laudable Practice

On Fridays throughout Lent, laudable Practice will be posting extracts from Jeremy Taylor's The Worthy Communicant; or, A discourse of the nature, effects, and blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lord's Supper and of all the duties required in order to a worthy preparation (1667). Taylor's work is, to say the least, difficult to place within current Anglican practice, shaped by the Parish Communion Movement, with the expectation that weekly reception will be the norm. Added to this, not only is the penitential aspect of contemporary eucharistic liturgies much inferior to that in Prayer Book tradition, any sense of an expectation of preparation to partake of the Sacrament is almost entirely absent from Anglican piety (as in most other liturgical and sacramental traditions).  This is what Michael Ramsey warned Anglicans about in his 1956 essay ' The Parish Communion ', noting that that were "weaknesses which haunt the wide and rapid growth of t...

At the Eucharist of Ash Wednesday, 18.2.26 Matthew 6.16 “And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting.” [1] On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, it is difficult not to recognise that this day begins a season of fasting. We heard it in the introduction to our liturgy: “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Lord to observe a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial …” [2] We heard it in the first reading from the prophet Joel: “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting …” [3] And we will hear it again in our final hymn, referring to our Lord’s time in the wilderness: “Forty days and forty nights, thou was fasting in the wild …” [4] Lent is a time for fasting. Depending on our age, health, and circumstances, this may mean abstaining from one of the day’s meals throughout Lent; or it may mean simplifying our diet in Lent; or...

Wherefore, laying aside these shifts and excuses, let us all set ourselves in good earnest to resist all manner of temptations: let us putout all the strength which we naturally have to this purpose, and beg of God super naturally to supply us with what we have not. Especially at this solemn time, set apart to commemorate the great conflict of our Saviour with the tempter in the wilderness, and to prepare and qualify us for such spiritual encounters. Let us lookup to the example of Christ, and remember how victorious he was over those fierce assaults of Satan; and what assurance he hath given us, that they who tread in his steps, and resolutely fight the good fight, shall be alike victorious. And whilst we resist as he did, let us be sure to use the same means of resistance, that he used, fasting and prayer: for there is no kind of temptation, but may, by the joint force of these, be cast out. To these, therefore, let us fly. These let us lay hold of, bending our knees often in private...

As Ussher continued to reflect on 'the priest's power to forgive sins', he looked towards the East. He pointed to two examples from the liturgies of the East to demonstrate that this power directly belongs only to God: Add hereunto the prayer of Damascen, which is still used in the Greek Church before the receiving of the Communion: "Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who alone hast power to forgive sins, in thy goodness and loving-kindness pass by all the offences of thy servant, whether done of knowledge or of ignorance, voluntary or involuntary, in deed or word, or thought; and that which is used after, in the Liturgy ascribed to St James, wherewith the priest shutteth up the whole service: "I beseech thee, Lord God, hear my prayer in the behalf of thy servants, and as a forgetter of injuries pass over all their offences. Forgive them all their excess, both voluntary and involuntary: deliver them from everlasting punishment. For thou art he who didst command us, sayin...

As this is the week in which Lent begins, laudable Practice will pause the readings from Nelson, Cranmer, and Lindsay until next week. This will allow for some hopefully appropriate seasonal reflections as we enter into the season of penitence and fasting. Today and tomorrow, there will be extracts from Ussher. Ussher has been on my mind recently as I have pondered the possibility of a revisionist reading of the Irish Articles of 1615 - that is, seeing them as something more than simply a 'Calvinist' statement (a simplistic term which Ussher would certainly not have regarded as praise). Ussher, in his own terms, was not a 'Calvinist'. Rather, he understood himself to be an orthodox catholic: the way which they call heresy is not new, but hath been trodden in long since by such as in their times were accounted good and catholic teachers in the Church. These words are taken from his Answers to a Jesuit (1622). In this work, Ussher addresses 'the Priest's power ...

In his sermon ' The Faith and Patience of the Saints; Or, the Righteous Cause Oppressed ' - part of the second volume of the Golden Grove series - Jeremy Taylor addressed the dissolution of the monasteries: We know that when, in Henry the Eighth, or Edward the Sixth's days, some great men pulled down churches and built palaces, and robbed religion of its just encouragements, and advantages; the men that did it were sacrilegious; and we find also that God hath been punishing that great sin, ever since; and hath displayed to so many generations of men, to three or four descents of children, that those men could not be esteemed happy in their great fortunes, against whom God was so angry, that he would show his displeasure for a hundred years together. This is the type of comment that might be taken as an example of - to use Peter Lake's terminology - 'maximalist' Laudianism. Here, after all, was a critique of a not insignificant aspect of the English Reformation. ...

In the debates surrounding the Articles of Perth introducing kneeling to receive the Sacrament in the Church of Scotland, 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 , reflected on how this was also a debate about liturgy.  Quoting his opponent, Lindsay noted how he alleged that because kneeling to receive the Sacrament was accompanied by words of administration, this replaced the Words of Institution: The fift breach of the institution made by kneeling is, the altering of the enunciatiue words of Christ, This is my body which is broken for you: This is my bloud which is shed for you, in a prayer, To blesse our body and soule, saying, The body of our Lord Iesus Christ, &c. This was no new debate. Hooker had responded to a similar criticism of the liturgy and practice of the Church of England by Cartwright, offering a robust defence of the words of administrat...

One of the consistent themes in Gardiner's critique of Cranmer is the accusation of inconsistency - that Cranmer is denying his previous writings in order to further radicalize his eucharistic doctrine. In this extract, Gardiner draws attention to Cranmer using the word "there" - in the sacrament - with reference to the gift of the Lord's Body and Blood: This is here worthy a special note, how by the manner of the speech in the latter part of this difference, the teaching seemeth to be, that Christ is spiritually present in the sacrament, because of the word "there," which thou, reader, mayest compare how it agreeth with the rest of this author's doctrine.  Cranmer's response, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551), is not to deny that the Lord's Body and Blood is present "there". Christ is indeed truly present "there" - in the faithful eating of the Bread and Wine: And where of  this word "there," you would conclude rep...

... a Storm being there upon raised in the Church. This is how Robert Nelson, in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , describes the context in the Church of England in the aftermath of the publication of Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685). The storm had not been caused by Bull's work but, rather, by a clumsy attempt by the orthodox divine William Sherlock to defend Trinitarian doctrine. As Nelson puts it, Sherlock applied "the principles of the Cartesian Metaphysicks" to the Holy Trinity, with the result that his work was seen "false, heretical, and impious" by "a great many" (not least because he depicted the Trinity as, again quoting Nelson, "three infinite distinct Minds and Substances"). In the heated debates over the Trinity which followed, "some Drops fell upon the Head of Mr. Bull also", his view of the Son's subordination being a particular target - as we have seen - of criticism by the divines of Reformed Orthodox...

In his discussion of a Laudian defence of ceremonies, Lake's On Laudianism distinguishes between what he terms "the minimum and maximum positions". The minimum position - "the more conservative view" - invoked the Elizabethan Settlement. What, then, of the 'maximalists'? Their view, Lake insists, was radically different: The maximum position went further, deriving that Anglican essence not solely from the prayer book [sic], or the Thirty-nine Articles, but rather from the primitive, apostolic and now the later Catholic churches, whose practices provided the Laudians with a prism through which to read the foundation documents of the church of England, thus rendering them more compatible with their religious sensibilities and ecclesiological priorities (p.349). The idea that invoking patristic authority somehow stood apart from - indeed, seemingly contradicted - the formularies of the Elizabethan Settlement runs entirely contrary to how the Elizabethan a...

It is not uncommon in the Church of Ireland for The Preamble and Declaration of 1870 to be invoked by evangelicals as a 'low church' document, almost as if it is a confessional expression of evangelical Anglicanism. The reality, however, is that The Preamble and Declaration is robustly Laudian in character. To illustrate this, I set out below the key statements from The Preamble and Declaration alongside excerpts from a 1630 sermon by the Laudian divine Giles Widdowes . The sermon was, according to its title, " concerning the lawfulnesse of church-authority, for ordaining, and commanding of rites, and ceremonies, to beautifie the Church ": it was, in other words, a thoroughly Laudian statement. The prominent Puritan polemicist William Prynne felt compelled to attempt to answer it, an indication of its significance as a Laudian statement. Setting The Preamble and Declaration alongside Widdowes' sermon not only reveals the character of this foundational document of...

Addressing how critics of the Articles of Perth condemned kneeling to receive the Sacrament as 'popish', 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 , summarised how those critics viewed the practice as contrary to the laws of the King and the Estates of Parliament: I come to consider the ordinances made, as ye alledge, against kneeling: where first yee alledge an Act made in the Assembly 1591, that an Article should bee formed, and presented vnto his Maiesty, and the Estates, for order to be taken with them, who giue or receiue the Sacraments after the Papistical manner; but by Papistical maner is meante, the giuing of the Sacrament by a Masse Priest, and the receiuing the same after the order of the Romane Church ...  Lindsay, however, points out that the purpose of such laws was to prevent conversion to the Roman obedience: The tenor wherof is those Perso...