laudable Practice

This final extract from Mant's 1842 Visitation Charge offers a quite beautiful depiction of Old High piety.  It follows from Mant challenging evangelical clergy who were organising for the purposes of agitation and campaigning.  Against such disorder, disturbing the Church's peace, he points to Hooker, quoting from Walton's Life : And surely a parochial clergyman were better employed at home, serving God and waiting upon his people, in the quiet and unobtrusive walk of his legitimate and prescribed ministrations, and, like the venerable Richard Hooker, "as he expressed the desire of his heart, being free from noise, and eating his bread in privacy and quietness," than in seeking abroad the means of feeding the morbid appetite of an inordinate, indiscreet, and indiscriminating zeal. Then, for the very closing words of the Charge, Mant turned to the  Lawes , invoking the peaceable, ordered vision which those volumes wonderfully and reverently expound: in the magnif...

Continuing 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 penultimate extract from the 1842 visitation charge of Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor,  The Laws of the Church: The Churchman's Guard Against Romanism and Puritanism .  As with the charges of Bagot of Oxford and Phillpotts of Exeter, the point of these extracts is not to focus on the rejection of Tract XC but, rather, on how these charges provide a rich seam of Old High teaching. In this extract Mant addresses the unauthorised changes to the Prayer Book liturgy made by "modern puritanical ministers", the Church's "less merciful sons". His rebuke of this practice, addressing examples from the Baptism and Burial rites, demonstrates the continued significance of conformity and uniformity for the Old High tradition, even as the disputes occasioned by Tractarians and early Ritualists commenced.  Mindful of...

This final extract from the seventh of Jelf's 1844 Bampton Lectures, An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England , provides an excellent - and rather prophetic - summary of the Old High case against Tractarianism.  Noting that those who pursued supposed and unauthorised "Catholic usages" disturbed the Church's peace and unity, while those who abandoned Anglicanism (Newman would do so the year after these lectures) engaged in illegitimate separation over matters indifferent, Jelf pointed to the rich grace which sustained Anglican life: as his lectures had demonstrated, "our cup is overflowing". In place of both the divisive private judgement which undermined ecclesial peace and unity, and the path of deserting Anglicanism, Jelf encouraged "a sense of duty and gratitude" towards and for the Church of England and its native piety (a significant Old High theme ).  In J...

From an excellent account of the Anglican approach to the daily office in Draw Near With Faith's post ' Anglicanism: A Love Letter ': In a unique way, Anglicanism has retained the daily office as a form of regular worship of God and sanctification of Christians for all Christians, not just for priests. Even today, it is not unusual for Anglican churches to offer at least some regular public celebration of the daily office, and the office’s inclusion in Anglican liturgical books means that laypeople who own these books at least have access to the office, whether or not they actually pray it. It is not that only Anglicans have a tradition of daily liturgical prayer, or that Anglicans always faithfully follow this tradition. But the emphasis on the office for all is, I am convinced, an Anglican distinctive. Moreover, this emphasis has shaped Anglican theologies of worship and of asceticism or discipleship in helpful ways. The office as an act of worship reminds us that worshi...

A fourth Lenten sermon from Cornelius Duffie - rector of Saint Thomas, New York City 1824-27 - in which we again see the spiritual vitality of the Old High tradition. Duffie here urges the "duty of meditation", reflecting the wise Old High understanding that there should be no embarrassment in referring to the duties of Christians.  Pointing to the works of Law and Augustine, Duffie presents meditation as the soil in which prayer grows (again, this is significant pastoral and spiritual wisdom). It also demonstrates how the Old High tradition, amidst the 'Second Great Awakening', offered a sober piety as a serious alternative to the pursuit of the experiences of Enthusiasm. Such sober piety, as seen in the duty of meditation, could sustain a lively, meaningful spiritual life in which, quoting Law, "every place 'be turned into a chapel'". If, my brethren, we would perform this duty of meditation profitably to ourselves, and agreeably in the sight of ...

They all preached in their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them. It is one of the lines I particularly enjoy from Trollope's description of the clergy of Barchester , high church but not Puseyite. Bishop Mant, however, would not approve. In his 1842 visitation charge  The Laws of the Church: The Churchman's Guard Against Romanism and Puritanism , Mant explained why clergy should preach wearing the surplice (a highly controversial practice in the 1840s, often opposed on the grounds that it was 'Puseyite'): The case is the difficulty experienced in resuming the service after the sermon, by reason of the requisite change of the dresses, appropriated in practice respectively to the pulpit and the communion table. My solution of the difficulty is comprised in the following suggestions:- First, what is the obligation on a clergyman to use a dress in the pulpit different from that which he wears during his other ministrations? Secondly, does not the order for his...

I am not sure of the origin of the illustration which was circulated on Anglican Twitter some weeks ago (apologies to the person who designed it), but I did enjoy considering its options.  Such things are not, of course, to be taken too seriously.  Thinking about my instinctive answers, however, I realized that they provided a rather good expression of why I value the Old High tradition.  Today's post offers some extended thoughts on these choices. Archbishops of Canterbury - D, William Howley, 1828-48. This might be regarded as my most surprising choice.  Why not Laud? I do, of course, admire Laud for his defence of the ecclesia Anglicana against the gathering storm inspired by Puritan agitation. What gives me pause, however, is perhaps best summarised by Hume's judgement that he did not act "with the enlarged sentiments and cool reflection of a legislator". While rejecting the deeply inaccurate portrayals of Laud which still dominate historical accounts (Sharpe...

In the seventh of his1844 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 the Zs, those whom Nockles highlights as the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses the issue of private confession and absolution. Proposed by Tractarians as a regular, routine feature of the spiritual life, Jelf robustly reaffirms the Old High understanding that this Prayer Book provision must not be regarded as Tridentine "compulsory auricular confession". Jelf begins by pointing to the radical difference between the primitive penitential practice and the much later Sacrament of Penance: And let it be acknowledged that it [i.e. the primitive practice] is now to be found nowhere in Christendom as it existed in the Primitive Church; and, considering the change of circumstances and habits, it is, perhaps, hardly to be expected that any Church will ever succeed in resto...

Having considered the exposition of the Exhortation (on penitence and worship ) at Morning and Evening Prayer by John Shepherd in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), a footnote provided by Shepherd is significant.  It is a footnote to a line in his discussion of how the Exhortation sets before us the gift of absolution and reconciliation: For forgiveness and justification we are indebted solely to the "infinite mercy and goodness of God," through the meritorious sufferings, and efficacious mediation of our Lord, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Shepherd's footnote quotes the Homily on Justification as an example - no doubt to the surprise of many Anglicans today - of moderation , a "general" account of justification free of the "speculative points" concerning predestination which had disturbed the peace and unity of the Reformed Churches: We are forgiven, acquitted, absolved, and ...

In this third Lenten sermon from Cornelius Duffie - rector of Saint Thomas, New York City 1824-27 - we see how the Old High tradition reverenced "the reading of the Holy Scriptures as a prominent mean of grace".  The same Old High affirmation would be seen in Jelf's 1844 Bampton Lectures .  It is a reminder of how the Old High tradition embodied the teaching of the Book of Homilies' ' A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of holy Scripture ' and the piety of the Prayer Book's petition, "that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear, and receive thy holy Word". I have now completed what I proposed in setting before you the reading of the Scriptures as a mean of grace. Here, then, is a plain duty, accessible to all, and easy of performance; one which has the promise and assurance of God's blessing, and which is, in itself, calculated to promote holy thoughts, good dispositions, heavenly desires. If we neglect this mean ...

On this Saint Patrick's Day, words from Jeremy Taylor's 1663 sermon at the funeral of John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh 1661-63 and, in Taylor's words, "Primate of this National Church".  Some might, of course, ask why Taylor's sermon at Bramhall's funeral makes for appropriate material on this celebration of Ireland's patron saint. Bramhall and Taylor, after all, were both born on the other island, Bramhall in Yorkshire, Taylor in Cambridge. This, however, makes them rather like Patrick: they, too, were British-born bishops who served in Ireland.  Like Patrick, Britannia was for them "my home country", their patria (see Patrick's Confessio , 43). In his sermon, Taylor draws another comparison between Bramhall and Patrick.  Just as Patrick's ministry had established the Church on this Island, even as his homeland experienced the unhappy confusions occasioned by the collapse of Roman Britain, so too did Bramhall's minister as Ar...

Continuing 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 again turn to the 1842 visitation charge of Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor: The Laws of the Church: The Churchman's Guard Against Romanism and Puritanism .  As with the charges of Bagot of Oxford and Phillpotts of Exeter, the point of these extracts is not to focus on the rejection of Tract XC but, rather, on how these charges provide a rich seam of Old High teaching. In this extract, Mant contrasts the tendency in the later Tracts to admire the Roman Breviary with an Old High reverence for the Book of Common Prayer. The Prayer Book is primitive and Reformed, wisely reducing the seven daily offices, admired by some of the Tractarians, to two. This, Mant notes, provided for a "more agreeable to a reasonable service", terms which reveal something of the pleasing nature of Old High piety. While elements of Tractarianism - a...

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 the Zs, those whom Nockles highlights as the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses the question if the Church of England has "not abandoned some of the means of grace, by her refusal to recognise five out of the seven Sacraments, which the Church of Rome retains?". Earlier in the lectures he had considered the ordained ministry as a means of grace. Next week's post will explore his understanding of private confession and absolution. In today's extract we see Jelf refute the suggestion that the Church of England was deprived of particular graces because it rightly did not define Matrimony, Confirmation, and Unction as Sacraments of the Gospel. Matrimony The holy estate of Matrimony is so highly esteemed amongst us as to be considered compatible with the highest...

Continuing the exposition of the Exhortation at Morning and Evening Prayer by John Shepherd in his  A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we turn to the second part of the Exhortation, addressing the worship offered "when we assemble and meet together". Again we are struck by the Exhortation providing a meaningful, attractive, and compelling account of public worship, an account which we heard week by week at Sunday Mattins. In this sacred place we meet together for the purpose of performing the four principal parts of public worship. 1. To "give him thanks" for his innumerable blessings and benefits, for all his goodness, and loving kindness to the children of men. This we do in our general Thanksgiving, and in several of the Psalms. 2. To "set forth his most worthy praise," to laud and glorify his holy name, which we do in Psalms, Hymns, Anthems, and Doxologies. 3. "To hear his most ...

In this second Lenten sermon from Cornelius Duffie - rector of Saint Thomas, New York City 1824-27 - we see an excellent example of the Old High understanding that a popular Calvinism undermined the call to serious repentance as a characteristic of the Christian life. This, of course, had roots in Taylor's 'holy living' vision but also reflected the anti-Calvinist concerns of the 'Latitudinarians', as Spellman indicates in his superb study of the 'Latitude-men': Believing that the fundamental demand made by Christ who those who sought to participate in God's glory was that they should repent, the Latitudinarians could not in good conscience divorce their piety from simple moral obligations. This points to how the Old High tradition was also heir to an earlier Latitudinarian piety and its rejection of a Calvinism which, in Spellman's words, obscured the scriptural truth that "the point of Christ's redemption was that men might become good ...