laudable Practice

Following on from yesterday's post , which presented the case for PECUSA omitting the Athanasian Creed from its BCP 1789 and 1801 Articles of Religion, an extract from a Trinity Sunday sermon by Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie , Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City, 1824-27. Duffie, a convert to Episcopalianism from the Baptist tradition, stood firmly within the Hobartian tradition, the American expression of the Old High tradition.  It is this which makes his sermon particularly interesting, for here he gives a defence of the PECUSA decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from liturgy and Articles. Echoing a significant tradition of theologically orthodox thought in 18th century Anglicanism, with its roots in Taylor, he notes of the doctrine of the Trinity that it is "safest, in reference to so sublime a mystery, to speak in few words". On this basis, he defends the omission of the Athanasian Creed: such omission is understood, therefore, to serve rather than undermines Trini...

 ... one of the signal weaknesses of the American Prayer Book tradition. A recent article at the North American Anglican  addressed the absence of the Athanasian Creed from PECUSA's BCP 1789 and the 1801 Articles of Religion . It leads us to question if the decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from the liturgy and the Articles represented a serious rupture with the classical Anglican and Prayer Book tradition. Was it? The interpretation of the Athanasian Creed given by Taylor and Burnet would suggest otherwise. Affirming the catholic truth of the articles set forth in the Athanasian Creed, Taylor nevertheless counsels that this Creed has a secondary nature: For the articles themselves, I am most heartily persuaded of the truth of them, and yet I dare not say, all that are not so are irrevocably damned, because without this symbol the faith of the apostles' creed is entire, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; that is, he that believeth such a belief as is ...

Jonathan Swift's  sermon for Trinity Sunday  is another expression of the 'Trinitarian minimalism' evident in Anglican thought during the long 18th century. At the heart of the sermon is the conviction that the scriptural confession of the Trinity - "very short" - is sufficient "for any good Christian to believe": ... the great doctrine of the Trinity; which word is indeed not in Scripture, but was a term of art invented in the earlier times to express the doctrine by a single word, for the sake of brevity and convenience. The doctrine then as delivered in holy scripture, though not exactly in the same words, is very short, and amounts only to this; that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are each of them God, and yet there is but One God ... Therefore I shall again repeat the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is positively affirmed in Scripture: that God is there expressed in three different names, as Father, as Son, and as Holy Ghost; that each of t...

Last week, laudable Practice considered what the The Life of John Lonsdale (1868) - an associate of the Hackney Phalanx and later Bishop of Lichfield (1843-67) - revealed about an Old High view of ceremonial disputes in Victorian Anglicanism. This week we turn to his stance on another matter of debate, the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed.  This was, of course, a long-standing debate. Jeremy Taylor had famously expressed his view that the damnatory clauses lacked "moderate sentence and gentleness of charity". The 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension proposed a rubric stating that these clauses only applied to this "who obstinately deny the substance of the Christian Faith". Despite robust High Church for this Creed in the 18th century, in the face of anti-Trinitarian theologies, it was removed from PECUSA's BCP 1789. This, however, did not prevent the Church of England recognising PECUSA. Unease with the damnatory clauses was evident within the Victorian O...

From an 1816 sermon preached by Richard Laurence (then Regius Professor of Hebrew, later Archbishop of Cashel, 1822-38), at the episcopal visitation in the Diocese of Rochester.  Laurence defends the Athanasian Creeds on the grounds of its modesty and moderation, against those critics who portray it "as an attempt to explain in detail, that which is confessedly inexplicable".   He states that this Creed makes no attempt to "explain" the Holy Trinity but is a rejection of erroneous teachings which had sought too precise definitions, as seen with the Sabellians who "anxious perhaps to preserve entire the divine essence ... strangely confused together the divine persons" and the Arians who "separated the substance".  The Athanasian Creed, rather than being an exercise in scholastic speculation, consisted "only of the most general counterpositions" as a response to the speculations and definitions of "the Antitrinitarian hypothesis, ...

With reference to the Athanasian Creed (commonly so called), we have removed the Rubric directing its use on certain days; but, in so doing, this Church has not withdrawn its witness as expressed in the Articles of Religion, and here again renewed, to the truth of the Articles of the Christian Faith therein contained - from the Preface to the 1878 Irish revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Amidst the debates in the disestablished Church of Ireland's concerning proposals for the revision of the BCP 1662, none was so fierce as that concerning the Athanasian Creed. The outcome - the Athanasian Creed was retained in the 1878 Book, the rubric for its liturgical use was removed, the text of Article 8 was unchanged - has the clear shape of a compromise.  But was it a compromise too far? From an Old High Church perspective, it might be thought that this represented something of a defeat.  Vigorous defence of the Athanasian Creed, after all, had been a characteristic of much...

F.C. Mather's classic study of Samuel Horsley, High Church Prophet (1992), states the 1790 pamphlet An Apology for the Liturgy and Clergy of the Church of England is attributed to Horsley.  Whether or not Horsley is accepted at the author, the identification of the pamphlet with one of the leading High Church voices of the era certainly points to the pamphlet's robust High Church credentials.   The pamphlet was a response to the Unitarian proposals for reform of the liturgy and abolishing subscription contained in the Duke of Grafton's  Hints Submitted to the Serious Attention of the Clergy, Nobility and Gentry, by a Layman .  Grafton had pointed to the Proposed Book of 1689, suggesting that it offered a liturgy akin to that proposed by the Samuel Clark, whose 1712 The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity had been censured by the Lower House of Convocation. Grafton praised those involved in the 1689 proposed revision as 'the most respectable Bishops and divines'...