laudable Practice

As we proceed with our readings from the sermons of William Paley, week by week it is increasingly clear that the lazy stereotypes of both Paley and Georgian Anglicanism are deeply unserious. By contrast, we are seeing in Paley's sermons a serious Christianity. Today's reading, from Sermon VI in Volume V of Paley's Works - 'Our Dearest Interest To Be Parted With Rather Than Endanger Our Salvation', on the text Matthew 5.29 - demonstrates how Paley explicitly understood Christianity to require self-denial in the interests of our salvation. "Our real pleasure and happiness" was not to be found in - to again use Newman's caricature of Georgian Anglicanism" - "false cheerfulness" but, rather, in the reality of salvation and the life everlasting: Every sound plan of religion, and consequently the plan of the Gospel, is only putting men in the best way of promoting their own happiness, and providing for their own interest. It is on our own ac...

November. It is the month of the departed - All Saints' Day, Remembrancetide, "the quick and the dead" of Advent Sunday. As the days of late Autumn shorten and grow colder, with the trees now bare of leaves, Winter approaches, and another year's end draws nigh, signs of mortality surround us.  It is a time, then, to profitably read old funeral sermons. Perhaps after a late afternoon walk, the sun low in the sky and sunset not far off. The crunch of walking on fallen leaves. A nip in the air. Then we sit down and mull over words once preached in times past, when an earthly life had ended. Doing so can remind us of the virtues that are to be nurtured in this transitory life. Of what, when the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, is a life well lived. An old funeral sermon I often turn to is that given by Jeremy Taylor in 1657, at the funeral of Sir George Dalston . Dalston was Cumberland gentry, an old Royalist who had served the King in ...