Throughout Lent, laudable Practice will be considering Restoration- and Revolution-era Lenten sermons and what these suggest regarding the Lenten discipline and piety of the Church of England at the time. On this first day of Lent, words from a 1679 sermon (by High Churchman Benjamin Camfield ) on the Commination, described in the sermon as "such a Solemnity". While the sermon laments the absence of a more widespread observance of the first day of Lent (probably an enduring complaint of parish clergy!), the fact that the ' Note to the Reader ', which prefaced the published sermon, addressed "Friend[s] to an Orderly Piety and Christian Life" is suggestive of a wider recognition of the significance of the day in the Restoration Church. Also of note is the reference to Shrove Tuesday, indicative of a cultural recognition of the idea of Lenten abstinence. The fact that the first day of Lent is referred to in the sermon as Ash Wednesday is not without sig...
Protestant Episcopalian - Burkean - clerk in holy orders