"This ordinary path of faith and duty": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

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 of his Gospel, and to bless God that we are not called to those severer trials, which were laid on many in past times.

We are not proved as Abraham was; we are neither bid to forsake our friends, our country, or our goods, if our connection with them can be kept with a clear conscience and an undisturbed pursuit of our best hope and inheritance. The days of persecution, when such sacrifices might be needful, are not the ordinary portion of the Church, nor the perpetual condition of our faith.

We are not called, as Moses was, to long journeyings, and exposed to all the hardships of a desert soil, as the path of our appointed pilgrimage. We are not called, as the house of Israel was, to fulfil a thousand troublesome and costly rites.

We are not called to those hurtful superstitions, which many, even in the Christian world, have mistaken for the highest acts of spiritual fervour. We are not called to beads and cloisters, to solitude and sackcloth, or to voluntary self-inflicted pains; all which have been substituted for those habits of denial, which indeed are needful to regulate the heart, without demolishing its freedom, or cancelling that privilege, which has the sanction of the Christian charter. We are not told, as St. Paul observed, "to climb up into heaven, or to descend into the deep"; for that which we may find at hand,even the lessons of our duty, and the plain dictates of repentance, faith, and righteousness, which are delivered in the page of Scripture, and taught with all simplicity of speech and doctrine ...

In order to avoid [the] ground of spiritual pride, let us cleave to the needful and appointed means of grace, and to the common faith of Christians, in the symbols of the Christian church: let us beware of a dividing spirit: let us love the sacraments, the prayers, and worship of the Lord, and the communion of his Church, and strive to grow in grace and knowledge, without vain singularitics, or fantastic zeal. They who despise this ordinary path of faith and duty, and regard such rules of life as formal things, will be apt to contemn the fittest remedies for human frailty and disorders, and to prefer those which are doubtful and unsafe.

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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