laudable Practice

The Homilies were intended to provide churchgoers with teaching about what the Church of England stood for and why it had embraced the Reformation. So says Gerald Bray on the website of the conservative evangelical Church Society.  From a rather different perspective, Eamon Duffy agrees.  The Edwardine and Elizabethan Homilies were a part of "the attack on traditional religion, "a relentless torrent" of Protestant "polemic". All this, of course, is standard stuff.  The Homilies are obviously thoroughly Protestant and Reformed. They were also thoroughly Conformist, in content and form.  In content, they reflected the Conformist vision of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana defined by the parish church, common prayer, and Royal Supremacy. In form, they sustained Conformist practice, enabling the humble parson and the lowly curate, when not licensed to preach, to yet fulfil their calling to "preach the Word of God" through the reading of the Homilies. The...

In his 1662 work defending the Restoration Settlement - A view of the government and publick worship of God in the reformed churches beyond the seas wherein is shewed their conformity and agreement with the Church of England  - John Durel makes a number of interesting references to the Lutheran Churches, reflecting the well-established Conformist insistence that the Churches of the Augsburg Confession were to be numbered amongst the Reformed Churches, challenging the Puritan notion that the "reformed churches beyond the seas" uniformly supported Geneva-style polity and liturgy. Firstly, he defends regarding the Lutheran Churches as Reformed and notes their significance for the 1662 Settlement: If we take for Reformed Churches those which follow the Confession of Augsburg, as I see no reason but we should (the French Reformed Churches do I am sure, as to the points in controversy). If, I say, we take those Churches for Reformed, we shall find amongst them the very same both G...

Words from a great sermon by  Oikodoemo , addressing those about to be ordained priest,: Read your bible: keep it close to you. Never go many hours without touching base with Scripture. Especially the psalms; pray them every day as Christians have always done, learn them off by heart. The psalms are a powerful weapon against the terror, because they are full of terror, and full of resurrection which is stronger. What particularly strikes me about this exhortation is its solidly Cranmerian pedigree.  One of Cranmer's intentions in reforming the Daily Office was to ensure that the full Psalter would be more regularly recited: And furthermore, notwithstanding that the ancient Fathers have divided the Psalms into seven Portions, whereof every one was called a Nocturn : Now of late time a few of them have been daily said, and the rest utterly omitted (all such quotes in this post are from ' Concerning the Service of the Church '). Thus in BCP 1552's ' The Order Howe The...

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. It is during Autumn that the Third Collect at Evensong has a particular resonance.  The days are shortening, the evenings are darker.  Evensong during these weeks is often said or sung as the sun is setting, the mellow beauty of Autumnal sunset the background to our evening prayer. As Autumn progresses, as the leaves fall, the days become colder and shorter, as the year declines, intimations of our vulnerability present themselves in a way that is not the case during the exuberance of Spring or the glory of Summer.  Cooler days and darker evenings, falling leaves and the approach of the year's end. They remind us of our vulnerabilities and frailties. It has been a year when we have been confronted with our vulnerabilities and frailties in an unexpected and disconcerting fashion, as a virus sprea...

Another example from Andrewes of a 1598 sermon on the Sacraments which holds together Lutheran and Reformed perspectives.  Firstly, a more Lutheran emphasis on the significance of the elements which rather contrasts with Calvin's insistence that in the Sacraments the Lord cannot "be affixed to any earthly creatures" ( Institutes IV.17.19): Why doth not the blood of Christ immediately incorporate us into the Church, without the mediation of water in baptism, and drinking of Christ's blood in the Lords Supper? ... He useth this course to shew his power; which appears hereby to be great, in that albeit these elements of water, and bread and wine be weak and beggarly elements, yet by his power he exalts them and makes them effectual means, to incorporate us into his body, and so set us in that estate wherein we may be saved ... Now the mediation of these elements are no less necessary to preserve and keep us as lively members of the mystical body of Christ than bread an...

Thus the sacraments are sometimes called seals, and are said to nourish, confirm, and advance faith, and yet the Spirit alone is properly the seal, and also the beginner and finisher of faith. For all these attributes of the sacraments sink down to a lower place, so that not even the smallest portion of our salvation is transferred to creatures or elements - Consensus Tigurinus , Article 15. The 1549 Consensus Tigurinus - the work of Calvin - provided Zurich and Geneva with a shared statement of sacramental theology.  A good case can be made that while the Articles of Religion comprehend the sacramental theology of the Consensus, they do not require it.  This may be partly due to the Lutheran influence exerted on the Articles via the Thirteen Articles of 1538.  Thus, as Torrance Kirby points out, the first paragraph of Article XXV, defining the nature and use of the Sacraments, is taken (via 1538) from the Augsburg Confession.  One result of this is the possibility...

Who would have thought it? The ardent confessional Calvinists over at The Gospel Coalition have rejected the Reformation. Okay, I am exaggerating. Very slightly exaggerating. The Tweet quoting evangelical scholar Carl Trueman - a quote included in the actual article - stands in stark contradiction to the claims of the magisterial Reformation.  In fact, when the quote is placed in its original context , it gets even worse: Rome has a better claim to historical continuity and institutional unity than any Protestant denomination, let alone the strange hybrid that is evangelicalism; in the light of these facts, therefore, we need good, solid reasons for not being Catholic. Historical continuity with the Catholic Church is precisely what the magisterial Reformation claimed.  In the words of the Augsburg Confession : our churches dissent in no article of the faith from the Church Catholic, but only omit some abuses which are new, and which have been erroneously accepted by the corru...