laudable Practice

Nov. 5. I read Prayers this morning at Cary being the 5 of Novem the day on which the Papists had contrived an hellish plot in the reign of King James the first, but by the Divine hand of Providence was fortunately discovered. Good Parson Woodforde's diary entry for 5th November 1768 is jarring. When the diaries were first published in 1924, editor John Beresford referred to "the peace which breathes from Parson Woodforde's pages". It is this which has made the good Parson beloved to many in the century since. But this entry for 5th November 1768 does not breathe such peace. Or does it? Let us begin with with his opening phrase, "I read Prayers this morning". It is, of course, a very oft-repeated phrase in Woodforde's diaries, marking each Sunday. It was also the conventional clerical language for officiating at divine service in the 18th century and extending into the 19th . The phrase here, then, on 5th November 1768, reminds us of the rhythms and pat...

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...

Having considered how precatory forms of absolution were normative in the Christian East, John Shepherd, in his reflections on the Prayer Book's absolutions, in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), then highlights the normative form of absolution in the liturgical texts of the Latin tradition: It were an act of injustice, not to observe, that in the annual course of the offices of the Romish church, a considerable variety of absolutions are found, all running in the precatory form. Of their general tenor, a judgment may be formed from the following specimens, which in the Breviary frequently occur. I. "May Almighty God have mercy upon you, pardon your offences, and bring you to everlasting life." 2. "May the Almighty and merciful Lord grant us pardon, absolution, and the remission of our sins. 3. "O Lord Jesus Christ, hear the prayers of thy servants, and do thou who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy...

Today's reading from Paley's sermons - from Sermon V in Volume V of his  Works ,   'This Life a State of Probation', on the text Psalm 119.71 - is again an example of the 'serious Christianity' evident in his sermons. The closing lines of this extract particularly point to how Paley sought to encourage and exhort a Christianity very far removed indeed from both the 'empty formalism' and 'false cheerfulness' allegations routinely levelled against Georgian Anglicanism by its 18th and 19th critics, and still routinely heard in 21st century Anglican circles: They are the severest, the sublimest, perhaps the most meritorious, of which we are capable: I mean patience and composure under distress, pain, and affliction; a steadfast keeping up of our confidence in God, and our dependence upon his final goodness, even at the time that every thing present is discouraging and adverse; and, what is no less difficult to retain, a cordial desire for the happine...

Last year's Christmas edition of the Spectator , reviewing books for the festive season, drew my attention to Jenny Uglow's A Year With Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer (2025).  Reading the concluding paragraph of the review, I was immediately attracted to the book: Writers who believe they have to travel the world, have great romances or wild adventures in order to publish a book should contemplate Gilbert White, who never went abroad, seldom ventured further than Alston, his nearest town, and had no adventures at all. Just quiet days in his garden listening to birdsong, counting his cucumbers and keeping an eye on Timothy the tortoise was material enough. In the introduction to her book, Uglow points to White as typical of the clergy of the Georgian Church of England: classically educated, generous to the poor but complacently sure of his place and proud of his country (p.6). While there is a hint of criticism in this description offered, I found it to be a plea...

Nor can that clamour of his adversaries make Mr. Hobbes think himself a worse Christian than the best of them. And how will you disprove it, either by his disobedience to the Laws Civil, or Ecclesiastical, or by any ugly action? Or how will you prove that the obedience which springs from scorn of Injustice, is less acceptable to God, than that which proceeds from fear of punishment, or hope of benefit? In his Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes , published in 1662, Hobbes challenges those who have condemned his philosophy as 'atheistical'. Against both doctrinal ideologues and Enthusiasts, whether those promoting high-flying notions of ecclesiastical authority or Calvinistical dogmas, whether those who unsettled the Church during the Personal Rule or those who did so in Interregnum, Hobbes set forth an alternative understanding of conformity to the Church of England: obedience to the constitutional and religious settlement, motiva...

Having demonstrated the deep patristic roots of the Prayer Book's use of declaratory and precatory forms of absolution, John Shepherd, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), then looks to the Christian East. Here he sees a further example of the scriptural and patristic understanding of absolution found in the Prayer Book: The form of the absolution of penitents, in the Greek church, is in a great measure left to the discretion of the penitentiary. The most common forms are, "Do thou, O Lord, remit, pardon, and forgive the sins committed by thy servants." 2. "May it please thee to absolve thy servants according to thy word." 3. "Do thou pardon, who art our good and gracious God." 4. "May our Lord Jesus Christ pardon all those sins which thou hast confessed before him to my meanness, as well as those which thou hast forgotten." 5. "O Lord, pardon thy servant, and be reconciled to him....

As we proceed with weekly readings from Paley's sermons, it is clear that - contrary to critics of Georgian Anglicanism in general, and of Paley in particular - that his sermons embody a serious Christianity. Today's reading from Sermon IV from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Neglect of Warnings ', on the text Deuteronomy 32.29 - again demonstrates this. The call to conversion and the reality of divine judgement are explicit in this extract: Neglecting warnings is not the way to obtain God's grace: and God's grace is necessary to conversion ... We call our preservations escapes, not preservations; and so we feel no thankfulness for them: nor do we turn them into religious cautions. When God preserved us, he meant to warn us. When such instances, therefore, have no effect upon our minds, we are guilty before God of neglecting his warnings. Most especially if we have occasion to add to all other reasons for gratitude this momentous question, What would have bec...

From Sermon III from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Fear a Religious Principle ', on the text Proverbs 14.16 - another example of how Paley's preaching contradicts notions of what Newman described as the "false cheerfulness" of Georgian Anglicanism. As this extract demonstrates, it is "seriousness", not a lazy cheerfulness, which we see in Paley. Note, too, how Paley is explicit about the call to be "disciples of Christianity" and entirely unembarrassed about Christ's words regarding riches. This, in other words, is serious Christianity. Ease, and prosperity, and wealth, and pleasure, and gaiety, and diversion, are sadly unfavourable to the impressions of religion; they are not inconsistent with these impressions; to say that, would be to say more than the truth; but they are adverse to them. "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven;" that is, one either intent upon acquiring riches, or addicted to the ple...

Beginning last week this series exploring the sermons of William Paley, I pointed to the significance of Paley's role as an exemplar of Georgian Anglicanism. In that first extract we saw in Paley, entirely contrary to Newman's lazy prejudice, the serious, austere piety of Georgian Anglicanism. Now in Sermon II from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Why Men Resist and Put Aside the Thoughts of Religion ' - we see the same austere seriousness: And to every argument and every plea which may be offered, or which may pass in our minds in favour of putting aside the thoughts of religion, this single string of conclusions is an answer: 1. That it is by religion alone that a sinner can be saved. 2. That religion can have no effect where it has no influence. 3. That until we come to think, to ponder, to ruminate upon religion, it is impossible that we should acquire its instruction; and still more impossible, that we should feel its power, its authority, its rule and direction...

In his discussion of absolution in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), John Shepherd points to how the administration of the Bread and Cup in the Holy Communion is itself is a precatory form of absolution: The absolution, or as we now say, the sacrament of the Supper of the Lord is, in the Church of England, administered in a precatory form. At the delivery of the bread, the priest says, "the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and foul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." When the cup is presented, he says, "the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life: drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee, and be thankful." The words of administration, therefore, share the character and purpose of ...

Today marks the beginning of another new series on Laudable Practice - readings from the sermons of William Paley. In recent months I have pointed to a convincing call to ' Revisit Paley ' and his theology, rescuing it from the enormous condescension of Anglican posterity. I have also suggested that Paley represents something of the austere piety that New Georgians should cherish. In Sermon I from Volume V of Paley's Works - ' Meditating Upon Religion ', on the text Ps. 63/7 - we see how Newman's view, that that the "animating principle" of Paley's Christianity was "false cheerfulness ... ill-founded hope ... blind charitableness" is, quite frankly, nonsense.  Rather than Newman's charge, we see something very different indeed in this extract from Paley. His is indeed an austere piety, a weighty understanding of the Christian religion, with no "false cheerfulness". Indeed, elsewhere in this sermon, Paley will declare, ...

Sunday coming is Yale Apostasy Day. On 13th September 1722, the day after commencement at Yale, seven New England Congregationalist ministers publicly declared their intention to seek episcopal orders in the Church of England. It was a day which shook the 'New England Way' and brought the Church of England to the land of the Pilgrim Fathers. Over the years of writing on Yale Apostasy Day on this blog, my interpretation of the event has changed. I initially regarded it as the arrival of 'Laudianism' in New England. Leaving aside the fact that I now believe the term 'Laudian' to be meaningless, it was opponents - not New England Church of England ministers and their congregations - who viewed the Yale Apostasy and its consequences in such a way. In more recent times, I have moved to emphasising what Church of England ministers and laity in colonial New England shared with their Congregationalist neighbours.  This year's Yale Apostasy Day post returns to anothe...

Today's post is a slight excursus as we continue to reflect on John Shepherd's discussion of absolution in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796). Having considered last week his emphasis on the precatory nature of the presbyter's ministry of absolution - that is, invoking God's forgiveness - before turning to see how Shepherd regards the administration of the Lord's Supper and Baptism as also sharing this precatory character, a footnote caught my attention: Unleavened bread, wafers, the elevation and adoration of the host, and the putting of it into the mouth of the communicant, all of them the offspring of transubstantiation, are not many years younger than their parent; and must all be ranked with the sacerdotal corruptions and superstitions, for which the thirteenth century is distinguished. The positive or indicative form of absolution was likewise the invention of this age. The footnote concerns how the Holy Communi...

And now that we have attended this very learned and pious Prelate, from his Birth to the last Period of his Life, let us endeavour in a few Words, to recapitulate the Excellencies of his Life; and in running over his Character, strive to copy the Example of those eminent Vertues, which in this Pattern shine brightest for our Imitation. Today we reach the conclusion of our readings from Robert Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull . These readings commenced in mid-January 2025 : we have spent over a year and a half with Nelson's account of Bull. Over that time it has, I hope, become evident why Bull was both a formative influence on and exemplar of 18th century Anglicanism. As Nelson summarises Bull's ministry, we hear an ideal that was set forth before 18th century clergy and which shaped the aspirations of 18th century laity for their clergy: He so excelled in his Profession, that he was justly esteemed one of the greatest Divines of the Age in which he lived, and that at...