"The reformation of her rites and ceremonies": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on plain Prayer Book piety

Returning to 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, and following on from his vigorous defence of the rights of national churches, we consider his account of how the Church of England exercised its liberties as a national church at the Reformation. The account is an example of how the Zs - the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - were radically parting ways with the Tractarians and an increasingly explicit rejection of the Reformation:

the Church of England thought it expedient, under the guidance of God's Spirit, to add to the purification of her faith the reformation also of her rites and ceremonies. It was as much her duty to see that "all things" should "be done unto edifying," as it was the duty of the Church at Corinth. That which, as a divinely commissioned Church, she had thought fit to establish, or to accept, or to continue, she thought fit, by virtue of the same authority, to modify or to repeal. True, the usurpations of Rome had, for some time, suspended de facto the exercise of her independent powers; but no authority could abrogate them, save that which had given them at first; and, the foreign influence being providentially removed, she was restored at once to the liberty with which Christ had made her free.

And, assuredly, what she did thus legitimately she was led by the Holy Spirit to do with moderation and wisdom. She was neither carried away by the blind zeal of innovation, nor restrained by a superstitious reverence for human, though ancient, institutions. What was really Divine, or Apostolical, or Catholic, she was reverentially careful, as to all essential parts, to retain entire; what was decent and orderly in ancient practice, she held in due regard. But whatever experience had taught to be an abuse, or leading to abuses, to be evil or the germ of evil, these things, as tending not to edification, but to corruption, she did not hesitate to purge away ...

And the result, though doubtless bearing marks of human imperfection, was such as to entitle her to the gratitude of her children. In the the usages which she has retained, there is enough to fill the heart and to elevate the soul, to support spirituality, not to overwhelm or to supersede it. Let her children but obey her voice in simplicity and truth, let them make full proof of the manifold privileges which she is ready to dispense, in her round of holy services, in her festivals and in her fasts, in things indifferent as well as in things essential, and they will feel no temptation to desert her fold of safety, or to wander either in forbidden pastures, or "in a barren and dry land, where no water is."

It is, of course, difficult not to read those final lines as a rather pointed warning to those Tractarians casting longing looks across the Tiber.

The practical significance of this robust Old High defence of the Reformation becomes evident when Jelf then provides examples of usages rightly abandoned by the Reformed Church of England - usages which, in coming decades, Ritualists would embrace with enthusiasm:

But, inasmuch as to give even a brief outline of the modifications which were then introduced, and of their several grounds, would far exceed my limits; suffice it to say, that some usages were removed, because they were absolutely evil, such as the adoration of images, and the invocation of saints; some,

because, though in themselves indifferent, they were relatively injurious, or tending to superstition and fanaticism, such as the use of holy water, or oil, or ashes; some, because they were both at variance with primitive practice, and proved by experience to be detrimental to purity and morality, such as the compulsory celibacy of the clergy; some, because they confounded falsehood with truth, as the legends of apocryphal saints; some, because, from their very excess, they were conducive to the diminution, rather than to the increase, of edification, such as the unreasonable multiplication of festivals. And the general ground of her decisions our Church has explicitly stated in the Preface to her Book of Common Prayer.

Jelf, in other words, is defending an ordinary Anglican, Prayer Book piety against what the Church of Ireland in its 1870 Declaration would describe as "those innovations in doctrine and worship, whereby the Primitive Faith hath been from time to time defaced or overlaid, and what at the Reformation this Church did disown and reject".