laudable Practice

Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. S. Matt. 3.2. At Matins in Advent, I use this penitential sentence (found in 1662 and 1926), the proclamation of Saint John the Baptist. The dark December mornings begin with the words of the Forerunner, cutting through the cold, the pressing demands of the approach of the festive season, thoughts too easily distracted by the prospects of busy roads and Christmas-card writing. The odd, discomforting character of John - "his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey" - is what I need alongside the the joyous anticipation of Advent: an incessant reminder from the Judean wilderness that all is not well, with the world, with the Church, with me. That Our Lord takes for Himself these very words of John (Matthew 4.17) emphasises their significance. That John, he who is "more than a prophet", "among them that are born of women there hath not risen a great...

Throughout Advent, I will be posting some Marian extracts from Jeremy Taylor's Great Exemplar , demonstrating how in Taylor we see that a thoroughly Protestant understanding (evident, for example, in his Dissuasive , with its robust critique of Tridentine Marian practices) is no barrier to a tender reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary.  We begin today with words from the outset of Taylor's account of 'The History of the Conception of Jesus'. Here we see how Taylor's depiction of the Blessed Virgin evinces love and reverence, a quiet joy that the grace of God had prepared her for "a full measure of honour": In the days of Herod the king, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a holy maid called Mary, espoused to Joseph; and found her in a capacity and excellent disposition to receive the greatest honour that ever was done to the daughters of men. Her employment was holy and pious, her person young, her years florid and s...

Francis Atterbury's ' A Sermon preached before the Sons of the Clergy ' was delivered on 6th December 1709, in the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, London. Atterbury, later Bishop of Rochester, was then Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. The Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy had been established in 1655, receiving its Royal Charter in 1678. It held a yearly festival in Saint Paul's in order to raise funds for poorer clergy, and the widows and children of deceased clergy. Atterbury's sermon referenced the season in which the event occurred: It is said of our Blessed Saviour (whose Advent we now celebrate) that he came Eating and Drinking, and that he went about doing good. I join these two Parts of his Character, because He himself often exerted them together, and made use of the One, as affording him fit Opportunities to abound in the Other. He disdained not to appear at great Tables and Festival Entertainments, that he might more illustriously manifest his Divine Ch...

Having earlier this week praised Victorian Anglicanism, today's post is an example of how earlier Georgian norms could continue to be found in the Victorian era. In a Stir-up Sunday sermon , John Keble favourably refers to the practice of Ante-Communion: If any go on profanely rejecting the Holy Communion altogether, the Church, he would perceive, is not to blame for it, who has not only enjoined all her children to communicate at least three times a year, but also encourages, wherever it may be, Communion on every Lord's day; and to put us in mind of that sacred duty, appoints certain portions of the holy service to be said at the Lord's Table, even when the Sacrament is not administered. Mindful that this collection of Keble's sermons was published in 1878, this reference certainly suggests that the practice of Ante-Communion was known past the mid-19th century. What is more, not only does Keble not criticise the practice, he actively praises it: Ante-Communion "...

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. And so begins, of course, Washington Irving's ' The Legend of Sleepy Hollow '. That Irving was a parishioner of the Episcopal congregation in Tarrytown, "on the eastern shore of the Hudson", adds to the story: he was writing about the place which was his home from 1835 until his death, the place in which he worshipped (in the Episcopal congregation, Christ Church), the landscape in which he rejoiced. It is the custom of laudable Practice on Thanksgiving Day to give thanks for an aspect of the Protestant Episcopal Chur...

It might make regular readers of this blog choke on their morning tea. What on earth has happened to the sound, pleasing Georgian tastes of laudable Practice ? Were not the Victorians responsible for what Thomas Hardy, in A Pair of Blue Eyes , called "the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration". Do we not, with Hardy in Under the Greenwood Tree , lament "regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen" - the west gallery musicians and singers - "by an isolated organist"? Is it not the case that good Parson Woodforde is to be celebrated and lauded over and above the Victorians J.H. Newman and J.C. Ryle? The answer to all these questions is a hearty 'yes'. But, those of us who are 'New Georgians' (seeking to promote an appreciation of 18th century Anglicanism, Georgian churches, and the ordinary, stolid piety that characterised the Georgian Church of England) do live in an Anglican landscape defined by the Victorians. To simply ...

Zwingli failed to work out any fully developed or coherent theology of baptism ... It is easy enough to detect the weaknesses in Zwingli's understanding. He isolates the various aspects of the sacrament. He has not true doctrine of sacramental efficacy. He has little or nothing to say about baptism as a sign of remission and regeneration. G.W. Bromiley's introduction to Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' - in the Zwingli and Bullinger volume (1953) in 'The Library of Christian Classics' series - offers a stark but accurate assessment of the failings of the Zurich reformer's sacramental theology, not least when contrasted with "Luther and the more developed 'sacramentalism' of the later Reformed school". As example of such richer Reformation sacramental theology we might particularly point to the BCP Baptismal rite, Article XXVII, and the Catechism: the Anglican eye will particularly notice how Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' significantly contr...

At Parish Communion on The Sunday before Advent, 23.11.25 Jeremiah 23:5 “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” [1] The words are those of the prophet Jeremiah, speaking to God’s ancient people Israel, in a time long before the birth of Christ. And it is in those centuries long ago that our journey this morning begins. Jeremiah’s words of hope about a king descended from the line of David stand amidst other words spoken by the prophet - words of challenge and warning for the people of Israel. Their faithlessness, their worship of false gods, their refusal to walk in the ways of the Lord; this was bringing close a time of calamity. Jeremiah foresaw what would soon come to pass.  The bitterness and shame of defeat, of banishment, of exile, far from the Promised Land.  The kingdom established in times past by the great King Da...

This being the Day which Custom has devoted to celebrate the Decency of Cathedral service, to set forth its Usefulness, to convince the Gainsayer, to remove the Prejudice of the Ignorant, and the Cavails of the Malicious ... So began the sermon - ' Cathedral Service Decent and Useful ' - of the Reverend William Dingley (a fellow of Corpus Christ College, d.1735), in the University Church, Oxford, on "Cecilia's Day" 1713. What is immediately significant is Dingley's statement that such sermons, in praise of the choral tradition, were customary on Saint Cecilia's Day, 22nd November. Alongside Dingley's sermon, this post will consider two other sermons for Saint Cecilia's Day, Nicholas Brady's ' Church Music Vindicated ' in 1697 and, in 1698, Francis Atterbury's ' The Usefulness of Church Music '. They indicate a pattern in the late 17th/early 18th century Church of England of observing Saint Cecilia's Day with a celebratio...

As we approach the anniversary of the death of surely the most influential Anglican of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis, I share a wonderful extract from his English Literature in The Sixteenth Century , discussing Richard Hooker. While Lewis prefaces this extract with a reminder that "Hooker had never heard of a religion called Anglicanism", what would become Anglicanism, at its best, embodies this Hookerian ethos, in which an exhausting (and inherently deceptive) spiritual search for 'the true Church' is, thankfully, not ordinarily an Anglican concern. As Hooker declared, such searching is the pursuit of "they [who] define not the Church by that which the Church essentiallie is, but by that wherein they imagin their own more perfect than the rest are" ( LEP V.68.6).  In this, Lewis was truly Hookerian, his writings demonstrating a catholic spirit free of of such a stultifying, narrow spirit. If there is a 'patron saint' of the ordinary Anglican - con...

And this shall suffice here, to show how Christ's intent was to give verily, as he did in deed, his precious body and blood to be eaten and drunken. Cranmer has no hesitation in  affirming  these words of his opponent in the Answer to Gardiner (1551). This is indeed what the Dominical and Apostolic words on the institution of the Eucharist declare: And when this true believing man cometh to the Lord's Supper, and according to Christ's commandment receiveth the bread broken in remembrance that Christ's body was broken for him upon the cross, and drinketh the wine in remembrance of the effusion of Christ's blood for his sins, and unfeignedly believeth the same, to him the words of our Saviour Christ be effectuous and operatory, Take, eat, this is my body which is given for thee; and, Drink of this, for this is my blood which is shed for thee, to the remission of thy sins. And as St. Paul saith, the bread unto him is the communion of Christ's body, and the wine, t...

Having seen in last week's reading from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , that Bull's chief concern in Defensio Fidei Nicaenae was refute critiques of Nicaea which had emerged and become influential in Remonstrant theology , this week we turn to how this refutation was expressed. Nelson identifies "four principal pillars" of Nicene faith defended by Bull: Now the four principal Pillars of the Catholick doctrine concerning Christ, maintained and defended in this Book, are The Pre-existence, his Divine Substantiality, his Eternity, and his Subordination as Son. For against the Socinians he proveth, that the Son of God did preexist before he was born of the Virgin, and even before the World also was, by many great Authorities. And against the Arians, he sheweth how this Son of God is not of any created and changable Essence, but of the very same Nature with God his Father: and so is rightly called, very God of very God, and of one Substance with the Father. Al...