"Singularly sparing in the number of ritual observances": Jelf's Bampton lectures and ceremonies, some retained, some abolished

In the seventh 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 - commenced by introducing "auxiliary and subordinate" ordinances and usages. 

In today's extract, Jelf expounds a deeply Cranmerian understanding of ordinances, rites, and ceremonies.  As Cranmer had declared, while "Christ's Gospel is not a Ceremonial Law, (as much of Moses' Law was)", "without some Ceremonies it is not possible to keep any Order, or quiet Discipline in the Church". Such ceremonies, Cranmer stated, could legitimately differ and be changed in "divers countries", not least because "at length [some ceremonies] turned to vanity and superstition".

Mindful that mid-Victorian Anglicanism would soon experience intense conflict and division regarding the Anglo-catholic insistence on restoring long abolished pre-Reformation ceremonies, Jelf's exposition of the Cranmerian understanding of ceremonies - the understanding embodied in the Book of Common Prayer - provided the basis for a coherent, unifying approach to ceremonies, "why some be abolished, and some retained":

Christianity differs from the earlier form of true religion, which it displaced and succeeded, in nothing more remarkably than in this, that, whereas the most minute details affecting divine offices and privileges, were scrupulously set down in the law of Moses, illustrated also during a considerable period by the constant special intervention of a proper theocracy; the books of the New Testament, on the contrary, are, on the very face of them, singularly sparing in the number of ritual observances. Certain mysteries and certain rites are, indeed, enjoined; and certain plain, necessary, and constituent parts therein implied: but the exact mode of celebrating them is, in general, left in Scripture indeterminate. Yet some mode there must be, some order, and circumstances, and ceremonies, calculated to further the main design, and some more appropriate than others; for the nature of man requires some such external aid in religion as in everything else. Accordingly we find, in the same Volume, many allusions to some authority, external to the Scriptures themselves, by which such things were to be "set in order" ...

For these words imply, that, due regard being had to certain fixed principles, something was left as a matter of choice, not of necessary obligation, commended to the discretion, rather than to the obedience of Christians. For decency and order, and (in minor matters) edification itself are relative terms. The same things are not equally fitting under all circumstances, or in all places and times; the same custom, which might be edifying to one nation, might have an effect directly the reverse upon another; the same ordinance which, in its first origin, ministered grace to the worshippers, might, in the process of time and the progress of corruption, become a snare to weaker brethren, an object of superstitious reverence, nay, of idolatry itself.