laudable Practice

Having considered the reflections on the Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution at Mattins and Evensong in John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we now turn to the first Lord's Prayer in the daily office. Shepherd captures how the twice daily use of the Lord's Prayer following the confession and absolution has an "endearing sense". In a footnote accompanying this extract, he describes the title 'Our Father' as "this endearing appellation". It reminds us that the saying of the Lord's Prayer at this point is a quietly beautiful practice, comforting us that our fundamental identity is as children of God in Christ: Whatever may have been the reason for prefixing the Confession, Absolution, &c., to the Lord's Prayer, the propriety of the addition cannot be disputed. Till we had confessed, and repented of our sins, we could not, in the endearing sense, in w...

From the 1652 Whitsun sermon by Bishop Hall, moderate Calvinist and Dort delegate, an expression of Episcopalian piety - irenic, quiet, peaceable - with roots in Hooker and flowering in the Laudian Taylor and the Latitudinarian Tillotson : God's Spirit leads us Sweetly and Gently ... not in a blustering and hurrying violence, but by a leisurely and gracious inclination. So, in Elijah's vision, there was fire, wind, earthquake; but God was in none of them: these were fit preparatives for his appearance; but it was the still soft voice, wherein God would be revealed. Those, that are carried with a heady and furious impetuousness and vehemence of passion in all their proceedings, which are all rigour and extremity, are not led by that Good Spirit; which would be styled the Spirit of Meekness: who was pleased to descend, not in the form of an eagle, or any other fowl of prey; but in the form of a meek and innocent dove. We could easily imagine the words coming from Hooker or Tayl...

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever ... I will not leave you comfortless - John 14:16,18, from the Gospel appointed for Whitsunday. I find it one of the most joyful aspects of Whitsuntide, the fulfillment of the dominical promise of "another Comforter". It overflows in the Prayer Book collects and readings for this time. The collect of the Sunday after Ascension Day and the week following petitions "We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us", echoing the opening words of the Gospel reading, "When the Comforter is come". The Gospel of Whitsunday is reflected in the collect praying that we may "evermore ... rejoice in his holy comfort".  Whitsun is the feast of the Comforter. In a beautiful passage, Jeremy Taylor draws us to see how this presence and indwelling of the Comforter animates the ministry of comfort in the life of the Ch...

A recent Tweet by an Episcopalian expressing regret that some members of their congregation did not cross themselves led to a number of comments from other Episcopalians sharing this regret, suggesting that refusal to make the sign of the Cross was an unfortunate, lamentable left-over of a low church, Protestant Episcopalian culture. I admit that the Tweet and subsequent comments did immediately bring to mind Trollope's words concerning Archdeacon Grantly (a sound High Churchman): "He certainly was not prepared to cross himself".  The Twitter exchange, however, did lead me to consider the theological, liturgical, and devotional case for not making the sign of the Cross. To be very clear at the outset, this is not an argument against Anglicans crossing themselves. We should heed the wisdom of C.S. Lewis : One meets people who are perturbed because someone in the next pew does, or does not, cross himself. They oughtn't even to have seen, let alone censured. "Who a...

From Taylor's  Ductor dubitantium , a rather glorious Hookerian account of legitimate variety in sacramental practice, rejecting attempts to impose a uniformity on all the churches as a fettering of Christian liberty, exercised by "every particular or national Church" (cf. Article XXXIV). Note, in particular, Taylor's recognition that the Words of Institution are not necessarily required to consecrate the Eucharist, bringing to mind the Anaphora of Addai and Mari and also Reformed and Moravian practice. With Hooker, he reminds us that all Apostolic injunctions are not necessarily binding upon the Churches, "for Christ onely is our law-giver". The extract also exemplifies how Episcopalian thought interpreted Christian liberty in terms of the liberties of national Churches, rather than as a proto-individualism. Above all, here is a joyous irenicism in which the historic variety and diversity of Christian practices concerning the Sacraments is justified and aff...

On a number of occasions, laudable Practice has drawn attention to the pre-1833 Old High tradition robustly affirming the divine institution of the Church and renouncing any reliance for its claims upon establishment status e.g. Horsley in 1790,  Spry in 1816,  Lonsdale in 1827, and  Perceval in 1831. This refutes the suggestion made in Tract One that the 'Two Bottle Orthodox' relied on "secular advantages" - "Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions". The evidence from the pre-1833 Old High tradition is quite clear that such a claim was entirely erroneous.  This is also explicit in Thomas Le Mesurier's 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism . Ending the first lecture, Le Mesurier makes it abundantly clear that establishment status and temporal interests are not his concern when it comes to defining the claims of the Church, what Tract One called the Church's "divine missio...

Having previously considered the reflection on the text of the Absolution at Mattins and Evensong in John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), his consideration of the rubric directing that "The Absolution or Remission of sins [is] to be pronounced by the Priest alone" is also significant. While recognising that it is obvious that a layperson cannot pronounce this Absolution, Shepherd is aware that the role of the deacon is a matter of debate: That it must not be read in the congregation by a deacon, is a part of my argument, which will not be so readily granted. For of all the questions relative to Common Prayer, that have been discussed, among the members of our establishment, few, I apprehend, have been more frequently agitated, and none more  commonly left undecided, than this, - Is it lawful and right for a Deacon to read the Absolution? He points to Thomas Bennet's 1708  A Paraphras...

Mindful of the Gospel appointed in 1662 for the Sunday after Ascension Day - "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth" - another extract from Taylor's The real presence and spiritual of Christ in the blessed sacrament proved against the doctrine of transubstantiation (1653), in which a bodily presence of Christ in the holy Sacrament is held to be incompatible with the dominical promise of the presence of the Comforter: If he be here in person, what need he to have sent his Vicar, his holy Spirit in substitution? Especially since by this doctrine he is more now with his Church then he was in the days of his conversation in Palestine; for then he was but in one assembly at once; now he is in thousands every day. If it be said, because although he be here yet we see him not. This is not sufficient, for what matter is it whether we see him or no, if we know him to be here, if we feel him, if we eat him, if we worship hi...

On this day after the Ascension Day, from Jeremy Taylor's  The real presence and spiritual of Christ in the blessed sacrament proved against the doctrine of transubstantiation (1653), a robust affirmation of a fundamental characteristic of a Reformed Eucharistic theologies, that (in the words of the Black Rubric) "the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here": The next argument from Scripture is taken from Christ's departing from this world; his going from us, the ascension of his body and soul into heaven; his not being with us, his being contained in the heavens: So said our blessed Saviour, Unless I go hence, the Comforter cannot come: and I go to prepare a place for you: The poor ye have always, but me ye have not always. S. Peter affirms of him that the heavens must receive him, till the time of restitution of all things. Now how these things can be true of Christ according to his human nature, that is a circumscribed body, and a ...

For this Holy Thursday, Thomas Comber's meditation - from A Companion to the Altar (1675) - on the proper preface for Ascension Day.  The work is dedicated to Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, formerly a chaplain to Laud. There is a clearly Laudian emphasis in the dedication , in which Comber (speaking in the third person) refers to Sterne as the bishop by whom he was ordained: he first received the Holy Order of Priesthood, and the Power of Dispensing this Sacrament from your Grace's Hands. He continues in thoroughly Laudian fashion when he expresses his hope that the work "may minister to the Devotion of those who approach to God's Altar".  The meditation on the Ascension Day proper preface, however, exemplifies how such Laudian reverence for the altar and the priestly ministry of administering the holy Sacrament - together with use of the Book of Common Prayer and observance of its festivals - was definitively Protestant. In fact, it is a rather glorious ex...

As Rogationtide draws to a close for another year, words from Jeremy Taylor for this Rogation Wednesday: God is everywhere present by his power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with his hands; he fixes the earth with his foot; he guides all the creatures with his eye, and refreshes them with his influence ... he it is that assists at the numerous productions of fishes; and there is not one hollowness in the bottom of the sea, but he shows himself to be Lord of it by sustaining there the creatures that come to dwell in it: and in the wilderness, the bittern and the stork, the dragon and the satyr, the unicorn and the elk, live upon his provisions, and revere his power, and feel the force of his almightiness ... Let everything you see represent to your spirit the presence, the excellency, and the power of God; and let your conversation with the creatures lead you unto the Creator; for so shall your actions be done more frequently, with an actual eye to God’s presence, by your often seeing hi...

Amongst the days when the Benedicite should be used in place of Te Deum at Morning Prayer, Rogationtide must surely be included.  Surveying commentaries on the Prayer Book over the centuries, it is consistently recognised that the Benedicite is particularly appropriate when we are rejoicing in the natural world.  Sparrow's Rationale (first published in 1655) states: [when the lessons] set before us the wonderful handy-work of God in any of the Creatures ... Then it will be very seasonable to return this Song. Comber's A Companion to the Temple and the Closet (1676) similarly declares that Benedicite is "always proper to be used" when reflecting on the created order: it is always proper to be used after the History of the Creation ... And then we may in this Form learn the order of God's works, for the method is exact, and beginning with the Heavens and the hosts thereof descends to the air, the Earth and Sea reckoning up all the furniture of them; and concluding...

Last Rogationtide, I turned to Mole in The Wind in the Willows to explore the ordinary joys of the Anglican tradition. This Rogationtide, days which reflect a joy in the ordinary, I turn to another fictional account, this time rather more ecclesiastical: Trollope's description of St. Ewold's in Barchester Towers .  We are introduced to St. Ewold's during Archdeacon Grantly's campaign against Mr. Slope, chaplain to the newly-appointed low church, Whig Bishop. The Archdeacon's resistance to the Whiggery and 'Sabbath schools' of the Bishop, his wife, and Mr. Slope are not my concern on this Rogation Monday (though regular readers of laudable Practice will, no doubt, be aware of my allegiances in this particular controversy).  So let our attention turn to St. Ewold's, "the pretty church and parsonage". 'Pretty' is an appropriately modest phrase. It does not suggest a loud, overpowering beauty but, rather, a pleasant, gentle attraction. Y...

A recent Spectator article on the quiet revival of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in the Church of England is well worth reading. At the heart of the article is a key observation: What’s interesting is that the C of E’s Book of Common Prayer revival is overwhelmingly led by millennials. We should not be surprised that some of those belonging to a generation abandoned to the vagaries of the Market, celebrities, social media, and a public realm usually devoid of serious moral reflection, will - thankfully - find meaning, comfort, and truth in the Book of Common Prayer. Indeed, this has been commented upon by others, not least in the context of the growing numbers attending Choral Evensong in Oxford and Cambridge college chapels . As another commentator has remarked: It is perhaps not a coincidence that attendance at traditional choral services started to surge as modern life began to seem most removed from their world of candles, canons and communal reflection: Evensong offers an antid...

Six years before the 1850 Gorham Judgement, the Old High Bishop of Lichfield, John Lonsdale entered into correspondence with one of this clergy who had expressed the view that his conscience was increasingly troubled by the Prayer Book's teaching on Baptismal regeneration. The correspondence was published after the bishop's death in The Life of John Lonsdale (1868). The minister in question had referred to William Wall's 1705 A History of Infant Baptism , to which Lonsdale also pointed in his response: for there appears to me no reason why, as a Minister of the Church of England, you should feel yourself at all called upon to go beyond the view of Baptismal Regeneration which is stated by Wall in the passage quoted by you. How this can be deemed 'a rationalistic view,' I am at a loss to conceive. Neither can I see how any man can take upon himself to say what the formularies of the Church imply. We can only judge of what is expressed. Of course, as you say, differe...

Last week's extract from Thomas Le Mesurier's 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , addressed the challenges to the 18th century Church of England national from both Enthusiasm and radical Latitudinarianism. Today's extract shows how Le Mesurier introduced a modest but serious case for the claims of the national church. It centres around denying that the Reformation's rejection of papal claims can justify schism from the national church. He firstly points to the fundamental difference between the Reformation as a controversy over vital articles of the Faith, and breaking communion with the national church over secondary matters (Dissent in 1662, Methodism) or because of entirely rejecting subscription to Articles and Creeds (the radical Latitudinarian aspiration): And, because it has been a favourite topic with dissenters of all sorts to insist upon our separation from the church of Rome as if it precluded us from objecting to their, or any other s...