laudable Practice

Loyalty to her king is the boast, and the glory of the Church of England. The spirit of Christian Loyalty breathes in her devotional offices, and has ever been displayed in the lives of her sons. When, in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), John Shepherd opens his discussion of A Prayer for the King's Majesty with the comment above, we might assume that this reflection on the prayer will be a straightforward example of a stereotyped muscular Anglican High Toryism.  Shepherd, however, presents a reading of the prayer much more nuanced than the stereotype. He notes how critics of Anglicanism and the Prayer Book misinterpret A Prayer for the King's Majesty: By the enemies of the established church, this and similar passages in our Liturgy have been misrepresented, as recommending aggrandizement and conquest. He goes on to provide a cautious, reserved reading of the prayer, emphasising that it seeks the "...

Amidst many Anglican posts during Holy Week and Easter on 'X' of Chrism Eucharists, foot-washings, altars of repose, and Easter Vigils, there was another current to be detected. Small in number, perhaps, but some posts on 'X' during this highpoint of the liturgical year might be regarded as suggesting that the ordinary, modest, reserved Anglican piety of the Old High tradition can continue to have resonance and appeal. We begin with the excellent Episcopalian Reformed theologian Fleming Rutledge on Good Friday: It is a minority POV these days, but for me today, a noonday service with powerful sermon and the "old" Prayer Book service with all the readings and prayers but no communion and no "veneration of the cross" seemed perfect to me. — Fleming Rutledge (@flemingrut) March 29, 2024 Good Friday is surely a day for such a stark, unfussy liturgy, not overwhelming the senses, a liturgy which stills us in heart, mind, and soul before the myster...

From A Course of Sermons for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1821) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: The fact itself, which has this day been set before us by particular memorial in the sacred office of the Church; the coming of the angel to the blessed Virgin, and the message then announced to her, furnish themes of meditation closely coupled with the great miracle of our redemption by the Incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God, who took our nature in order to restore it, and to raise it far above its first station in the universe. How far short shall we fall of the faith of her who was "blessed among women," if we can turn easily to ordinary objects from these first scenes of the Gospel; scenes in which the kingdom of God, and of his Christ was first manifested upon earth, and have been since fulfilled, and will one day be finally accomplished, in the r...

At the early Eucharist, Easter Day 2024 Mark 16:8 “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” It seems an odd - even inappropriate - ending for the Gospel of Easter Day. The women run away from the empty tomb; terrified, amazed, struck silent. Why not straightforward joy? Why not lots of words, expounding at length to the disciples (and everyone else) about what had happened? Why not raucous laughter and celebration? Is this not what human beings do when we experience a joyful event? Of course it is. Birthdays, marriages, a sporting team winning a trophy, a national celebration: these experiences are marked by straightforward joy and celebration; by many words; by laughter. They are events and experiences we quite easily understand; they are known quantities; they are the stuff of ordinary human experience. That first Easter is different - radically different. The resurrection of Jesus Chris...

From an Easter Day sermon of the 1820s , by Charles James Blomfield when he was vicar of St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London and (from 1824-28) Bishop of Chichester, standing in the Old High tradition.  In characteristic Old High fashion, Blomfield here sees our participation in the Easter embodied in prayer, scripture, and sacrament (note this pre-1833 reference to "frequent communion") and in the call to holy living. The scripture references are a reminder of how the Old High tradition robustly and confidently regarded itself as rooted in Holy Scripture. There is a deeply Pauline nature to this emphasis: like the Apostle, the Old High tradition understood the Resurrection as necessarily expressed in ecclesial communion and holy living. In the absence of such witness to and fruit of "distinctness and splendour", the Resurrection is not being confessed. ... the resurrection of our Lord, as recorded by the  Evangelists, and as explained and improved by the Apostl...

The doctrine of the cross is therefore a saving doctrine, a vital doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Christianity; and we hold it to be no less indispensable now, than it was in St. Paul's time, that every minister of the Gospel should be able to say with truth, We preach Christ crucified.  The words are those of Charles James Blomfield in a Good Friday sermon during the 1820s, when he was vicar of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London and (from 1824-28) Bishop of Chichester. Blomfield had associations with the Hackney Phalanx. The preacher at his episcopal consecration in 1824 had been John Lonsdale, who had links to the Hackney Phalanx. The Old High Howley of London, translated to Canterbury in 1828, cultivated Blomfield as his successor. This, in other words, was most definitively an Old High sermon - an Old High sermon proclaiming Christ Crucified as "a saving doctrine, a vital doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Christianity", contrary to the oft repeated misrepre...

At the evening Eucharist of Maundy Thursday, 28.3.24 John 13:1-2, 30 “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.” As Jesus and the disciples gathered for the Last Supper, the darkness was gathering. It was, already, present in that upper room - and not only in the heart of Judas. At supper, Jesus would tell a boastful Peter, so sure of the strength of his faith, that he would, instead, betray Jesus that very night.  Jesus tells the other disciples that they will scatter, leaving him alone, abandoned. The writer of the Fourth Gospel powerfully captures this sense of gathering darkness in describing Judas leaving the upper room to undertake his act of betrayal: “He immediately went out. And it was night”. In our parish Lent book, Lent with the Beloved Disciple , Michael Marshall says, “turning his back on Jesus, the light of the world, [Judas] walked into the darkness” [1]. They all walked into the darkness: Judas, Peter, the other disci...