laudable Practice

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Brett Salkeld's excellent Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (2019) is Zwingli's appearance in the discussion of what is shared in eucharistic theology by Thomas and Calvin: On this, of course, Calvin (and Zwingli too!) follows Aquinas rather precisely ... How ironic, then, Calvin's reputation as a Zwinglian is based largely on his theology of signs and his affirmation of the ascension, two points on which he is in strict agreement with Aquinas! Now, to be clear, Salkeld does not propose a rehabilitation of Zwingli (such as  laudable Practice has previously suggested).  For Salkeld, Zwingli - unlike both Bullinger and (more fully) Calvin - still proposes that the bread and wine in the Supper are "signs of an absent reality".  Leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that Salkfeld does not address those statements by Zwingli which clearly confess a true participation in Christ in the Supper, it ...

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 - an extract from a sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Here Pott demonstrates the ascetic seriousness which could accompany Lent in pre-1833 Anglicanism: a time for "harder passages and severer remedies". His exhortation against "mistaken zeal" was not only wise and prudent Old High pastoral advice: it is also itself suggestive of the presence of an ascetic seriousness that required such pastoral wisdom and prudence.   ... there are Christian graces, of which repentance is one, which take their garb, and suit their aspect, to the present state of man, and adapt themselves to his occasional necessities; but which shall one day give place to qualities and dispositions which are, indeed, essential to the best condition of the reasonable soul and spiritual nature. Thus, patience under grief and sufferings; vigilance amids...

As our Mother, you love us and know us: no concern of our hearts is hidden from you. Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced your watchful care and your peaceful presence! ...We now turn to you and knock at the door of your heart. We are your beloved children. In every age you make yourself known to us, calling us to conversion ... You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times. In you we place our trust ... O Mother, may your sorrowful plea stir our hardened hearts. May the tears you shed for us make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew ... Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love. Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world ... Our Lady of the “Fiat”, on whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God. May you, our “living fountain of hope”, water the dryness of our hearts ... You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace. Amen - the Act of Consecration of ...

“My womb begot my child”: on the grace of maternal love At the Parish Eucharist on The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Mothering Sunday, 2022 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 “It's the word of Jesus that has the greatest effect  On the world. That has found the deepest resonance  In the world and in man. In the heart of man ...  A man had two sons.   Of all God's parables This one has awakened the deepest echo.” The words are those of the French poet Charles Peguy on the parable of the Prodigal Son. He captures how this parable has touched numberless hearts over centuries: how many of us see ourselves in this parable; how it evokes within us a deep recognition of our own journeys. And yet, it might seem an odd choice of Gospel reading for Mothering Sunday.  The parable, after all, is dominated by three male characters - a father, an elder son, a younger son.  Why does Jesus tell such a parable with no mention of female family members?   It is not, after all, as if...

Cranmer's decision to use the pre-Reformation post-communion prayer for the Annunciation as the collect of the feast bequeathed to Anglicans a prayer of great theological richness.  This post-communion prayer came to the pre-Reformation Latin rites from the 8th century Gregorian Sacramentary .  It was a prayer which shaped over centuries how Latin Christians had celebrated the Annunciation. In using it as the collect for the feast in the Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer no doubt was attracted by how the emphasis on grace reflected his Reformed theological agenda: "We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts".  It is the grace of God which is the cause of the Blessed Virgin's fiat .  This also points to Augustine's insight: Yes, of course, holy Mary did the will of the Father. And therefore it means more for Mary to have been a disciple of Christ than to have been the mother of Christ. It means more for her, an altogether greater blessing, to have been ...

An extract from Bramhall, again responding to a work by the Roman titular Bishop of Chalcedon, robustly denying the suggestion that the Eastern Churches are schismatic and thus not part of the Catholic Church. In looking to the Churches of East as an example of episcopal national churches, holding to the Faith of the Councils and belonging to the Church Catholic, Bramhall is, of course, claiming that the Church of England is such a Church.  Also worth noting - as previously seen - is Bramhall's contention that the Oriental Orthodoxy are not 'Nestorian', an anticipation of contemporary ecumenical agreements with the Oriental Orthodox. As for the Filioque, he rejects the suggestion that the Eastern Churches must accept it or that it indicates a difference in the Trinitarian confession. Underpinning it all is the generous Catholic vision that animated the Laudians, of non-papal episcopal Churches sharing in the confession of Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy, the admini...

He saith that I deny, that we receive in the sacrament that flesh which is adjoined to God's own Son ... I have written in more than an hundred places, that we receive the selfsame body of Christ that was born of the Virgin Mary, that was crucified and buried, that rose again, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And the contention is only in the manner and form how we receive it ... For I say (as all the old holy fathers and martyrs used to say), that we receive Christ spiritually by faith with our minds, eating his flesh and drinking his blood: so that we receive Christ's own very natural body, but not naturally nor corporally - Archbishop Thomas Cranmer responding to a Roman apologist in his Answer to Smyth's Preface , 1551. For both you and I agree herein, that in the sacrament is the very true and natural body and blood of Christ, even that which was born of the Virgin Mary, which ascended into heaven, which sitteth on the r...

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 the Third Sunday in Lent. This extract echoes Lenten preaching and piety across the centuries, on the need for the Christian to contend against the evil one.  The ascetic seriousness of the sermon is indicated at its opening - " Our ruin and our redemption, our subjection to the tyranny of Satan, and our deliverance by the might and succour of a conquering Leader".  It points to something rather different than the 'High and Dry' critique levelled by Tractarianism against the Old High tradition. Too true it is, that the common enemy is still received among men. He has his trains and subtle ties to carry on his malicious purposes, though his own armour, wherein he defied God, is taken from him, and his own head bruised and crushed by the triumphs of the cross. He has the spirit of delusion still to practise wi...

Anglicans - despite the best efforts of Gregory Dix - regularly celebrate the legacy of Cranmer the liturgist. Cranmer the liturgist continues to shape how we as Anglicans pray, and not just at Choral Evensong.  Many contemporary Anglican eucharistic rites continue to employ prayers from Cranmer.  To take an example from the Church of Ireland's BCP 2004, its Order 2 Holy Communion includes the Collect for Purity, an absolution drawn from Cranmer, the Prayer of Humble Access, an invitation to receive based on Cranmer's words of Administration from 1552, and a blessing which is again from Cranmer.   It is not, however, only Cranmer the liturgist who influenced and (in many ways) continues to influence Anglicanism.  Classical Anglicanism was profoundly shaped by Cranmer the theologian .  Much as this might offend or, indeed, horrify some contemporary Anglicans, it is the case that Cranmer's theological views continue to determine significant aspects of the An...

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, a fine rejoinder to the Roman apologist invoking the words of the prophet Isaiah to urge obedience to the Roman See: To conclude; the same advice which he giveth unto me, I return unto himself. Attendite ad petram unde excisi estis - "Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn". Look unto the Church of Hierusalem, and remember, that "the Law came out of Zion, and the Word of the Lord out of Hierusalem". Look unto the Church of Antioch, where "the disciples were first called Christians". Look unto the other Eastern Churches, in whose regions the Sun of Righteousness did shine, when the Day of Christianity did but begin to dawn in your coasts. Look to the primitive Church of Rome itself, whose "Faith was spoken of throughout the whole world", and needed not the supplemental articles of Pius the Fourth. Lastly, loo...

Responding to the claim of a Roman apologist that "Pope Celestine" sent "St. Patrick into Ireland", thus supposedly demonstrating that "the Bishops of Rome exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Britannic Churches", Bramhall points to the consecration and sending of Patrick (by bishops in Gaul) as exemplifying a relationship between neighbouring churches rather than any claim jurisdiction.  As an example, he notes how "a French synod" - not the Bishop of Rome - was responsible for aiding the Church of the Britons against the influence of the Pelagians: If the Bishop of Rome had been reputed to be Patriarch of Britain, and much more if he had been acknowledged to be a spiritual monarch, it is not credible that the Britannic Church should have applied itself for assistance altogether to their neighbours and not at all to their superior. When he turns to the mission of Patrick, Bramhall declares that it likewise demonstrates "not one sy...

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 - an extract from a sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent. Pott here sets forth a thoroughly patristic understanding of Lent as a preparation for the celebration of the Lord's Passion, together with the benefits of Lenten observance for the renewal of the interior life.  As mentioned in previous posts in this series, this is striking testimony to the vitality of the liturgical spirituality in the pre-1833 Church of England and, in this particular case, to the observance of Lent: The subject well deserves our notice at this period of the year; when, as members of one household, who are connected in one form of discipline, and bound to keep one fellowship, we are invited, for wise and beneficial purposes, to prepare ourselves, by special exercises of the mind, and by fit expressions in the life and conduct, for those days of memorial, whe...

I have not turned my back on those who remain in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. This is the claim of Michael Nazir-Ali in the final paragraph of his recent First Things article, 'From Anglican to Catholic'. Rejecting the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion; seeking ordination afresh despite having been ordained deacon, priest, and bishop in the Anglican Communion; embracing a whole raft of doctrines explicitly rejected by Hooker, Andrewes, Laud, Taylor, Keble, and Pusey - quite how this is described as not turning his back on those who remain Anglicans is, to say the least, distinctly odd.  Put more bluntly, it is nonsense. Rather more revealing is an earlier statement in the article: I had often boasted that Anglicanism, although reformed, had by divine providence retained both the sacred deposit of faith and the sacred ministry. 'Although reformed'? Perhaps nothing so quite indicates the extent to which Nazir-Ali has rejected classic...

Lent in a time of war: on being marked with the Cross At the Parish Eucharist on the Second Sunday in Lent, 2022 Philippians 3:18 Last Sunday was the First Sunday in Lent for Western Christians.  For our brothers and sisters in the great Orthodox Churches of the East it was ‘Forgiveness Sunday’, the day before Lent begins. Observing ‘Forgiveness Sunday’ means that Orthodox Christians enter into the fast of Lent acknowledging how they have sinned against their neighbour, how they have failed to see their neighbour as a child of God. And last Sunday, ‘Forgiveness Sunday’, 120 kilometres north-west of Moscow, Father Iohann Brandin, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, was preaching at the celebration of the Divine Liturgy in his small, rural parish. In the sermon he told of how Russian forces were shelling Ukrainian cities and killing citizens of Ukraine, those whom he called “brothers and sisters in Christ”.  He had earlier written on the website of his parish, “We cannot ba...