laudable Practice

‘From one degree of glory to another’: Baptism, Lent, and the gift of life in Christ At the Parish Eucharist & Holy Baptism on the Sunday before Lent, 2022 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 How might we describe what we do here on Sundays in our parish church?  How might we describe how we seek to live out the Christian faith, Monday to Saturday?  I think most of us would instinctively choose quite modest words to describe both.   We might talk of our Sunday worship as a means of growing in faith, hope, and love; we might talk of seeking in daily life to love God and neighbour. In our first reading this morning, however, from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle employs more dramatic language to describe Christian worship and the Christian life: “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Sp...

In a recent North American Anglican article, it was claimed of Anglican-Lutheran ecumenical agreements, "Helsinki, Niagara, and Porvoo clearly and closely echo Augsburg Confession art. X, and as such signal the ascendancy of the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence in ecumenical Anglicanism". Is this the case? Consider the relevant statements from each of these Anglican-Lutheran agreements: In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, crucified, risen and ascended, is truly present in his body and blood under the elements of bread and wine - Helsinki Report , 1982; We believe that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper - Niagara Report , 1987; We believe that the body and blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper (Eucharist) - Porvoo Common Statement , 1993. These statements do indeed cohe...

On this feast of Saint Matthias, a very simple but yet revealing comparison.   This is what the Second Helvetic Confession says of such observances: we do not approve of feasts instituted for men and for saints. Holy days have to do with the first Table of the Law and belong to God alone. Finally, holy days which have been instituted for the saints and which we have abolished, have much that is absurd and useless, and are not to be tolerated. Now contrast it with the Augsburg Confession : Of Usages in the Church they teach that those ought to be observed which may be observed without sin, and which are profitable unto tranquillity and good order in the Church, as particular holy days, festivals, and the like. The Book of Common Prayer - both in its 1559 and 1662 forms - is, quite clearly, following the Augsburg Confession rather than the Second Helvetic Confession.  Not only does it make liturgical provision for observance of commemorations of the Saints, it also - in 15...

From Bramhall's Discourse III: A Reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon (1656), a response to a work by the Roman titular Bishop of Chalcedon, in which it was claimed that the Church of England had forsaken sacramental communion with "all the ancient Christian Churches": But for all ancient Churches, Grecian, Armenian, Ethiopian, & c. - none excluded, not the Roman itself, - we are so far from forsaking them, that we make the Scriptures, interpreted by their joint belief and practice, to be the rule of our reformation. And wherein their successors have not swerved from the examples of their predecessors, we maintain a strict communion with them. Only in rites and ceremonies, and such indifferent things, we use the liberty of a free Church, to choose out such as are most proper for ourselves, and most conducible to those ends for which they were first instituted, that is, to be advancements of order, modesty, decency, gravity, in the service of God, to be adjuments to atten...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday. Preaching on the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, Pott echoes the ancient themes of Septuagesimatide, the call to prepare for Lent as a time to be restored and renewed, "by all the means of grace": To us, then, the clear inference from this whole view, is plainly this; that we must return back to the ground of faith and duty, from which the first pair departed in their day of trial, entailing many a consequence of their sad forfeiture upon us: we must learn, and indeed we are abundantly encouraged and enabled so to do, by all the means of grace, and the succours of redemption, to walk in faith, to embrace the word, obey the will, and trust in the mercies and the promises of God; to lean to no other motives of persuasion, and to rest upon no other ground of confidence or hope ... Let it then be...

‘Clothed and in his right mind’: preparing for the season of healing At the early Eucharist on the Second Sunday before Lent, 2022 Luke 8:22-35 Luke’s account of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac may sound very far removed from our respectable, rational twenty-first century lives.   He lived naked among the tombs; he would break the shackles placed on him by the local community, so disturbed were they by him; he would go out into the wilderness, there tormented by his demons. And we are left in no doubt that the profound disordering of this individual’s life was because of the influence of dark spiritual forces.  “Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him.” When those demons are expelled by Jesus, they enter into the nearby herd of swine, who rush into the lake and are drowned. For respectable, rational people it all sounds a bit too much. Except that behind our respectable, rational appearances, we can be much closer...

The earlier post exploring the use of 'Table' in 1662 sought to emphasise that such usage was not an expression of a 'low' eucharistic theology.  What, however, of the absence of 'Altar' from 1662? Surely this suggests a 'low' understanding of eucharistic sacrifice? The absence of 'Altar' from 1662 needs to be set alongside its consistent use in the post-Reformation Church of England.  Eamon Duffy notes that the parson of Morebath - who conformed and ministered faithfully under the Elizabethan Settlement - continued, in parish documentation, to refer to his parish's new Communion Table as the 'Altar'.  As Duffy comments: The combination of the old sacral language of altars ... is instructive, and full of significance for the future.  Already, however unwittingly, however tentatively, a new ceremonial sensibility was in formation. Such "a new ceremonial sensibility" was not the avant garde and Laudianism: it was already e...

Bramhall in An answer to Monsieur de la Militiere (1653), after describing the witness of the Royal Martyr, turns to "the other most glorious Martyr". The description he provides evokes thoughts of the ancient episcopal martyr to whom Peter Heylyn looked in his later account of Laud, Cyprianus anglicus .  It is difficult to think of a more effective summary of the content and significance of Laud's witness than that provided by Bramhall: the other most glorious Martyr, the late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, a man of profound learning, and exemplary life, of clean hands, of a most sincere heart, a patron of all good learning, a Professor of ancient truth, a great friend indeed, and earnest pursuer, of Order, Unity, and uniformity in Religion ... I wish all your great Ecclesiastics had his Innocency, and fervent zeal for God's Church, and the peace thereof, to plead for them at the day of Judgement. Elsewhere in the work, Bramhall points to Saint Cyprian's vision of e...

In  An answer to Monsieur de la Militiere  (1653) - a response to a Roman apologist - Bramhall defends the stance of the magisterial Reformation on  justification, merits, and the invocation of Saints, identifying this with the teaching of "the ancient Church", and reminding us of the Protestant nature of Laudianism over and against Tridentine norms.  Set alongside the other aspects of Bramhall's defence of the ecclesia Anglicana in this work, it points to a robustly Christocentric reformed Catholicism, richly sacramental, episcopally ordered because this is a divine institution and the apostolic order, rooted in patristic teaching and practice. Concerning Justification, we believe that all good Christians have true inherent Justice, though not perfect according to a perfection of degrees, as gold is true Gold, though it be mixed with some dross. We believe that this inherent Justice and sanctity, doth make them truly just and holy. But if the word Justification be ...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Septuagesima Sunday. Pott powerfully captures the ancient theme of Septuagesimatide as orienting us towards the redemptive events of the Paschal season and the preparatory discipline of Lent, " that work of renewal and recovery by which the first righteous image of integrity may once more be renewed in us".  The sermon is a reminder of the deep liturgical spirituality which could be found in the pre-1833 High Church tradition: Let us look, then, with some sad reflections on the former state of man, which the text [Genesis 1:26 - the reading of Genesis, of course, traditionally commenced at Septuagesima] describes in terms so glowing and significant: but let us look also with good hope and with joyful confidence, to him in whom that image was restored, and concerning whose accomplished dispensations it is said so tr...

How should we to interpret Hooker's famous dictum on the Eucharist, "The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament" ( LEP V.67.6)? It is not a denial that the consecrated Elements are changed: Christ assisting this heavenly banquet with his personal and true presence doth by his own power add to the natural substance thereof supernatural efficacy, which addition to the nature of the consecrated elements changeth them and maketh them that unto us which otherwise they could not be (V.67.11).   It is not to say that the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist are mere figures: the Eucharist is not a bare sign or figure only ... the efficacy of his body and blood is not all we receive in this sacrament (V.67.8).   It is not to deny that there is a "conjunction of his body and blood with those elements" (V.67.10).  The Bread and Cup "are his body and blood fo...

As of old it was called Mensa Domini as well as Altare Domini , the one having reference to the participation, the other to the oblation of the eucharist ... it is in most of the fathers sometimes called a table. Cosin's words are a reminder that the Prayer Book's consistent use of 'The Table', 'the Lord's Table', 'the holy Table' is not to contradict any use of 'Altar' but, rather, to emphasise that we "verily and indeed" feed on our Lord in the holy Eucharist.  Mensa Domini is a declaration of a true feeding in "these holy mysteries".   There is, therefore, no need for Anglicans to be embarrassed about such usage in the Prayer Book.  In fact, we should be celebrating it as a deeply patristic usage which points to the truth of our feeding upon the Lord's Body and Blood in the Sacrament. Consider, for example, Chrysostom's use of 'Table' in his homilies on I Corinthians: You have partaken of such a Table ...

Bramhall in An answer to Monsieur de la Militiere  (1653) - a response to a Roman apologist who had had urged Charles II to convert to Roman Catholicism - echoing the East both in its rejection of papal claims and the affirmation of the apostolic tradition kept, treasured, and interpreted by the Church of the Fathers, "the constant tradition of the Primitive Church": We receive not your upstart supposititious traditions, nor unwritten fundamentals: But we admit, genuine, Universal, Apostolical traditions, As the Apostles Creed, the perpetual Virginity of the Mother of God, the Anniversary Festivals of the Church, the Lenten fast (yet we know that both the duration of it, and the manner of observing it, was very different in the Primitive times). We believe Episcopacy to an ingenuous person may be proved out of Scripture without the help of Tradition, but to such as are froward, the perpetual practise and tradition of the Church renders the interpretation of the Text more aut...

In a recent episode of the always thoughtful and insightful Holy CofE podcast, theologian Hans Boersma was interview. Boersma - who belonged to the Reformed tradition - recently received episcopal orders, being ordained a priest in the Anglican tradition. One particular line from the interview struck me.  Addressing the vocation of the theologian, Boersma said: There is no, it seems to me, better way to do that than to be a priest in the Church. This, of course, does not deny that there other ways which are as equally good and proper: the lay theologian in the academy or the lay theologian in the service of the Church.  It does, however, suggest that the office and work of the priest is inherently caught up with the vocation of the theologian.   The vocation of the theologian in this context is not to publish but, rather, to take seriously the stuff of theology, what Thomas Aquinas calls sacra doctrina .  And it is Thomas who provides us with the key definitio...

Bramhall in An answer to Monsieur de la Militiere (1653), responding to Roman apologist's accusation that the Church of England has abolished the Eucharistic sacrifice. pointing to a richer, fuller understanding of anamnesis : you say we have renounced your sacrifice of the Mass. If the Sacrifice of the Mass be the same with the Sacrifice of the Cross, we attribute more unto it, than yourselves; We place our whole hope of Salvation in it. If you understand another propitiatory Sacrifice, distinct from that (as this of the Mass seems to be, for confessedly the Priest is not the same, the Altar is not the same, the Temple is not the same,) If you think of any new meritorious satisfaction to God for the sins of the world, or of any new supplement to the merits of Christs Passion, you must give us leave to renounce your Sacrifice indeed, and to adhere to the Apostle; 'By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified'. Surely you cannot think that Christ did ...

‘Of first importance’: turning towards the Paschal Mystery At the early Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday before Lent, 2022 I Corinthians 15:1-11 The season of Lent is approaching.  This Fourth Sunday before Lent begins a series of weeks in which we ready ourselves to enter into Lent. The liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, tells us that we are called to mark Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word”. It is right, then, that we ready ourselves, that we give time during these weeks to think about how we will observe Lent. But why? Why these Sundays before Lent, heralding the approach of the season? Why have forty days in the Spring of each year marked by prayer and abstinence, self-examination and the reading of Scripture?  The answer is found in today’s Epistle reading, Saint Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had receive...

The common cup may now be shared. So says the Church of England's most recent Covid-19 guidance , issued on 25th January, repeating the guidance given in December. It is, therefore, a rather odd time to renew the campaign to allow the administration of the Eucharist by means of individual cups : after all, the Covid-19 restrictions are being eased across society, the bishops have judged it appropriate to restore the Chalice to the faithful, and there is now no pressing need to consider alternatives. Unless, of course, this campaign has never really been about public health concerns but, rather, about altering Anglican eucharistic practice and theology .  The Book of Common Prayer 1662 makes clear, explicit provision for what is to happen with "consecrated Elements" remaining after the faithful receive the Sacrament: When all have communicated, the Minister shall return to the Lord's Table, and reverently place upon it what remaineth of the consecrated Elements, coveri...