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"Peculiar austerity and mortification": Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures against 'The Weird'

Turning to Le Mesurier's third 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism, we encounter an aspect of his lectures identified by Nockles:

Anti-asceticism remained a feature of one element of Orthodox spirituality up to the eve of the Oxford Movement and beyond. It found expression in the High Churchman Thomas Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures in 1807.

While too easily regarded by post-Oxford Movement Anglicans as evidence of the worldliness of Anglicanism during the long 18th century (which itself, of course, is a result of assault on the 18th century church by Tractarian histories), this critique of excessive asceticism - and of attaching too great a significance to ascetic practices - remains a wise and prudent aspect of Old High teaching. 

It echoes the Apostle's rebuke of those who reject that "which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving" (I Timothy 4:2). As Le Mesurier emphasises, a determination not to give undue significance to ascetic practices and lifestyles aids in being centred upon and abiding by the church's unity, its ordered ministry, and apostolic confession. Finally - and here Le Mesurier's critique of monastic orders echoes both the English Reformation critique of monasticism and the wider Old High rejection of 'The Weird' - it affirms the ordinary Christian life and community, which do not require dramatic ascetic practices and commitments. 

There is, therefore, good reason to heed the pastoral wisdom pointed to by Le Mesurier, recognising its continued relevance and applicability, and its continued warning against movements of self-proclaimed spiritual elites, exalting themselves over and against the ordinary Christian life and community:

we must also not forget, that in all religious contests, an appearance of greater sanctity must necessarily have considerable weight and it is in fact one of the means which all those who set themselves up against any establishment would, out of mere worldly wisdom, and in order to carry their ends, seek to employ and make a shew of. We accordingly find that most leaders of sects have in reality affected to make such a display, not only of great virtue, but of peculiar austerity and mortification. 

This was the case with the Essenes, the Montanists, nay with most of the Gnostics and Manicheans. It was also particularly the case with the authors of those institutions which are now universally allowed to have been pernicious and ill- judged: I mean the founders of monastic orders, who grew into favour and power only by the opinion which was entertained of their extraordinary holiness, and the rigour with which they abstained even from what was lawful, from everything which was connected with indulgence and pleasure. 

We must not, therefore, as it clearly follows, be detained by any such pretensions, from examining into the soundness of any doctrine, or trying it by its proper standard; still less should they operate to restrain us from reproving every approach to heresy and schism.

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