be the mother of forgetfulness; the face of war is terrible, even when he smiles upon us; his best and most gorgeous robe is stained with blood; and even when he wears a crown, it is a crown of thorns. Whilst victory waves her banners before us, we are too much delighted with the prospect, to consider how dearly they were purchased: the news of conquest reaches to every ear, and is echoed by every tongue; but who, in the meantime, listens to the shrieks of the widow, or regards the cries of the orphan?

From Thomas Francklin's sermon 'On the Fast Day, February 21, 1781' in his Sermons on Various Subjects, Volume I. The picture is of a memorial which marks the burial place of a British soldier who fell in the service of the Crown during the Revolutionary War.

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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...

laudable Practice

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