"The true middle path between the two extremes": An Old High sermon during the Tract XC controversy

Another extract from R.W. Jelf's January 1842 sermon, The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent. The contrasts with Newman and Tract XC are stark throughout the sermon. As Newman was beguiled by Tridentine decrees and papal supremacy, Jelf - in authentic Old High fashion - rejoices in the gift of the Reformed Catholic identity of Anglicanism, adhering to the Primitive mean against both Roman additions and Dissenting deficiencies:

Must we wander also with one or the other to the right hand or to the left, or alternately with each? God be praised! we have no excuse for doing so - the Church, in which it has been our blessed privilege to be born and baptized, has been led by God's grace and mercy to take the true middle path between the two extremes. She has avoided the superstitious and vain additions of the one, without countenancing the wilful deficiencies of the other. She unites in herself, what is true in God's word, with what is traced in God's dealings with His Church; she is equally Scriptural and primitive; and this union must be the characteristic of God's Church, because what the Apostles wrote, they and their successors must have taught and practised. The Primitive Apostolic Church could not but hold the Apostles' doctrine as well as their fellowship; and our Church, in setting before her that primitive model, together with the written oracles of God as her supreme guide, has taken the only reasonable course for arriving at the truth.

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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...

laudable Practice

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