"The participation of the benefit of his resurrection": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for Holy Communion on Easter Day

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 Easter Day. Here we see the lively sacramental piety of the pre-1833 Old High tradition, with the Holy Communion received on this greatest of feasts being the means by which our participation in the Risen Christ is "sealed and effected":

They began to apprehend the special operation and effects of his triumphant resurrection, as it formed a demonstration of the life to come, and as it became the earnest and commencement of that living intercession by which men were invested with the benefits of Christ's death as a sacrifice for sin, and enriched with every other privilege of his glorious kingdom. It was then that the measures of divine grace, which had been before applied in secret streams, and by smaller currents, began to be poured out, and openly entailed upon that Church which was quickened as one body, together with its head, and which, as a living subject, was from thenceforth to exert its vital powers.

Surely we cannot have to seek far for the full meaning of that phrase which is applicable to the body of the Christian Church, when we consider how the participation of the benefit of his resurrection, and the influences of his grace, or in one word, the privilege of our communion with him, are sealed and effected by his own peculiar blessing upon those ordinances and those means which he hath instituted for that purpose in his Church. We know well that his own performance of his own part is expressly promised, and never will be wanting where the candidates for such benefits and blessings, put no hindrance through their own default.

After a break for the Easter octave, laudable Practice will return on 25th April.

A blessed Easter to all readers.

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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...

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