laudable Practice

In March 1900, the US publication Literary Digest provided a fascinating glimpse of life in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Noting the "marked demarcation in matters of doctrine and worship" within PECUSA, the article provided a breakdown of "the relative strength of the High-, Low-, and Broad-Church parties". High Church is defined as "not elaborate ritual alone" but also "the importance of the sacraments" and a belief "in the place of the church, as preceding the Bible, not founded upon it". Low Church is taken to mean "attach[ing] less importance to the sacraments", being "evangelical in method, and sometimes "employ[ing] extempore prayer". As for Broad Church, it refers to "the liberal constructionists, sometimes of the Bible, oftener of church practises". Perhaps what is most significant about these introductory comments is that a Low Church, evangelical tradition...

In an 1851 sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on the feast of the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin, ' On a Recent Proposal of the Church of Rome to make a New Article of Faith ', Christopher Wordsworth - a leading figure in the Old High tradition, Bishop of Lincoln 1869-85 - addressed the process which led to the Bishop of Rome promulgating the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. In this extract, Wordsworth expounds how refusal to accept this doctrine is rooted in the Scriptural proclamation and creedal confession of the Incarnation. Not only is the mystery of the Incarnation not aided by the doctrine Immaculate Conception. In fact, as Wordsworth emphasises, the mystery and grace of the Incarnation is more faithfully acknowledged by a recognition that the Blessed Virgin is, with us, entirely dependent upon the Redeemer. This also points to the grounds for what Wordsworth terms "the true honour of the Blessed Virgin", her overshadowing by the Holy Spi...

Having earlier this week praised Victorian Anglicanism, today's post is an example of how earlier Georgian norms could continue to be found in the Victorian era. In a Stir-up Sunday sermon , John Keble favourably refers to the practice of Ante-Communion: If any go on profanely rejecting the Holy Communion altogether, the Church, he would perceive, is not to blame for it, who has not only enjoined all her children to communicate at least three times a year, but also encourages, wherever it may be, Communion on every Lord's day; and to put us in mind of that sacred duty, appoints certain portions of the holy service to be said at the Lord's Table, even when the Sacrament is not administered. Mindful that this collection of Keble's sermons was published in 1878, this reference certainly suggests that the practice of Ante-Communion was known past the mid-19th century. What is more, not only does Keble not criticise the practice, he actively praises it: Ante-Communion "...

It might make regular readers of this blog choke on their morning tea. What on earth has happened to the sound, pleasing Georgian tastes of laudable Practice ? Were not the Victorians responsible for what Thomas Hardy, in A Pair of Blue Eyes , called "the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration". Do we not, with Hardy in Under the Greenwood Tree , lament "regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen" - the west gallery musicians and singers - "by an isolated organist"? Is it not the case that good Parson Woodforde is to be celebrated and lauded over and above the Victorians J.H. Newman and J.C. Ryle? The answer to all these questions is a hearty 'yes'. But, those of us who are 'New Georgians' (seeking to promote an appreciation of 18th century Anglicanism, Georgian churches, and the ordinary, stolid piety that characterised the Georgian Church of England) do live in an Anglican landscape defined by the Victorians. To simply ...

On this Thanksgiving Day in Canada, laudable Practice turns to an Autumn day in 1820, as - according to an 1851 account of the journey - the Rev'd John West, appointed by the Church Missionary Society, set out for the territory then known as Rupert's Land (now southern Manitoba and parts of eastern Saskatchewan): It was in the autumn of the year 1820 that a little boat of birch-rind might have been seen to leave York Fort, on the western side of Hudson's Bay and after coasting for a while along the shore, enter one of the rivers that flow from the interior. There was nothing in this circumstance to attract the attention of a casual observer - similar boats were continually arriving at, and departing from, the fort during the few bright months of summer and early autumn; this canoe was, as usual, manned by natives, and, as was frequently the case, an European gentleman was sitting at the stern. But if any of God's own people had seen that boat depart, they would have w...

In his 1872 primary visitation charge , William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, had - as previous posts explored - robustly critiqued Anglo-papalism, neo-Puritan evangelicalism, and advanced liberalism. He goes on, however, to provide a significant and powerful account of what we might term 'Deep Anglicanism', in which the three streams - High, Low, and Broad - mutually enrich each other, all part of "the deep mid-channel of the Church's course": In truth, each of these parties, little as it might be disposed to own it, has learned, is learning, much from the other two. There is more of Evangelicalism in the High Churchman, more of High Church principle in the Evangelical, more of Dogma in the Broad Churchman than would flow from their own avowed principles but which comes for each from the influence of those to whom he is most opposed. Candid and earnest men of all parties are learning to recognize this more and more; are coming to understand that it is not...

Having considered in some recent posts Phillpotts' Old High critique of auricular confession , in light of the Tractarian attempt to promote private confession and absolution as a normative, routine practice within Anglicanism, we turn now to E.H. Browne's consideration of the matter in his An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles: Historical and Doctrinal (1874). Browne had received orders in 1836 and 1837, became Norrisian chair of divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1854, was appointed Bishop of Ely in 1864, as was transferred to Winchester in 1873. He was, therefore, a significant divine. Expounding Article 25, Browne contrasts the teaching of the Council of Trent with that of the Reformed churches, amongst which he places the Church of England: The reformed Churches have generally abolished auricular confession, as obligatory and sacramental. The Lutherans indeed still retain it, as a regular part of Church order and discipline. The Augsburg Confession declares co...

Having offered robust critiques of advanced Anglo-catholicism and neo-Puritan Evangelicalism, William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, in his 1872 primary visitation charge , turns his attention to "a third School of thought", the liberal stream within the Church of England. He described this stream as those who declared that "if the Church is to remain established she must learn to be less dogmatic, and to put herself more in accord with the 'liberal and enlightened spirit of the age'": And though we should be as far as possible from charging all of this School of thought with aiming at these results, yet we cannot fail to see amongst them tendencies in this direction - demands, for instance, for the abolition of all doctrinal tests for admission to the ministry of our Church; complaints of the too dogmatic character of our Creeds; proposals for the admission of any one and every one, schismatic, heretic, or unbeliever to her pulpits, or to a share in ...

In today's post we come to a very fine Old High exposition of the catholicity of the Church of England, by William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, in his 1872 primary visitation charge . Magee reminds us that these claims to catholicity are not dependent upon general councils or, indeed, even the Creeds, for councils (as the Article 21 declares) "may err, and sometimes have erred", while the Creeds (in the words of Article 8) are received because "they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture":  So far from asserting the infallibility of general councils, she [i.e. the Church of England] categorically denies it. "General Councils, she declares, may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God." So far from admitting her subjection to their decrees "in things necessary to salvation," she declares that these "have neither strength nor authority," unless it may be declared (i.e. clearly shown)...