laudable Practice

Pentecostal Jubilee: the presence and gifts of the Spirit At Early Communion on Whitsunday 2022, during the Platinum Jubilee  Acts 2:11 Seventy years ago, Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne.  As part of the ancient coronation rite in Westminster Abbey, the new monarch was anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. These words were prayed at the anointing: “Confirm and stablish her with thy free and princely Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and government, the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness”.  The act of anointing, echoing the anointing of prophets, priests, and kings in the Scriptures of Israel, is a sign and symbol of the gift of the Holy Spirit strengthening, guiding, and sustaining a person for Christian life and witness. It is the case, of course, that the anointing of a monarch in Westminster Abbey is a dramatic occasion.  But the subsequent evidence of the presence and gifts of the Holy Spirit in a life is rarel...

It was, of course, entirely predictable: some Anglican clerics on Twitter sniffily declaring that Sunday is Whitsun and that this must take precedence over the celebration of Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee.  Now while we might be forgiven for thinking that such clerics would not have been celebrating the Jubilee irrespective of its date, let us assume that their point is sincere.  Whitsun, after all, is one of the three great festivals.  For some centuries, Anglican custom was that Holy Communion should be received at Christmas, Easter Day, and Whitsunday. And despite the rather odd provision in contemporary liturgical calendars which fails to recognise the feast by observing the festive nature of the days following, it is meet and right that this high festival is duly celebrated. None of this, however, requires that the Platinum Jubilee cannot also be celebrated in the Church's liturgy.  An Anglicanism which cannot weave together Whitsun and the Jubilee is an Anglic...

As in the United Kingdom and across the Commonwealth we celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen, words from an 1809 sermon by Edward Nares - a representative of the Orthodox party (i.e. the Old High mainstream of the pre-1833 Church of England) - to mark the Golden Jubilee of George III. Noting how the British Crown was limited by law and constitution, Nares rejoiced in the religious example and influence of George III.  This is an aspect of the reign of the Elizabeth II that should be given much more serious consideration by Anglicans: But I have reserved for the last, that trait of his character, which must still give the greatest lustre to his names and will forever shine as the brightest jewel of his crown, I mean, his constant and exemplary discharge of RELIGIOUS duties. I say exemplary, because in this consists the great worth of his character. I must maintain that a King of this country is so limited and restrained by the laws of the Empire, and so impeded ...

Richard Montagu's  Articles of Enquiry  in the Primary Visitation of the Diocese of Norwich, 1638, provide evidence of how the Table against the east wall, and railed, did not prevent the customary approach of communicants to the chancel at the Exhortation during the Communion: Before the communicants ascend up into the Chancell out of their seats in the church, that exhortation is to be said, which in the Communion-book beginneth "We be come together at this time, &c.". And then this exhortation, "Dearly beloved, we are come together, &c.". When after this exhortation, the communicants are come up into the Chancell, before they dispose themselves to kneel in their severall places (which are orderly and decently to be appointed for them) this is to be said, "You that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sinnes, &c.". What makes Montagu's support for the custom particularly interesting is that his fellow-Laudian John Cosin had indic...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume II (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Sunday after Ascension.  Pott, reflecting an Old High spirituality which fostered gratitude for the ordinary blessings of earthly life and was deeply suspicious of an excessively ascetical discipline, points to earthly joys as an anticipation of heavenly delight: Our Lord's ascension into heaven, so newly celebrated in the Church, inclines us very naturally to direct the thoughts to that scene of glory into which he entered, and to which he hath promised to receive his faithful servants, who shall aspire to those everlasting realms of light and bliss ...  Surely it is most injurious to the character of Christian hope, as it exists here, to say that its consolations and fruitions are fit only for those who have no worldly pleasures to engage their notice and attention, and no present satisfaction...

Today, a further extract from R.W. Jelf's January 1842 sermon,  The Via Media: Or, The Church of England our Providential Path between Romanism and Dissent . Amidst the Tract XC controversy, and c ontrary to Newman attempting to force the Formularies into a Tridentine mould, Jelf points to the Anglican Formularies unambiguously rejecting Trent's errors and embodying a Reformed Catholicism, scriptural and patristic: Thus she inculcates the value and necessity of Good Works, whilst she disclaims for them the smallest particle of merit. She inculcates Justification by Faith alone (per fidem - sola fide) "only for the merit (propter meritum) of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ", but "good works (she teaches us) do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith". She acknowledges "the services of Angels as ordained and constituted in a wonderful order", (Collect for St. Michael and all Angels) and commemorates the excellent graces of the Saints, and...

The 1722 Restoration Day sermon preached in St Paul's Cathedral, London, by Joseph Watson - then rector of one of Wren's churches in the City of London, St. Stephen Walbrook - provides an excellent example of how 29th May was celebrated by 18th century Anglicanism as a restoration of both constitutional and ecclesiastical order.  (The reredos of St. Stephen Walbrook - pictured - provides a fine example of Restoration Anglicanism.) The deliverance from the rule of the Protectorate, "a Government founded in violence", was a cause for gratitude: We were freed then this Day from Rapine, Plunder, Bloodshed and Oppression of all Kinds, with which we had long been harass'd , the natural Effects of Liberty and Property unguarded: As this also was, and ever will be, the Effect of a Government founded in Violence; the same Measures being always necessary to supports such Governments which at first erected them.  The bitter experience of that rule, however, was the conseque...