In an 1825 Ash Wednesday sermon, entitled '
Penance and Penitence', Charles James Blomfield - then Bishop of Chichester, appointed to the See of London in 1828 - demonstrated how penitential season was approached in the pre-1833 Church of England. Blomfield had associations with the Hackney Phalanx. The preacher at his episcopal consecration in 1824 had been John Lonsdale, who had links to the Hackney Phalanx. The Old High Howley of London, translated to Canterbury in 1828, cultivated Blomfield as his successor.
Blomfield's sermon, in other words, functions as an important indication of how Ash Wednesday and Lent were regarded and observed before 1833. The sermon is abundantly clear on how the season was to be approached with penitential seriousness:
A more important, or more awful act of religious duty there can hardly be, than that for which we are met together this day; to make a solemn, a united, and I trust a sincere confession of our sins to him, from whom nothing is hidden. It is true, that we do this in the service of every Lord's day: we ought to do it every day of our lives; for not one passes over our heads, which does not bring with it fresh occasions for repentance and confession: but it is more especially the business of this day and season; and happy will it be for us all, if the observance of this day and season shall answer the purposes of admonition, and induce us to turn our thoughts inward, and to institute a more particular and scrupulous examination of our proceedings. If it does not, we must be strangely dead to all religious impressions.
Also clear from the sermon is the significance of the Prayer Book's Commination rite appointed for the first day of Lent. While an uneasiness with aspects of the rite had been voiced in Latitudinarian circles for some time, Blomfield provides a solid defence of the Commination and its scriptural basis:
We must have very inadequate and erroneous notions of our own state, if we can listen to that most solemn warning, which has just been pronounced, without some compunctious visitings, some painful recollections of the past, and some fearful apprehensions of the future. I hope there is not one amongst us, who can hear the repeated and accumulated denunciations of God's wrath upon impenitent sinners, which are taken from the mouths of the prophets and apostles, and of the Lord Jesus, the judge of men, and yet imagine that he himself is not concerned in them.
It is as an awakening warning to ourselves, and not in condemnation of our neighbour, that we are called upon to express our belief in the truth of those sentences of Scripture, which declare that the breakers of God's law are subject to his curse: a part of the service of this day greatly misunderstood. We do not invoke, nor even pronounce a curse upon any individual sinner whatever. We are forbidden to pray for, or even to desire the infliction of that wrath upon the ungodly, which the best of us all too well deserves. But we make, on the authority and in the words of Scripture, a solemn declaration of the inevitable consequence of unrepented sin. We declare those to be accursed, or condemned before God, and excluded from the fellowship of the saints, whom God himself has declared to be accursed; and the people assent, as they cannot but assent, to the truth of that declaration, and say Amen, so indeed it is!
But while in this solemn act there is no breach of Christian charity towards others, there is abundant matter for serious reflexion with ourselves, lest, if we should be called to our account at no distant period, it might be said to us. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, O thou wicked servant. Yet in truth and justice, this may be said to every man, who professes to believe the Word of God; for he believes it with all its promises and threats; and every time that he listens to the Word, or the ministers of God, declaring his just indignation against sinners, his conscience rises in judgment; assents to and adopts the divine decree; and anticipates the fearful sentence of the eternal judge.
A serious approach to Lent demonstrated embodied an enduring Old High conviction - the need for serious, ongoing repentance in the Christian life:
The scope and purport of the public services of the Church, at this season of the year, is to excite the apprehensions of her sinful members, (and which of us comes not under that denomination?) and to expostulate with them, in the name of her divine founder; Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
Without repentance there is no remission of sins. No doctrine is more plainly laid down in Holy Scripture than this; and not a word more need be said in proof of its importance. There is no man that sins not; consequently, there is no man that needs not repentance. We must all repent, therefore, or we cannot be saved.
As for the Prayer Book's call to fasting and abstinence in Lent, Blomfield reaffirmed this in classic Old High fashion. They were never to be understood as somehow making atonement for past sin, for this is the office of the Crucified alone. Rather, they are disciplines that aid our sanctification in the face of future temptation:
As to the outward and mechanical acts of religious discipline, we tell them, that they are profitable, to mortify our appetites, the causes of sin; but not to make expiation for sin itself; that we must deny ourselves, in order to prevent future offences, not to make satisfaction for those which are past. Guilt already contracted may be deeply felt, and bitterly bewailed; but can be washed out only by the blood of Christ. A real faith in the atonement which he has made, as it is the surest safeguard against sin, so is it the only effectual remedy for it. Upon no other foundation can we build our hopes of forgiveness, nor our belief that repentance will be available, or reformation practicable.
This 1825 Ash Wednesday sermon - eight years before the beginning of the Movement of 1833 - points to a lively, meaningful observance of the day and the Lenten season, rooted in key Old High characteristics: respect for the Prayer Book liturgy and appreciation for its ordering of the liturgical year; an emphasis on the life-long call to repentance and holy living (recall Taylor's critique of death-bed repentance); and a willingness to recognise the role of fasting and abstinence in our sanctification. 19th century Church of England observance of Ash Wednesday and Lent, therefore, was not dependent on the Movement of 1833.
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