laudable Practice

From an Easter Day sermon of the 1820s , by Charles James Blomfield when he was vicar of St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London and (from 1824-28) Bishop of Chichester, standing in the Old High tradition.  In characteristic Old High fashion, Blomfield here sees our participation in the Easter embodied in prayer, scripture, and sacrament (note this pre-1833 reference to "frequent communion") and in the call to holy living. The scripture references are a reminder of how the Old High tradition robustly and confidently regarded itself as rooted in Holy Scripture. There is a deeply Pauline nature to this emphasis: like the Apostle, the Old High tradition understood the Resurrection as necessarily expressed in ecclesial communion and holy living. In the absence of such witness to and fruit of "distinctness and splendour", the Resurrection is not being confessed. ... the resurrection of our Lord, as recorded by the  Evangelists, and as explained and improved by the Apostl...

The doctrine of the cross is therefore a saving doctrine, a vital doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Christianity; and we hold it to be no less indispensable now, than it was in St. Paul's time, that every minister of the Gospel should be able to say with truth, We preach Christ crucified.  The words are those of Charles James Blomfield in a Good Friday sermon during the 1820s, when he was vicar of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London and (from 1824-28) Bishop of Chichester. 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. This, in other words, was most definitively an Old High sermon - an Old High sermon proclaiming Christ Crucified as "a saving doctrine, a vital doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Christianity", contrary to the oft repeated misrepre...

At the evening Eucharist of Maundy Thursday, 28.3.24 John 13:1-2, 30 “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.” As Jesus and the disciples gathered for the Last Supper, the darkness was gathering. It was, already, present in that upper room - and not only in the heart of Judas. At supper, Jesus would tell a boastful Peter, so sure of the strength of his faith, that he would, instead, betray Jesus that very night.  Jesus tells the other disciples that they will scatter, leaving him alone, abandoned. The writer of the Fourth Gospel powerfully captures this sense of gathering darkness in describing Judas leaving the upper room to undertake his act of betrayal: “He immediately went out. And it was night”. In our parish Lent book, Lent with the Beloved Disciple , Michael Marshall says, “turning his back on Jesus, the light of the world, [Judas] walked into the darkness” [1]. They all walked into the darkness: Judas, Peter, the other disci...

And there is no one grace in which Christ propounded himself imitable so signally as in this of meekness and humility; for the enforcing of which he undertook the condition of a servant, and a life of poverty, and a death of disgrace; and washed the feet of his disciples, and even of Judas himself, that his action might be turned into a sermon to preach this duty, and to make it as eternal as his own story. Jeremy Taylor The Great Exemplar , 'Considerations upon the Washing of the Disciples' Feet by Jesus, and his Sermon of Humility'. (The painting is Dirck van Baburen, 'Christ Washing the Apostles' Feet', c.1616.)

Praying the Litany on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, week by week, is a practical, enriching discipline which can gather up all of life in prayer before the Triune God. It has a blessed prosaic quality, week by week ensuring that we pray for those whom we might forget or, in some cases, prefer not to pray for.  In Holy Week, while the text (thankfully) does not change, particular petitions of the Litany take on an added emphasis, compelling our attention, drawing us more deeply into the mysteries of this week and unfolding their meaning. O God the Father of heaven ... O God the Son, Redeemer of the world ... O God the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son: have mercy upon us miserable sinners. We begin, as we do each time the Litany is prayed, by invoking the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. From the outset, then, the Litany brings us to recognise the truth that the savings events of Holy Week are the work of the Holy Trinity, for us and for our salvation. He...

From Sir Roger Twysden's  An Historical Vindication of the Church of England (1658), a statement of the Church of England's Reformed eucharistic theology: To apply this to our case; the Church Catholick hath ever held a true fruition of the true Body of Christ in the Eucharist, and not of a signe, figure, or remembrance onely, but as the French confession, que par la vertue secrete & incomprehensible de son Esprit, il nous nourrit & vivifie de la substance de son corps & de son sang [that by the secret and incomprehensible power of his Spirit he feeds and strengthens us with the substance of his body and of his blood] Twysden was a firm Episcopalian who opposed Parliament's assaults on the Church during the early 1640s, and was a committed Royalist during the civil wars. He helped draft the 1642 Kentish petition which supported the liturgy and episcopacy. An excellent recent study of Twysden's piety notes that he accepted Laudian reforms in the parish chu...

At the Parish Eucharist, Palm Sunday 2024 Mark 15:5 “But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.” That was a long Gospel reading. Last Sunday’s Gospel reading for the feast of Saint Patrick had a mere 143 words. Today’s Gospel reading has 883 words, six times as long, a full chapter from Saint Mark’s Gospel [1]. And so Holy Week begins.  It is a week traditionally marked by much longer readings from the Scriptures.  We also have additional ceremonies that take place in our services in Holy Week. Today, as we have seen, we have had the blessing of palms. On Maundy Thursday evening, with our parish church darkened, the altar is solemnly stripped ahead of Good Friday. Each day is marked by services and special readings from the Scriptures. There are many deeply evocative hymns for Holy Week, which we are singing today and will be singing throughout this week. Across the Christian traditions, our services also tend to be longer. For example, the Good Friday liturgy...

Each Friday of Lent, laudable Practice  has been presenting words from Jeremy Taylor reflecting on fundamental practices shared by the Christian traditions. Today we conclude this short series with the practice of preparing to receive the Holy Sacrament. These extracts are from The Worthy Communicant (1660). We might regard this devotional work as flowing from Hooker's eirenic eucharistic theology: clearly Reformed (Taylor: "these things are not consequent to the reception of the natural body of Christ, which is now in heaven; but of his word and of his Spirit, which are, therefore, indeed his body and his blood"), while regarding Reformed affirmation of "the participation of the body and blood of Christ" to be that "wherein all agree" (LEP V.67.6-7). This leads Taylor to follow Hooker in regarding "curious and intricate speculations" (V.67.3) as a hindrance to a warm sacramental piety. Instead, the intention of this work is "not to mak...

On this commemoration of the martyrdom of Archbishop Cranmer, we turn to words from his Answer to Gardiner . It is, of course, fashionable - and, in some quarters, de rigueur - to minimise, if not ignore, Cranmer's influence on the Anglican tradition. The extract below, however, captures a pastoral ethos which has profoundly shaped the Anglican experience.  The words of Cranmer's liturgy - at prayer desk and in the pew, at Font and Table, in matrimony and burial - comfort us; we whose faith is "feeble and weak"(as Cranmer knew of himself); we who err and stray, "like lost sheep"; we who journey through "this transitory life". This flows from and gives expression to Cranmer's robustly Christocentric theological vision, the (comforting) realism of his Augustinian recognition of sin, and the assurance of his Reformed sacramental vision. We need to be comforted, assured of Christ's gracious and loving presence for us and within us, sustained ...

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 Third Collect at Evensong, for Aid against all Perils. Strangely, and despite noting how the other daily collects are taken from ancient Latin sacramentaries, Shepherd does not refer to this Collect being found in the Gelasian Sacramentary. Instead, in a footnote, he roots it in a prayer from the Euchologion of the Greek Church, which includes the petition "dispel all darkness from our hearts, and vouchsafe to us the sun of righteousness". The quotation in the extract below is also from this prayer: Though their titles are different, the third collects at Morning and Evening Prayer bear a considerable resemblance to each other: and both of them are peculiarly well adapted for the situations they respectively hold. That for the morning, appears to be more immediately directed, against the dangers and temptatio...

Returning to The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761), we now consider its account of imagery and the Elizabethan Settlement. I have previously noted how this work provided a thoroughly Laudian defence of imagery in churches. Today's extract is a similarly Laudian account of the moderation of the Elizabethan Settlement regarding images: rejecting that which was superstitious, retaining that which was edifying.  The Elizabethan Settlement was contrasted with "warm Advocates for such a naked and unadorned State of Religion, as almost excluded every Thing which affected the Imagination and Senses". Significantly, a footnote at this point refers to Lutheran practice: Amongst those who embraced the Reformed Religion, the Lutherans manifested the greatest Inclinations for preserving in their Churches some of those exterior Forms and Ornaments, which make an Impression on the Sens...

When we consider the characteristics of Old High piety (sober, rational but not rationalistic, modest, reserved), its consistent critique of Enthusiasm, and its suspicion of excessive asceticism, the monastic spirituality of the Christian East may not, to say the least, be the first tradition we think in terms of identifying similarities. However, reading Rowan Williams' recent little book on this spirituality - Passions of the Soul - has led me to wonder about such similarities. Consider, for example, Williams' account of how the early Eastern monastic classics responded to the reality of temptation in the Christian life: In the long run, the pattern of integrated, restored human life that we're called to and drawn to in the labour of prayer and service and love is in all sorts of ways - quite appropriately - a prosaic matter, a matter of doing the next thing (p.16). This would function very well as an Old High description of what the Christian life is like: not a matter ...

Ahead of the feast of Saint Patrick on Sunday, words from a series of 1852 sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (then Archdeacon of Westminster, later Bishop of Lincoln, firmly in the Old High tradition) on The Church of Ireland, Her History and Claims . Wordsworth rejoices in Saint Patrick as exemplifying that which the Old High tradition vigorously defended and affirmed: the apostolic faith of Scripture, the Christocentric catholic creeds, national episcopal churches, historic threefold order. In the classic Old High term used by Wordsworth at the conclusion of the sermon, this was the 'evangelical truth and apostolic order' of the Reformed Catholic episcopal churches of these Islands. May Wordsworth's words, therefore, aid us in celebrating Saint Patrick in true Old High fashion, rejoicing in "the common ground of St. Patrick's Gospel, St. Patrick's Creed, and St. Patrick's Church". His mission in Ireland seems to have begun about A.D. 440, and there h...

Each week of Lent, laudable Practice is presenting words from Jeremy Taylor reflecting on fundamental practices shared by the Christian traditions. Today's practice is private prayer. Taylor here echoes the deeply patristic tradition of understanding the Lord's Prayer both as the Dominical prayer for all Christians and the form to guide all our prayer.  This extract begins by expounding the significance of private prayer to the Christian life, quoting patristic witnesses to this effect. Prayer here is a chief means of sanctification, making us a shrine of the Triune God. The commentary on the petitions of the Lord's Prayer demonstrates how this Prayer is "mysterious, and, like the treasures of the Spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses", a nourishing well from which we to drink deeply, as it guides and shapes our prayers.  The extract then concludes with Taylor addressing three practical aspects of prayer: when we are to pray, distractions in prayer, and postur...

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 Second Collect at Evening Prayer. As with the second and third collects at Matins, Shepherd notes the antiquity of this collect, "translated, with little change, from a prayer in the sacramentary of Gregory the Great". Again we note how each day at Cranmerian Morning and Evening Prayer we pray in ancient words, offered by churches over centuries. While accepting the similarity with the Second Collect for Peace at Matins, Shepherd points to how the Second Collect at Evensong - "The second for Peace" - is particularly suited to the evening hour, after the day's labour, with the hours of darkness before us, the passing of another day marking the passage of our mortal lives: This collect has the same title with the second for morning prayer; "A collect for peace." And though the petitions ...

Bringing to a close this series of posts on the influence of Eastern theologians on Taylor's thought in  The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), we turn to a passing reference in the work's dedication: But in the Greek Churches [transubstantiation] could not prevaile, as appears ... in Cyrils book of late, dogmatically affirming the article in our sense. Taylor is here referring to the Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith (1629) by Cyril Lucaris, Ecumenical Patriarch 1620-38. Having previously come into contact with Reformed churches and theologians, Cyril sought to give expression to his understanding of agreements between Orthodoxy and the Reformed. Taylor's reference, of course, is particularly to Cyril's statement on the Eucharist: This is the pure and lawful institution of this wonderful Sacrament, in the administration of which we profess the true and certain presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; that presence, however, which...