"The remedies of seasonable recollections": A Hackney Phalanx Sermon for the Fifth 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 Fifth Sunday in Lent. This extract is yet further evidence of the ascetic seriousness which can be found in pre-1833 Anglican Lenten preaching, suggesting something rather different to the Tractarian critique of the supposedly 'High and Dry' tradition:

Let us then be careful how we misapply the pleas of natural infirmity. Let not the sense of weakness lead us to forget the remedies which are placed within our reach; the remedies of grace and truth; the remedies of seasonable recollections, of humble thoughts, and timely exercises of religious culture. Above all, let us learn to despise the gross folly of pretended frailties, when the sad and voluntary servitude to base and unworthy objects of pursuit is manifested in our whole choice, and evident in all our conduct.

The lowest estimate which we can frame of the healing nature of divine grace, which is given together with the word of truth, must inevitably oblige us to admit, that unless we shall be wanting to ourselves, those succours will suffice to countervail the force of human frailty in due measure, and to correct the influence of corrupt propensities ... If then the burden of our common frailty, those weights, of which it is so significantly said, that they so easily beset us, if these impediments remain; yet let us remember, that they do not remain as exceptions to our duty, but as motives rather to religious prudence and exertion.

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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...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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