'The sole, divine, and supernatural agencies': when a Hackney Phalanx sermon sounds like the Wesleys
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 ...