laudable Practice

The people are to receive the Communion all meekly kneeling. When, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd addresses the Prayer Book rubric directing that the Sacrament is to be received "meekly kneeling", he immediately draws a parallel between this and the practice of the patristic and Eastern churches: In the ancient Church the people appear to have more generally received the Communion standing. Yet they "stood with fear and trembling, with silence and downcast eyes." Cyril directs the communicant "to draw near, bowing his body in the posture of worship and adoration." In the modern Greek Church the communicant does not kneel, but inclines his body, and is instructed to exercise at the time this act of faith: "I believe and I acknowledge that thou art Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."  While it may seem coun...

Today we resume our weekly readings from Robert Nelson's 1713 The Life of Dr. George Bull , one of the particularly significant divines of the 18th Church of England. Prior to Lent, we had left Bull in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration, in a nation reeling from the political and religious divisions of the past few decades, his preaching already indicating the wisdom and moderation of the Arminian Conformity central to the Church of England during the long 18th century. We now move to 1662, when Nelson was presented to a new cure: In the Year 1662, Mr. Bull was presented to the Vicaridge of Suddington St. Peter, by the then Lord Chancellor the Earl of Clarendon, at the Request and Application of his constant Patron, and worthy Diocesan, Dr. Nicholson, who was made Bishop of Gloucester upon the Restoration, and who had all that Merit which was necessary to fill so great a Station in the Church to the best Advantage, if his Steddiness to her Doctrines and Discipline, in ...

Low Sunday 27.4.25 John 20:28 “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” [1] It is Doubting Thomas Sunday.  A day when we celebrate Thomas as the patron saint of doubters.  A day when we affirm the role of doubt in the Christian life.  A day when we are encouraged to have doubts about the Christian faith. Well, no, actually.  Apart - obviously - from the words of John’s Gospel quoted at the outset, all that I have just said is nonsense. It is wrong. It is not Doubting Thomas Sunday.  On this Sunday after Easter Day we rejoice in Saint Thomas the Apostle’s great declaration of faith concerning Our Lord Jesus Christ: “My Lord and my God!” [2]. Saint Thomas is not the patron saint of doubters.  He is, rather, the Apostle who gives full-throated expression to the most explicit statement of the Christian faith in the entire New Testament [3]. And, no, the Sunday after Easter Day is not a day when we affirm - or, worse, encourage - the place of doubt in our Chr...

And if the Head be risen, the Members shall not stay behind. He is the head of the body the Church. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Our Lord is our Head, and in Him is our Nature exalted and raised up: And as he partakes of our Flesh, so do we of his Spirit, and have a pledge and argument on each side of our Resurrection. If the spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you; He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you, (Rom.viii.11.) We receive great assurance of our Resurrection; Christ hath left us (says Tertullian) Arrabonem Spiritus, the Earnest of the Spirit; and he hath taken from us Arrabonem Carnis, the Earnest of the Flesh, and carried with him into Heaven, Pignus totius summae illic quandóque redigendae; Part of our humane Nature, a pledge that inferrs the Resurrection of the rest. The Holy Sacrament we receive (if we receive as we should) is a token of our Resur...

At Ante-Communion on Good Friday 18.4.25 John 19:36-37 “These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken.’ And again another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’” [1] Of all that is said by the writer of the Gospel of John regarding Good Friday, this is amongst the most surprising and the most revealing. As we gaze upon the Crucified on this day, the Lord nailed to the Cross, John’s Gospel proclaims, “ These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled”.  According to John the saving purposes of God, revealed over centuries in the Scriptures of Israel, what Christians call the Old Testament, reach their fulfillment here , on this day, at the Cross, in the Crucified Lord. The scriptures of the Old Testament tell of God’s saving purposes - in a world broken and shadowed by sin and death - revealed first to Abraham; the saving purposes of God which moved the Psalmist to sing God’s ...

At Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday, 17.4.25 1 Corinthians 11:26  “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” [1] Since Saint Paul penned these words, only a few decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has been celebrated by Christians in a vast array of diverse circumstances. In ancient basilicas, grand cathedrals, and humble parish churches.  On battlefields, in prisons, and at hospital bedsides. In the face of bitter persecution; in the midst of secular indifference; and at the coronation of monarchs (most recently, the coronation of His Majesty the King).  In times of peace and times of war; in times of celebration and times of grief. In large, cosmopolitan cities, at the very heart of political, economic, and cultural life; and in small, quiet villages, very far from the centres of power. In each of these circumstances, in all of these circumstances, the Sacrament...

Went to Parson Gapper's this afternoon at East Charlton, about one mile from Babcary, to desire him to administer the Sacrament for me next Friday being Good Friday, which he promised me he would. The words of Parson Woodforde from 1764 introduce us to a practice now unfortunately lost to most Anglicans: the administration of the Lord's Supper on Good Friday. This Woodforde reference is significant, not least because the good Parson was not the type to be - how shall we put this? - a liturgical innovator. While I have yet to see any research on the matter (if readers are aware of any such research, please do let me know), there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that administering the Lord's Supper on Good Friday was a common practice throughout the 'long 18th century'.  For example, John Shepherd, in his 1801 A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II , makes a point of addressing the absence of a proper preface for Good Frida...

On previous occasions, laudable Practice has noted both Jeremy Taylor's critique of the indicative form of absolution ('I absolve thee') and how this was reflected in 18th century High Church caution regarding this form of absolution in the BCP's Visitation of the Sick, as seen in the comments of Secker and others. One of Taylor's most famous works, Holy Dying (1651), demonstrates his desire for a form of absolution in private confession after the declaratory and precatory forms: Then let the sick man be called to rehearse the articles of his faith; or, if he be so weak he cannot, let him (if he have not before done it) be called to say Amen when they are recited, or to give some testimony of his faith and confident assent to them. After which it is proper (if the person be in capacity) that the minister examine him, and invite him to confession, and all the parts of repentance, according to the foregoing rules; after which he may pray the prayer of absolution. O...

It is bad enough that the Netflix drama 'Adolescence' is  driving government policy in the United Kingdom. To have it also proposed as a reason to determine the Church of England's approach to holy orders was, however, rather unexpected. The drama - note, not a documentary, despite the views of the Prime Minister - was invoked by the Area Bishop of Croydon, Dr Rosemarie Mallett, launching a campaign by the pressure group Women And The Church (WATCH) to repeal the Church of England's provisions for those opposed to the ordination of women. Most strikingly, the Bishop urged that the ordination of women should be understood as a means of pursuing a progressive agenda in the culture wars: I think in honesty we also thought that as society changed and as views became more open-minded among growing numbers of younger men and women, the culture of the Church would change like the culture of the wider society. No one really saw that there was an underlying trend even then, g...

Today our Lenten readings from Jeremy Taylor's sermon Golden Grove sermon ' The Invalidity of a Late, or Deathbed Repentance ' draw to a close. And they do so with the figure of the Penitent Thief. Surely this figure contradicts the very point of Taylor's sermon: that deathbed repentance is invalid? This, contends Taylor, is to misunderstand our relationship to the Penitent Thief: But why may not we be saved as well as the thief upon the crosse? even because our case is nothing alike. When Christ dies once more for us, we may look for such another instance; not till then. But this thiefe did but then come to Christ; he knew him not before; and his case was as if a Turk or heathen should be converted to Christianity, and be baptized, and enter newly into the Covenant upon his deathbed. Then God pardons all his sins; and so God does to Christians when they are baptized, or first give up their names to Christ by a voluntarie confirmation of their baptismal vow: but when th...

This series of short Lenten reflections on penitence in the Prayer Book concludes with a prayer from the Burial of the Dead in the Church of Ireland Book of Common Prayer 1926. Fittingly for these days of late Lent, the prayer is the collect for Easter Even, placed alongside a prayer for the bereaved after the reading from Scripture. It ensures that as we gather at the grave and confront our mortality, we hear the call to penitence. Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ ... In the Passion of the Lord, death has been swallowed up in victory. In the words of the Apostle: "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection". In the face of death we are recalled to our baptism, the sign of our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ: living out this gift, in penitence and faith, we are conformed to the Lord's death that we might share...

From Tillotson's sermon ' The Danger of Impenitence, Where the Gospel is Preached ', on the text Matthew 11:21-22, refuting the doctrine of irresistible grace. He does so on the grounds that sufficient grace always accompanies the "outward means of repentance", as opposed to the Calvinist notion that, without irresistible grace, the outwards means of repentance were not a means of grace unto repentance. In other words, each time the call to repentance is heard in the reading of the Scriptures, the praying of the liturgy, or preaching from the pulpit, grace truly accompanies such call, sufficient for authentic repentance. What Repentance is here spoken of; whether a meer external and Hypocritical Repentance in shew and appearance only, or an inward and real and sincere Repentance ... The Reason of this doubt depends upon the different Theories of Divines, about the sufficiency of Grace accompanying the outward Means of Repentance, and whether an irresistible degree...

We saw last week how E.H. Browne - then Bishop of Winchester - in his An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles: Historical and Doctrinal (1874), set forth an Old High understanding in which the Prayer Book's provision for private confession and absolution followed " the same wise and moderate view " of the Continental Reformers regarding this ministry. In this week's extract, Browne repeats the wisdom of ensuring that this ministry is available, but robustly warns against it becoming the normal and routine form of confession and repentance, which is to be "confession to God": There can be no doubt, that a distressed conscience may be soothed and guided by confidence in a spiritual adviser. Most people, much in earnest, and much oppressed with a sense of sin, have yearned for such confidence. Hence the Church should always afford to the sin-stricken soul the power of unburdening itself. But, on the other hand, whatever tends to lead people to substitute con...

Imagine a world without Protestantism. According to a recent First Things article, not much imagining is required. The magisterial Protestant traditions, we are told, have almost entirely disappeared: The world I invite you to imagine, then, is one in which this middle way—neither Roman nor Anabaptist, both traditional and reformed—has vanished. Is such a world possible? It is. In fact, we are living in it right now. Ours is a world without Protestantism. The slight problem with this assessment is that it is nonsense. To be more specific, it is nonsense in large swathes of the globe. Admittedly we can find evidence to support it in a particular North Atlantic context. We might, for example, point to the profoundly depressing account offered by the outgoing bishop of the Yukon , a diocese in the Anglican Church of Canada which, in 2019, had an average Sunday attendance of 191 . Yes, you read that correctly: 191 for an entire diocese. That shameful figure is unfortunately understandable...