laudable Practice

In mortality there is a sharpness / of perception - everything made bare and elemental. Christopher Yokel, 'Life-In-Death', in Autumn Poems (2019). November.  It is the month in which intimations of mortality are particularly evident .  With the glories of Autumn past, the landscape dulls, quietens, and prepares for Winter's arrival. The trees are bare, the days shorten and grow colder.  Another year of this earthly life is passing.  It is a month when my mind turns to the fitting character of the Prayer Book's The Burial of the Dead . Yokel's words, written of Autumn's end and November days, could have also been composed to describe the Prayer Book's Burial office. In mortality there is a sharpness / of perception - everything made bare and elemental. The starkness of The Burial of the Dead is, contrary to its liturgical critics and their desire for something much less bracing, its great strength.  All else is stripped away. Death is confronted, not denied...

In his defence of authority by which the Articles of Perth were introduced, in a  1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - addressed the allegation that the practices required by the Articles were contrary to the order and discipline of the Church of Scotland as praised by Beza. Lindsay, however, points out that this is not what Beza meant by Scotland's "good order or discipline". Beza, rather, was praising the Geneva-like approach to ecclesiastical discipline: "the use of this Ecclesiasticall power in censuring of manners". What is more, not only was Beza not referring to the particular ceremonies that had been previously adopted by the Church of Scotland, it was also the case that those ceremonies did not conform to the Genevan use: But yee, no sooner heare good order or discipline commended but presently yee imagine, that your table ge...

On this day when we rightly give thanks for the failure of the Powder-plot, I turn to Jeremy Taylor's 1634 sermon " upon the anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason ". One of the themes running throughout the sermon is the repeated view that, prior to Pius V's 1570 bull  Regnans in exclesis - declaring Elizabeth a "heretic" and "depriv[ing] of her pretended title to the kingdom ... and of all dominion, dignity and privilege whatsoever" - England's Roman Catholics had conformed and worshipped in parish churches. Indeed, as the final extract below indicates, Taylor also noted how this had, in some cases, continued long after Regnans in excelsis :  From primo of Elizabeth to undecimo, the Papists made no scruple of comming to our Churches, Recusancy was not then so much as a Chrysome, not an Embrio. But when Pius quintus sent forth his Breves of Excommunication and Deposition of the Queen, then first they forbore to pray with us, or to have any re...

In his discussion of Bull's 1685 work Defensio Fidei Nicaenae , Nelson refers to an interesting debate provoked by a reading of Bull by the Roman Catholic divine Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux and an eirenic voice in French Catholicism:  the late Bishop of Meaux, with whom I had the honour to be acquainted, and who is known to have had  a particular Esteem for our Author, is mistaken, in supposing him to hold the Infallibility of this Council of Nice; for had the Bishop but proved this once, all that Mr. Bull had written in defence of the Faith there established, would have been altogether superfluous. We might note that Nelson's passing reference to knowing Bossuet was due to him remaining on the continent for some years after the Revolution of 1688: in other words, it is an acknowledgement of his Jacobite loyalties, loyalties which remained (albeit perhaps more as an emotional attachment) even after he abandoned the Non-juror schism and reconciled to the Church of England in 1710...

Wherefore, to resume that mother-sentence, whereof I little thought that so much trouble would have grown, "I doubt not but God was merciful to save thousands of our fathers living in popish superstitions, inasmuch as they sinned ignorantly": alas, what bloody matter is there contained in this sentence that it should be an occasion of so many hard censures! Did I say that "thousands of our fathers might be saved"? I have showed which  way it cannot be denied. Did I say, "I doubt it not but they were saved"? I see no impiety in  this persuasion ... On this commemoration of Richard Hooker, we turn to words from his A Learned Discourse on Justification   (1585),   responding to those who attacked him for affirming that salvation was to be found within the pre-Reformation Roman Church. We might begin by noting Hooker's insistence regarding the salvation of "our fathers", an insistence that surely echoed the Christian instincts of the average pari...

On this Reformation Day, I offer extracts from various of the Confessions of the Reformation, indicating the profound continuity and retrieval at work in the Reformation, reaffirming creedal orthodoxy, proclaiming sacramental and ministerial order, and demonstrating the catholic nature of the Churches of the Reformation. Such is the richness and depth of the magisterial Protestantism which shaped the Protestant national churches of Reformation Europe. From this well these Churches should be drinking deeply, not least in the time of the Quiet Revival.  That some of those in the Quiet Revival will find the grace and truth of the Christian faith in Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Pentecostalism is only to be expected and should be recognised with joy, for Christ is the centre of the Church catholic in all its expressions. It will, however, be a fundamental betrayal of the Reformation - and, more, of the Gospel - if the Protestant national churches of Europe, exchanging their glorious...

Having considered how David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - defended the authority by which the Articles of Perth were introduced, in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , we now turn to his defence of the provisions of the Articles themselves. The Articles of Perth, at the urging of James VI/I, reintroduced to the Church of Scotland kneeling to receive the Holy Communion, Communion of the sick at the end of their earthly lives, the private Baptism of infants when necessary, Confirmation, and observance of the major festivals of Our Lord. Those who, rather than peaceably accepting the lawful decision of the General Assembly, cantankerously opposed the Articles of Perth sought to portray them as 'Roman' practices - despite the fact that many of their provisions were found in other Reformed churches. Quoting an opponent who ridiculously suggested that Roman Catholic opinion would interp...

Now, where the author, to exclude the mystery of corporal  manducation, bringeth forth of St. Augustine such words as en treat of the effect and operation of the worthy receiving of the sa crament, the handling is not so sincere as this matter requireth. In his defence of our partaking of Christ in the holy Sacrament was by "corporal manducation", Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, accused Cranmer of deliberately misinterpreting Augustine. Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551), responds by again quoting Augustine, from De Doctrina Christiana , "where he saith, that 'the eating and drinking of Christ's flesh and blood is a figurative speech'" - in other words, that our partaking of Christ is not by corporal manducation. For Cranmer, corporal manducation was to be rejected not because it made an excessive claim for the Sacrament but, rather, because mere corporal manducation failed to recognise the nature of our spiritual partaking of Christ: Wheref...

On quite a few occasions in these readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. Bull , I have pointed to Samuel Fornecker's excellent study Bisschop's Bench: Contours of Arminian Conformity in the Church of England, c.1674-1742 (2024). It is a wonderful conversation partner when reading Nelson's account of one of the towering 'Arminian' Church of England divines of the long 18th century, not least because Nelson's judgements often contrast with those presented by Fornecker. This can lead to an interesting debate over the nature of 'Arminian Conformity'. Today's reading provides another example of this. Fornecker regards Bull's 1685 work Defensio Fidei Nicaenae  as exemplifying "the graded subordinationism" characteristic of Episcopius-influenced Arminian accounts of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Nelson, however, points to  Defensio Fidei Nicaenae as fulfilling its title. The work, Nelson states, had its origin...

At Parish Communion on the Fifth Sunday before Advent, Bible Sunday 26.10.25 Luke 4:16-21 “He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.” [1] Across the globe on this Sunday, in a vast array of languages, Christians of all the various traditions are doing what we have just done - reading the Scriptures. Indeed, it is what The King and the Pope did on Thursday past, when they shared in prayer, a wonderful sign of Christian unity. Reading the Scriptures is what Christians do when we gather for public worship. And it is what we have done across the centuries. One of the earliest descriptions of Christian worship outside the New Testament was written by a Christian thinker called Justin, around the year 150AD - just over a century after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and perhaps about 70 years after the last books of the New Testament had been written. This is how Justin begins his description of Christian worship: “On the day called Sunday there is a ga...

Jeremy Taylor in The Worthy Communicant - Chapter III, Section V ' Of the proper and specific Work of Faith in the Reception of the Holy Communion ' - providing a robust statement of a distinctive of Reformed eucharistic theology, the rejection of the manducatio impiorum : If the manducation of Christ's flesh and drinking his blood be spiritual, and done by faith, and is effected by the Spirit, and that this faith signifies an entire dedition [i.e. surrender] of ourselves to Christ, and sanctification of the whole man to the service of Christ, then it follows, that the wicked do not communicate with Christ, they eat not his flesh, and they drink not his blood: they eat and drink indeed; but it is gravel in their teeth, and death in their belly; they eat and drink damnation to themselves. For unless a man be a member of Christ, unless Christ dwells in him by a living faith, he does not eat the bread that came down from heaven. "They lick the rock," saith St. Cypri...

Today we reach a final extract from ' Answers to the Exceptions Made Against the Assembly of Perth ' in the 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618, by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38). Lindsay here sets forth a well-established understanding of the civil magistrate's duty to uphold conformity, not for binding the conscience but as a means of securing the peace of the kirk: Since the time that Kings and Princes became Christian, it hath alwayes beene the custome that Synodicall Decrees were authorized by their Lawes; not that the allowance or authoritie of Ciuill Lawes is made a rule to a Christians Conscience, but that the externall man might thereby bee tyed to the obedience of these things, which the Church hath found to be agreeable to the Word of God, that is the only rule of conscience: and it is to bee hoped, that God shall so dispose the hearts of the whole Estate, to the loue of ...