laudable Practice

On this feast of Michaelmas, as we rejoice in the "wonderful order" uniting angels and mortals, our thoughts can turn to a particular focus for that union and communion, the holy Sacrament.  This has been the cause for rich reflection in classical Anglican sources, two of which we might especially note, Anthony Sparrow's  A Rationale on the Book of Common Prayer (1655) and Thomas Comber's A Companion to the Altar (1675). Both works would be reprinted on numerous occasions throughout the 'long 18th century', becoming staple sources of an influential sacramental piety. For both writers, it is the Sanctus and the Gloria in excelsis which give expression in the eucharistic liturgy to the "wonderful order" embracing the mortals and the angelic host.  As Sparrow says of the Sanctus : Here we do, as it were, invite the heavenly host to help bear a part in our thanks to make them full ... And in this hymn we hold communion with the Church triumphant. Comb...

Continuing with the series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx, this extract is from a sermon on Matthew's account of the Lord's response to the Canaanite woman: What petitioner ever met with so many bitter checks and discouragements? Yet she bore them patiently, and persevered through them all; and did not renounce her faith in the goodness and mercy of God. Contending with her Saviour, she underwent the test of a mute and silent denial, an open rejection, and a bitter rebuke: but still she retained her fidelity and trust in God, and so at length she prevailed; and "Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee, even as thou wilt." When we therefore are in any trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or other adversity, let us not seek to hide our affliction from ourselves, or from God: but learn from its greatness, only to redouble our prayers and imp...

In the fifth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier demonstrates the Protestant nature of the Old High tradition regarding the cult of the saints: You may remember that when Moses died, his body was not to be found: and this, as it is well understood, was done in mercy, lest the Israelites should, from the great benefits of which he had been the instrument to them, have been led to worship his remains, or in any other way to pay him adoration. It is striking to see how God appears to have pursued a similar course with respect to the first publishers of the New Testament. Of the Virgin Mary we know absolutely nothing after the ascension of our Saviour, except that she was at one time with the disciples at Jerusalem ... Going on to others, we may observe that of Joseph, her husband, not a word is said. We are left to collect that he died before our Lady only from what passed at the foot of the cross. The same remark applies to the apostles. Of them ...

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), having considered the lessons from the Canonical Scriptures, Shepherd turns to the matter of lessons from the books of the Apocrypha. He first indicates a practical reason for such lessons, mindful of the fact that not all of the Canonical Scriptures were considered appropriate for public reading in the congregation : To supply what is wanting to complete the year, we read a part of Scripture which we acknowledge not to be canonical, out of the Apocrypha, or Apocryphal Books. Such acknowledgement of practicalities, however, does not prevent Shepherd from recognising that public reading of the Apocrypha was a patristic practice: By the ancients, these were sometimes styled ecclesiastical books, having been compiled, and published for the edification of the pious, and being commonly read in the church ... as works of religious and mora...

Following on from last Monday's post on the ' Contours of Conformity, 1662-1833 ', I think there may perhaps be some use in a series exploring the characteristics of Conformity across the 'long 18th century'. We begin with an excerpt from Edward Welchman's 1713 commentary on the Articles of Religion .  Welchman (b.1679, d.1739) would become archdeacon of Cardigan and a prebendary of St. David's Cathedral in 1727, and chaplain to Richard Smalbroke, bishop of Lichfield, in 1737. His significance for this series of posts flows from his status as one of those Reformed theologians who Stephen Hampton has identified as the 'Anti-Arminian' tradition in the Church of England between the reigns of Charles II and George I. It is this which makes his comments on Article XVII particularly interesting: The truth of this whole Article will sufficiently appear from the texts of Scripture, which I shall here subjoin. But I would desire the reader to observe, that o...

It is the Friday of September Embertide. Today I am thinking of a dear friend who will be priested in coming days. My mind turns towards words from Jeremy Taylor, from his work  Clerus Domini , on "the divine institution, necessity, sacredness, and separation of the office ministerial". Taylor's words are an exposition of the formula repeated at the laying on of hands in the Ordering of Priests in the 1559 Ordinal : Receive the holy goste, whose synnes thou doest forgeve, they are forgeven: and whose sinnes thou doest retaine, thei are retained: and be thou a faithful despensor of the word of god, and of his holy Sacramentes. In the name of the father, and of the sonne, and of the holy gost. Amen. This formula became a particular focus of controversy when Apostolicae Curae declared that 'Receive the Holy Ghost' was insufficient, going on to strangely suggest that the addition in 1662 of 'for the office and work of a Priest" indicated that Anglicans under...

In the fourth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier provides an example of how Newman's thinking in the late 1830s and early 1840s was a complete rupture with the previously dominant Old High tradition. In particular, the seeking after authoritative certainty which became evident in Newman and other Tractarian quarters, culminating in the desire for an infallible authority, ran entirely counter to the Old High recognition of the historical complexities, contradictions, and confusions which inevitably accompanied ecclesial life. As Le Mesurier states: The same question would apply to the claims of infallibility. But, indeed, we might first desire our adversaries to define with whom this infallibility resides, with popes or with councils? separate or united? For, upon this point, there is, and has been, an endless diversity of opinions. We might ask them further, how such a supposition is reconcileable with their many and notorious schisms, the...

On this Wednesday of September Embertide, my thoughts turn to the impending arrival of Autumn. We are now in the very last days of Summer, with cooler mornings and darker evenings already having an autumnal character. On Saturday, with the autumnal equinox, we enter into Autumn. That the days of September Embertide should fall now is, of course, no coincidence. The Ember Days are, as the Prayer Book tells us, "at the Four Seasons", marking the movement into each new season with penitence and abstinence. A time of penitence and abstinence before entering into Autumn prepares us to receive the gifts of the season. Indeed, such a time of penitence draws us into discernment, appropriate for Autumn's quieter days, mellow scenes, and - with the decline of the year - air of melancholy. Penitence drawing us into discernment prepares us to still and quieten ourselves for a more reflective time of year, even amidst the work September and the months ahead bring; to see the beauty of...

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), in his discussions of the reading of scripture in these offices, he carefully notes Cranmer's words : For it must be observed, that though "the most part of the Bible is read through every year once,"  [emphasis added] yet some chapters of particular books, and three whole books, are left unread and unnoticed. Cranmer's phrase is itself suggestive that not every part of scripture was to be read in "the Common Prayers in the Church", as Shepherd goes on to acknowledge: yet some chapters of particular books, and three whole books, are left unread and unnoticed. What were the reasons, why these parts were omitted, I now proceed to enquire. In his review of the passages of scripture not included in the daily lectionary, Shepherd highlights the wise reasoning involved in not including such passages and, indee...

One of the most interesting recent developments in Anglican historiography has been a series of studies demonstrating the vitality of the Reformed tradition in the post-1660 Church of England. The works of Stephen Hampton have, of course, initiated this. His Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (2008) pointed to "the consistency and resilience of the Reformed tradition within the Church of England into the Hanoverian age". In Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England (2021), Hampton sought to show the continuity of the post-1660 Reformed tradition with that of the pre-1640s.  Jake Griesel in Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity: John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart Church (2022) followed on from Hampton's Anti-Arminians , showing Edwards as an embodiment of the vitality and influence of the post-1660 Reformed tradition. In contrast to the dynamis...

Continuing with the series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx, here is a characteristic expression of Old High anti-solifidian teaching and piety, echoing comments elsewhere by Wordsworth in these sermons: Here then opens upon you your path of duty. Here especially lies your part and obligation: quench not this spirit: follow the example of the holy Jesus: adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things; and walk before him in newness of life. What we before spoke of were the free graces and mercies of Almighty God in Christ Jesus. This now is your part and duty. Unless this be well performed and regarded, all the rest, be assured, must be vain. Ye must be made holy here, in order that ye may be happy hereafter. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye, through the spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." "If ye live after the flesh," then...

In the fourth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier continues with his exposition of how authority functioned amongst the patristic churches. This was the " example of the primitive church " to which the Church of England returned at the Reformation, in which (to use the words of Article XXXIV) "every particular or national church hath authority" to order its affairs: In all this, clearly, there is nothing like what can be properly called jurisdiction in one church or bishop over another: nothing but what I have stated, that when any evils were to be resisted, or any point of doctrine or of discipline to be ascertained, those bishops who could do so, met together and declared their sentiments. Those sentiments were communicated to the other churches, and were adopted and observed according to their apparent reasonableness, and the weight of character which belonged to those from whom they came. Nothing was pretended to but tha...

To celebrate Yale Apostasy Day, the day in 1722 when seven sons of Puritan New England - all Congregationalist ministers - declared that they were convinced on the need for episcopal ordination, we hear from one of the Yale Converts , James Wetmore . Wetmore received episcopal orders, alongside his fellow converts Timothy Cutler and Samuel Johnson, in England in 1723, before returning to the colonies, appointed by the SPG to be rector of Rye Church, New York.  In 1747, he responded to an attack on episcopal orders by Connecticut Congregationalist minister Noah Hobart. Hobart declared that because the Church of England was an episcopal church, claiming only for its bishops succession to the apostles, its presbyters lacked apostolic commission: "They to whom it does not belong, are no Ministers of Christ, nor do they derive any Authority from him". Apostolic ministry in New England, therefore, was to be found in the presbyters of the Congregationalist establishment, claiming an...

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we turn to the Lessons in at Matins and Evensong. Shepherd addresses the practice of two Lessons from the Old and New Testaments: Though the two covenants differ in language and form, yet in sentiment and substance they agree: for they are in fact but two different parts of one and the same system, the former being introductory and preparatory to the latter ... "What is the law," says Justin Martyr, "but the prediction of the Gospel? and what is the Gospel, but the law fulfilled?" "Things there prefigured," says Austin, "are here performed." "Between the two Covenants," says Chrysostom, "there is neither repugnance, nor contrariety of meaning; the difference is merely verbal. I have repeatedly said, that two Covenants, two handmaids, and two sisters, are the attendants on one Lor...