laudable Practice

Continuing with the series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx, here is a characteristic expression of Old High anti-solifidian teaching and piety, echoing comments elsewhere by Wordsworth in these sermons: Here then opens upon you your path of duty. Here especially lies your part and obligation: quench not this spirit: follow the example of the holy Jesus: adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things; and walk before him in newness of life. What we before spoke of were the free graces and mercies of Almighty God in Christ Jesus. This now is your part and duty. Unless this be well performed and regarded, all the rest, be assured, must be vain. Ye must be made holy here, in order that ye may be happy hereafter. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye, through the spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." "If ye live after the flesh," then...

In Barchester Towers , Trollope accurately captured over a century of Old High critique of 'Solifidianism' when he summarised Mr. Arabin’s sermon: "he taught them the great Christian doctrine of works and faith combined".  This critique stretched across the 'long' 18th century.  Waterland's A Summary View of the Doctrine of Justification  - taking aim at "the Antinomian and Solifidian doctrines" - had declared, "we due care so to maintain the doctrine of faith, as not to exclude the necessity of good works".  Mant's 1812 Bampton Lectures , surveying the New Testament’s exhortations to good works and "practical righteousness", declared, "How different from these scriptural expositions of the terms of everlasting happiness, are the remonstrances and exhortations, addressed by the Solifidian to his hearers!".  In a sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity - in   A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day through...