OUR first Psalm at Evening Prayer today (Psalm 142) exhorts us to bring our troubles and sorrows to God’s throne.

Psalm 142:1-2

James Ussher (1581-1656), Archbishop of Armagh, rightly understood that Evensong corresponds to the evening sacrifice of the Temple, and so he cast our prayers in terms of pleading Christ’s sacrifice before heaven, offering our remembrance of his death like calves upon the altar.

AS soon as I apprehend my need, and see the golden sceptre stretched out, then I come with might and main with Christ in my arms, and present him to the Father, and this is the approaching and drawing near in the text, to the throne of grace.

But now when I am come thither, what do I say there? What, shall I come and say nothing? The prodigal son resolved to go to his father, and say, “I will up and go,” there is the will; “and say,” there is his speech (see Lk 15:11-32).

The believer is not like to the son that said to his father, I will go, but went not; and when his father bids him come, he will come; he will not only say so, but will draw near, and then he hath a promise: “He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out” (Jn 6:37).

But when we come thither, what must we do? why we must take unto ourselves words, according to the prophet’s expression: “Take unto you words, and go unto the Lord, and say, Take away all our iniquities, and receive us graciously, so will we render the calves of our lips” (Hos 14:2; cf. Heb 9:11-12).

When he comes to the throne of grace, the thing that he doth, is, he presents unto the Father Christ, bleeding, gasping, dying, buried, and conquering death; and when he presents Christ to him, he opens his case, and confesses his sin to the full, and says, Lord, this is my case. [...]

A beggar’s need will make him speak, and he will not hide his sores; but if he hath any sore more ugly or worse than another, he will uncover it; Good sir, behold my woful and distressed case, he lays all open to provoke pity.

So, when thou comest before God in confession, canst thou not find out words to open thyself to Almighty God, not one word whereby thou mayest unlap thy sores, and beseech him to look on thee with an eye of pity? I must not mince my sins, but amplify and aggravate them, that God may be moved to pardon me; till we do thus, we cannot expect that God should forgive us.

Works, Vol. XIII (Sermons). Sermon XIV

See more by Archbishop Ussher.

John Bird Sumner (1780-1862)

THE Gospel reading this week (The Eighth Sunday After Trinity) is a warning against “false prophets” (Mt 7:15-21).

BEWARE of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Writing about this passage, John Bird Sumner (1780-1862), Archbishop of Canterbury, reminded us that it is only wisdom from above that will bear good fruit in our lives.

THEY come in sheep’s clothing. They profess that they seek the welfare of the flock, and that the welfare of the flock depends solely on themselves.

But inwardly they are ravening wolves; “not sparing the flock;” (Acts 20:29) “teachers of what they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake;” (Tit 1:11) “through covetousness by feigned words, making merchandize of others.” (2 Pet 2:3)

They “say, Peace, peace; when there is no peace:” (Jer 6:14) or they make “the heart of the righteous sad, which God has not made sad.” (Ezek 13:22) In various ways they “subvert the hearers,” (2 Tim 2:14) whom they are bound to establish in the faith of Christ.

There is a rule, however, by which these and any other false teachers may be discerned. Ye shall know them by their fruits. The great purpose of our Lord’s coming, was to “redeem men from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (Tit 2:14)

Every teacher that does not exhibit that character in himself, and study to produce it in others, is a false teacher.

Every doctrine which does not tend to promote individual righteousness and holiness, is false doctrine.

Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Grapes may as reasonably be expected from thorns, as a good life from unsound doctrine; figs may as well be sought from thistles, as the work of an effective ministry from a corrupt teacher.

“He that winneth souls,” (Prov 11:30) must himself be first won by “the wisdom which is from above.” (Jas 3:17)

A Practical Exposition Of The Gospels Of St Matthew And St Mark. Lecture XVI.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

TODAY we commemorate St Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Traditions surrounding Mary’s birth and parents have come down to us from the so-called Protevangelium of James, which dates from around the middle of the second century AD, and in which we hear for the first time the names Joachim and Anna (Anne).

Rarely referred to in the English Reformers’ “golden era” of the first six centuries of the Church Fathers, it was regarded with a degree of suspicion (e.g. St Augustine, 354-430, Contra Faustum Bk XXIII §9).

Chastened by the flights of fancy in late Mediaeval speculation, few Anglican Divines set much store by these accounts either, save for the names Joachim and Anna.

It is, perhaps, a day for musing on parenthood, in which we must suppose Joachim and Anna were proficient.

In the following passage, Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) speaks of the supreme importance of inculcating Christian principles by gaining a child’s trust.

“FATHERS, provoke not your children to wrath” (Eph 6:4): that is, be tender-bowelled, pitiful, and gentle, complying with all the infirmities of the children, and in their several ages proportioning to them several usages, according to their needs and their capacities.

“Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord:” that is, secure their religion; season their younger years with prudent and pious principles; make them in love with virtue; and make them habitually so, before they come to choose or to discern good from evil, that their choice may be with less difficulty and danger: for while they are under discipline, they suck in all that they are first taught, and believe it infinitely.

Provide for them wise, learned, and virtuous tutors, and good company and discipline, seasonable baptism, catechism, and confirmation. For it is a great folly to heap up much wealth for our children, and not to take care concerning the children for whom we get it; it is as if a man should take more care about his shoe than about his foot.

“Parents must shew piety at home” (Heb 12:9); that is, they must give good example and reverend deportment in the face of their children; and all those instances of charity, which usually endear each other, — sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonitions, all significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, — must be expressed towards children, that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide.

The Rule And Exercises Of Holy Living, Chap. III §2.

Margaret Thatcher (1925-)

ROWAN Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has once again criticised Margaret Thatcher’s statement that “there’s no such thing as society” (Telegraph).

It is, of course, fully twenty years since Mrs Thatcher was in power. Thirteen of those years have been under a socialist government.

By any measure, society is less free, cohesive and equitable, and significantly less Christian, than ever.

Yet Dr Williams repeatedly comes back to Mrs Thatcher’s famous line. This time, he even called it “toxic”.

What Mrs Thatcher actually said, in an interview with lifestyle magazine Woman’s Own in 1987, was this:

IF children have a problem, [people say] it is “society” that is at fault. There is no such thing as “society”. There is [a] living tapestry of men and women and people, and the beauty of that tapestry, and the quality of our lives, will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves, and each of us prepared to turn round and help, by our own efforts, those who are unfortunate.

Visit The Margaret Thatcher Foundation for the full text.

Now, if this is “toxic”, the New Testament is toxic, because this is exactly what it teaches.

Dr Williams asserted, apparently unware of how cold and manufactured it sounds, that “The role of government is building connections between people and communities and making them work”.

The governments in both Jerusalem and Rome loudly claimed to do just that, yet not one single verse in the New Testament looks to them to perform or even facilitate this role. Indeed, St Paul warned the Christians of Thessalonica against being taken in by Rome’s “peace and security” propaganda (1 Thess 5:3).

In passage after passage, “building connections” and providing for the less fortunate was the task of unregulated, private Christian individuals, families, and above all parishes.

They did not need, ask, or expect help of the Emperor – they knew what a price he would extort in return.

POSSIBLY it may seem a good reason to some, for their own neglect of the poor, that the law makes provision for them.

And it is certainly an honour to the law, that it doth: but no honour to us, that it needs do it.

Besides, there are very many cases of great distress, to which legal provision is neither easily nor properly extended: nor can it give by any means so plentiful relief, as should be given to the greater part of those, to whom it may extend.

But suppose the law capable of doing every thing that needs be done: what would be the consequence of leaving every thing to it? That we should lose intirely the means, which now we have, of proving to the world, and to ourselves, the goodness of our own hearts; and of making an undoubted free-will offering to God, out of what he hath given us.

Thomas Secker (1693-1768), Archbishop of Canterbury.
Sermon IV. Preached in the Parish Church of St Bridget, London, Monday in Easter Week, 1738.

Richard Mant (1776-1848), Bishop of Down, Connor And Dromore

IN our Gospel for the Feast of St James today, we hear how Salome, the mother of St John the Evangelist and St James, stepped forward to ask that in Jesus’s kingdom, her two sons might have favoured places (Mt 20:20-23).

Though John was “the beloved disciple”, Jesus nevertheless replied to her,

TO sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.

Bishop Richard Mant (1776-1848) explained to us in what sense this gift was and yet was not Christ’s to give, and who they are for whom such pre-eminence in the kingdom of heaven has been prepared by our Father.

AS if he had said, Such pre-eminence in my kingdom “is not mine to give,” as you fondly suppose, by any absolute will of mine, or by any arbitrary selection of objects; by any undue partiality or fondness for the persons to be admitted; or out of any undue compliance with the earnest solicitations of others: “but” these rewards are regulated by the counsels of divine wisdom, which pervade the dispensation whereof I am the Mediator; and accordingly, in the execution of my mediatorial office, it is mine to give it unto them “for whom it is prepared of my Father.”

Now, who are they, for whom future blessedness and glory are “prepared of his Father,” he has not left us to conjecture, but has elsewhere graciously informed us.

They are they who love God: for “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2:9).

They are they who love their brethren, the brethren of Christ as he is not ashamed to call them, and practise towards them the offices of benevolence and love: for this shall be the language addressed to them by the King, the Son of man, when he shall sit upon the throne of his glory, and all nations shall be gathered before him; “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Mt 25:34, 40).

They are they, who on their passage through this terrestrial scene confess by their conduct that “they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” and “desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:13, 16).

The Happiness Of The Blessed &c — Section IV: Principle On Which Higher Degrees Of Happiness Will Be Bestowed

The Crown Of Thorns, by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)

YESTERDAY, we saw how in our common prayer we present to God the life and Passion of Christ, doing upon earth what Christ does evermore in heaven.

On that occasion, we heard from St Anselm, Bishop Andrewes, and Bishop Taylor. Here now is a more recent writer on the same subject, showing movingly the unbroken golden thread of catholic faith that runs through the English Church.

O HOW little have I said of the Passion, when the whole world might be filled with It, when all eternity will be full of It, when, in all eternity, we shall never weary of admiring, thanking, adoring It!

Shall we perhaps know more and more of It throughout eternity and love It more? I cannot but think that we shall, if through Its precious merits we attain thither.

Our’s will be no mere reflection upon It; we shall ever see It: for we shall for ever see the prints of the nails in the glorified Body of Jesus.

Yes, this is an addition to the condescension of His Passion; this is part of the mystery of His love, that the Passion lives on there eternally. Perseverance is our highest conception of love; we are so changeable, so unpersevering! The Passion lives on in Heaven: it lives on upon earth in the Sacraments. [...]

His Presence intercedes; the Wounds, which for us He endured, intercede. He intercedes as our High Priest. How did the High Priest intercede? By presenting the blood of the sacrifice. Jesus intercedes then by presenting Himself.

Yet this is again another condescension of the love of our God. He wills not, that the memory of the contumely and contempt, which He endured for us, should fade or pass away. It is part of the continual outstretched contemplation of the blessed Angels. We know that the prints of the nails, and the spear-pierced Side, are, as they were, in glory.

For the Angel said to the Apostles, that “this Jesus, Who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.”

But He went with those prints of the nails, into which St. Thomas put his fingers, and that wound in the Side into which he was bid to thrust his hand. Well then may we think, that there are the traces of the Crown of thorns, the punctures in the Forehead through which they pierced Him, and perhaps the wales of the scourges.

There they are, but in what glory! All creation, to its utmost bounds, adores the condescension of its God. But the love of that condescension was for us.

The Revd E. B. Pusey (1800-1882). Eleven Addresses During A Retreat Of The Companions Of The Love Of Jesus. Address VI.

Christ on the cross (14th century)

THE Litany sets on our lips a series of moving invocations of Christ’s birth and Passion.

BY the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation,
Good Lord, deliver us.

By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost,
Good Lord, deliver us.

These Obsecrations (Lat. obsecro, lit. “ask on religious grounds”, “entreat”) were objected to by the Calvinist party right from the start, with John Knox (?1513-1572) complaining to Geneva about “a certain conjuring of God” in the Litany within the Prayer Book of 1552.

Yet these same prayers were to be found in Martin Luther’s Litany. The 15th century Golden Litany (here) was on this model, and much earlier St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) wrote his Prayer XV (extract) as a litany.

O MOST loving and sweetest Lord Jesu, by Thy holy Annunciation, have mercy upon my unhappy soul. [...]
O most Sweet Lord Jesu, by Thy Scourgings, Spittings, Blows, which for us Thou didst receive,
O most Sweet Lord Jesu, by the Crown of Thorns which Thou didst bear upon Thy Head, that Thou mightest take away the thorns of our sins,
O most Sweet Lord Jesu, by Thy Cross, and the Death which on that Cross Thou didst suffer, that Thou mightest redeem us from death, …

The title Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) gave to a similar prayer in his Devotions (here) explains everything: An Eucharistic Prayer.

BY the things which Thou didst, and bearest,
Thy Oblation and Sacrifice,
Thy emptying Thyself, Thy humbling Thyself,
Thy Incarnation, Thy Conception, Thy Birth,
Thy Circumcision, the first-fruits of Thy Blood,
Thy Baptism, Thy Fasting, Thy Temptation,
Thy Houselessness, Thy Hunger,
Thy Weariness, Thy Thirst,
Thy Sleeplessness, Thy Injuries:
Thy patience, endurance, Thy apprehension as a thief, bonds,
By Gethsemane, Gabbatha, Golgotha,
Thy obedience unto Death, Thy endurance to the Cross:
Let my prayer ascend; Turn not away Thine Ear.

All prayer is essentially Eucharistic, when it does not merely acknowledge but holds up before God a remembrance of the life of Christ to God, just as Christ himself presents it evermore before his Father’s throne.

NOW what Christ does always in a proper and most glorious manner, the ministers of the gospel also do in theirs; commemorating the sacrifice upon the cross, “giving thanks,” and celebrating a perpetual eucharist for it, and “by declaring the death of Christ,” and praying to God in the virtue of it, for all the members of the church, and all persons capable; it is in genere orationis, a sacrifice, and an instrument of propitiation, as all holy prayers are in their several proportions.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). The Divine Institution Of The Office Ministerial, §V.1-2

See Introduction to the Litany, by the Revd William Bright D.D. (1824-1901).

George Hickes (1642-1715), Dean of Worcester

IN a previous post, we heard from Jane Austen (1775-1817) on the importance of clergy “as the guardianship of religion and morals, and consequently of the manners which result from their influence”.

We heard also from Canon Carter, on the unique dignity of a priest as “a necessary link in the chainwork of the Divine purposes”, and from George Hickes (1642-1715), urging us not to jettison words like “priest” and “sacerdotal” in hasty fear of erroneous doctrines such as those condemned in Article XXXI, but to bring them back to the evangelical doctrine of the Fathers.

Underlying Dean Hickes’s comments was a widespread experience (see e.g. Bishop Hall), that parties opposed to the catholic doctrine of priesthood were associated with a secularisation of worship and morals.

AS long as the People are taught the true Nature of the Christian Ministry, to be, as really it is, a true and proper Priesthood, and that their Ministers are true, and proper Priests ordained by God to stand before him as Advocates for them, and before them for him as his Oracles to bless them in his Name, so long they will honour, and reverence them, as Priests; but when they are pleased to strip themselves of that part of their Character, and Relation to God, to which those Powers belong, and which above any other makes their Ministry, and them, as Church Ministers, venerable, and holy, then they’ll soon find the Veneration of the People begin to decay, and by degrees wear off into utter Contempt, when they have once laid aside the Notion of their being Orators, and Advocates ordained by God to intercede with him for them; which, Sir, their Flocks can no longer retain, than they believe them to be proper Priests. [...]

BUT neither are these, Sir, all the ill Consequences of this Doctrine, which must also tempt Clergymen themselves, who believe it, to have a lower, and meaner Idea of their Ministry, and not to think their Order to be of that Dignity, and Holiness; and so separate from the World, as it is, and the ancient Christians believed it to be.

They cannot have that Honour, and Reverence for it, as they themselves ought to have, if they do not believe it to be a true Priesthood, nor will they distinguish themselves so carefully, as it becomes Ministers of Christ, from other Men by the singular Piety of their Lives, and the Gravity of their Garb, and Behaviour, if they do not believe themselves to be Priests; I doubt nor, Sir, but that their Latitude of Opinion in this point is one of the Reasons, why so many Ministers of late are more than ever secularised in their Conversation, and without Reverence to them selves, conform themselves, and Families, to the sinful Fashions, and Vanities of the World, against which they ought to preach with one Mouth, and with the Zeal of a Cyprian, a Basil, a Gregory, an Ambrose, or Chrysostom, lift up their Voices, like Trumpets, and not spare the greatest of Men.

Christian Priesthood Asserted. Chapter III.

The Revd Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

THINK not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

THE Revd Sydney Smith (1771-1845), who divided his time as a backwoods parson between conscientious attention to his doting parishioners and extolling the virtues of tea, interpreted these words from our reading at Evensong today (Mt 10:24-42) in terms of our call to the communion of saints.

When the politics of his day turned against him and he was overlooked for his promised Bishopric, he took the disappointment with all the fortitude this passage recommends.

WE are between two cities — the one visible, the other invisible — the one an object of sense, the other of faith — the one garish, splendid, and tumultuous, the other calm, glorious, and serene. On the one side, the world, and this earthly life, with its fair show, luring gifts, bright promises, gilded ambition; on the other, the city of God, the fellowship of saints, the sympathy of Christ, the love of the Father, the Beatific Vision.

Choose one you must. Either you must have a life — not sinful, or gross, or reckless, or profane — of these we are not speaking — but in this world, and of this world, loved by it, courted, followed, endowed, gifted, smooth, and fair, without sharpness or cross, without contradiction or shame, without devotion or self-denial, without saintliness or repentance: or you must have a life of striving and suffering, of temptation and weariness, of faith and faintness, of hope and fear, of longing and waiting, of anxious desires and slow tarrying answers; bearing the weight of a conscious immortality, with sins remembered in the conscience, and intentions pent up in the heart.

One of these two you must choose to be your own. Either in this world “to have your reward,” or to have your “life hid with Christ in God.” For He has said, “I came not to send peace upon earth, but a sword”, and with that sharp two-edged weapon He is severing His own from this perishing world.

He has been cutting all round you to set you free by His ministries of truth and grace, by warnings and chastisements, by blessings and visitations, by His words piercing the outward ear, and His presence moving your inward heart.

Look back upon your past life. Retrospect will interpret it as a whole, and marshal all its parts in order. Through all your earthly trial He has had one stedfast intention, to bring you to Himself.

Sermons Preached In St Paul’s. Sermon XVIII: The Communion Of Saints.

Worcester Cathedral

GEORGE Hickes (1642-1715), Dean of Worcester, was profoundly upset by the common phrase of his day, that Christian priests are “not proper priests”, i.e. not proper priests like the Jewish priests with their bloody sacrifices.

Hickes felt it was wrong to distinguish our priests by making them less. Surely they must be more?

We must appreciate, Hickes tells us, that it was not conducting animal sacrifices that made the sons of Aaron and Levi into true priests.

Priesthood is about intercession on behalf of the nation. The animal sacrifices of the Jewish Temple had been empty in themselves, effective in their intercession before God only by their obscure foreshadowing of Christ,

who was as a Priest with his Father before the beginning of the World, and in Virtue of whose meritorious Sacrifice, to be offered at the appointed time, the Jewish Priests, tho’ they knew it not, made Atonement for the Sins of the People.

But Christ’s High Priestly intercession is far more plainly, more knowingly echoed today by the commemorative oblations of Christian priests than by the sacrifices of the Temple. Our liturgical intercessions are more nearly and evidently (cf. Gal 3:1) joined to Christ’s priestly intercession in heaven.

This actually makes our priests the “proper priests”. By their evangelical, memorial oblations that liturgically commemorate Christ’s ancient sacrifice, they are more truly priests than the Jewish priests could ever be by their obscure and shadowy offerings.

IN like manner it belonged to the Apostles, and Presbyters, by Virtue of their sacerdotal Office, and Ministry, to be Advocates, and Intercessors with God, and as such, to pray and entreat God for the People, and by Prayer, to make Atonement for their Sins, and propitiate him, and to ask Favours, and Blessings of him for them. [...]

I need not insist upon their Power, of Baptizing for the Remission of Sins with Fasting, and Prayer, which was a most solemn Act of Expiation for washing away all the past Sins of the Baptized.

Nor need I spend much time to prove, that it was their Office to administer the holy Eucharist, in which more especially they exercised the Priest’s Office in making Prayers, and Intercessions at the holy Altar upon the account of the same Sacrifice, that Christ makes continual Intercession in the Presence of God for us.

And to these solemn Prayers, and Intercessions, which the Priests make in the holy Eucharist, the People with all the Powers of their Souls are to say Amen. [...]

It is their Office then to make Atonement most especially at this Sacrifice, which consists in the Celebration of the Sacrifice which Christ made upon the Cross, when they make a most solemn Memorial, and Representation of it unto God upon Earth, correspondent to that, which he daily makes of it before him in Heaven.

The Christian Priesthood Asserted. Chapter II, §§XII-XIII

I’d prefer apply the fruits of rather than make Atonement (see Bramhall). That aside, in extolling the superior virtues of commemorative sacrifice, Hickes is doing something very important for our understanding of priesthood.