laudable Practice

It is not at all original to read Hooker's exposition of the Sacraments in Book V of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity alongside the Consensus Tigurinus (the Consensus of Zurich), the 1549 agreement between the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on the Sacraments. Torrance Kirby , for example, has said that Hooker's teaching on the Sacraments as 'moral instruments' is "demonstrably in agreement with the Consensus Tigurinus". Similarly, Diarmaid MacCulloch regards Hooker's eucharistic views as being at home in "Bullinger's Zurich".  The purpose of this post, therefore, is not to offer any original commentary but to consider how the Consensus Tigurinus is significantly reflected in Hooker. The focus of this post is V.57.3-5 of the Laws . We begin, however, with a passage from the Laws just prior to V.57, as Hooker considers "The union or mutuall participation which is betweene Christ and the Church of Christ in this present worlde". In...

But from the beginning the mystery of the sacrament hath been with wonder marvelled at, how Christ made bread his body, and wine his blood, and under the figure of those visible creatures, gave invisibly his precious body and blood presently there.  Gardiner's critique of Cranmer's sacramental theology is familiar. In Anglicanism, it was increasingly voiced by Tractarians as they parted ways with the Old High tradition. In the 20th century, Gregory Dix became is chief proponent - aided, ironically, by evangelicals such as Colin Buchanan, who shared an interest in denying the rich and vibrant sacramental vision of the founder of the Prayer Book tradition. Gardiner's view of Cranmer is still to be heard amongst those who regard the 1662 Holy Communion as insufficiently 'catholic'.  Cranmer's response, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551) powerfully sets forth why such impoverished readings of his sacramental theology should be banished. The sacraments are indeed ...

In the  previous post  in this series, we have seen how Gardiner enjoyed invoking the Holy Communion in BCP 1549 against Cranmer. We now come to another example of this: In the  Book of Common Prayer, now at this time set forth in this realm, it is ordered to teach the people, that in each part of the bread consecrate, broken, is the whole body of our Saviour Christ, which is agreeable to the catholic doctrine. Gardiner is here referring to the rubric at the conclusion of the 1549 Holy Communion, explaining why communicants received a broken rather than unbroken wafer: For advoyding of all matters and occasyon of dyscencyon, it is mete that the breade prepared for the Communion, bee made, through all thys realme, after one sort and fashion: that is to say, unleavened, and rounde, as it was afore, but without all maner of printe, and somethyng more larger and thicker than it was, so that it may be aptly devided in divers pieces: and every one shall be devided in two piec...

Zwingli failed to work out any fully developed or coherent theology of baptism ... It is easy enough to detect the weaknesses in Zwingli's understanding. He isolates the various aspects of the sacrament. He has not true doctrine of sacramental efficacy. He has little or nothing to say about baptism as a sign of remission and regeneration. G.W. Bromiley's introduction to Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' - in the Zwingli and Bullinger volume (1953) in 'The Library of Christian Classics' series - offers a stark but accurate assessment of the failings of the Zurich reformer's sacramental theology, not least when contrasted with "Luther and the more developed 'sacramentalism' of the later Reformed school". As example of such richer Reformation sacramental theology we might particularly point to the BCP Baptismal rite, Article XXVII, and the Catechism: the Anglican eye will particularly notice how Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' significantly contr...

Having considered how David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - defended the authority by which the Articles of Perth were introduced, in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , we now turn to his defence of the provisions of the Articles themselves. The Articles of Perth, at the urging of James VI/I, reintroduced to the Church of Scotland kneeling to receive the Holy Communion, Communion of the sick at the end of their earthly lives, the private Baptism of infants when necessary, Confirmation, and observance of the major festivals of Our Lord. Those who, rather than peaceably accepting the lawful decision of the General Assembly, cantankerously opposed the Articles of Perth sought to portray them as 'Roman' practices - despite the fact that many of their provisions were found in other Reformed churches. Quoting an opponent who ridiculously suggested that Roman Catholic opinion would interp...

In his Answer to Gardiner (1551), Cranmer responds to Gardiner's allegation that he taught, regarding the Sacraments, "there is nothing to be worshipped, for there is nothing present but in figure, and in a sign: which whosever saith, calleth the thing in deed absent". In doing so, Cranmer emphasises that while the water, bread, and wine of the Sacraments do not have within themselves grace, they are yet holy for they are signs of the truth and reality of God's grace: And as concerning the holiness of bread and wine, (whereunto I may add the water in baptism,) how can a dumb or an insensible and lifeless creature receive into itself any food, and feed thereupon? No more is it possible that a spiritless creature should receive any spiritual sanctification or holiness. And yet do I not utterly deprive the outward sacraments of the name of holy things, because of the holy use whereunto they serve, and not because of any holiness that lieth hid in the insensible creature...

In them were said ancient prayers, giving thanks to God for the whole congregation, as partakers of the Body and blood of Christ, when not one of them received the Sacrament. The people were mere spectators, while the priest pretended to act in the name of the whole congregation, and to communicate without any real Communion. So does John Shepherd - in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - describe non-communicating and private Masses. We might note, by the way, that this description accords with Eamon Duffy's account of pre-Reformation English spirituality: "for most people, most of the time the Host was something to be seen, not to be consumed". Shepherd is here commenting on one of the concluding rubrics in the 1662 Holy Communion: And note, that every Parishioner shall communicate at the least three times in the year, of which Easter to be one. Shepherd accepts that this falls short of patristic Christian practice o...

On this Whitsun Ember Day, we turn to Tillotson's sermon 'The Authority of Jesus Christ, with the Commission and Promise He Gave to the Apostles', on the text Matthew 28:18-20.  In rooting apostolic ministry - that is, the ministry of the Apostles and those whom Tillotson twice describes in this sermon as their "successors" - in the dominical command to baptise in the Triune Name, Tillotson first places the Trinitarian confession at the very heart of church's faith and life, and thus of the faith to be proclaimed by the ordained minister: As for the form of baptism, "in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," it plainly refers to that short creed, or profession of faith, which was required of those that were to be baptized, answerably to the reciting of the precepts of the law, at the baptizing of proselytes among the Jews: now the articles of this creed were reduced to these three heads, "of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,...

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 ...

Today we resume the series ' Contours of Conformity' , exploring exploring the characteristics of Anglican Conformity across the 'long 18th century'. We do so by returning to Edward Welchman's 1713 commentary on the Articles of Religion .  Welchman (b.1679, d.1739) would become archdeacon of Cardigan and a prebendary of St. David's Cathedral in 1727, and chaplain to Richard Smalbroke, bishop of Lichfield, in 1737. His significance for this series of posts flows from his status as one of those Reformed theologians who Stephen Hampton has identified as the 'Anti-Arminian' tradition in the Church of England between the reigns of Charles II and George I. In his commentary on Article 25, 'Of the Sacraments', provides an account of the working of the Sacraments which refuted a Hoadlian understanding and, furthermore, was in complete agreement with Old High definitions: The Sacraments are indeed tokens, by which Christians are distinguished from infide...

The queen's majesty, of her godly zeal, calling to remembrance how necessary it is to the advancement of God's glory, and to the establishment of Christ's pure religion for all her loving subjects, especially the state ecclesiastical, to be knit together in one perfect unity of doctrine, and to be conjoined in one uniformity of rites and manners in the ministration of God's holy word, in open prayer and ministration of sacraments, as also to be of one decent behaviour in their outward apparel ... It is Gloriana Day.  In 1604, the year after Elizabeth I's death, the obscure commemoration of St. Evurtius on 7th September was added to the Prayer Book Kalendar. It marked the day on which Gloriana had been born in 1533. Today, in other words, is a day to give thanks for the Elizabethan Settlement. Last year on Gloriana Day, laudable Practice rejoiced in Elizabeth's Prayer Book , the Book of Common Prayer 1559, the liturgy which carried the "mellow light" o...

Continuing the new series of weekly posts on visitation charges of Old High bishops in the immediate aftermath of the Tract XC controversy, today we turn again to the  1842 Visitation Charge  of Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford.  As stated in the introductory post of the series last week, the focus is be not so much on the well-known critique of Tract XC but, rather, on what the visitation charges reveal about the teaching, piety, concerns, and vitality of the Old High tradition nearly a decade after the emergence of the Oxford Movement. In today's post, an extract from Bagot's charge on the significance of the sacraments.  This notably follows his praise for the Tracts:  "they have successfully laboured to impress the necessity and efficacy of the Sacraments, as the appointed means, in and by which God is pleased to impart the vital and saving grace of Christ". Against this, Bagot contrasts some opponents of Tractarian teaching on the sacraments, accusing ...