laudable Practice

Another example of the piety of High Church Receptionism, associated with the Hackney Phalanx, from George D'Oyly , Sermon V 'On the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper' in Sermons, chiefly doctrinal, with notes (1827), on the Words of Institution: Surely here are important words, which would be altogether superfluous, if a mere commemorative rite had been intended. Had such only been the meaning, our Lord would, no doubt, have commanded His disciples to eat bread and to drink wine in remembrance of Him. He would not have told them that the bread was His body broken for them; that the wine was His blood shed for them; words, which can only be verified by the fact that, in some sense, the bread and wine in the Eucharist do become the body and blood of Christ. That they do not become so in a literal sense, is shewn by the plainest evidence of our senses. It remains, therefore, that they must become so in a symbolical or in a spiritual sense; in the sense that to the wor...

In the posts for Monday and Tuesday of this week, attention was drawn to the place of the Comfortable Words in High Church Eucharistic piety, with examples from two members of the Hackney Phalanx, Hugh James Rose and Joshua Watson.  The extracts demonstrate how this aspect of the Prayer Book Communion Office was a recurring theme in High Church piety. Another example if this is found in Keble's ' Holy Communion ' in The Christian Year , itself a fine expression of the pre-1833 High Church tradition.  The poem captures the significance of the Comfortable Words in High Church Eucharistic piety, structured as it is around the four sentences.  Mindful of the examples of Rose and Watson, Keble was here invoking an established characteristic of High Church piety, with its recognition of the evocative quality and affective power of the Comfortable Words: Who can express the soothing charm, To feel thy kind upholding arm, My mother Church? ... The precious words are ...

With the long days of Summer now behind us, and signs of approaching Autumn now evident, what are the characteristics of a Prayer Book September? Sundays after Trinity We are now in the midst of the long stretch of Sundays after Trinity.  This year, 1st September was the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, and the liturgical year will end on 24th November, Stir-up Sunday and the Last - the 23rd Sunday - after Trinity.  In his advice to younger clergy ,  Henry Handley Norris ,  of the Hackney Phalanx, contrasted the Sundays of the Advent-Trinity Sunday cycle with those after Trinity: Having in the former part of the year fully instructed his flock in the doctrines, let him in the latter part enforce upon them the duties of the Gospel. These Sundays after Trinity, he states, are given over to "to practical Christianity".  With the rest and recreation of Summer now past, with a new season of labour and activities commencing, the Sundays after Trinity in Septem...

From A Memoir of Joshua Watson , an extract from an 1846 letter to Watson by William Broughton , then the Church of England's Bishop of Australia, on Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine : To make a candid confession to you ... I did not open it without some uncomfortable apprehensions as to the formidable assault which a writer of such high repute would make upon the towers and bulwarks of the Jerusalem from which he had fallen away. You may believe my assurance that I have really studied the book, reading it piece by piece with attention many times over; striving to make myself master as well of the general argument as of the several details. And now what shall I say? .... considered as a justification of a man's desertion of the Church of England for the purpose of joining the Church of Rome, it is the most inconclusive and unsatisfactory performance that it ever fell to my lot to examine.  The sum and substance of his argument appears ...

Another example from the Hackney Phalanx, this time from Joshua Watson , of the place of the Comfortable Words in Anglicanism's native piety: Again our Scriptural reading led him into quiet talk. It grieved him when, as by some writers is done, the love and mercy of God the Father in the work of redemption are obscured or forgotten, in the vain notion of thereby exalting the love and mercy of God the Son; representing the Father as a Being of stern justice alone, and attributing, as it were, different characters to the divine Persons: the "comfortable words" adopted into our Communion Service are alone sufficient to correct this error. From Edward Churton, A Memoir of Joshua Watson (1863).

From  Eight Sermons Preached before the University of Cambridge at Great St Mary's  (1831) by  Hugh James Rose , associated with the Hackney Phalanx, a wonderful example of how a distinctive part of Anglican liturgy - the Comfortable Words - shaped a native Eucharistic piety: But to the penitent, the believer, the faithful, humble, Christian, what are her words of consolation and of comfort? Does she not call with her voice of love to all the weary and heavy laden to come and lay down their burden there? Does she not speak of love by which the Father gave up the only beloved to die for the world? Does she not bid the guilty but repenting heart that doubts if that sacrifice, could be made for one so stained with guilt, remember that He came to die for sinners? Does she not bid us remember that He that died for sinners, lives for them, prays for them, offers up their prayers to the eternal Father? Does she not call upon us to lift up the heart that is cast dow...

From  Henry Handley Norris , a leading figure in the Hackney Phalanx,  A Manual for the Parish Priest   (1815), a defence of the 'practical Christianity' of the High Church tradition against evangelical (and later Tractarian) critiques: Some years ago an outcry was raised against the great body of the clergy for preaching too much on the subject of morals, and neglecting the leading doctrines of the Gospel. The outcry I fear was raised with no good intention, and the charge I am persuaded was, in general, without foundation. I believe however, sober churchmen were at that time so disgusted with the sermons of some preachers, who were unceasingly bringing forward certain doctrines for the sake of perverting them, that there were parochial ministers who, through fear of running into this, were verging toward the opposite extreme: in avoiding the whirlpool they approached perhaps rather too near the rock; they allotted more than the just proportion of their discours...