laudable Practice

On this second of the Lenten Ember Days, heralding the approach of Spring, a delightful passage from Bishop Horne - quoted by  Mant in his  Notes  (1820)  - on how the change of season reflects the Church's observance of Lent in preparation for Easter: It was wisely foreseen, that, should the sinner be permitted to reserve to himself the choice of a “convenient season” wherein to turn from sin to righteousness, that “convenient season” would never come; and the specious plea of keeping every day holy alike would often be found to cover a design of keeping none holy at all. It seemed good therefore to the Church to fix a stated time, in which men might enter upon the great work of their repentance. And what time could have been selected with greater propriety than this “Lenten,” or, spring season, when universal nature, awakening from her wintry sleep, and coming out of a state of deformity, and a course of penance, imposed for the transgression, of man, her Lord ...

Peter Heylyn concludes his  Ecclesia restaurata   (1660)  with a review of the early years of Elizabeth's reign, praising the Elizabethan Settlement and identifying the Puritan party as seeking to overthrow it.  This demonstrates the conservative nature of Laudianism, rejoicing in the "glory" of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana , and defending the Elizabethan Settlement against an agitation which sought to overturn a settled order and polity: By this last Act the Church is strongly setled on her natural pillars of Doctrine, Government and Worship, not otherwise to have been shaken, than by the blind zeal of all such furious Sampsons as were resolved to pull it on their own heads, rather than suffer it to stand in so much glory. And here it will be time to conclude this History, having taken a brief view of the State of the Church, with all the abberrations from its first constitution as it stood at this time, when the Puritan faction had began to disturb her Order...

In an example of what we might term 'Laudians against Eamon Duffy' - contrary to the seemingly de rigueur Anglo-catholic acceptance of Duffy's critique of the Reformation in  The Stripping of the Altars and subsequent works - here Peter Heylyn in  Ecclesia restaurata   (1660)  praises the Edwardine Reformation: But we return again to England, where we have seen a Reformation made in Point of Doctrine, and settled in the Forms of Worship; the Superstitions and corruptions of the Church of Rome entirely abrogated, and all things rectified, according to the Word of God, and the Primitive Practice. And it was this Reformation which he understood to be at the heart of the Elizabethan Settlement: She raised Her whole Fabrick on the same Foundation, which had been lay'd by the Reformers in the Reign of King EDWARD; that is to say, the Word of God, the Practise of the Primitive Times, the General Current of the Fathers and the Example of such Churches, as seemed to...

From the Laudian divine Peter Heylyn's  Ecclesia restaurata, or, the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (1660), a description of the purpose of the Articles of Religion.  The fact that Heylyn was a robustly anti-Calvinist polemicist makes this description all the more significant in setting the Articles of Religion within the context of the confessions of the "other Protestant and Reformed Churches" and in recognising them as expressing the unity of Edward VI's Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement. The Lutherans having published that famous Confession of their faith, which takes name from Ausbrge, at which City it was tendered to the consideration of Charls the 5th. and the Estates of the Empire there assembled, Anno 1530. In tract of time, all other Protestant and Reformed Churches followed that example; And this they did, partly to have a constant Rule amongst themselves, by which all private persons were to frame their judgments, and par...

As I write this post, the top 7 stories on the BBC News website are about coronavirus.  The lead story quotes Public Health England warning that the UK must prepare for widespread transmission of the of the virus. To state what should be obvious, the Church in its public worship should be praying about this situation.  Perhaps, then, one should reach for the Church of England's Common Worship Daily Prayer to find an appropriate prayer in the face of the threat posed by such a virus.  But no, no such prayer is to be found in Common Worship.  For those of us in the Church of Ireland, we could reach for our BCP 2004 and turn to the section entitled 'Some Prayers and Thanksgivings'.  Again no such prayer will be found. The contrast with 1662 (and, in Ireland, 1926 ) is stark.  Amongst the prayers contained in 1662 for use "upon several occasions" at Morning and Evening Prayer we find the following: For Rain.  For fair Weather.  In the time ...

From a 1619 Lenten sermon by Donne.  Note again the reference to the Lenten fast and - as in the 1624 sermon - the understanding of this fasting as preparation for receiving the Sacrament at Easter. ... the Lord's day, of which the whole Lent is the vigil, and the eve. All this time of mortification, and our often meeting in this place to hear of our mortality, and our immortality, which are the two real texts, and subjects of all our sermons; all this time is the eve of the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That is the Lord's day, when all our mortification, and dejection of spirit, and humbling of our souls, shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection, and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompensed in the participation of his body and his blood in the sacrament; God's chancery is always open, and his seal works always; at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soul in the sacrament.

From a 1624 Lenten sermon of Donne: That which God commanded by his Word, to be done at some times (that we should humble our souls by fasting) the same God commands by his church, to be done now: in the Scriptures you have preceptum , The thing itself, what; in the church, you have the Nunc , The time, when. The Scriptures are God's voice; the church is his echo; a redoubling, a repeating of some particular syllables, and accents of the same voice. And as we hearken with some earnestness, and some admiration at an echo, when perchance we do not understand the voice that occasioned that echo; so do the obedient children of God apply themselves to the echo of his church, when perchance otherwise they would less understand the voice of God, in his Scriptures, if that voice were not so redoubled unto them. This fasting then, thus enjoined by God, for the general, in his word, and thus limited to this time, for the particular, in his church, is indeed but a continuation of a grea...