laudable Practice

Last Thursday's post on Ussher's eucharistic theology concluded with a suggestion that the Laudian Bramhall had the same understanding of the Sacrament. Here, in other words, was the sacramental consensus of the Jacobean and Caroline Church, embracing both Reformed Conformists and Laudians.  Something of this is also indicated in Bramhall's words of praise for his predecessor in the See of Armagh, in his  Discourse on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day   (written shortly after Ussher's death in 1656): the late Lord Primate of Armagh ... under whose pious and moderate government I lived sundry years a Bishop in the Province of Ulster, whilst the political part of the care of that Church did lie heavy upon my shoulders. I praise God, we were like the candles in the Levitical Temple, looking one towards another, and all towards the stem. We had no contention among us, but who should hate contention most, and pursue the peace of the Church with swiftest paces. If we wanted...

 ... 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 ...

In the last year of his life, 1867, John Lonsdale, Bishop of Lichfield, had to address one of the most theologically and culturally divisive aspects of Anglo-catholic practice in Victorian England: auricular confession. The promotion of auricular confession, as Nockles notes, was one of the most profound differences between the Old High tradition and the Tractarians: "Forgiveness was effectively made conditional upon the sacramental absolution administered by a priest in private confession in a way which the old High Churchmen deplored". As recorded in The Life of John Lonsdale (1868), the Bishop was required to address the matter because of the controversy surrounding a boys' school in his diocese allowing pupils "by the permission of their parents only, to come to confession, and to receive absolution, if they are unable (as the Prayerbook says) by the usual means to satisfy their own conscience, and require further comfort or advice". Lonsdale carefully defe...

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...

Prior to Lent, laudable Practice shared extracts from two sermons by John Lonsdale, an associate of the Hackney Phalanx and later Bishop of Lichfield (1843-67). The Life of John Lonsdale (1868), by his son-in-law, provides an interesting insight into Lonsdale as a representative of the Old High tradition. The work describes Lonsdale as "a High Churchman of the old school, broadened by experience, and inclining always to moderation and comprehension". In this, he was not dissimilar from other bishops in the Old High tradition as, for example, Christopher Bethell (Bishop of Gloucester then Exeter,1824-30) and William Jacobson (Bishop of Chester, 1864-84). On ritual matters, it is stated that this "High Churchman of the old school" did not at all identify with ceremonies the Tractarians imported into parish churches from cathedrals, such as bowing to the Holy Table or facing east for the Creed: Neither did he, either in the reading desk, or at the Table, or in his ...

I am not sure of the origin of the illustration which was circulated on Anglican Twitter some weeks ago (apologies to the person who designed it), but I did enjoy considering its options.  Such things are not, of course, to be taken too seriously.  Thinking about my instinctive answers, however, I realized that they provided a rather good expression of why I value the Old High tradition.  Today's post offers some extended thoughts on these choices. Archbishops of Canterbury - D, William Howley, 1828-48. This might be regarded as my most surprising choice.  Why not Laud? I do, of course, admire Laud for his defence of the ecclesia Anglicana against the gathering storm inspired by Puritan agitation. What gives me pause, however, is perhaps best summarised by Hume's judgement that he did not act "with the enlarged sentiments and cool reflection of a legislator". While rejecting the deeply inaccurate portrayals of Laud which still dominate historical accounts (Sharpe...

In the seventh of his1844 Bampton Lectures,  An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England , Jelf - one of the Zs, those whom Nockles highlights as the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses the issue of private confession and absolution. Proposed by Tractarians as a regular, routine feature of the spiritual life, Jelf robustly reaffirms the Old High understanding that this Prayer Book provision must not be regarded as Tridentine "compulsory auricular confession". Jelf begins by pointing to the radical difference between the primitive penitential practice and the much later Sacrament of Penance: And let it be acknowledged that it [i.e. the primitive practice] is now to be found nowhere in Christendom as it existed in the Primitive Church; and, considering the change of circumstances and habits, it is, perhaps, hardly to be expected that any Church will ever succeed in resto...

On this Saint Patrick's Day, words from Jeremy Taylor's 1663 sermon at the funeral of John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh 1661-63 and, in Taylor's words, "Primate of this National Church".  Some might, of course, ask why Taylor's sermon at Bramhall's funeral makes for appropriate material on this celebration of Ireland's patron saint. Bramhall and Taylor, after all, were both born on the other island, Bramhall in Yorkshire, Taylor in Cambridge. This, however, makes them rather like Patrick: they, too, were British-born bishops who served in Ireland.  Like Patrick, Britannia was for them "my home country", their patria (see Patrick's Confessio , 43). In his sermon, Taylor draws another comparison between Bramhall and Patrick.  Just as Patrick's ministry had established the Church on this Island, even as his homeland experienced the unhappy confusions occasioned by the collapse of Roman Britain, so too did Bramhall's minister as Ar...

The '1859 Revival', which took place in the predominantly Protestant north-east of Ireland, has a particularly exalted place in the subculture of Ulster evangelicalism . The then moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland heralded the revival in his account,  Year of Grace: A History of the Ulster Revival of 1859 . No less significant than this revivalist narrative, however, is the counter-narrative provided by critics.  Isaac Nelson, a Presbyterian minister, condemned the revivalists from a robustly Reformed perspective in his The Year of Delusion (1860). Another leading critic was the Irish Episcopalian cleric William McIlwaine, a Belfast rector.   McIlwaine - a member of the Evangelical Alliance - might have been expected to join those Episcopalian clergy who endorsed the revivalists. Instead he provided a sustained critique of the 'revival', echoing traditional Anglican concerns concerning revivalism. A 2014 paper in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History b...

As Joseph Butler was preaching to the House of Commons on the 13th December 1776 fast day on the occasion of the American War, Thomas Leland was delivering his sermon to the University of Dublin .  Like Butler, Leland set before his hearers the divine judgement that is civil war: We are at this day, not indeed at the conclusion, possibly but at the commencement of a civil war. It hath already proved far more obstinate, far more afflicting and alarming, than at first our pride suffered us to suspect: and from this beginning of strife the most bitter waters have already gushed out. One tribe, however divided from us by situation, yet of our own language and people, influenced, I do not say, by what motives, hath avowed, and seems to glory in its separation ... It is not the business of the present hour, to speculate on the causes and occasions of this contest. In the time of our visitation, we are to consider only, that we have been visited. There is an intestine war; the empire...