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...

Lord God our Father,  through our Saviour Jesus Christ you have assured your children of eternal life and in baptism have made us one with him. Deliver us from the death of sin and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. For some it might be surprising that the post-Communion prayer from the Church of Ireland BCP 2004 - shared with the CofE's Common Worship - for the 'Second Sunday of Easter' (i.e. Low Sunday) can bring us to think about the sacramental theology of Calvin. The issue came to mind when this prayer was said on Sunday past, as I am aware that for a certain strain of contemporary evangelicalism in the CofI this reference to Baptism is, to put it charitably, problematic. (We will leave aside, for the moment, the fact that the subscription required of all clergy in the CofI declares that "the doctrine of the Church of Ireland" as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer is ...

Ussher may seem to be an odd source for a blog which stands in the Old High tradition. As laudable Practice has sought to previously demonstrate, however, there is good precedent for an Old High regard for Ussher. The Laudian Bramhall, after all, praised his predecessor in the See of Armagh as "an ornament to the Reformed Church". This year's Jeremy Taylor Week on the blog also explored how Taylor the Laudian and Ussher the Reformed Conformist shared theological commitments on the liturgy , episcopacy , the Royal Supremacy , the Lord's Supper , and the Reformed identity of the Church of England. There is a rich seam of sacramental teaching in Ussher's works, underpinning the view that the theological gap between Reformed Conformists and Laudians is too often overstated and exaggerated . This is no new claim. Henry Charles Groves , in his 1858 work refuting Tractarian interpretations, declared that Reformed Conformists such as Ussher had a eucharistic theology ...