laudable Practice

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we consider the alternative canticle after the first reading, the Benedicite. Shepherd points to the evidence for its widespread use in East and West: the fourth council of Toledo enjoined it to be used in the Spanish churches, alleging as a reason, that it was sung all over the world. St. Chrysostom had before made the same observation, describing this as a hymn every where sung throughout the world, and which would continue to be sung by latest posterity. In the Gallic Lectionary, it is appointed to be sung after the reading of the Prophets, much in the same manner, as it is here ordered to be said or sung after the reading of the first Lesson.  While noting that patristic writers disagreed on the status of the text - "Ruffinus maintains against Jerome, that it is a portion of Holy Writ" - Shepherd, as with his earlier di...

As Canadian friends celebrate Thanksgiving, my thoughts turn to Old Holy Trinity, Middleton, Nova Scotia .  During the Summer, I happened across pictures of the church on social media and reproduced them for a post celebrating Charles Inglis , commemorated in the Church of Ireland calendar on 16th August. I then read Brian McConnell's delightful history of Old Holy Trinity, The First Church , a title referring to this being the oldest church built by United Empire Loyalists in the lands that would become Canada.  On this Thanksgiving Day, those of us elsewhere who value Canadian Anglicanism can look to Old Holy Trinity as embodying a heritage, virtues, and theological commitments which represent the best - and, we might add, future hope - of Anglican life and witness in Canada.  Unfashionable though it may be within official Canadian Anglican circles to recall the significance of the Loyalists to the foundation of Anglicanism in the True North, the story of those Loyalist...

To continue the series exploring the contours of Conformity 1662-1832 , we have today another excerpt from Edward Welchman's 1713 commentary on the Articles of Religion .  Welchman is identified by Stephen Hampton in Anti-Arminians as one of the Reformed divines in the early 18th century Church of England. Here Welchman reflects on Article XXIII, 'Of Ministering in the Congregation': Since the Ministers of the Word and Sacraments are Ambassadors for Christ, and Ministers of God (2 Cor. v.20. and v.4) they must necessarily receive their Authority from God, and be sent by him; and must not assume that Authority to themselves, unless they are called to it by God. And since God our Saviour, from the Time when he called the Apostles, has not immediately called any one to the Ministry; it follows, that they must be called by those, whose Business it is to call others. Thus the Apostles ordained Presbyters and Bishops, and the Bishops ordained by the Apostles did from thencefort...

One of the most influential studies in the last few decades of Georgian England was entitled A Polite and Commercial People . While, as J.C.D. Clark famously reminded us, English society 1688-1832 remained firmly monarchical, dynastic, and aristocratic, the title does point to the economic and cultural significance of the commercial and trading concerns of the society in which the Georgian Church of England ministered. These concerns were also to the fore of the 1812-27 premiership of Lord Liverpool, as William Anthony Hay has shown in his biography. Liverpool defended "a balanced political order ... to secure ordered liberty and property ... [to] secure prosperity and rising living standards".   Now this might seem an odd introduction to the next extract in the series from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx. The connection is, however, two-fold.  Firstly, the cultural and social context in whic...

In the fifth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier, in the midst of a critique of transubstantiation, makes this comment: When you are told that the words of our Lord "this is my body, and this is my blood," are plain words, you may answer with a learned prelate of our church, "very plain indeed, for they are a very plain figure." The words are interesting for two reasons. Firstly, they they provide a convenient example of how Old High eucharistic theology was conventionally Reformed (and, indeed, this is abundantly clear elsewhere in Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures). Secondly, there is the reference to "a learned prelate of our church" which, as the relevant note indicates, is James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Primate of Scotland 1661-1679. The fact that Le Mesurier describes Sharpe as "a learned prelate of our church" (emphasis added) indicates both an unembarrassed affinity with the Scot...

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we turn to the canticle after the first lesson, beginning with the Te Deum. In stark contrast to the demotion of the Te Deum in most contemporary Anglican versions of the Daily Office, Shepherd rejoices in its "superior excellence": its excellence is surpassed by no human composition. Indeed the composition alone is human, the materials are of divine original. The "methodical composition" of the Te Deum is in three parts: The first part is an act of praise, or an amplified Doxology. The second, a confession of the leading articles of the Christian faith. The third contains intercessions for the whole church and supplications for ourselves. The first part, the doxology, draws us into the praises given to the Triune God by the company of heaven: This hymn not only opens to us a view of heaven, but with the evangelic...

It was Harvest Thanksgiving in the parish yesterday: the fruits of the earth decorating the parish church; the festive hymns of harvest; a Sunday in early Autumn marked by gratitude and thanksgiving.  Presiding at the early Eucharist, it was clear that the days of late Summer were now past. I left the house at 8am, less than thirty minutes after sunrise. Along the roadsides of Jeremy Taylor country, fallen leaves were abundant. The hues and tones of Autumn were beginning to show in the churchyard. The collect of Harvest Thanksgiving, as always, beautifully captured the occasion: Eternal God, you crown the year with your goodness and give us the fruits of the earth in their season ... The collect evokes the joyous delight of the Psalmist and the abundance of the opening chapter of Genesis, words that have resonated over centuries at this time of the year ; the reference to 'season' recognises that it is in the Harvest Thanksgiving of Autumn that such delight and abundance finds ...