laudable Practice

Some are put away, because the great excess and multitude of them hath so increased in these latter days, that the burden of them was intolerable; whereof Saint Augustine in his time complained, that they were grown to such a number that the estate of Christian people was in worse case concerning that matter, than were the Jews. And he counselled that such yoke and burden should be taken away, as time would serve quietly to do it. But what would Saint Augustine have said, if he had seen the Ceremonies of late days used among us; whereunto the multitude used in his time was not to be compared?  Quoting Cranmer's ' On Ceremonies ' during Holy Week might be seen as somewhat provocative. Anglican liturgies during this week, after all, now tend towards a multitude of ceremonies. My purpose in this post, however, is not to be provocative, nor to critique those who value the many various ceremonies of Holy Week (palm procession, foot washing and altar stripping, veneration of the ...

Preparing to read the Commandments at the Holy Communion on this Monday of Holy Week, I turned to Taylor's discourse on the Decalogue in The Great Exemplar . Here Taylor - referencing Clement of Alexandria, a favourite in his works -  sets forth the place of the Commandments in the Christian moral vision, as the way that is fulfilled in "Christian charity". This is the context for the saying of the Commandments in the Holy Communion, the way that is to taken up "in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people", who "continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in". St. Clement of Alexandria saith, the Pharisees' righteousness consisted in the not doing evil, and that Christ superadded this also, that we must do the contrary, good, and so exceed the Pharisaical measure ...  But the balance in  which the Judge of quick and dead weighs Chris tians is, not only t...

Today we conclude our Lenten readings from Jeremy Taylor's The Worthy Communicant (1667). We do so with Taylor again emphasising both the significance and effectiveness of the duty of self-examination before receiving the holy Sacrament. Our self-examination is to be thorough and searching. It is the very fact that this is, for Taylor, the fundamental discipline regarding the Sacrament which means that we cannot judge others who come to the Sacrament, for we are called to not judge others but only ourselves, instead exercising grace and mercy to others: I do not say that persons unprepared may come, for they ought not; and if they do, they die for it: but I say, if they will come, it is at their peril, and to no man's prejudice, but their own, if they be plainly and severely admonished of their duty and their danger; and, therefore, that every man must judge of his own case, with very great severity and fear, even then when the guides of souls must judge with more gentleness, ...

We haue abjured Episcopall gouernment, and therefore we cannot lawfully admit Episcopall Confirmation ... it is damnable presumption, [for bishops] to appropriate vnto themselues the dutie that belongs to all Pastors. Having considered at some length the defence 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 - of the provision in the Articles of Perth for kneeling to receive the holy Sacrament, we now turn to its provision for Confirmation administered by bishops: it is thought good, that the minister in every parish, should catechise all young children of eight years of age, and see that they have the knowledge, and be able to make rehearsal of the Lord's Prayer, Belief, and Ten Commandments, with answers to the questions of the small catechism, used in our church, and that every bishop in his visitation, shall censure the minister who shall be found re...

Amongst the revisions to 1662 in the Church of Ireland's 1878 Book of Common Prayer , one is often overlooked. In 1662, in the Lessons Proper for Holy Days, we find the "Annunciation of our Lady".  In 1878 this became "Annunciation of B.V.M.". There was precedent for this. The 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension simply had "Annunciation". In  PECUSA's 1789 revision it became "Annunciation of Virgin Mary". 1878, therefore, was following a well-established pattern of omitting "our Lady". This was a wise revision. While there were some examples of 'advanced' opinion in the 1630s employing the term 'our Lady' - in particular, Mark Frank's Annunciation sermon - the term was not used in the ninety-six sermons of Lancelot Andrewes , edited by Laud and Buckeridge, and published by royal authority in 1636. Likewise, it is not found in Taylor's The Great Exemplar , even when it affirms Mary's perpetual virginity, ...

The Dutch Remonstrant theologian Episcopius was, as Nelson notes in his his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , an influential figure in Bull's thinking from his student days . Indeed, Episcopius' Institutiones Theologicae  (1650) was regarded by Bull as "the best System of Divinity that had appeared". That said, however, we have seen how Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicaenae  demonstrated a common concern amongst English non-Calvinist Episcopalians that Remonstrant thought could become Socinian-adjacent , a "lurking Poison, which might secretly instil itself into the Minds of unwary Readers". In 1694, Bull returned to this matter, publishing a significant critique of a particular aspect of Episcopius' thought regarding Nicene Christology: In the Year 1694, Dr. Bull, while Rector of Avening, published his Judicium Ecclesia Catholicae , which was printed at Oxford, and written in defence of the Anathema, as his former Book had been of the Faith, pronounced at the...

Of all the descriptions I have read of Cranmer, it is Diarmaid MacCulloch's, in his essay ' Tolerant Cranmer? ', which I find most attractive: "a cautious, well-read humanist". Elsewhere, discussing the biographers of Cranmer, MacCulloch suggests that it is in Cranmer that we see something of what Anglicanism should be: which forces the individual to undertake a good deal of hard thinking in order to make sense of the world around, rather than reaching for some simple model in a book. Not mentioned by MacCulloch amongst Cranmer's biographers, but, I think, an account which points in this direction, evoking the spirit of  "a cautious, well-read humanist", is William Gilpin's 1784  The life of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury . Gilpin was a representative of Georgian England's enlightened clergy and in Cranmer he sees an Erasmian humanist who embodied "wisdom, prudence, learning, moderation" - a precursor, then, of 18th centur...

... and are in love and charity with your neighbours. The absence of these words from contemporary Anglican eucharistic rites is striking from the perspective of Jeremy Taylor's The Worthy Communicant (1667). Taylor regards reconciliation with our neighbours as fundamental and necessary to our partaking of the holy Sacrament. If we are not "in love and charity" with our neighbours, we should not approach the Sacrament , the love feast: It was love that first made societies, and love that must continue our communions: and God, who made all things by his power, does preserve them by his love, and by union and society of parts every creature, is preserved ... when God, in this holy sacrament, pours forth the greatest effusion of his love, peace in all capacities, and in all dimensions, and to all purposes, he will not endure that they should come to these love-feasts who are unkind to their brethren, quarrelsome with their neighbours, implacable to their enemies, apt to con...

The Lutheran Churches do acknowledge reall presence by way of Consubstantiation: it is no wonder therefore, that they approue kneeling. The Reformed Churches, as they damned bodily presence, so haue they reiected the gesture of kneeling in the act of receiuing. For the critics of the Articles of Perth , as the above words indicate, the matter was very straightforward. Of course the Lutherans knelt to receive the Sacrament, for they are Ubiquists. By contrast, the Reformed, who reject "bodily presence", denounce kneeling.  In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth , David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), pointed to a much richer, diverse Protestant landscape. To begin, he invoked a broader understanding of 'Reformed' to include the Lutherans. While obvoiusly rejecting Consubstantation, he emphasises that Lutheran sacramental teaching does share important characteristics with the Reforme...

In the debate with Cranmer, Gardiner turned to the Lord's Words of Institution and the teaching of Cyprian to support the understanding of the Eucharist as "a sacrifice propitiatory", fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi: We read in St. Cyprian how Christ offered himself in his  supper, fulfilling the figure of Melchisedech, who by the offering of  bread and wine, signified that high mystery of Christ's supper, in  which Christ under the form of bread and wine, gave his very  body and blood to be eaten and drunken ...  Now when we have Christ's body thus present in the celebration of the holy Supper, and by Christ's mouth present unto us, saying, This is my body which is betrayed for you; then have we Christ's body recommended unto us as our sacrifice, and a sacrifice propitiatory for all the sins of the world, being the only sacrifice of Christ's Church, the pure and clean sacrifice, whereof the prophet Malachie spake, and whereof the fathers in Christ...

In many Church of Ireland parish churches, you will notice something about stained glass depictions of Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick, contrasting with much of his traditional iconography, is not wearing a mitre.  Nor is he wearing eucharistic vestments. His attire is simple, plain robes. He is identified as a bishop solely by the fact that he holds a pastoral staff. Many of these stained glass windows date from around 1932, marking the 1,500th anniversary of Saint Patrick's arrival in Ireland. It was a time of heightened tensions between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The triumphalist nature of the centenary celebrations of Catholic Emancipation in 1929 had led the Irish Times to note "too frequent suggestions" that the Church of Ireland represented "an alien creed, an alien culture and alien aspirations".  In late 1931 , the Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Joseph MacRory, publicly declared that the Church of Ireland had not exi...