"The bond of life-giving union": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on Sacraments and Ministry

In 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 - turned to the nature of the Church. Addressing two characteristic Old High concerns, he emphasised how the Sacraments had to be rightly administered and the Ministry rightly constituted precisely because of their significance to our participation in Christ:

But although truth of doctrine, that is, the true faith, must ever occupy a most prominent place in the notes of the Church, yet there are two other elements of unity intimately connected with this characteristic: the one, the right and due administration of the Sacraments; the other, the true constitution of the ministry of the Church.

The doctrine respecting the Sacraments is an integral part of Christian truth; their due administration is that doctrine reduced to practice. And this due administration, rightly understood, implies a full obedience to Christ's ordinance and institution, as in other respects, so also in respect to whatever order of Ministry He may have appointed to be the stewards of His mysteries. Not to anticipate the fuller statement which will be offered on these subjects in a future Lecture, it may be sufficient here to remark, that any deviation from Christ's ordinance must at least tend to weaken the bond of life-giving union between the offending congregation and the one body in which the Sacraments are the great covenanted means of grace.

It is not to disobedience, but to obedience, that grace is promised. In a word, therefore, one test of a Church's vitality is adherence to "the truth as it is in Jesus" - the true doctrine, the true Sacraments, the true Ministry; for, as all these points may be proved to be in accordance with His word and will, such an adherence is nothing more than "holding the Head, from which all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God".

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laudable Practice

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