laudable Practice

In last week's extract from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), I suggested that it showed how a Hackney Phalanx preacher could sound like the Wesleys in a lively proclamation of salvation in Christ. This indicates how the ridiculously outdated, Old Hat view of 'moralistic' preaching of the pre-1833 High Church tradition - a view still oft-repeated by contemporary Anglicans despite being debunked by decades of historical research - is, to be blunt, nonsense.  Today's extract, from a sermon on Luke's account of the healing of the ten lepers, is another Wesley-like example of the lively faith proclaimed by this Hackney Phalanx preacher. When reading this sermon, I could not help think of the Tractarian slur of 'Two Bottle Orthodox', implying a cold formalism amongst pre-1833 High Churchmen. Reading Old High works and the sermons, however, reveals how entirely incorrect this. There is a warmth to the piety and a vibrancy ...

Continuing with the series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx, this extract demonstrates how the preaching of the Hackney Phalanx - and the Old High tradition more generally - was not defined by 'moralism' (a tired, Old Hat caricature that has no place in serious analysis of this tradition and its preaching) but, rather, had at is centre a lively proclamation of salvation in Christ. Indeed, this particular extract would not be out of place in the preaching of the Wesleys: That which the recovery of sight is to the blind, of feet to the lame, of hearing to the deaf, the same is our religion to the intellectual eye and ear, to the several faculties of man's understanding. Without the Gospel, men wander on their way, not knowing what they are, whence they come, nor whither they are going. They are blind to their real good, followers after phantoms and shadows, and the darkness and the ...

From Richard Warner's   The Sermon on the mount; in five discourses  (1840) - five sermons preached "on several successive Sunday afternoons" - a statement of why faith must bear fruit in love: the seat of true religion, is in the heart: where repentance for past sin: Faith in the only Saviour: the spirit of holiness: and the gospel grace of brotherly love; for ever dwell - unseen, indeed, by mortal eye, and visible only to the all seeing eye of God - but - made manifest to man, outwardly, and beautifully; in the substantial form of acts of repentance; faith: hope: and charity - in tokens of sorrow for numberless demerits: in a zealous exercise of "good works": and in earnest longings, desires, and strivings, to imitate, towards our brethren in the flesh, (though in an infinitely less degree) the unfathomable; unbounded; and impartial, mercy, compassion, and love, of "our Father which is in Heaven" - the most glorious of his eternal attributes: and (to...

He was 'the Lord of hosts', and He is still what He was, but He loves to be called the 'God of peace'; because He was terrible in that, but He is delighted in this. His mercy is His glory, and His glory is the light of heaven. His mercy is the life of the creation, and it fills all the earth; and His mercy is a sea too, and it fills all the abysses of the deep: it hath given us promises for supply of whatsoever we need, and relieves us in all our fears and in all the evils that we suffer. His mercies are more than we can tell, and they are more than we can feel; for all the world in the abyss of the divine mercies is like a man diving into the bottom of the sea, over whose head the waters run insensibly and unperceived, and yet the weight is vast, and the sum of them is unmeasurable; and the man is not pressed with the burden, nor confounded with numbers: and no observation is able to recount, no sense sufficient to perceive, no memory large enough to retain, no underst...

From Richard Warner's   The Sermon on the mount; in five discourses (1840) - five sermons preached "on several successive Sunday afternoons" - from the first sermon, a clear statement of the Scriptural teaching that "the practice of the precepts of the Gospel" is "a condition of everlasting salvation": Fully convinced, myself, of the high duty incumbent upon the Ministers of the Gospel, of not "shunning to declare" unto their hearers, "the whole counsel of God": deeply feeling (I humbly trust,) the responsibility which rests upon the Preacher of God's word, of "keeping himself pure from the blood of all men", by rightly dividing the word of truth, "and holding up moral righteousness", - (or the practice of the precepts of the Gospel, embodied in a life of piety, virtue, sobriety, honesty, and brotherly love,) as well as Faith, to the solemn attention of his congregation - assured in my conscience, that, with...

Paul Anthony Dominiak's  Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation  (2020) is, quite simply, superb.  One significant feature of the work is the way in which it reveals Hooker's defence in Book V of the Prayer Book liturgy and ceremonies as flowing from and dependent upon the rich participatory vision he sets out in Books I-IV: Book Five aims to show that the Elizabethan Prayer Book engenders 'true religion' and cultivates the Philonic virtue of 'godliness', with benefits for the here and now in political terms of order, but also preparing believers for their final union with God  (p.62); Hooker argues that the established liturgy affords 'mutuall conference and as it were commerce to be had betwene God and us', creatively crafting appropriate 'holie desires' which lead believers both to know and also to love God in sacramental union with Christ  (p.127). What has particularly struck me is that while Baptism and Eucharist are, as Dominiak...

Taylor on why religion is good for us: But because such is the bounty of God that He hath provided a better life for the inheritance of man, if God is so merciful in making fair provisions for our less noble part, in order to the transition toward our country, we may expect that the mercies of God have rare arts to secure to us His designed bounty in order to our inheritance, to that which ought to be our portion for ever. And here I consider, that it is an infinite mercy of the almighty Father of mercies that He hath appointed to us such a religion that leads us to a huge felicity through pleasant ways. For the felicity that is designed to us is so above our present capacities and conceptions, that while we are so ignorant as not to understand it, we are also so foolish as not to desire it with passions great enough to perform the little conditions of its purchase. God therefore, knowing how great an interest it is, and how apt we would be to neglect it, hath found out such conditions...

Taylor on how there can be holy living in a communion with erroneous doctrine: He that believes contrition alone, with confession to a priest, is enough to expiate ten thousand sins, is furnished with an excuse easy enough to quit himself from the troubles of a holy life; and he that hath a great many cheap ways of buying off his penances for a little money even for the greatest sins, is taught a way not to fear the doing of an act for which he must repent; since repentance is a duty so soon, so certainly, and so easily performed. But these are notorious doctrines of the Roman church; and yet God so loves the souls of His creatures, that many men who trust to these doctrines in their discourses dare not rely upon them in their lives. But while they talk as if they did not need to live strictly, many of them live so strictly as if they did not believe so foolishly. He that tells that antecedently God hath to all human choice decreed men to heaven or to hell, takes away from men all car...

Richard Warner -  in two sermons in the second volume of his  Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light"  (published in 1818) - on "the necessity of practical religion", capturing the characteristic Georgian Anglican emphasis on the need for good works.  This is an emphasis rooted (of course) in the Scriptures and, indeed, in the Homilies ("faith of itself is full of good works", "true faith bringeth forth good works") and the Prayer Book (" and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command", "direct, sanctify, and govern, both our hearts and bodies, in the ways of thy laws, and in the works of thy commandments; that through thy most mighty protection, both here and ever, we may be preserved in body and soul"). This view of the necessity of practical religion, of obedience, or "good works", being a condition of salvation, was kept up under every dispensat...

Richard Warner - in a sermon in the second volume of his Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light" (published in 1818) - again capturing a distinctive aspect of the Anglican experience.  The quietness, gentleness, and modesty of the characteristically Anglican spiritual life, alongside suspicion of and discomfort with Enthusiasm, rather than being evidence of spiritual coldness reveals how the Holy Spirit operates in the process of our conversion and sanctification over a lifetime: Hence, then, my brethren, you perceive the wickedness or folly of those who now pretend to especial communications of the Holy Spirit; to extraordinary inspirations from heaven; to particular illuminations; to sudden and forcible conversions from heinous sin to certain salvation; and to personal experiences of the operation of the Holy Ghost upon their inner man. All such pretensions are false and wicked; the offspring either of an heated imagination, and a wild enthusiasm; or, what ...

Richard Warner - in a sermon in the third volume of his  Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light"  (published in 1818) - critiqued those within the Church who had " lost sight of that great scriptural, and Church of England principle, that 'good works' are a condition of salvation; when they have once done this, they gradually proceed to all the extravagancies of enthusiasm".  Warner, in other words, was defending the emphasis on moral teaching and exhortation found in the Anglicanism of the 'long 18th century', an emphasis routinely criticised by later Evangelicals and Tractarians but described by  Spellman  as the conviction that "the point of Christ's redemption was that men might become good before God". As Warner pointed out, the emphasis on moral teaching and exhortation - rather than being being central to a declinist narrative - has deep roots in both Scripture and the Prayer Book. Yes, my brethren, that disinclin...

In the third volume of his 1818 collection of sermons - Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light" -  Richard Warner refutes, in Hookerian fashion, excessively radical accounts of Original Sin which denied the place of reason, natural law, and virtue in the ordering of common life, the natural knowledge of God, the moral obligation to obey the Commandments, and the call of the Christian to co-operate with grace.  This Hookerian vision - rooted in the classical affirmation that Grace does not destroy Nature - is in many ways the foundation of the Anglican experience's routine and consistent rejection of sectarianism, and underpins the modesty, caution, and patience of its pastoral approach . They "prophesy falsely", then, who describe human nature, and every branch and faculty of it, as utterly and entirely corrupted by the transgression of Adam; as an unleavened mass of malignity and sin, incapable of any good thought, amiable feeling, virtuous aff...

In his 1817 description of how the grace of regeneration in Holy Baptism is to be followed by what other authors routinely termed 'renovation', Warner summarises what we might term the Anglican pastoral ethos, an abiding character of Anglicanism, in which 'enthusiasm' is distrusted as ineffectual distraction, with the slow, sober work of grace identified as the means of ongoing conversion: Hence it appears, that the change which takes place at Baptism can take place only at that time, and in consequence of that rite; for, as a wise and holy man (Jeremy Taylor) observes, "we are but once to change our whole estate of life, from the power of the Devil and his entire possession, from the state of sin and death, from the body of corruption, to the life of grace, to the possession of Jesus, to the kingdom of the Gospel; and this is done in the Baptism of Water, and the Baptism of the Spirit, when the first rite comes to be verified by God's grace coming upon us...

In 1828, Richard Warner , an English parson, published Evangelical Preaching, commonly so denominated: Its character, errors and tendency , a critique of "this new system of preaching, [which] is called, (with singular inconsistency) evangelical preaching".  Nockles in The Oxford Movement in Context , describes Warner as one of those "Orthodox churchmen in the forefront of campaigns of 'refutation of Calvinism'", an exponent of the 'Tillotsonian' character in the Orthodox school.  What is particularly striking about the work is its explicit defence of the style of preaching which was common in 18th century Anglicanism, only years before the Tractarians would commence their historiographical assault on the church of that century: That this style of spiritual teaching [i.e. of the evangelical preachers] has something wrong in it, may fairly be inferred, not only from its novelty, (for, in such cases, new and erroneous, are, usually, synonymous terms) ...

In the final Sermon (VIII) of his  1834 Bampton Lectures ,  Archbishop of Cashel Richard Laurence considered how the teaching of Article 17 set the United Church of England and Ireland apart from a Calvinistic understanding of predestination.  He again pointed to significant similarities with the Lutheran position: So far indeed is the Article in question from sanctioning the creed of the French Reformer, that, like those already reviewed, it seems to have been framed in perfect conformity with the less abstruse , and more scriptural, opinions of the Lutherans. With them it teaches an election of Christians out of the human race, conceives abundant consolation derivable from such an election, when piously surveyed, and not perverted by a profligate fatalism; and, lastly, represents its position upon the point as consistent with God's universal promises and revealed will, expressly declared to us in the holy Scriptures. Noting the oft commented upon absence of any ref...

The doctrine of Predestination, the last subject which I proposed to consider, has been so frequently involved in metaphysical obscurity, and disgraced by enthusiastical conceit, that men of moderate principles have been averse from admitting it in any sense. So began Archbishop of Cashel Richard Laurence's Sermon VII in his  1834 Bampton Lectures ,  addressing the teaching of Article 17. Laurence gave over this and his final sermon to the subject.  The focus of Sermon VII is "Lutheran predestination", noting that Luther's views were "c ongenial also with the feelings and sentiments of Erasmus upon this point".  This provides the context for interpreting Article 17 as Erasmus was "a peculiar favourite with the Reformers of our own country", while "our Reformers, as generally on other occasions, trod in the wary steps of the Lutherans".  He quotes Erasmus regarding the need for such wary steps when considering predestination: in the holy S...

From the  1834 Bampton Lectures  of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel), Sermon VI, addressing Justification "by Faith only".  Laurence took care to point to the Lutheran rejection of the allegation that sola fide encouraged "Enthusiasm", reducing faith to an individual experience of " an internal confidence, that his name is  written in the book of life", irrespective of repentance and good works.  After quoting Lutheran sources, he turns to Article 11: Both in their object and tendency perfectly accord; but the latter is,  if possible, more guarded than the former against the obliquities of Enthusiasm. Noting the Article's reference to the Homily of Justification, he quotes from the Homily to illustrate that "justified by Faith only" was not intended to deny the necessity of repentance and works: For when we are said, as the same  Homily remarks, to be justified by faith only, it  is not meant "that this our own act to believ...

From the  1834 Bampton Lectures  of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel), Sermon V, addressing  Articles 10 and 13 in relation to 18, 'Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ'.  Under the subheading of 'Salvation of Heathens', Laurence insists that these Articles do not exclude those of other faiths from "the uncovenanted mercies of God", again noting (as with Article 9 ) the generous vision of salvation upheld by Zurich: But because our Church ascribes not to human virtue, contemplated as independent of Christianity, the power of conciliating divine approbation, we must not hence conclude, that she restricts the uncovenanted mercies of God, withholding salvation from Heathens, upon whom, walking in darkness and the shadow of death, the light of the blessed Gospel has never arisen. Although persuaded "that there is none other name under heaven given to man, in which, and through which, we can receive health and salvation, but onl...

From the 1834 Bampton Lectures of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel), Sermon IV, on the meaning of Articles 10 and 13 regarding works done before and outside of Christian Faith.  Contrary to what Laurence condemns as Calvinistic readings of these Articles, in which all such works are worthy only of damnation, he emphasises what he sees as a Lutheran Christological reading in which these works have the nature of what is good and just but cannot save.  They are to be recognised as virtue but cannot do that "which the oblation of Christ alone accomplishes".  The intention of these Articles, then, is not to deny human virtues but to centre the Church on the saving work of Christ. Let us not however imagine, that the Lutherans on this occasion attempted to confuse together virtue and vice without distinction, from any absurd attachment to puerile paradox. Far was it from their intention to break down the sacred barriers of morality, and call evil good, or good evil;...