laudable Practice

For this Tuesday in Whitsun Week, from an 1814 volume of sermons by Richard Mant - appointed Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora in 1820, translated to Down and Connor in 1823 - further words from his sermon 'The Aid of the Spirit, the gift of God', on how the working of the Spirit is ordinarily dependent upon "certain means", chiefly prayer.  Again we see Mant's emphasis on the presence and working of the Holy Ghost known in and through the ordinary practice of the Christian life: The gift of the Holy Ghost then is of the free grace of our heavenly Father, granted by him in his goodness, and purchased by his Son. But free as is this gift of God, and utterly incapable as we are of meriting or purchasing it for ourselves, it remains in the third place to be remarked that he has appointed certain means, by which the aid of the Holy Spirit is to be procured. All the blessings, which we receive from God, are free gifts of his mercy and loving kindness; but they are all ...

For this Monday in Whitsun Week, from an 1814 volume of sermons by Richard Mant - appointed Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora in 1820, translated to Down and Connor in 1823 - words from his sermon 'The Aid of the Spirit, the gift of God', on a trust in the ordinary working of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, requiring no speculative inquiries or attempts to probe beyond the plain assurance of holy Scripture: But whatever improvement our spiritual part is capable of receiving, it is not capable of furnishing that improvement to itself. We must be wrought upon by supernatural power: we must be "strengthened with might by the Spirit of God in the inner man." How he works upon us we know not: we need not, we cannot know; and it were useless and rash to inquire; for the scriptures, not only do not supply a clue to guide us in the search, but close the door upon such inquiries, by authoritatively asserting the fact, and requiring us to believe it as an article of fait...

Bright the vision that delighted  once the sight of Judah's seer;  sweet the countless tongues united  to entrance the prophet's ear. It is a Church of Ireland favourite on Trinity Sunday (hymn 316 in our Church Hymnal). This, no doubt, has something to do with the author, Richard Mant, from 1820 to 1848 a bishop in two Irish sees. Mant stood solidly within the Old High tradition, evident from his anti-Enthusiast 1812 Bampton Lectures , his rejection of Ritualism , and his affection for Anglicanism's native piety . His hymn, then, is another expression of Old High piety: such hymns will now be the subject of an occasional series  on  laudable Practice . What particularly connects the hymn to Trinity Sunday? It does, after all, make no specific mention of the Holy Trinity or of the Three Persons of the Godhead. The answer lies in the scriptural passage contemplated by the hymn, the vision of the prophet Isaiah in the Temple (Isaiah 6). While not appointed as a le...

On this Saint Patrick's Day, words from an 1829 sermon by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor, entitled ' The Visible Church of Christ: the United Church of England and Ireland a True and Sound Part of it '. In this extract, Mant - a noted Old High divine - sets forth a defence of sola scriptura  as patristic and catholic. And so, "no article of faith, which was not plainly laid down in Scripture" could be proclaimed by the Church or required of Christians: as affirmed by Article VI of the Articles of Religion, Scripture is "the full and perfect rule for the Church of Christ".  Agreeable to this was the universal testimony of the primitive Christians, both in the Apostolical times, and in those which immediately, and afterwards for many ages uninterruptedly succeeded. The Scriptures, which the Apostles had acknowledged or delivered, the Churches constantly received for their own direction, and regularly transmitted to their posterity. Upon these scri...

They all preached in their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them. It is one of the lines I particularly enjoy from Trollope's description of the clergy of Barchester , high church but not Puseyite. Bishop Mant, however, would not approve. In his 1842 visitation charge  The Laws of the Church: The Churchman's Guard Against Romanism and Puritanism , Mant explained why clergy should preach wearing the surplice (a highly controversial practice in the 1840s, often opposed on the grounds that it was 'Puseyite'): The case is the difficulty experienced in resuming the service after the sermon, by reason of the requisite change of the dresses, appropriated in practice respectively to the pulpit and the communion table. My solution of the difficulty is comprised in the following suggestions:- First, what is the obligation on a clergyman to use a dress in the pulpit different from that which he wears during his other ministrations? Secondly, does not the order for his...

Continuing the series of weekly posts from the responses to Tract XC by Old High bishops in the visitation charges of the early 1840s, today we again turn to the 1842 visitation charge of Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor: The Laws of the Church: The Churchman's Guard Against Romanism and Puritanism .  As with the charges of Bagot of Oxford and Phillpotts of Exeter, the point of these extracts is not to focus on the rejection of Tract XC but, rather, on how these charges provide a rich seam of Old High teaching. In this extract, Mant contrasts the tendency in the later Tracts to admire the Roman Breviary with an Old High reverence for the Book of Common Prayer. The Prayer Book is primitive and Reformed, wisely reducing the seven daily offices, admired by some of the Tractarians, to two. This, Mant notes, provided for a "more agreeable to a reasonable service", terms which reveal something of the pleasing nature of Old High piety. While elements of Tractarianism - a...

In his 1812 Bampton Lectures - An appeal to the Gospel, or, An inquiry into the justice of the charge, alleged by Methodists and other objectors, that the gospel is not preached by the national clergy - Richard Mant (received orders in 1802, consecrated to the episcopate in 1820) challenged the revivalist notion of the necessity of "a special and instantaneous conversion". Mant, referring to the "writings of the Founders of Methodism, and of the most eminent among those Ministers of the Establishment, who, like the professed Methodists, have been distinguished (I think unduly) by the appellation of Evangelical or Gospel Preachers", confronted the accusation from revivalists that "the Gospel is not preached in our Church": [those who] claim the appellation of Evangelical or Gospel preachers, thereby exclude, by implication at least, if not expressly, from a share in that appellation those of their fellow-labourers, whose opinions and style of preaching do ...

Following on from yesterday's post , another example of High Church rejoicing in the Church of Ireland's adoption of the Articles of Religion in 1634, replacing the Irish Articles.  From Richard Mant's History of the Church of Ireland (1840), moving from lament to thanksgiving: the Reformed Church of Ireland ... the soundness of whose religious profession was also in some degree committed by incorporating with it the modern inventions of the Genevan reformer through the medium of the Lambeth Articles. But by the blessing of Providence this evil was not permitted to be of long continuance: being obliterated in the succeeding reign by a recurrence to “the Apostles' doctrine,” concerning God's will in man's salvation, as avowed in the professions of the early Christians, and perpetuated in the Articles of the Church of England. It is rather appropriate that this High Church celebration of the Irish Church's adoption of the Articles of Religion appeared in a wo...

It is usual to regard Ussher's  A discourse of the religion anciently professed by the Irish and Brittish (1631) as one of the earliest expressions of a Protestant narrative laying claim to Patrick and the primitive Irish Church.  Ussher's claim, however, is rather more specific than that: the religion professed by the ancient Bishops, Priests, Monks, and other Christians in this land, was for substance the very same with that which now by publike authoritie is maintained therein, against the forraine doctrin brought in thither in later times by the Bishop of Romes followers. In other words, Ussher portrayed the primitive Irish Church not merely as Protestant but as sharing the same characteristics as that of the Elizabethan Settlement: Augustinian, episcopalian, liturgical, and under the Royal rather than papal Supremacy.  Alongside affirming that "the Crowne of England hath ... obtained an undoubted right unto the soveraigntie of this countrey", Ussher contrasted t...

From Richard Mant's 1836 The Churches of England and Rome Compared , an example of Old High Church teaching on the sufficiency of the general absolution at the daily service and Holy Communion, and how private confession was to be understood as a "rare occurrence".  Also significant is the emphasis on absolution "not as a judicial, but as a ministerial act", characteristic of the Anglican ethos of pastoral, rather than sacerdotal, ministry: according to the provisions of the Church of England, the "Absolution," pronounced by the minister in ordinary cases, has a general reference to the whole congregation; and it is only on one special occasion , the terms of which make it of rare occurrence, that it takes in this respect a different character ... No such confession is esteemed necessary or required by the Church of England: in common cases, a general confession of sin is provided by her as the preliminary to absolution, such confession being addressed...