laudable Practice

Now then let me come at once to the subject which leads me to address you. Should the Government and Country so far forget their GOD as to cast off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claim of respect and attention which you make upon your flocks? Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must CHRIST'S Ministers depend?  With these words, published on 9th September 1833, did Tracts for the Times begin. In the first of the Tracts , John Henry Newman painted a picture of a Church of England corrupted by the Georgian era. Its clergy were dependent, we are told, on "birth ... education ... wealth ... connexions". He issued a trumpet call to the parsons of the Georgian Church, "to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats" and that "idle habit" of relying upon "that secular respectability, or cultivat...

On Epiphany 1813, William White, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Presiding Bishop of PECUSA, preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia. The sermon addressed the newly-established Society for the Advancement of Christianity in Pennsylvania, founded by White in the previous year to support the creation of Episcopal churches in the state.  What is striking about the sermon is how it is defined by what White terms "the festival of this day". Remembering that White is regarded as an exemplar of the low church tradition in PECUSA, and that there was little, if any, high church influence in Pennsylvania, the sermons points to how the feast of the Epiphany was meaningfully observed in pre-1833 Anglicanism: It has been often remarked concerning the calling of the Gentiles, that the great event became distinct a prophecy, in proportion as the time of its accomplishment drew near. The truth of this is especially evident in the text. The ...

Having earlier this week praised Victorian Anglicanism, today's post is an example of how earlier Georgian norms could continue to be found in the Victorian era. In a Stir-up Sunday sermon , John Keble favourably refers to the practice of Ante-Communion: If any go on profanely rejecting the Holy Communion altogether, the Church, he would perceive, is not to blame for it, who has not only enjoined all her children to communicate at least three times a year, but also encourages, wherever it may be, Communion on every Lord's day; and to put us in mind of that sacred duty, appoints certain portions of the holy service to be said at the Lord's Table, even when the Sacrament is not administered. Mindful that this collection of Keble's sermons was published in 1878, this reference certainly suggests that the practice of Ante-Communion was known past the mid-19th century. What is more, not only does Keble not criticise the practice, he actively praises it: Ante-Communion "...

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...

The people are to receive the Communion all meekly kneeling. When, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd addresses the Prayer Book rubric directing that the Sacrament is to be received "meekly kneeling", he immediately draws a parallel between this and the practice of the patristic and Eastern churches: In the ancient Church the people appear to have more generally received the Communion standing. Yet they "stood with fear and trembling, with silence and downcast eyes." Cyril directs the communicant "to draw near, bowing his body in the posture of worship and adoration." In the modern Greek Church the communicant does not kneel, but inclines his body, and is instructed to exercise at the time this act of faith: "I believe and I acknowledge that thou art Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."  While it may seem coun...

Having considered in some recent posts Phillpotts' Old High critique of auricular confession , in light of the Tractarian attempt to promote private confession and absolution as a normative, routine practice within Anglicanism, we turn now to E.H. Browne's consideration of the matter in his An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles: Historical and Doctrinal (1874). Browne had received orders in 1836 and 1837, became Norrisian chair of divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1854, was appointed Bishop of Ely in 1864, as was transferred to Winchester in 1873. He was, therefore, a significant divine. Expounding Article 25, Browne contrasts the teaching of the Council of Trent with that of the Reformed churches, amongst which he places the Church of England: The reformed Churches have generally abolished auricular confession, as obligatory and sacramental. The Lutherans indeed still retain it, as a regular part of Church order and discipline. The Augsburg Confession declares co...

In Tract 71  (published in 1836), John Henry Newman addressed "the Mode of Conducting the Controversy with Rome", articulating what he described as "intelligent opposition" to "Romanism". Amongst the "practical grievances" raised by Newman was the requirement of auricular confession: By the Council of Trent, every member of the Church must confess himself to a priest once a year at least. This confession extends to all mortal sins, that is, to all sins which are done deliberately and are of any magnitude. Without this confession, (which of course must be accompanied by hearty sorrow for the things confessed), no one can be partaker of the Holy Communion.  Newman highlighted as particularly objectionable that such auricular confession was required to be understood as "a point of faith": That there is no such impediment sanctioned in Scripture, is plain, yet to believe in it is a point of faith with the Roman Catholic. The practice is gri...

Having last week considered how Henry Phillpotts, in a series of letters - debating a Roman Catholic apologist - published in 1825, gave voice to an Old High critique of auricular confession, we now turn to this insistence that the special form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick was not to be understood in the terms of Roman Catholic theology: But it may be said, a particular absolution "is given to him who has made a particular confession": true, it is enjoined in the Rubric, that after what has preceded, if the sick man humbly and heartily desire it, the priest shall absolve him in the form annexed, a form, the meaning of which, if it be ambiguous, must be understood from comparison with the express doctrine, and uniform practice, of our Church in all the preceding instances. But even in this very form there is an implied declaration of the nature of the absolving power; it is given to absolve all sinners who truly repent and "believe in our Lord Jesus Chris...

In a series of letters published in 1825 , Henry Phillpotts - standing in the Old High tradition, a rector in the Diocese of Durham, soon to be appointed Dean of Chester and, in 1830, Bishop of Exeter - engaged with a Roman Catholic apologist, Charles Butler. The ninth letter addressed the matter of 'Confession and Absolution in the Church of Rome', including a 'Statement of Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England on these points'.  Phillpotts noted that Butler had mischievously and inaccurately used the two references to private confession in the Book of the Common Prayer. There was, Phillpotts declared with right and proper confidence, no comparison between Roman Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Penance and the Prayer Book's pastoral provision in the Exhortation in the Holy Communion: You know that auricular confession is, with you, an essential part of a Sacrament, which, as you value your soul's salvation, you must perform. You also know, that, w...

As John Shepherd moves to discuss the Prayer Book rite's Sursum corda in detail, in his  A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), what is perhaps most evident is his use of patristic sources to expound the meaning of these versicles. Consider, for example, his use of Cyril of Jerusalem: By the Greek and Latin Fathers, these four versicles are called lift up your hearts, from the introductory words. Cyril, Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Austin, expound this first versicle, as a seasonable admonition to dismiss all worldly thoughts, and to fix our minds upon the divine mercies, and the mysteries we are now celebrating. Cyril says, "The priest exclaims, lift up your hearts. At that tremendous hour," he adds, it is necessary to "elevate the heart to God, and not to depress it to earth, and earthly pursuits. The priest therefore directs, that all secular care and solicitude about domestic concerns be dismissed, and the heart devoted...

In his 1872 primary visitation charge to the clergy and churchwardens of the Diocese of Peterborough, Bishop William Connor Magee set forth characteristically High Church concerns: "reviving daily Service", "the keeping of the great days in the Christian year", monthly Communion as "the minimum of Eucharistic privilege which should be provided in every Church", "Weekly communion [as] that at which we should all of us aim". Magee, however, was certainly no Tractarian. He was, rather, a late 19th century representative of what we can call the Old High tradition. This becomes particularly evident when, in the charge, he offers a robust critique of advanced Anglo-catholicism, what he terms "the exaggeration of the Catholic element" in the Church of England: This tendency of a false theory of Catholicity is only too plainly illustrated amongst us at this moment. The party in our Church which claims, I must say invidiously, the exclusive tit...

Dec. 25 ... I read Prayers and administered the Holy Sacrament this morning at Weston, being Christmas Day. My Squire and Lady both at Church and at the Sacrament. This being Christmas Day, the following old poor men dined at my House, and I gave each of them a shilling to carry home to their wives - Richard Bates, Richard Buck, Thos. Dicker, Thos. Cary, Thos. Cushion, Thos. Carr, and my Clerk Js Smith - in all gave them 0.7.0. I had a prodigious fine surloin of Beef rosted with quantities of plumb-Puddings. We also began on Mince Pies today at dinner - entry for Christmas Day 1780 in the diary of Parson Woodforde . Good Parson Woodforde would be rather bemused by an article in First Things , published over the Christmas season: ' How the Oxford Movement Saved Christmas '. Leave aside for the moment the good Parson being very confused by the views of the Oxford Movement. He would be wondering - as he enjoyed his plumb puddings and mince pies - why on earth this Movement had to...

Do you think that you are truly called, according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, and according to the canons of this Church, to the ministry of the same? In reflecting upon the second question in the Ordering of Deacons, William White's Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination (1833) addresses the apostolic nature of the Church from which the candidate receives holy orders: To justify the candidate in believing that he is called according to the will of Christ, he should be convinced, after due inquiry, that the Church to which he looks for ordination, is a true apostolick Church, deriving its authority from that founded by the apostles. For since they did confessedly found a communion, and since it did confessedly transmit its ministries, there seems no possible right to the name of a Christian Church at present, but in succession from the originally established body. What then is the result, but that an opinion, formed under due care, is a prerequisite of admission ...

Our journey through The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), by Henry Charles Groves, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, concludes today. The work, as has hopefully been seen in the various posts, is a splendid example of Old High critique of Tractarian eucharistic teaching.  We end with words from Thomas Jackson, born in 1579, a chaplain to the 'Arminian' Bishop Neile, becoming a leading anti-Calvinist theologian at Oxford, one of the Durham House Group, and appointed Dean of Peterborough in 1635. When Laud was challenged for appointing "popishly inclined" clergy, he countered by invoking the name of Jackson as representative of "divers good and orthodox" appointments. Jackson, in other words, was characteristic of a second-tier of Laudian clergy, not in the episcopate or at court, but influential, through their place in the universities and cathedrals, in how the m...

The critique of Keble's handling of the words of earlier English divines continues in The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), by Henry Charles Groves, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland. In turning to those involved in the 1662 revision, Groves highlights how Keble assumes that he is invoking allies. Laudians such as Wren, however, are no such thing, for, as Groves had demonstrated, the view of the Sacrament held by Laud himself was firmly within the Reformed mainstream: Mr. Keble proceeds ... to prove that the revisers of the Liturgy in 1661 were men likely to favour his views. Of Wren he is quite convinced that he is justly to be regarded as an exponent of Laud's doctrine. And so am I. Laud's doctrine will be found in the extracts under his name; and neither on the Sacrifice nor the Presence are his views in any way similar to Mr. Keble's [a subject addressed in an earlier po...

Many an admiring reader of the "Christian Year" heard with regret that the author of it had written his last work, "On Eucharistical Adoration," with the object of defending the worship of Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist, or of His Humanity present there. By these expressions we have to hope that he means no more than the worship of Christ Himself present, for, in truth, they have a rather Nestorian savour.  In The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), Henry Charles Groves - a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - gave expression to the Old High lament that the traditional High Church parson of The Christian Year had become the Tractarian of On Eucharistical Adoration . The radical change in Eucharistic theology between these two works - from the Virtualism of the former to the explicit rejection of Hooker in the latter - is itself an indicator of the rupture occasi...