"I mean the Offertory": Bishop Phillpotts' 1842 Visitation Charge and the offering of alms

As part of the series of weekly posts from the responses to Tract XC by Old High bishops in the visitation charges of the early 1840s, today we have a final extract from the charge given in 1842 by Henry Phillpotts (Bishop of Exeter 1831-69). These charges are a rich seam of Old High teaching. In this extract, Phillpotts interprets the Prayer Book offertory in light of the rubric: "the Alms for the Poor". This reflects the original intent of the Cranmerian offertory, applied by Phillpotts to the changed social context of Victorian era. This, of course, was a quite different emphasis to that which would be given by Anglo-catholics - e.g. in Directorium Anglicanum - to the offertory, with the bread and wine as the focus. Phillpotts, however, demonstrated the continued relevance of the Cranmerian offertory and its alms for the poor, pointing to a vision of a society renewed by love of God and love of neighbour:

There is, too, one other claim still more imperative than either, - I mean the necessities of those large masses of population, in our own land, which are left in a state of spiritual destitution. If the happier lot of this portion of England brings us not to witness many such cases, shall we be the less anxious to relieve them?

Now, the Rubric offers - I might almost say, requires the use of one expedient, excellently adapted for this purpose; I mean the Offertory, which the Church contemplates as to be read, whenever any portion of the Communion Service be used, whether the Sacrament be administered or not.

Do not, however, imagine that I wish to prescribe to you such a measure. But give it consideration, and adopt it, or anything else of the same sort, as you shall judge best. Let me only remind you, that the more you can induce your people to act with you, as their minister, in such joint labours of love, the more close will be your connection, the more affectionate your intercourse, the more blessed your ministrations both to them and to yourselves.

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