laudable Practice

Wise counsel from Jeremy Taylor, delivered during the dark days of the Interregnum, on the offering of Morning and Evening Prayer: Keep strictly, as much as you are able, to those times of the day, which you have designed to appear in before the Lord for then you offer up not only your prayers, but the strict observation of set times, which is a double sacrifice, and an evidence that you will not dispense to pretermit that holy work for any avocation [i.e. minor occupation]. He that refers himself at large to pray, when he is at leisure, gives God the worst of the day; that is, his idle time. I account them prudent, therefore, that are precise in keeping canonical hours of prayer, as they call them, so they pray to God alone, who alone knows their heart and so they pray "with the Spirit, and with the understanding": that is, in a tongue wherein they know what they say, and understand the language wherein they vent the meditations of the Spirit. This was the milk that the chur...

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 Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. Preaching on II Kings 5:13 - Naaman's servant exhorting him to heed Elisha's call to wash in the Jordan - Pott identifies this with the "ordinary path of faith and duty" laid out in Scripture, contrasting it with a spirituality characterised by " vain singularitics, or fantastic zeal".  This extract epitomizes Old High piety, its rejection of ' the Weird ', its pastoral wisdom, and its embodiment of the gentle yoke: We have the same reason which is here urged upon Naaman inducing us to exert a cheerful readiness in our obedience to the word of God, as it is made known by a merciful Redeemer. His yoke is easy, and his burden light. How great cause then have we to address ourselves with joy and thankfulness, to keep the terms and conditions ...

In the deluge of commentary that accompanied this year's Lambeth Conference, the references to 18th century Anglican church history in the Archbishop of Canterbury's second keynote address  were, strangely, entirely ignored.  I am, of course, being somewhat ironic.  After all, the Archbishop's views on 18th century Anglicanism do not have quite the headline-making power as his management of the human sexuality debate.   His views on the 18th century church, however, are not without significance and not least because caricaturing 18th century Anglicanism has frequently been a sign that those involved are seeking to reorder Anglicanism.  Ryle, for example, promoting his own brand of Victorian low church evangelicalism, absurdly regarded 18th century Anglicanism as defined by "natural theology, without a single distinctive doctrine of Christianity, cold morality, or barren orthodoxy". Newman famously condemned "the last miserable century", which actually wo...

In the third of his 1844 Bampton Lectures,  An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England , Jelf  - one of those whom Nockles lists as the 'Zs', the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - celebrated the historic succession maintained by the ecclesia Anglicana . He did in terms which exemplified the Old High tradition, considering Reformation and catholicity as complementary rather than contradictory (unlike the Tractarians). His rejoicing in the preservation of the historic succession amidst the trauma of the 1640s and 1650s reflects Old High native pride in the restoration of the Church and episcopate, in a manner echoing  Taylor's great sermon at the restoration of the Irish episcopate in 1661. And underpinning it all is a profound sense of gratitude for the episcopal succession as a gift of grace. And here let us pause to offer our thanksgivings to Him, from whom "every go...

Many thanks to the North American Anglican for publishing my essay ' Foundations of unity and accord: in praise of Saint Bartholomew’s Day 1662 '.  The essay seeks to offer an alternative to the Whiggish assumptions which dominate contemporary Anglicanism regarding that Saint Bartholomew's Day and the so-called 'Great Ejection'. Below is an extract from the essay, considering the stance of Richard Baxter. --- The Non-conforming representatives at Savoy were not declaring the surplice, kneeling to receive, and signing with the cross at Baptism to be impossible barriers to communion.  If they were not to be abolished, the ‘Exceptions’ declared, there should be given “such a liberty, that those who are unsatisfied concerning their lawfulness or expediency, may not be compelled to the Practice of them, or Subscription to them”.  In other words, the Non-conforming representatives stated that they would minister in a Church of England in which these ceremonies, while no...

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 - a sermon for Saint Bartholomew's Day. Preaching on the Gospel of the Day (Luke 22:24-30), and pointing to the accounts given by "ancient writers" of the apostle's "labours and his martyrdom", Pott explains (in fine Old High fashion - and note the reference to Cranmer's wisdom) how this festival, together with the festivals of the other apostles, edifies and encourages us in the life of Faith: In addition, therefore, to the stated Sabbaths which rank first in dignity and order, and make such indispensable and welcome claims upon the loan of time, the żeal and wisdom of the early ages have marked the Christian calendar with many profitable invitations to religious exercises and devotion; to public prayer and private recollections, as each one may be able. At such times the lives of those who stand distinguishe...

As I continue to read Stephen Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England (2021), I am struck by the assumption throughout that Reformed Conformity straightforwardly represented 'orthodoxy' in the ecclesia Anglicana .  This seems - at best - rather difficult to reconcile with the debates of the Jacobean and Caroline Church. For example, the English delegation's contribution to the Synod of Dort is described by Hampton as "the most authoritative statement of English Reformed Orthodoxy since the Lambeth Articles".  Not referenced is the fact that the Supreme Governor of the Church of England refused authority to publish the Lambeth Articles.  No minister of the Church of England had to subscribe to them.  What is more, Overall's opposition to the Lambeth Articles did not prevent his advancement:  Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge 1596, Dean of St. Paul's 1601, Bishop of Coventry and L...

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 Tenth Sunday after Trinity. His text was taken from the Gospel of the day, from Luke 19: " And when he was come near , he beheld the city,  and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known,  even thou, at least in this thy day, the things  which belong unto thy peace; but now they are  hid from thine eyes".  The sermon challenges later Tractarian caricature of the 'Two Bottle Orthodox', characterised by formalism and laxity.  It indicates the religious seriousness of the Old High tradition and, also worthy of note, the willingness to articulate this from the pulpit.  Also of significance is the reference to the Sacrament at the close of this extract, a reminder of the consistent Old High emphasis on faithful reception. How many excellent advantages are daily sacrificed and ...

I n the second of his 1844 Bampton Lectures,  An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England , Jelf  - one of those whom Nockles lists as the 'Zs', the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - expounds the Old High understanding of the salvific nature of the Church and does so in a manner which beautifully captures the character of the ministry of the parish church, from cradle to grave: But the Church on earth is not only to those who are truly united with her a means of grace; not only an element in each process of sanctification; she is also a means leading directly to many of the means by which grace is to be attained. She is herself "a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ"; she is the authorized channel of the two holy Sacraments of the Gospel; she furnishes a body of men, whom the Holy Ghost calls from within her to be the appointed ordinary stewards and dispensers of these S...

Another example of an antecedent for Taylor's critique of a radical Augustinianism in Unum Necessarium is found in Peter Heylyn's examination of the theology of Dort in Historia Quinqu-Articularis: Or, a Declaration of the Judgment of the Western Churches; and more particularly of the Church of England, in the five Controverted Points (1660). Heylyn's work was, of course, published after Unum Necessarium , but it points to an aspect of the Elizabethan Settlement that provides a basis for a critique of radical Augustinianism: there was another Canon passed in this convocation [of 1571], by which all Preachers were enjoined to take special care ... that they should maintain no other doctrine in their publick Sermons to be believed of the People, but that which was agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and had from thence been gathered by the Catholick (or Orthodox) Fathers, and ancient Bishops of the Church.  To which rule, if they held themselves as they ...

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 Ninth Sunday after Trinity.  The text for the sermon is taken from the concluding words of the Gospel of the day, the strange words spoken by the Lord at the conclusion of the Parable of the Unjust Steward: " And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations". The sermon is a good example of the Old High use of Trinitytide to expound the duties of the Christian life; in this case, the need for a wisdom and prudence in those duties which " imitate[s] the unjust steward's wisdom, so far as it will teach us to provide for future needs, and to employ fit means to further our designs". It may be granted, then, that there are many points of wisdom, to be found in some parts of the conduct ...

In 1891, Arthur Wentworth Eaton - Canadian born, but a graduate of Harvard and a cleric of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States - wrote his The Church of England in Nova Scotia and the Tory Clergy of the Revolution .  His judgement on the Nova Scotia Anglicanism into which he had been born was withering:  The chief defect of the Churchmanship of Nova Scotia, is a lack of intellectual breadth, the result of the isolation of the diocese from great centres of thought and action, and there have consequently been many places where the attitude of the Church towards other religious bodies has been narrow and intolerant ... In Nova Scotia the Church may hold her own, but she can never gain greatly until her clergy come to understand that she is not simply the ancient Church of England, or the Church of the Tory people of the American Revolution, but that she is also a Church with infinite powers of adaptation to the intellects and hearts of nineteenth century me...

Following on from the consideration of  Unum Necessarium   in Jeremy Taylor Week, it is worth discussing how earlier divines of the ecclesia Anglicana provided antecedents for Taylor.  The issue of the fate of infants dying before Baptism led Taylor to refer to an incident involving King James VI/I and the Scottish Church: That it having been been affirmed by S. Austin , that Infants dying unbaptized are damn'd, he is deservedly called duruspater Infantum, and generally forsaken by all sober men of the later ages: And it will be an intolerable thing to think the Church of England guilty of that which all her wiser sons, and all the Christian Churches generally abhor. I remember that I have heard that K. James reproving a Scottish Minister, who refus'd to give private Baptism to a dying Infant; being ask'd by the Minister, if he thought the Child should be damn'd for want of Baptism, answered, 'No, but I think you may be damn'd for refusing it': and he said w...

It is strange to me that Men should desire to believe that their pretty Babes which are strangled at the gates of the Womb, or die before Baptism, should, for ought they know, die eternally and be damned, and that themselves should consent to it. So said Taylor in  Unum Necessarium , stating a significant pastoral implication of his teaching on Original Sin. That his critics would regard as heterodox the assurance his teaching gave to the parents of infants who died before Baptism struck Taylor as perverse: If I had told them evil things of God and hard measures, and evil portions to their Children, they might have complained; but to complain because I say God is just to all, and merciful and just to Infants, to fret and be peevish because I tell them that nothing but good things are to be expected from our good God, is a thing that may well be wondered at. No less perverse was the notion that God would damn unbaptised infants for Adam's sin: To condemn Infants to hell for the faul...

As noted in the first post of this series, Taylor had acknowledged in the Preface to Unum Necessarium that he would be criticised on the grounds of departing from the teaching of Article IX. He also accepts that "I do not understand the words of the Article as most men do". Taylor takes care, however, to state his fidelity to the Articles in general and Article IX in particular: But it is objected , that my Doctrine is against the ninth Article of the Church of England ... I have oftentimes subscribed that Article, and though if I had cause to dissent from it, I would certainly do it in those just measures, which my duty on one side, and the intereſt of truth on the other would require of me: yet because I have no reason to disagree, I will not suffer myself to be supposed to be of a differing judgment from my dear Mother, which is the best Church of the World.  A crucial aspect of Taylor's insistence that his views on Original Sin cohere with Article IX is his understan...