laudable Practice

In early 1623, Francis White was one of the Church of England divines who took part in a disputation , ordered by James I/VI, with Fisher the Jesuit. Later that year, White was appointed Dean of Carlisle, a clearly a sign of royal approval. In 1626, early in the reign of Charles I, he was appointed Bishop of Carlisle, with Cosin preaching at his consecration. He was closely associated with the ecclesiastical policies of the Personal Rule, with his Treatise of the Sabbath Day published in 1635 at the direction of Charles and dedicated to Laud. The trajectory of White post-1623 career in the Church of England - Jacobean and Caroline - is mentioned in order to emphasise that his role in the disputation was clearly highly regarded. It is this which makes his handling of one issue in the debates particularly significant. Regarding the apostolicity of the Church, Fisher had stated: The Church is Apostolicall, and that apparantly descending from the Apostolicall Sea, by succession of Bishops...

The ministers shall often admonish the people, that they defer not the baptizing of infants any longer than the next Lord's day after the child be born, unless upon a great and reasonable cause, declared to the minister, and by him approved, the same be postponed.  As also, they shall warn them, that without great cause, they procure not their children to be baptized at home in their houses. But when great need shall compel them to baptize in private houses - in which case the minister shall not refuse to do it, upon the knowledge of the great need, and being timely required thereto - the baptism shall be ministered after the same form, as it should have been in the congregation - and the minister shall the next Lord's day after any such private baptism, declare in the church, that the infant was baptized, and therefore ought to be received as one of the true flock of Christ's fold. Amidst the provisions of the Articles of Perth was that, when necessity required it, minist...

Now then let me come at once to the subject which leads me to address you. Should the Government and Country so far forget their GOD as to cast off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claim of respect and attention which you make upon your flocks? Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must CHRIST'S Ministers depend?  With these words, published on 9th September 1833, did Tracts for the Times begin. In the first of the Tracts , John Henry Newman painted a picture of a Church of England corrupted by the Georgian era. Its clergy were dependent, we are told, on "birth ... education ... wealth ... connexions". He issued a trumpet call to the parsons of the Georgian Church, "to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats" and that "idle habit" of relying upon "that secular respectability, or cultivat...

But however difficult the Employment might prove to Dr. Bull, in the decline of his Strength and Vigour, it certainly concerned the Honour of the Nation, not to suffer a Person to die in an obscure Retirement, who upon the account of his Learned Performances, had shined with so much Lustre in a neighbouring Nation, where he had received the united Thanks of her Bishops, for the great Service he had done to the Cause of Christianity. Accordingly he was consecrated Bishop of St. David's, in Lambeth Chapel on the 29th of April, 1705 ... And so it was that on the Third Sunday after Easter in 1705 that George Bull was consecrated to the episcopate. Robert Nelson, in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , notes that, despite Bull's advanced age, such elevation to the episcopate was only fitting for a divine who had received the praise of the bishops of the Kingdom of France.  This passing reference to the bishops of "a neighbouring Nation" exemplifies why the early 18th century...

Something of a tradition has emerged on Laudable Practice of marking the early May Bank Holiday with a reflection related to Georgian church interiors. While this holiday has other connotations, I enjoy it as quiet celebration of Spring, before the louder, garish days of Summer arrive. There is something about late Spring - its gentle light, the modest warmth after Winter, the fresh greenery of these days - which, I think, is reflected in the interior of Georgian churches. This May Day, I am prompted to address the 'New Georgians' - yes, in the words of the well-known meme, 'There are dozens of us. Dozens!'. I have previously suggested that those of us who might be called New Georgians seek "to promote an appreciation of 18th century Anglicanism, Georgian churches, and the ordinary, stolid piety that characterised the Georgian Church of England". Actually, it might be that there are a few more than 'dozens of us'. Something I enjoy posting on 'X...

The King's state visit to the United States, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, had me searching online for photographs of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II attending Episcopal services during their respective state visits.  During his state visit, George VI, with FDR, attended divine service at St. James Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, New York City on Sunday 11th June 1939. The first photograph, taken after the service, shows the King and Queen, President and Mrs. Roosevelt, Bishop Henry St. George Tucker (then PECUSA Presiding Bishop), and two Episcopal clergy.  The second and third photographs are of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attending divine service in Old North Church on Sunday 11th July 1976, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.  The photographs evoke something that, in many ways, been lost. Reflecting on the photographs, however, is neither a counsel of despair nor a call for reactionary outrage. It is, instead, an i...

As for the reformed churches, except our neighbor Church, they haue abandoned daies dedicated to Saints. For those who passionately opposed the Articles of Perth , the Church of England loomed large. The Articles were, it was asserted, a means of conforming the Church of Scotland to the 'but half-reformed' national Church south of the border. This explains why, although the Articles of Perth restored to the Church of Scotland the observance of the five principal festivals of our Lord but not the saints' days commemorated by the Church of England, the Articles' opponents raised the spectre of 'popish' saints' days. In the defence of the Articles of Perth given by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth - the attack on the Church of England's saints' days is directly address, Firstly, Lindsay challenges the allegation on Hooker...

Today marks a return to a genre of post on laudable Practice that I particularly enjoy: reflections on episcopal charges from the 'long 18th century'.  I find them all the more enjoyable when the bishop in question is little known. This adds to the sense that we are looking into what life was actually like in the pre-1833 Church of England, what concerns motivated bishops, what clerical life might have been like, what was the ethos of 18th century Anglicanism.  Thomas Burgess was born in 1756, just four years before George III acceded to the Throne. George III, of course, reigned until 1820. The vast majority of Burgess' life, therefore, was lived under good King George. In 1784 Burgess received holy orders and the following year was appointed examining and domestic chaplain to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Salisbury. 40 years later, during the reign of George IV, Burgess himself would become Bishop of Salisbury, translated from St Davids. In the charge delivered to the cle...

Cosmopolitanism has been a theme running through these readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull : from the influence of Episcopius on the younger Bull, to a later critical but still admiring response to Episcopius, to the warm relationship with the Gallican Bossuet. Today's reading offers another example of the cosmopolitan context both for Bull and wider 18th Anglicanism.  In 1703, John Ernest Grabe - of whom Nelson notes, "his particular friend and mine" - published a new Latin edition of Bull's works: with his [i.e. Grabe's] own many learned Annotations, and introduced it into the World with an admirable Preface, which did great Justice to our excellent Author, as well as to his learned and judicious Writings. Grabe had been born at Königsberg, in the Kingdom of Prussia, in 1666. Settling in Oxford in 1697, he received Church of England orders in 1700, becoming chaplain of Christ Church. While the son of a Lutheran divine and a subject of the Kin...

It is not at all original to read Hooker's exposition of the Sacraments in Book V of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity alongside the Consensus Tigurinus (the Consensus of Zurich), the 1549 agreement between the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on the Sacraments. Torrance Kirby , for example, has said that Hooker's teaching on the Sacraments as 'moral instruments' is "demonstrably in agreement with the Consensus Tigurinus". Similarly, Diarmaid MacCulloch regards Hooker's eucharistic views as being at home in "Bullinger's Zurich".  The purpose of this post, therefore, is not to offer any original commentary but to consider how the Consensus Tigurinus is significantly reflected in Hooker. The focus of this post is V.57.3-5 of the Laws . We begin, however, with a passage from the Laws just prior to V.57, as Hooker considers "The union or mutuall participation which is betweene Christ and the Church of Christ in this present worlde". In...