Skip to main content

"Definite and tangible": Bishop Bagot's 1842 Visitation Charge and Prayer Book piety

Today begins a series of weekly posts on laudable Practice from a rich seam of Old High teaching, the responses to Tract XC by Old High bishops in the visitation charges of the early 1840s.  The focus of the posts will be not so much on the well-known critique of Tract XC articulated in these charges but, rather, on what these visitation charges reveal about the teaching, piety, concerns, and vitality of the Old High tradition nearly a decade after the emergence of the Oxford Movement.  I begin with the 1842 Visitation Charge of Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford (1829-45, and Newman's diocesan).  

Here Bagot warns against undermining the "definite and tangible" catholic nature of the Prayer Book with devotional material from the Roman Breviary, in pursuit of an "indefinite and elusive ... shadowy Catholicism". This contrast - "definite and tangible" against "indefinite and elusive" - captures the differences between an Old High piety rooted in the Prayer Book, English divines, and parish over generations, and the first signs of the emergence of an artificial, ahistorical stream of Tridentine piety within Anglicanism:

Further I must take leave to tell those persons, whoever they are, that they are doing no good service to the Church of England, by their recent publication of manuals of private devotion, extracted from the Breviary and similar sources by inserting therein no small portion of highly objectionable matter, and tacitly, if not openly, encouraging young persons to be dissatisfied with what God has given them, and to look on the contents of our admirable Liturgy as insufficient to meet the wants of a Catholic mind. Be it ours, my Reverend Brethren, to remind the young and ardent of these days, that it is a most dangerous delusion to wander from any thing so definite and tangible as the Prayer Book, in search of what is so indefinite and elusive as that shadowy Catholicism, which, under the aspect represented by them, has never existed except in their own imaginations.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous12 October 2022 at 12:42

    Looking forward to this series! Just recently discovered your blog and have been deeply enriched and blessed by your research. Blessings.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
25 comments
Read more

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...
19 comments
Read more

Pride, progressive sectarianism, and TEC on Facebook

Let me begin this post with an assumption that will be rejected by some readers of laudable Practice , but affirmed by other readers. Observing Pride is an understandable aspect of the public ministry of TEC.  On previous occasions , I have rather robustly called for TEC to be much more aware and respectful of the social conservatism of the Red states and regions in which it ministers. A failure to do so risks TEC declining yet further into the irrelevance of progressive sectarianism.  At the same time, TEC also obviously ministers in deep Blue states and metropolitan areas - and is the only Mainline Protestant tradition in which a majority of its members vote Democrat .* With Pride now an established civic commemoration, particularly in such contexts, there is a case for TEC affirming those aspects of Pride - the dignity of gay men and lesbian women, their contribution to civic life, and their place in the church's life - which cohere with a Christian moral vision. (I will n...
4 comments
Read more