"The common interests of a wider fellowship": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Twenty-first 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 Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. Against a sectarian apocalypticism, the sermon presents a vision of providence which addresses "the common interests of a wider fellowship ... the joint concerns of the community". God's providential ordering of creation and history, therefore, points away from sectarianism to a consistent Old High concern, that common life - universal and national, civic and domestic - should be viewed as blessed and sustained by God, and should therefore be ordered towards Him:

If we wish then to cultivate right dispositions for a due attendance on the providence of God, let us cast away that narrowness of mind which confines itself to present things alone. The sun which sets and rises, is not bounded to our skies or limited to our climate and proportion of the globe: nor should our thoughts be bounded to the circle of those lands and fields around us, which are visited by his beams. Let our good wishes then extend as far as the lot and heritage of our fellow creatures, whilst our daily supplications and addresses are put up to him who hath set up a Redeemer as the common hope of all ...

The prayers and supplications which our blessed Lord, in the season of his ministry and travel, tendered to his heavenly Father, were sometimes made for his first followers in particular, and sometimes they were made for all: if then, with him, we may have a special eye to what lies nearest to us, yet with him we must extend the eye to larger views, and must learn to unfold the heart to the common interests of a wider fellowship. Our first regard should indeed be directed to the joint concerns of the community, civil and spiritual, in which we have our part and privilege. We are bound, within our own sphere, to employ our efforts with a constant diligence, in order, more especially, to counteract those direful signs of vice and irreligion, which threaten ruin wheresoever they prevail. We have to promote the fear of God and the knowledge of his word around us; and to encourage the fair signs of future happiness in our own land, by a diligent and prudent application of our minds and efforts to all things by which the interests of religion, and the improvement of the hearts and lives of men can be promoted. We are bound also to take thought and to exercise a true endeavour, so far as we are able, for the common benefit of all.

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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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