laudable Practice

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume II (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Sunday after Ascension.  Pott, reflecting an Old High spirituality which fostered gratitude for the ordinary blessings of earthly life and was deeply suspicious of an excessively ascetical discipline, points to earthly joys as an anticipation of heavenly delight: Our Lord's ascension into heaven, so newly celebrated in the Church, inclines us very naturally to direct the thoughts to that scene of glory into which he entered, and to which he hath promised to receive his faithful servants, who shall aspire to those everlasting realms of light and bliss ...  Surely it is most injurious to the character of Christian hope, as it exists here, to say that its consolations and fruitions are fit only for those who have no worldly pleasures to engage their notice and attention, and no present satisfaction...

Today, a further extract from R.W. Jelf's January 1842 sermon,  The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent . Amidst the Tract XC controversy, and c ontrary to Newman attempting to force the Formularies into a Tridentine mould, Jelf points to the Anglican Formularies unambiguously rejecting Trent's errors and embodying a Reformed Catholicism, scriptural and patristic: Thus she inculcates the value and necessity of Good Works, whilst she disclaims for them the smallest particle of merit. She inculcates Justification by Faith alone (per fidem - sola fide) "only for the merit (propter meritum) of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ", but "good works (she teaches us) do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith". She acknowledges "the services of Angels as ordained and constituted in a wonderful order", (Collect for St. Michael and all Angels) and commemorates the excellent graces of the Saints, and...

The 1722 Restoration Day sermon preached in St Paul's Cathedral, London, by Joseph Watson - then rector of one of Wren's churches in the City of London, St. Stephen Walbrook - provides an excellent example of how 29th May was celebrated by 18th century Anglicanism as a restoration of both constitutional and ecclesiastical order.  (The reredos of St. Stephen Walbrook - pictured - provides a fine example of Restoration Anglicanism.) The deliverance from the rule of the Protectorate, "a Government founded in violence", was a cause for gratitude: We were freed then this Day from Rapine, Plunder, Bloodshed and Oppression of all Kinds, with which we had long been harass'd , the natural Effects of Liberty and Property unguarded: As this also was, and ever will be, the Effect of a Government founded in Violence; the same Measures being always necessary to supports such Governments which at first erected them.  The bitter experience of that rule, however, was the conseque...

From A   Course of Sermons for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1821) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for this Holy Thursday, Ascension Day, in which the soteriological meaning of the feast is richly celebrated: I will name but one more particular of that eminent advantage which we have by our blessed Lord's ascension into heaven, and by the prospect of his sure return. We are thus invited to pursue that track which leads from earth to heaven. Let us learn, then, by our Lord's ascension, as the Son of man, to those bright scenes, that our nature has been indeed advanced to heaven, and that even our frail body will not binder our ascending thither, if our minds and hearts shall have gone before, and if we have so been partakers, in some sort, of our blessed Lord's ascension. By such spiritual elevations, and such good desires, the soul aspires to those scenes of bliss as to its own place, and enjoys som...

From Richard Montagu's Articles of Enquiry in the Primary Visitation of the Diocese of Norwich, 1638: an insight into the significance given by the Laudians - and, later, by the Old High tradition - to the Absolution at Mattins and Evensong: Do your parishioners come late to church, and not at the beginning of Divine service, to make their humble confession unto Almighty God? who, by coming late, deprive themselves of the benefit of absolution, and do become unprofitable hearers and petitioners in that holy action ... Doth he use the absolution to be pronounced on penitents, not as it is a declaration of forgivenesse, but as a prayer, altering the words of the Common Prayer-book, as some have presumed to do? (It is worth noting that in addition to 17th century Puritans denying this to be an Absolution, and turning it into a prayer, the Ordinariate has also explicitly done this .)

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 - extracts from a sermon for Rogation Sunday, on the opening words of the Gospel of the day, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you".   Pott offers a wonderful description of how prayer reflects the truth that grace does not destroy nature, for prayer is a means "of gradual renewal and recovery": At all times the needs of men which have been remedied by the counsels of the Lord, and supplied with a rich abundance by the dispensations of his grace, must receive their succour in a way consistent with a state of gradual renewal and recovery; and to that state the exercise of prayer is more especially adapted. He who moves but by steps and stages, and has need of vigilance and caution at every step, and who must measure every stage with some sad reflection upon that which falls out by the way to ...

It may be an odd literary source to invoke in order to help describe why I am an Anglican, but Mole's thoughts in The Wind in the Willows  do it rather well, not least during Rogationtide: As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime. I am "an animal of tilled field and hedgerow": the ordered, decent, modest rites and ceremonies of the Book of the Common Prayer.  ... well accepted and approved by all sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons of ...

Following on from yesterday's post on the Laudian Bramhall's agreement with Cranmer on ceremonies, an extract from a 1627 Donne sermon  at St. Paul's Cross, indicating how the Laudian understanding was also rooted in the pre-Laudian Jacobean Conformity exemplified by Donne: Ritual, and ceremonial things move not God, but they exalt that devotion, and they conserve that order, which does move him ... though they be not of God's revenue, yet they are of his subsidies, and though they be not the soul, yet are the breath of religion.

From Bramhall's The   Consecration of Protestant Bishops Vindicated , a Laudian view of ceremonies, perfectly echoing Cranmer's views in ' Of Ceremonies '.  This returns to a continued theme pursued by laudable Practice : Laudianism was a defence of norms accepted at the Reformation and maintained by the Elizabethan Settlement, in the face of an agitation seeking to undo and overthrow those norms. Ceremonies are advancements of order, decency, modesty, and gravity in the service of God, expressions of those heavenly desires and dispositions, which we ought to bring along with us to God's house, adjuments of attention and devotion, furtherances of edification, visible instructors, helps of memory, exercises of faith, the shell that preserves the kernel of religion from contempt, the leaves that defend the blossoms and the fruit; but if they grow over thick and rank, they hinder the fruit from coming to maturity, and then the gardener plucks them off. There is great d...

The Laudians, says Diarmaid MacCulloch stood "aloof from most Protestants as well as from the Church of Rome".  It is a statement which summarises MacCulloch's view of Laudianism as rupture, a fundamental break with the Protestantism of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana . He continues: Thus in July 1624 one of the most uninhibited spokesmen of the movement, Richard Montague, said that he sought a Church of England that would 'stand in the gapp against Puritanisme and Popery, the Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety'.  This was the beginning of the via media discussion, which would have a major future in the Anglican tradition. This, to say the least, seriously misunderstands Laudianism.  To begin with, Montague's famous A New Gagg (1624) was, as the text makes abundantly clear throughout, an explicit defence of Protestantism: Against Protestants your Gag is directed, not Puritans: and yet all your addresses, well-neer, are against Puritan Positions, malitious...

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 of Easter.  The sermon opens with a recognition of the continued season of Easter, " these days of religious celebration and memorial in the Christian Church". It then focuses on the reality and significance of the spiritual life ("the one great interest"), a good example of the spiritual vitality of pre-1833 Old High tradition: Let us, then, as the general lesson to be gathered from our past reflections, bear in mind, at all times, the true dignity and the real value of the soul. Let us learn frequently to put the question which our Lord framed for us, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Upon this ground of just comparison, we may bring all things temporal, all the g...

R.W. Jelf's January 1842 sermon -  The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent   - was preached amidst the Tract XC controversy.  The contrast between Jelf's sermon and Tract XC was stark.  While Newman sought to conform Anglican formularies to Tridentine doctrines,  Jelf restated the Old High critique of "the aberrations of the Church of Rome". Demonstrating how "innovation by addition" resulted in the Roman Communion "maintaining and enforcing doctrines and practices which are not Catholic at all", Jelf overturned Newman's approach in Tract XC by calling for the Church of Rome to follow the example of the Church of England: Yet, after all, it is painful thus to dwell upon the failings of a sister Church, which, amidst all her corruptions, has retained many Christian truths and holy practices in common with ourselves. Would God, that she would "remember from whence she is fallen, and repent,...

Having recently purchased Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England (2021), I thought it might be useful to repost my 2018 review of Anti-Arminians . --- The renaissance in the historical appreciation of 18th century Anglicanism - condemned by Newman in 1841 as the "miserable century" - began with J.C.D. Clark's  English Society 1688-1832 .  With a few exceptions (particularly E.R. Norman's 1976  Church and Society in England 1770-1970 ), historians of Left and Right, and latter day Puritans and Tractarians, agreed with Newman in presenting a moribund national Church during the 'long' 18th century (i.e. 1660-1832).  Clark radically challenged this, with his picture of an intellectually vibrant, robustly orthodox, socially and culturally significant Anglicanism. From this has flowed a number of ground-breaking works, demonstrating that Clark's interpretation - with its focus on political th...

Bramhall, addressing a Roman apologist who accused the Church of England of schism, demonstrating the modesty and generosity of the Laudian vision in the midst of a disunited and divided Christendom, rejecting both "anabaptistical perfection" and complete agreement in doctrine and practice before living together in communion: He maketh our Church to be in worse condition than the Church of the Donatists, because "Protestants grant" the Church of Rome doth still retain 'the essence of a true Church', but the Donatists did deny that the Catholic "Church of their time was a true Church". Doth he not see, that he argueth altogether against himself? The schism of the Donatists consisted therein, that they did uncharitably censure the Catholic Church to have lost the essence of the Church; this was indeed to go schismatically out of the communion of the Church: and on the other side this is our safety and security, that we are so far from censuring the C...

Of all the European churches, which shook off the yoke of the papal authority, no one proceeded with so much reason and moderation as the church of England; an advantage, which had been derived partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate in this innovation, partly from the gradual and slow steps by which the reformation was conducted in that kingdom. Rage and animosity against the catholic religion was as little indulged as could be supposed in such a revolution: The fabric of the secular hierarchy was maintained entire: The antient liturgy was preserved, so far as was thought consistent with the new principles: Many ceremonies, become venerable from age and preceding use, were retained: The splendour of the catholic worship, tho' removed, had at least given place to order and decency: The distinctive habits of the clergy, according to their different ranks, were continued: No innovation was admitted merely from spite and opposition to the former usage: And the new religi...

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 Third Sunday after Easter, on the opening words of the Epistle of the day, " Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims". Yet again, we see an example of Old High preaching - warm, meaningful, spiritually serious - that undermines the Tractarian 'High and Dry' allegation. Let us briefly trace this grand resemblance, which is to be completed between the spiritual progress of sincere believers and the former travels of God's ancient servants and elected people. The course of pilgrimage, in the Christian sense, consists, then, in the daily advancement of the reasonable mind to better measures of improvement, and to more elevated heights of expectation: it consists in the constant progress which is to be made in good attainments: and in acquiring clearer views of future happi...

Over the next few weeks, laudable Practice will be featuring excerpts from the works of Richard William Jelf (1798-1871).  Ordained in 1821, Jelf was one of those whom Peter Nockles lists as the 'Zs': the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition. Jelf's January 1842 sermon - preached amidst the outcry against Tract XC, with Old High bishops issuing a series of highly critical charges - exemplifies the alternative to Newman's proposal.  The title of the sermon itself captured the Old High vision - The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent .  Jelf's preface to the published version of the sermon immediately indicates Old High concerns in the aftermath of Tract XC. In a pithy expression of characteristic Old High piety, Jelf - with the emphasis in the original - rejected the notion that Anglicanism needed to be remade in the image of Newman: in the bosom of our own holy Apostolic Church, as she is , we may f...

I have previously mentioned how much I enjoyed recently reading Brett Salkeld's Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (2019).  The exposition of Thomas's teaching in the context of the eucharistic debates of previous centuries in Latin West was particularly useful, as was the engagement with Calvin's teaching.   The final sentence, however, ensured that I finished the book with a renewed gratitude for Article 28's robust rejection of Transubstantiation: Transubstantiation, properly understood, highlights and reinforces our agreements about God, creation, Christ, the Church, and the destiny of the world - a world Christ is drawing to himself, bread first. 'Bread first'?  The Apostle Paul declares that the Risen Christ is the firstfruits of the redeemed creation (I Corinthians 15:22). Being 'in Christ', the Church therefore, in some way, shares in this: bearing "the fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22) and "the fruits ...