laudable Practice

On Epiphany 1813, William White, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Presiding Bishop of PECUSA, preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia. The sermon addressed the newly-established Society for the Advancement of Christianity in Pennsylvania, founded by White in the previous year to support the creation of Episcopal churches in the state.  What is striking about the sermon is how it is defined by what White terms "the festival of this day". Remembering that White is regarded as an exemplar of the low church tradition in PECUSA, and that there was little, if any, high church influence in Pennsylvania, the sermons points to how the feast of the Epiphany was meaningfully observed in pre-1833 Anglicanism: It has been often remarked concerning the calling of the Gentiles, that the great event became distinct a prophecy, in proportion as the time of its accomplishment drew near. The truth of this is especially evident in the text. The ...

Richard Gardyner's 1639 Epiphany sermon , preached in Christ Church, Oxford, was in many ways, an exemplary Laudian discourse. Gardyner , who won praise from James I/VI for an oration delivered on behalf of the University of Oxford, was appointed a canon of Christ Church in 1629 and a chaplain to Charles I in 1630. His 1639 Epiphany sermon set forth a traditional piety associated with the feast, saw in the Magi a model of Laudian reverence "before the Altar", and evoked traditional Marian Epiphany iconography . The sermon also demonstrated how Laudians were promoting an attractive alternative soteriology to a rather rigid expression of Calvinistic scholasticism. As Gardyner expounded in the sermon, the feast of the Epiphany was particularly suited to giving voice to this alternative vision, with natural theology, reason, and a natural piety used by the Triune God to draw the Magi to the Incarnate Word: I will not affirme, as some doe, that the holy Spirit himselfe assum...