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"Thus, then, sins are forgiven": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on the ministry of reconciliation

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 - offered a classic Old High account of the ministry of reconciliation given to the ordained.  Contrary to Tractarian and later Anglo-catholic accounts which interpreted this to be private confession and absolution - an interpretation far removed from the lived experience of most Anglicans, in the 19th century and now - Jelf and the Old High tradition provided a vision of the ministry of reconciliation rooted in and expressed through the parson's ministry of Word and Sacrament.

This understanding had deep roots in the Laudian tradition. Richard Montague stated, "Reconciling by the whole office and function of the ministry".  Likewise Jeremy Taylor said of the use of the dominical words at the Ordering of Priests, "they are comprehensive of the whole power and ministry ecclesiastical".

For another mid-19th century example of the significance and vibrancy of this Old High understanding of the ministry of reconciliation, defined against Tractarian influences, Christopher Wordsworth's 1874 pastoral letter to his Diocese of Lincoln should be read. 

Here, however, is Jelf in 1844, describing the classical Old High vision of the ministry of reconciliation:

the whole "ministry of reconciliation" is entrusted to the regularly ordained Clergy, as, in their degree, the heirs of the Apostles. It is their office exclusively to publish the glad tidings with authority, to preach the word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in the congregation. He that preaches "Christ crucified" extends the benefits of the Sacrifice of the Cross; he that administers holy Baptism, does it for the forgiveness of sins, loosing men from the bands of Satan, and bringing them into the liberty of the sons of God; he that administers the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, imparts ministerially the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ; he that layeth hands upon fresh labourers and sendeth them into the Lord's vineyard, multiplies the channels and instruments through whom these offices of mercy are extended to mankind ... Thus, then, sins are forgiven for Christ's sake alone, and by virtue only of His authority; and yet by means of the subordinate instrumentality of the Word and the Sacraments, on the one hand, and of the stewards of His mysteries on the other. The Word and Sacraments are, considered by themselves, means of grace; God's Minister is another; yet ordinarily their combined agency is required to the full spiritual effect; a reciprocal relation which clearly evinces the good Providence of God, in securing both to our use.

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