laudable Practice

How are we to understand the eucharistic theology of Lancelot Andrewes? Since the mid-19th century, the Tractarian suggestion that Andrewes represented a rejection of Reformed sacramental theology has become almost de rigueur within Anglicanism. This being so, the words of Andrewes - here in response to Cardinal Bellarmine - are therefore presented as an alternative to both Reformed and Tridentine eucharistic theologies: For, what the Cardinal is not, unless willingly, ignorant of, Christ said, This is My Body: not, in this mode, This is My Body. Now, we are agreed with you about the object; all the contention is about the mode: concerning This is, we with firm faith hold that it is [the Body of Christ]; concerning In this mode it is, (namely, by the bread being transubstantiated into His Body,) concerning the mode by which it is made to be, whether by in, or con, or sub, or trans, there is not a word there ... In The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and Ki...

On the 28th May 1787, in Christ Church, Philadelphia, the first ordination took place in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Pennsylvania. The bishop was, of course, William White, who had been consecrated to the episcopate two months earlier by bishops of the Church of England, in Lambeth Palace chapel.  The preacher at the ordination was Samuel Magaw, Rector of St. Paul's, Philadelphia, and then vice-provost and professor of moral philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Magaw's sermon offers a significant insight into Protestant Episcopalian self-understanding as a church in, as then was the case, the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. When the sermon was published, the dedication to White celebrated his "appointment to the Episcopal Chair". This introduced a major theme in the sermon: the unembarrassed Protestant Episcopalian dependence upon the Church of England. Indeed, Magaw was expl...

One of the characteristics of what we might term Cranmerian orders for the Holy Communion is that the rite begins with the Lord's Prayer. Even some 20th century forms influenced by Anglo-Catholic thought - PECUSA 1928, England as Proposed in 1928, and Canada 1962 - begin with the Lord's Prayer. It is a feature which later 20th century liturgical revisers banished without hesitation, regarding it is an irrational use of the Lord's Prayer, distracting from our gathering for the Eucharist. By contrast, John Shepherd - in his 'The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion' in  A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - demonstrates how this placing of the Lord's Prayer at the outset of the Communion Office is both fitting and deeply resonant:  We begin this office with the Lord's Prayer; which, as many of the Fathers testify, the primitive Church always used in the celebration of the Euch...

From a visitation sermon by Bishop Bull, on the text James 3:1, urging his clergy to preach with the spirit of Grotius and Erasmus. This invocation of two great advocates of an eirenic Christian vision encapsulates a significant and attractive characteristic of 18th century Anglicanism, reflecting the One who is "the author of peace and lover of concord".  It is also rooted in the earlier eirenicism of Casaubon , and the praise for Erasmus and Grotius from Jeremy Taylor , echoed in Timothy Puller's  defence of the Restoration Church . In other words, the Erasmian and Grotian character of 18th century Anglicanism flowed from this earlier eirenicism. In our own age of secular and ecclesiastical culture wars, we might also heed Bull's call to follow after Erasmus and Grotius, seeking "cloven tongues of fire" with which to enlighten, rather than burn. To this it will not be amiss to add what Grotius wisely observes, that the admonition of the Apostle concerning...

Endue thy Ministers with righteousness. It has been prayed daily at Prayer Book Matins and Evensong since 1549.  The petition of the wording, of course, differs from its source in Psalm 132:9: "Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness". The change echoes throughout the Prayer Book. The 'Prayer for the Clergy and People' at Matins and Evensong prays for "our Bishops and Curates". PECUSA 1789 revised this to read "our Bishops, and other Clergy", while Ireland 1878 had "our Bishops and Clergy". In the Prayer for the Church Militant at the Holy Communion, 1549, 1552, and 1559 interceded for "all Bishops, Pastors, and Curates". In 1662 this became "all Bishops and Curates". The 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension restored the 1559 usage, while PECUSA 1789 had "all Bishops and other Ministers". The prayers for the Ember Weeks refer to "the Bishops and Pastors of thy flock", while those about "to be ...

Nor do we eat the flesh, without first adoring, with Augustine. And yet none of us adore the Sacrament. The words of Lancelot Andrewes, referring to Augustine's  homily on Psalm 98 - "no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped" - were invoked by Pusey to defend a Tractarian understanding of adoring Christ in the consecrated Bread and Wine of the holy Sacrament. Pusey also pointed to further words from Andrewes: Christ Himself ... in and with the Sacrament, out of and without the Sacrament, wheresoever He is, is to be adored. In The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), Henry Charles Groves - a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - pointed to the fundamental weakness in Pusey's reading of Andrewes. Pusey had to demonstrate that Andrewes understood adoration, and the reference to Augustine on Psalm 98, in a manner different from the other divines of the reformed Church ...

Last Thursday's post on Ussher's eucharistic theology concluded with a suggestion that the Laudian Bramhall had the same understanding of the Sacrament. Here, in other words, was the sacramental consensus of the Jacobean and Caroline Church, embracing both Reformed Conformists and Laudians.  Something of this is also indicated in Bramhall's words of praise for his predecessor in the See of Armagh, in his  Discourse on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day   (written shortly after Ussher's death in 1656): the late Lord Primate of Armagh ... under whose pious and moderate government I lived sundry years a Bishop in the Province of Ulster, whilst the political part of the care of that Church did lie heavy upon my shoulders. I praise God, we were like the candles in the Levitical Temple, looking one towards another, and all towards the stem. We had no contention among us, but who should hate contention most, and pursue the peace of the Church with swiftest paces. If we wanted...

Having reflected on the titles given to the Sacrament in the 1662 Communion Office, John Shepherd - in his 'The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion' in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - then turns to the opening disciplinary rubrics. The first directs the minister to exclude from the Sacrament "an open and notorious evil liver" by whose actions "the Congregation" has been "offended". The second rubric applies to "those betwixt whom [the Curate] perceiveth malice and hatred to reign".  These are, of course, rubrics which - even though maintained by, for example, PECUSA 1789 and Ireland 1878 - have had little meaningful role in Anglican life over recent centuries, including the era in which Shepherd was writing. This, however, is not a matter of the rubrics being merely conveniently set aside. Shepherd demonstrates this by quoting extensively from a 17...

From a visitation sermon by Bishop Bull, in which he emphasises to his clergy the importance of sermons addressing "moral or practical divinity". This is, of course, a characteristic of 18th century Anglican preaching that is routinely dismissed as supposed 'moralism'.  Bull, however, offers a robust defence of such preaching, a defence which continues to be relevant. It is not "barren subtleties" that are to be heard from the pulpit but, rather, teaching which expounds and encourages the stuff of practical divinity, "that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments", that we might live "in love and charity with [our] neighbours". Of this one speaks most truly: "The knowledge of controversies is made necessary by heretics, the study of piety by God Himself." Theology is doubtless a practical science, nothing in it but what aims at this end. And therefore, he that neglects this practical part of it, understands not the very d...

I am a friend of The Episcopal Church. Admittedly, I am a rather odd friend. I much prefer the title PECUSA (retained, we should remember, in the opening line of TEC's Constitution ). When someone mentions TEC my thoughts can drift to William White and John Henry Hobart; to Anglican order taking root in the early decades of the Great Republic; to the significant Episcopalian civic and cultural presence enduring into the second half of the 20th century. More immediately, I think with gratitude of those Episcopal congregations in which I have worshipped, in Cape Cod, in Maine, in New York City, in Washington DC. And I think also of those Episcopalians with whom I have become acquainted online, some of whom share my Old High predilections for Sunday Morning Prayer, the surplice, and churches like Old Trinity, Dorchester , Maryland. When TEC is mentioned, what I do not think about are Bishops Pike or Spong. As you might expect, I am definitively with Rowan Williams on this: say the C...

In The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), Henry Charles Groves - a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - subjects Pusey's reinterpretation of Article XXIX to strong critique. Pusey attempted to read the Article to mean that, because of an 'objective' presence of Christ in the elements, the wicked do eat the Body of Christ in the Sacrament, but unfruitfully. Groves contrasts this with "the old Anglican doctrine": But all this inconsistency might have been saved by following the old Anglican doctrine concerning the eating or partaking of Christ in the Sacrament, a specimen of which is afforded by Bishop White: "Augustine teacheth only two kinds of manducation in the Sacrament: one both corporal and spiritual, wherein the body of a man receiveth the outward elements of Bread and Wine, and the soul receiveth the true body and blood of Christ by faith; the other corporeal o...

Archbishop Ussher came to mind on Sunday, as the choir sung Ave Verum as the Communion anthem: Hail, true Body, born of the Virgin Mary, having truly suffered, sacrificed on the cross for mankind, from whose pierced side water and blood flowed: Be for us a sweet foretaste in the trial of death! It is possible that some of my low church brethren might assume that Ussher, the great Reformed Conformist, would heartily disapprove. I had in mind, however, his 1620 sermon to the House of Commons , which suggests that he would heartily affirm such a declaration of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the holy Sacrament: Thus in the Lord's Supper, the outward thing which we see with our eyes, is bread and wine, the inward thing which we apprehend by faith is, the body and blood of Christ: in the outward part of this mystical action, which reacheth to that which is Sacramentum only, we receive this body and blood but sacramentally; in the inward, which containeth rem , the t...

Beginning his discussion of  'The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion' in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd addresses the title given to this office in BCP 1662: Of the form directed by Parliament to be drawn up in 1547, the title was, "The Order of the Communion." In Edward's first book, 1549, this office is styled, "The Supper of the Lord, and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." At the review of this book in 1552, the words "commonly called the Mass" were expunged, and the title thrown into the form in which it still remains; "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion." Of the various names given by ecclesiastical writers to this Sacrament, the Supper of the Lord, and the Holy Communion, are two of the most ancient, and the most scriptural; and it is for this reason, I presume, that the...

We now reach our last extract from The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761). Appendix IX is entitled 'Testimonies from some of our most eminent Divines, in Confirmation of what has been advanced'. A range of divines are quoted - Hammond, Henry More, Wake, Stillingfleet, Butler. I turn, however, to the extract from Thomas Tension's 1678 work,  A Discourse of Idolatry .  Tension privately received episcopal orders in 1659, becoming a significant Latitudinarian voice in the Restoration Church and a staunch Whig critic of James II's Roman Catholicism. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury after Tillotson's early death in 1694, he remained at Canterbury until his death in 1715, despite Queen Anne's well known dislike of his Low Church tendencies. In other words, if we were looking for voice likely to be disapproving of imagery in the Church of England, surely it would be ...