"Most wonderful, most wise": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

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 First Sunday in Lent. This extract offers a deeply patristic, richly Christological reading of the Lord's Temptation: yet another reminder of how the Old High tradition could pre-empt the Oxford Movement in offering preaching grounded in the Fathers and unfolding the mysteries of the liturgical year. (A good case could be made that Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons share significant similarities with Pott's sermons.)

It provides an excellent exposition of the Litany's emphasis that the Lord's Fasting and Temptation was salvific ("by thy ... Fasting and Temptation, Good Lord, deliver us"). Also striking is that Newman's great hymn 'Praise to the Holiest in the Height' is anticipated in this 1817 sermon: another indication of how the pre-1833 Church of England was significantly different to the portrayal later offered by Tractarian history.

We may remark then, in the first place, that it seems to be sufficiently pointed out to us in all the the page of Scripture, that Christ, who became the second Adam, in whom the human nature was to regain its lost integrity, and to experience a still more abundant exaltation, was to fulfil those measures of obedience which were due to God from the first head of mankind, who failed so lamentably in his day of trial. This one observation, easy, natural, and obvious as it is, will serve at once to explain to us the true nature and design of that memorable circumstance in our Lord's life, in which be underwent a term of trial, or temptation, in the wilderness. We shall readily perceive how just and well-founded this remark is, by considering the manifest resemblance which appears between the first temptation in the first scene of man's abode, before he forfeited the happiness of Eden; and this new temptation which took place in the wilderness, the substituted soil for that which was the first allotted portion of mankind.

Most wonderful, most wise and consistent, will appear the method of divine love in man's redemption, when we regard it as so ordered, that in all points the human nature might recover its whole lustre, and reach its full perfection, in him who condescended to assume it for our sakes; who raised and glorified it by his whole example, and enriched it by his merits, the beneficial influences and effects of which redound for ever to his faithful servants, and form the true wealth and the promised glory of his chosen and adopted household.

We cannot, therefore, feel surprised when we find that trials of the same kind with those to which the first man was exposed, should be encountered by him who vouchsafed to take our nature, and to stand in our place when we could no more abide in judgment, and were unable, in our own strength, to recover the first footing which was lost by disobedience. Nor can it excite our wonder, upon this consideration, when we find that the first act of trespass which had brought misery and death into the world, was distinctly and signally contrasted by the constancy and fortitude of him who stood firm where Adam fell, who fulfilled the will of God where it had been left undone: who kept the terms of duty where they had been broken, and who accomplished all this, under the same character, and in the same nature, which the first man received from his Creator. Observe, then, the manifest and full propriety which is thus discovered to us in the whole work of our redemption.

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

Search This Blog