laudable Practice

Peter Williams was a Welsh clergyman (b.1756) who received holy orders in 1783 and was shortly thereafter appointed chaplain of Christ Church, Oxford. He returned to Wales in 1790, serving a number of Welsh cures thereafter, becoming archdeacon of Merioneth in 1809. He published  A Short Vindication of the Established Church in 1803 (which received a very favourable review in The Orthodox Churchman's Magazine ). There is, in other words, nothing to suggest that Williams was anything other than a faithful cleric of the Church of England, having a quite ordinary, conventional clerical career.  It is this which makes this 1786 Ascension Day sermon before the University of Oxford interesting. The sermon was published: this itself was nothing unusual, as many university sermons were published. It does allow us, however, to read an Ascension Day sermon by a quite ordinary clergyman of the late 18th century Church of England. What we read contrasts sharply with the conventional and...

As we celebrate the Ascension of Our Lord on this Holy Thursday, words from Tillotson's Ascension Day sermon, 'The Circumstances and Benefits of Our Saviour's Ascension': Let us heartily thank God for the whole dispensation of our salvation, by the incarnation and doctrine, by the holy life and meritorious death of our blessed Saviour, and by that demonstration of God’s mighty power and goodness, "which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; having put all things under his feet, and given him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body". The consideration whereof is (as you have heard) a mighty consolation unto us under all the troubles and dangers to which the church of Christ is exposed in this world. He who hath ...

At Choral Communion on The Ascension Day, 2024 Ephesians 1:20 “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.” A Thursday evening in early May in our parish church may seem rather different to the festive joys of Easter Day.  We are rather less full than we were on Easter Day. After the penitential season of Lent and the sombre observance of Good Friday, we greeted the colour, the flowers, the light of Easter Day; by Ascension Day, however, we are well used to the colour and light of Eastertide. The choir are, as always, in fine form but the joyous, triumphant music of  Ascension Day rarely reaches the same number of hearts as it does on Easter Day. Most people in our society will be aware that Easter Day is a significant Christian festival, marked by a public holiday. There is, however, no public holiday associated with Ascension Day in the United Kingdom: it is merely a Thursday in early May. And...

From an Ascension Day sermon  - entitled 'Christ's Ascension into Heaven preparatory to ours' - by William Beveridge (received orders 1661; Bishop of Asaph from 1704 until his death in 1708), on the text John 14:23. In this extract, Beveridge reflects on the Lord's words "if it were not so, I would have told you".   From whence we may observe by the way, how careful our blessed Saviour was to conceal nothing from us that might any way conduce either to our Salvation or Comfort. 'If it was not so,' saith he, 'I would have told you', and so he certainly would have told us many other things, which he hath not, if it had been necessary for us to have known them; and therefore we may conclude that whatsoever he hath not told us, it is no matter whether we know it or no. There are a great many nice Questions rais'd in Divinity, especially by the Schoolmen, which have perplex'd the Minds of the greatest Scholars, and have caus'd great Heat...

Mindful of the Gospel appointed in 1662 for the Sunday after Ascension Day - "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth" - another extract from Taylor's The real presence and spiritual of Christ in the blessed sacrament proved against the doctrine of transubstantiation (1653), in which a bodily presence of Christ in the holy Sacrament is held to be incompatible with the dominical promise of the presence of the Comforter: If he be here in person, what need he to have sent his Vicar, his holy Spirit in substitution? Especially since by this doctrine he is more now with his Church then he was in the days of his conversation in Palestine; for then he was but in one assembly at once; now he is in thousands every day. If it be said, because although he be here yet we see him not. This is not sufficient, for what matter is it whether we see him or no, if we know him to be here, if we feel him, if we eat him, if we worship hi...

On this day after the Ascension Day, from Jeremy Taylor's  The real presence and spiritual of Christ in the blessed sacrament proved against the doctrine of transubstantiation (1653), a robust affirmation of a fundamental characteristic of a Reformed Eucharistic theologies, that (in the words of the Black Rubric) "the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here": The next argument from Scripture is taken from Christ's departing from this world; his going from us, the ascension of his body and soul into heaven; his not being with us, his being contained in the heavens: So said our blessed Saviour, Unless I go hence, the Comforter cannot come: and I go to prepare a place for you: The poor ye have always, but me ye have not always. S. Peter affirms of him that the heavens must receive him, till the time of restitution of all things. Now how these things can be true of Christ according to his human nature, that is a circumscribed body, and a ...

For this Holy Thursday, Thomas Comber's meditation - from A Companion to the Altar (1675) - on the proper preface for Ascension Day.  The work is dedicated to Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, formerly a chaplain to Laud. There is a clearly Laudian emphasis in the dedication , in which Comber (speaking in the third person) refers to Sterne as the bishop by whom he was ordained: he first received the Holy Order of Priesthood, and the Power of Dispensing this Sacrament from your Grace's Hands. He continues in thoroughly Laudian fashion when he expresses his hope that the work "may minister to the Devotion of those who approach to God's Altar".  The meditation on the Ascension Day proper preface, however, exemplifies how such Laudian reverence for the altar and the priestly ministry of administering the holy Sacrament - together with use of the Book of Common Prayer and observance of its festivals - was definitively Protestant. In fact, it is a rather glorious ex...

From A   Course of Sermons for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1821) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for this Holy Thursday, Ascension Day, in which the soteriological meaning of the feast is richly celebrated: I will name but one more particular of that eminent advantage which we have by our blessed Lord's ascension into heaven, and by the prospect of his sure return. We are thus invited to pursue that track which leads from earth to heaven. Let us learn, then, by our Lord's ascension, as the Son of man, to those bright scenes, that our nature has been indeed advanced to heaven, and that even our frail body will not binder our ascending thither, if our minds and hearts shall have gone before, and if we have so been partakers, in some sort, of our blessed Lord's ascension. By such spiritual elevations, and such good desires, the soul aspires to those scenes of bliss as to its own place, and enjoys som...

From a 1671 collection of sermons by John Torbuck,  Extraordinary dayes, or, Sermons on the most solemn Feasts and fasts throughout the year , a sermon " On Holy-Thursday, Or the Ascension ". With Ephesians 4:10 as the text, the sermon opens by placing the Ascension within the outworking of the plan of salvation Here is the Highest ascent answering to the Lowest descent imaginable, and both in one and the same person. He that descended, is the same also that ascended, &c. This the Apostle speaks of Christ in his Exposition on that Prophetical Psalm the 68, proper for this day. His Descent we have already treated, from Heaven to the Earth, the lowest part of the world, at his Incarnation; from the surface of the Earth, into the Bowels thereof (the grave) at his passion. He descended from the bosom of his Eternal Father (that excellent Glory, 2 Pet. 1. c. 17.) into the lap of a poor Virgin: He that thought it no robbery to be equal with God, took to him humane nature and in...