Saint Andrew's Day: Bishop Mant's reverence for the Scotch Communion Office

Throughout the late 18th and well into the mid-19th century, the relationship of the Church(es) of England and Ireland with the Scottish Episcopal Church was a matter of theological and political controversy.  While the Low Church tradition regarded Scottish Episcopalianism with obvious hostility - due a mixture of older Whig fears and a narrow, populist Protestant suspicion of the Scottish Liturgy - the Old High tradition had a deep and profound respect for Episcopalians in the northern part of the Kingdom, and a very high regard for the Scotch Communion Office.

In 1824, the then Bishop of Down and Connor, Richard Mant - a leading Old High figure - became publicly involved in the debate when he published a letter to a Scottish Episcopalian cleric, rebuking an Irish cleric who had refused to share in the Sacrament according to the Scottish rite.  Mant had no hesitation in stating what he would do if he were in that part of the Kingdom:

if I were passing through Scotland, as, if it please God to preserve me in life, it is probable that occasionally I may be, and were to spend a Sunday in a town - your own, for instance - where is a congregation of the Scottish Episcopal Church, I should join in the entire service of that congregation, as in this country or in England I should join in the service of the Parish church where I might chance to be ... if I were in Scotland on a Sunday, I would communicate with a congregation of the Scotch Episcopal Church.

Nor did Whig, Low Church, or Presbyterian sensibilities concern him when he went on to describe the Scottish Episcopal Church as "national": 

Scotland ... has her own particular or national Episcopal Church, certainly not established by the State; but, nevertheless, it is her own national Church, of the true Episcopal character. In the same manner the United States of America have their national Episcopal Church, for which, by the way, they are in part indebted to the Scottish Episcopacy. 

What, however, of the Scottish Liturgy? Mant was dismissive of Low Church (and, we might note, later Anglo-Catholic!) claims that its invocation of the Holy Spirit and the oblation resulted in a different eucharistic doctrine:

Her Articles of Religion, indeed, are the same as the Articles of the Church of England and Ireland; her Liturgy also is the same, with the addition of another form for administering the Holy Communion, now peculiar to herself, though derived to her from the Reformed Church of England. Concerning this form it is not pretended that of itself it contains anything objectionable.

It was, he went on to say, an "unexceptionable" liturgy, and could not be a cause "of not holding communion with you". The difference characteristics of the Scottish Liturgy were merely what was "to be expected" in light of Article 34: "that difference is allowed".

Nor did he stop there. Mant also quoted Bishop Horsley's judgement on the Scotch Communion Office:

he had no scruple in declaring that he thought the Scottish Office more conformable to the primitive models, and in his private judgment more edifying, than the English Office now in use.

This view was also robustly confirmed by Mant in an Appendix to the letter, further exploring "the facts on which Bishop Horsley may be supposed to have based his preference of the Scotch over the English Communion Office". Pointing to the evidence of patristic liturgies supporting the Scottish Liturgy, he then offered a touching defence of Scottish Episcopalian commitment to their liturgy:

If, then, antiquity, universality, and consent are witnesses to primitive and Catholic truth, the Episcopal Church of Scotland may triumphantly adduce these witnesses to the soundness and orthodoxy ofher form of Invocation in her Office for Holy Communion. Can it, then, be a matter of surprise that the faithful members of that Church should entertain so devoted an attachment to, and so intense a feeling in favour of their own Eucharistic Office? Or could it be supposed that they would be willing to barter so precious a treasure in exchange for any civil or temporal privilege whatever?

In his final paragraph in the Appendix, Mant offered a final highly significant reason for Irish and English Anglicans to regard the Scottish Liturgy, with its invocation of the Holy Spirit, with a deep reverence and gratitude:

One word more. If ever the Church of England should seek to reopen communion with the Churches of the East, (an event, from recent circumstances, far from improbable,) it would not lessen the probabilities of success in so important a matter, when it could be shewn that that Church is already in full and sisterly communion with a British Church whose Eucharistic Office is so closely allied with their own Primitive Oriental Liturgies.

This reflects a theme Mant had alluded to in the Letter. A failure to maintain communion with Scottish Episcopalianism implied that the Church of England and Ireland were "insulated and unconnected individuals in all other parts of Christendom", a stance he regarded as entirely "alien from that truly Catholic and Christian spirit by which our Church is animated". By contrast, as the conclusion of the Appendix indicated, communion with Scottish Episcopalianism - with its Liturgy sharing in the invocation found in the Christian East - recalled Irish and English Anglicans from a narrow and, indeed, sectarian, provincialism to the generous catholicity at the heart of the Prayer Book.

On this Saint Andrew's Day, therefore, the words of Bishop Mant should be a cause of joy, leading us - with the wider Old High tradition - to give thanks for Scottish Episcopalianism and its rich witness over centuries. And grateful, too, for how the characteristics of the Scotch Communion Office turn us towards the great Churches of the East, reminding us of the faith and order shared with those churches, a cause dear to the Laudian heart.