"The sober duties of religion": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Fourteenth 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 Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. With its emphasis on "the sober duties of religion", as opposed to the dramatic and apparently miraculous, this again exemplifies Old High piety:

The constant, uniform, and steady disposition of the conduct, which is so produced, becomes the surest testimony of the Christian character, and the fruits of the Spirit manifest their own connexion with a state of grace. To such evidences, our Lord and his Apostles constantly referred. They taught men to regard them in preference to gifts of miracle; so that we find the best and most profitable things are still open to our choice, and left free to our pursuit. It is possible indeed for men to affect much knowledge in the ways of truth, and to look with some disdain on others, from some high notion of their own attainments; but a sober, pious, and well-ordered life, useful to others, and kept clear of all vicious habits and ill practices, by which the heart would be defiled, the conversation tainted, and the manners, dispositions, and deportment, turned to evil; such a life, exercised in all upright dealing, in all self-government and charity, in all sound faith, in the stated offices and known duties of religion, cannot well be dissembled. It will cost more pains, and offer more restraints, than dissemblers will be ready to approve. Such a life is the genuine fruit of that spiritual influence, concerning which the text speaks. Such are the surest tests of adherence to that doctrine, the end of which is a reasonable service, and the sum of which is an humble and sincere obedience to the will of God. When men resort to other tokens as the standard of their faith, and the witness of their spiritual growth, there is always much room for delusion. Our Lord, then, constantly prescribed the substantial parts of godliness, and the sober duties of religion, for the basis of that conduct, concerning which we now treat.

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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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