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Showing posts from November, 2022

"The Protestant Episcopal Communion in Scotland": St. Andrew's Day thoughts on Scottish Episcopalianism and the Old High tradition

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On this Saint Andrew's Day, a day when a Laudian gives thanks for the witness of Scottish Episcopalianism over centuries, I turn to a work of Alexander Jolly, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness 1798-1838.  Jolly was ordained deacon in 1776 and priest in 1777. At this time, the failed '45 rebellion still cast a shadow over Scottish Episcopalians, as James Walker - a later Primus - said of the rebellion in his memoir of Jolly's life: That unfortunate and ill-advised measure [i.e. the '45], in which, so far as I know and believe, the clergy of this Church had no general nor active concern whatever, caused them to be immediately silenced through the whole land. In Edinburgh, where their chapels were numerous and their congregations respectable, they were shut by authority, and the clergy compelled to silence, under a penalty rigidly exacted or enforced ... After the accession of George the Third, they [i.e. the penal laws] were seldom enforced, and never with the rigour o...

"The Real Presence spiritually, mystically, and sacramentally understood": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on the Holy Eucharist as true feeding

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In the sixth 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 - addresses Eucharistic doctrine.     In this extract, Jelf critiques those whose account of the Sacrament avoids reference to a true feeding on Christ's Body and Blood. What immediately comes to mind in reading is John Williamson Nevin's restatement of classical Reformed eucharistic teaching in  The Mystical Presence , published two years later in 1846.  To quote Nevin: Not the benefits of the new covenant only; but Christ himself with the benefits.  Christ first, and then and therefore all his benefits; as inhering only in his person, and carrying with them no reality under any different view. The distinct similarity between Jelf and Nevin is suggestive of how Old High euchar...

"This holy season": an early PECUSA sermon for Advent Sunday

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Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie was born into the newly-independent United States of America in 1789.  Raised a Baptist, he became an Episcopalian during his college years and received holy orders in 1823 from Bishop Hobart.  From 1824, until his early death in 1827, he was Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City .  During this Advent, laudable Practice will post extracts Duffie's sermons for the season, beginning with an Advent Sunday sermon .  As seen with previous examples of pre-1833 Old High Advent preaching , it is particularly striking to see the sense of the liturgical season.  Against this background, Newman's well-known Advent sermon in Parochial and Plain Sermons  - and we might note that Newman's sermon is very similar to Duffie's - suggests not a new style of Tractarian preaching but, rather, the continued vitality of Old High preaching and its liturgical spirit. Duffie's sermon again emphasises that a meaningful observance of Advent was not depend...

The cusp of Advent

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At Mattins and Evensong on this Friday, the collect remains that of the Sunday next before Advent: "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord ...". Tomorrow at Mattins we will pray the Stir-up collect for the last time this year.  As the late November sun sets tomorrow afternoon, 1st Evensong of Advent Sunday will be said or sung. Advent will begin and Cranmer's great words will ring out, heralding in the season: "give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light". We are on the cusp of Advent. This morning it is cold and dark.  The fields remain sodden after recent heavy rain. Sunrise is well after 8am. There will be less than 8 hours of daylight. We are now in the dark days before Christmas. There are, however, no Christmas decorations yet to be seen in the neighbourhood.  That will come on Sunday or with 1st December.   For now, there is a sparseness that reflects the dark days, the bare landscape turning to Winter, the colder weath...

Thanksgiving ... for the magisterial Protestantism of early PECUSA

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Each Thanksgiving Day,  laudable Practice  gives thanks for an aspect of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.  In past years I have given thanks for  The Episcopal Church in general , for  Anglican poetry and piety in the American Republic , for  William White , and for the Hobartian vision . This is now the fifth year of this practice.  It emerges from my own affection for Episcopalianism in the Great Republic, rooted in happy experiences in years past of worshipping in Episcopal congregations in the north-east during visits to the United States. It also reflects a sense of gratitude for those I know in Episcopalianism in the States who are encouraging a generous orthodoxy. (And, mindful of "unhappy divisions", I also think of those in the Reformed Episcopal Church who give expression to the traditions of Protestant Episcopalianism.) On this Thanksgiving Day, I give thanks for the magisterial Protestantism of the early PECUSA, in the ...

"He only is a faithful receiver who has a thankful remembrance": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on the Holy Eucharist as remembrance

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In the sixth 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 - addresses Eucharistic doctrine.   In this extract he turns to those "defective" accounts of the Sacrament which "hold less than the scriptural truth". Critiquing a 'memorialist' view of the Sacrament, Jelf reminds us that remembrance is, indeed, a defining aspect of the Eucharist. This, interestingly, challenges what we might term an 'anti-memorialist' view, which dismisses the aspect of remembrance.  As Jelf states, however, remembrance in the Sacrament is a means rather than the end: that which would limit the benefits of the Lord's Supper to the remembrance of His Death and Passion; or, which is nearly the same thing, which would look upon the outward eleme...

"To meet the great day of account with confidence and joy": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for Stir-up Sunday

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Since Advent 2021, laudable Practice has journeyed through the liturgical year with the sermons of Joseph Holden Pott. Associated with the Hackney Phalanx, the Old High circle which deeply influenced the early 19th century Church of England, Pott's  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year  was published in 1817. The sermons have offered a significant insight into how Old High theology and piety was articulated from the pulpit. Today's final extract is from the sermon for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, the Sunday next before Advent.  Based on the reading for the epistle, from Jeremiah 23, Pott emphasises how the righteousness of Christ is both the ground of our justification and is to bear the fruit of righteousness in the Christian life. This reflects an enduring Old High theme, echoed many times in Pott's sermons, on the necessity of good works. This, of course, echoed the collect of the Sunday: "plenteously bringing forth the fruit of...

PECUSA BCP 1789's Office of the Institution of Ministers and the means of grace

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A recent post on the excellent Draw Near With Faith explored ' An Office of the Institution of Ministers into Parishes or Churches ' from the PECUSA BCP 1789. Draw Near With Faith states that this - not the 1789 eucharistic rite - is "the most novel and one of the most interesting features of the American prayer book tradition". Provocative though it might be to those who rather inflate the importance and meaning of the 1789 Communion Office, it is a convincing point: this rite for the Institution of Ministers is the gift of PECUSA's first Prayer Book to the wider Anglican tradition. The theological significance of the Institution Office is wonderfully captured by Draw Near With Faith : for it is in the life of the parish that most Christians are joined to Christ in baptism, nourished at the Table, and strengthened in the Christian life. Generally speaking, if we are to be saved, it is not otherwise than through (as an instrument) the life of the parish and th...

Late November days and Stir-up Sunday

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The annual cycle of the Church’s year now ends with the Feast of Christ the King. The year that begins with the hope of the coming Messiah ends with the proclamation of his universal sovereignty. The ascension of Christ has revealed him to be Lord of earth and heaven, and final judgement is one of his proper kingly purposes. The Feast of Christ the King returns us to the Advent theme of judgement, with which the cycle once more begins. So says Common Worship: Times and Seasons about the Sunday before Advent. It all sounds so busy. Frenetic. Loud. Hectic. November has been a busy ecclesial month, with All Saints' Day and Remembrancetide.  In the United States, the month ends with Thanksgiving.   The festive season is fast approaching.  Do we really need a quite artificial feast foisted upon a Sunday in late November? We have celebrated the kingship of Christ on Ascension Day and the Sunday after Ascension Day.  This ensures that the kingship of Christ is rightly...

Elizabeth's Injunctions and a New Elizabethan Anglicanism

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On this date which marks the coronation of Elizabeth I in 1558, it is appropriate to turn to the Injunctions of 1559 , the means by which Elizabeth set about undoing the Marian counter-reformation and establishing her ecclesiastical settlement. For those of us pondering what a New Elizabethan Anglicanism might look like, the Injunctions - perhaps surprisingly, mindful of the context and their, to say the least, robust tone - can be a source of wisdom, encouragement, and guidance. Today I look at three of the Injunctions in particular and consider what they might suggest for a New Elizabethan Anglicanism.   Firstly, the Injunctions restored Cranmer's vision that "often reading and meditation in God's Word" was at the heart of common prayer: exhort every person to read the same with great humility and reverence, as the very lively word of God, and the especial food of man's soul, which all Christian persons are bound to embrace, believe, and follow, if they look t...

"Seek the Church's peace": Bishop Bagot's 1842 Visitation Charge and its Laudian vision of ecclesial peace

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Continuing the series of weekly posts on visitation charges of Old High bishops in the immediate aftermath of the Tract XC controversy, we turn for the final time to the  1842 Visitation Charge  of Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford. In the closing words of his Charge, Bagot set out the Laudian vision of ecclesial peace, against both evangelical and Tractarian agitation which refused to recognise that "good men will differ" within the charity provided by the Prayer Book and Articles: And, seeing the grievous want of charity which has prevailed among us, I have felt it my duty to condemn those who have set themselves forward as gratuitous agitators, and unbidden accusers of their brethren. I am no lover of error, and will shew it no favour; but, while the world stands, there must be points on which good men will differ, and so long as those points of difference do not contravene the Prayer-Book and formularies of the Church, it seems to me, that one set of opinions has the same r...

"When there is little leisure for long disquisitions and debates": a Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity

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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 Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity. Preaching on the text Proverbs 2:20 - " That thou mayest walk in the way of good men,  and keep the paths of the righteous" - Pott here provides an excellent example of the practical, grounded nature of Old High piety.  Emphasising the significance of "the fellowship of the sober and sincere", the sermon expounds how such friendships are a particular source of strength and guidance when, as is often the case, "there is little leisure for long disquisitions and debates".  Also of note is the sermon pointing to how this fellowship anticipates - and is fulfilled - in "a fixed and perpetual concord" in heaven.   It is another example from Pott's sermons of the Old High critique of Enthusiasm and rejection of ' the Weird ',...

Lichfield Cathedral and the relics of Saint Chad: a Laudian view

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'Saint's relic returns to cathedral 500 years on' declared The Times on 7th November.  And just so we know who was to blame for that 500 year interruption, "Henry VIII's men" are pointed to as vandals who destroyed the shrine of holy Chad. That is how the news that Lichfield Cathedral is 'recreating' the shrine of Saint Chad hit the headlines in the UK last week.  One can easily imagine responses from a particular Anglican (and, indeed, non-Anglican) 'angry Protestant' constituency: loud invocations of Article 22 and condemnation of the popish practice of relics.   This post, by contrast, seeks to give a Laudian response, that is, a peaceable Protestant perspective (remembering that the Apostle exhorts us, "as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men"). To begin with, let us consider the account of the project given on the Lichfield Cathedral website .  There are, it must be admitted, some silly statements on the site that d...