laudable Practice

Sitting on my desk, alongside a somewhat battered Church of Ireland BCP 1926, is a hard-backed copy of a 1973 Alcuin Club study, by Timothy J. Fawcett - The Liturgy of Comprehension 1689: An abortive attempt to revise The Book of Common Prayer . It is, I think, the only published study of the Liturgy of Comprehension, the attempted revision of the Prayer Book in the immediate aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, in an attempt to reconcile Dissenters to the Church of England. It sits on my desk for two reason. Firstly, because it influenced the Church of Ireland post-disestablishment revision of the Prayer Book. Secondly, because of my affection for John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury 1693-97, a strong supporter of William and Mary, and a leading figure in the proposed revision of 1689. It is not that I welcome all the suggested revisions of 1689. Some, I think, would have been unwise and de-stabilising for the Church of England and 18th century Anglicanism. Some were unnecessary,...

In revising the Table of Lessons, we have judged it convenient to follow generally the new Table which the Church of England has lately adopted, with these principal exceptions, that whereas in that Table some Lessons are still taken out of the Books called Apocryphal, we have so arranged ours as that all the Lessons shall be taken out of the Canonical Scriptures ... So declared the Preface to the Church of Ireland's 1878 Prayer Book revision. For Anglo-Catholic and, indeed, High Church critics, it was a significant rupture with 1662, placing the 1878 revision in succession to the dastardly Latitudinarian influences of the 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension and PECUSA's 1789 revision. Both of these, of course, had omitted readings from the Apocrypha. The Church of Ireland, then, had followed in such lamentable low church paths. This account, however, entirely fails to recognise a much more complex, diverse, and interesting approach to the public reading of the Apocrypha found in ...

I noticed a recent discussion on Anglican 'X' between a 1662 appreciator in the United States and a priest of the Reformed Episcopal Church who uses the PECUSA 1928 BCP. The 1662 appreciator pointed to BCP 1662 as "the standard for global Anglicanism". The Reformed Episcopal priest responded by saying that Anglicanism is "primarily expressed locally" rather than "globally" and that this therefore entails a nationally authorised liturgy, as opposed to any universal claim for 1662. As readers of laudable Practice will be aware, I have a great love of 1662. I had, however, no hesitation in agreeing with the "primarily expressed locally" view. Perhaps it is the Burkean in me, deeply sceptical of abstract claims for universal human authorities, removed from particular circumstances and polities. And then there is the voice of Jewel , affirming the rights and liberties of a national church: Yet truly, we do not despise councils, assemblies, an...

On previous occasions, laudable Practice has noted both Jeremy Taylor's critique of the indicative form of absolution ('I absolve thee') and how this was reflected in 18th century High Church caution regarding this form of absolution in the BCP's Visitation of the Sick, as seen in the comments of Secker and others. One of Taylor's most famous works, Holy Dying (1651), demonstrates his desire for a form of absolution in private confession after the declaratory and precatory forms: Then let the sick man be called to rehearse the articles of his faith; or, if he be so weak he cannot, let him (if he have not before done it) be called to say Amen when they are recited, or to give some testimony of his faith and confident assent to them. After which it is proper (if the person be in capacity) that the minister examine him, and invite him to confession, and all the parts of repentance, according to the foregoing rules; after which he may pray the prayer of absolution. O...

Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament? Answer. I do believe them. In considering the third question asked at the Ordering of Deacons, William White's Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination (1833), points to how Jewish and Christian understanding has been remarkably settled on the matter of, respectively, the canons of the Old and New Testaments: There is something worthy of remark in the unanimity of testimony which the Church, in all the various places of her settlement, has borne to the integrity of the Scriptures handed down in her. In regard to the Old Testament, indeed, the Roman Catholic Church has added to the canon. But this does not affect the principle maintained; because the witness in that department is the Jewish Church, and not the Christian ... In regard to the Scriptures of the New Testament, there is no diversity. And that this should be the case, after all the contentions which have taken place in regard to t...

In the course an 1840 sermon entitled ' Prayer and Thanksgiving for Civil Rulers ', preached in the parish church of Iffley, Oxford, on the day appointed to give thanks for the preservation of the life of Queen Victoria after an assassination attempt, Old High divine William Jacobson (received orders in 1830, appointed Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford in 1848, appointed Bishop of Chester in 1865), expounded "the great Christian duty of praying and giving thanks for rulers and governors": For, remember, however much the form of government may be permitted to vary in different countries, whatever be the alterations in the working and administration of government which may be thought (and thought at times with the best reason) necessary and desirable in the same country, as one generation comes into the place of another, the duty remains as binding as ever, Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. This scriptural understanding, declared Jacobson, was particula...

Following on from yesterday's post , which presented the case for PECUSA omitting the Athanasian Creed from its BCP 1789 and 1801 Articles of Religion, an extract from a Trinity Sunday sermon by Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie , Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City, 1824-27. Duffie, a convert to Episcopalianism from the Baptist tradition, stood firmly within the Hobartian tradition, the American expression of the Old High tradition.  It is this which makes his sermon particularly interesting, for here he gives a defence of the PECUSA decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from liturgy and Articles. Echoing a significant tradition of theologically orthodox thought in 18th century Anglicanism, with its roots in Taylor, he notes of the doctrine of the Trinity that it is "safest, in reference to so sublime a mystery, to speak in few words". On this basis, he defends the omission of the Athanasian Creed: such omission is understood, therefore, to serve rather than undermines Trini...

 ... one of the signal weaknesses of the American Prayer Book tradition. A recent article at the North American Anglican  addressed the absence of the Athanasian Creed from PECUSA's BCP 1789 and the 1801 Articles of Religion . It leads us to question if the decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from the liturgy and the Articles represented a serious rupture with the classical Anglican and Prayer Book tradition. Was it? The interpretation of the Athanasian Creed given by Taylor and Burnet would suggest otherwise. Affirming the catholic truth of the articles set forth in the Athanasian Creed, Taylor nevertheless counsels that this Creed has a secondary nature: For the articles themselves, I am most heartily persuaded of the truth of them, and yet I dare not say, all that are not so are irrevocably damned, because without this symbol the faith of the apostles' creed is entire, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; that is, he that believeth such a belief as is ...

A recent post on the excellent Draw Near With Faith explored ' An Office of the Institution of Ministers into Parishes or Churches ' from the PECUSA BCP 1789. Draw Near With Faith states that this - not the 1789 eucharistic rite - is "the most novel and one of the most interesting features of the American prayer book tradition". Provocative though it might be to those who rather inflate the importance and meaning of the 1789 Communion Office, it is a convincing point: this rite for the Institution of Ministers is the gift of PECUSA's first Prayer Book to the wider Anglican tradition. The theological significance of the Institution Office is wonderfully captured by Draw Near With Faith : for it is in the life of the parish that most Christians are joined to Christ in baptism, nourished at the Table, and strengthened in the Christian life. Generally speaking, if we are to be saved, it is not otherwise than through (as an instrument) the life of the parish and th...