The English liturgy, and our duties in respect of it : a sermon preached in the Parish Church of Kidderminster, on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1862

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THE ENGLISH LITURGY;
AND OUR DUTIES IN RESPECT OF IT.

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PREACHED IN

THE PAEISH CHURCH OF KIDDERMINSTER,

ON" ST. BARTHOLOMEWS DAY, 1862.

T. L. CLAUGHTON, M.A.,

A'lCAR,

JOHN HENRY and JAMES PAEKER.

KIDDEEMINSTER : T. MARK ; G. FRIEND.

1862.

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2 KINGS xii. 5.

'* '$d ilmn xt^mx tijc brtacjjxs uf tijc Ijousc."

AND so let us do, my brethren, as King Jehoasli,
under the good instruction of Jehoiada the priest,
ordered to be done unto the breaches of the house of
the Lord in Jerusalem. So let us do in regard of the
house of the living God which is set up amongst us,
the Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth
unto the people of this land. For there is in it even
now, to the eye of faithful men, a breach ready to fall,
the breach of schism and division. This day, in regard
of circumstances which occurred two hundred years ago,
is to some men a commemoration of the ejectment from
their cures, and the endowments attached to them, of
many of those ministers who in the time of the Great
Rebellion had been put into the places of the ministers
dispossessed by the Parliament ; so that, in some sort,
the ejectment of St. Bartholomew was a kind of retribu-
tion. There was only this difference between the two
cases, that the first dispossessed were put out whether
they would or no ; the second, who were dispossessed on
St. Bartholomew's Day, 16G2, were allowed three months
to consider whether they would subscribe to the Act of
Uniformity. But some at once, some after deliberation,
went out for conscience' sake. You must not picture to
yourselves a violent forcible possession taken of 2,000

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cliurclies or parsonage-houses all on St. Bartholomew's
Day ; no such proceeding took place ; nor, in the end,
did any number like 2,000 quit their benefices. But
many did ; many men of singular piety and sweetness
of character, ornaments of our Church and nation. And
many, alas ! of those who did acce])t the Act of Uni-
formity and remain, were the least desirable of all the
multitude of ministers who had been intruded into those
benefices in the Rebellion, being persons who were in
no wise prepared for the ministry, — fanatics and zealots
of all kinds, — who, as they accepted those benefices at
the hand of the oppressor, had no inclination to leave
them for conscience' sake. So that our poor Church was
doubly wounded at that time ; those whom she could
least afford to spare leaving the ranks of her ministry,
(by no means all of them forsaking her Communion,)
and those whom she would have gladly have had to
cease from ministering at her altars, remaining in her
for worldly considerations.

And I would have you, dear brethren, bear in mind
(whatever you hear or read to the contrary) that this is
a true and impartial summary of the state of things at
that time : that the ordinary representations are most
grossly exaggerated ; that nothing like 2,000 went out ;
of those 2,000 many debated long whether it w^ere need-
ful, and the prayers of good men were offered up for
them that they might be guided aright. But it was not as
if they had been the possessors of those benefices in the
ordinary way of right, (for they had been put in them by
violence,) and the answer of conscience had to be given
in reference to the whole case. And if any man, who-
ever he be, should attempt to mislead an ignorant multi-
tude by representing that 2,000 good men were, with
circumstances of great cruelty, ejected from their com-

fortable houses and cluirches, to which they had been
appointed in the ordinary and lawful course, on one day;
any man who speaks this, either deliberately states what
he knows is incapable of proof, or speaks on a matter of
vast importance without having even tried to inform
himself of the real circumstances of the case.

But St. Bartholomew's Day is another sort of comme-
moration also to us. It is the commemoration of the
completion of the best manual of devotion which, I be-
lieve, any Church in these latter days could hope to
possess with the sanction of lawful authority — the Eng-
lish Prayer-book. Our liturgical service, as it exists,
was established about this time two hundred years ago.
And in order to estimate what the real blessing of that
liturgical service is, we should well consider the alter-
native— of extempore prayer offered by the minister, of
which, after some considerable experience of it during
a residence in Scotland, I can only say this, that when-
ever I have heard it, it is one of two things ; either
a peculiar form, almost always the same, and so not in
any true sense extempore — the same things always asked
for, in the same tone, with the same weakness of ex-
pression, as depending on the feelings, or state of health,
or condition of the minister at the time ; or if not that — if
the form be in the hands of some man of power, and fer-
vour, and imaginative propensity — then so disfigured by
far-fetched expressions, by unnatural excitement, by an
evident wish to astonish, in order to rouse the feelings
of the congregation, that I venture to say there is not
one of you who, after a few months' experience of such
a service, would not wish yourselves back again, with
your old Prayer-book in your hands, where everything
needful for you to ask or think is contained in a well-
considered form of words, well-arranged, well-digested.

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according as the saints of God have in all ages held to
be in accordance with Holy Scripture.

There is no request or supplication wanting in the
ordinary prayers of our Prayer-book that I know of — ex-
cept one, and that is, a more explicit and direct peti-
tion for missionaries ; there is positively nothing in the
form for Morning and Evening Prayer which we can
think of to ask according to God's will, which is not
there asked for — not one single thing. There is a very
careful apportionment of the subjects of worship, of con-
fession, of prayer, of praise, of humble dependence on
our part ; there is an entire absence of tediousness, if
we give ourselves to prayer, such as no continuous
prayer, poured forth extempore for the same length of
time, ever fails to bring ; there is such an intermixture
of Scriptural language with our prayers and praises, as
leaves nothing in that sort to be desired. Look into any
page of the English Prayer-book, in a book which has
Scripture references at the side, and judge for yourselves.

It has sometimes been said that for the poorer and
less learned sort there are many phrases and words in
the Prayer-book difficult to comprehend. I say first,
in answer to this, that I have never heard any extempore
prayer at length in my life in which there were not far
greater difficulties ; and secondly, I say that the most
difficult passages for untaught people in our Prayer-
book, such as the solemn adjuration in the Litany, where
we say, " By the mystery of Thy holy Licarnation ;
by Thy holy Nativity and Circumcision ; by Thy Bap-
tism, Fasting, and Temptation," where there is only
one primitive word of our forefathers, the rest being all
Greek or Latin, — I say that this, and other hard pas-
sages in the Prayer-book, become by the ordinary teach-
ing of any parish school (and it is to be hoped this

teaching will not cease) as familiar to poor men's
thoughts as their own vernacular tongue.

Bat it is not for these reasons alone that I look upon
the English Prayer-book as a special gift of God to
this Church, destined manifestly to be an instrument
for great good or great evil to all mankind ; but I
honour it most of all because it is impossible for any
person to attend the service of our Church according
to that prescribed form, and not have duly suggested
to his heart and inmost soul, in the course of it, the
great doctrines of our salvation, — every prayer being
offered in the name of the Mediator, except three, where
He is expressly addressed. And the glories of our re-
demption by Christ Jesus, the comfort and help of our
sanctification by the Holy Spirit, shine forth through-
out ; the two Sacraments embodying these two doc-
trines ; and no admission to her worship being recog-
nised except through the washing with water, as at the
first preaching of the Gospel ; nor any real establish-
ment in the faith except by spiritually partaking of
the Body and Blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper.
Add to this, that there is no circumstance of human
life which is not provided for ; the instruction of the
young ; the solemn ratification of that sacred tie of mar-
riage by which the continuance of the holy seed upon
earth is secured ; the special warning and comforting
of the sick; the danger of childbirth; the burial of the
happy dead ; the denunciation of more obstinate sin-
ners ; the great national occasion of the accession of
the sovereign, who is bound, you remember, by our
laws to defend the faith ; and lastly, that contingency
which we, as islanders, ought ever to bear upon our
hearts, a prayer for sailors while at sea. When all this
is considered, I say that the day when the Act of Uiii-

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formity established the Prayer-book to be the manual
of their ordinary devotions to English Churchmen for
ever, and for ever rescued us from the risk of extempore
— which is often ill-considered, ill-arranged, ill-adapted
— prayer, is a day to be remembered by us throughout
our generations ; a day only to be regretted for the
semblance of persecution with which it stands con-
nected. I say advisedly a semblance, not really a per-
secution, like that of the twenty years previous, when
the savage barbarity of the Puritan in England seemed
permitted, as the no less savage cruelty of the Episco-
palian government in Scotland, to bring both, in after
ages, to reflect on the impieties they had done, and to
secure to the worshipper of God in this realm for ever
a mercifid and gracious toleration.

But, my brethren, I have not even touched upon as
yet, that, which I feel this is the opportunity which
I am bound to take, of endeavouring to impress upon
your hearts and consciences.

In reference to the Word of life — the Holy Scrip-
tures— I have frequently reminded you in by-gone days,
that the free circulation of it by Bible Societies, the pos-
session of it in families, the power to read it, the inter-
pretation of it by authorized teachers, in fact, everything
which constitutes " an open Bible," is as nothing if that
Bible lies unopened on our shelves and tables, dust-
defiled, dishonoured, torn by children, unread for spi-
ritual edification.

I have now to use a similar argument with reference
to our Prayer-book. It is the use of it, not the pos-
session of it, which is the edification of the worshipper,
the glory of the Church. It is very easy to stand up
for Church and the Prayer-book : but what if we never
care to be absent from church if we are busy, if it is

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a bad day, if we are a little indisposed, if a friend comes
in? What if many occasionally plead these good-for-
nothing excuses for absence from the house of prayer ?
What if many more than a thousand men in this one
parish never come ? Then what signifies standing up for
the Church ? Or what if, in the use of our great manual of
devotion, most men are quite as ignorant or inattentive
as if it were in a foreign tongue, never utter its words,
but simply listen while they are read, and that not with
attention; never observe its directions; always leave
the church when earnestly and lovingly invited by God's
minister to join their fellow-worshippers in the holy Sa-
crament of the Lord's Supper ; continually finding fault
with this or that in the minister, making as though every-
thing depended on one part of the service only, i.e. on
the sermon ; if that is not to their mind, saying at once,
* I go no more there, I like something that will rouse
me;' or, 'I like such a one, not such a one.' What if
this be a very true picture of the condition of an Eng-
lish congregation ? What if, as at Kidderminster, nearly
all the men of a large class, except a few old and past
work, have agreed with one consent to leave religion to
others — to women and children — as a thing unworthy of
their freedom to think for themselves and to pursue
their own will and fancy in everything? What if a
Liturgy — the word means ' the Public Service' of God
— is to vast numbers no Liturgy or public service at all ?
What if the two Sacraments of Christ's Church, ordained
by Christ Himself, are either made light of, as Baptism,
or utterly forsaken, as the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper? What if the office of the minister of God,
which is to admonish, lead, assist, direct the people in
holy things, be ignored by multitudes, and the minister
be never sought by the vast number of parishioners,

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except by the wealthy as a companion or partaker of
their wealth, by the poor as a ready help at a pinch,
not as having any rule over them ; be wholly set at
nought by the rich and the poor, called the ' parson' in
contempt, though the word is a word of honour and
respect ; set down by gossips and busy-bodies as High,
Low, or anything which means that they do not believe
in him as a person ordained of God for their spiritual
help ? What if all this is the case, and grows and in-
creases ? What if I, your minister, after twenty years'
labour among you, see my church three parts filled with
women and aged persons — see the able and the strong
deliberately rejecting my ministry ? What if this parish
be even a better sample than many — what if in this
neighbourhood a parish twice as large as this has not one-
third, one-fourth of the number of worshippers that we
have? What if the securing to our parishes on this
day the Liturgy of our Reformed Church, as an heritage
for ever, have ended, with half the male population of
England, in such a state of mind as this? What if half
the men who do attend divine service in our churches
really think in their inmost hearts that all these contro-
versies about the truth, and settlement of disputed
points of doctrine one way or other, are nothing worth,
for that every man will be saved by the law or sect he
professeth, so he be diligent to frame his life according
to that law; and that the work and being of Jesus
Christ, being a mystery, may be understood one way or
the other without any real detriment to our hope of sal-
vation ? What if this most fatal of heresies lurks at the
bottom of the hearts of any of you, and turns our preach-
ing into nothing else than as it were the sound of the
voice of one that hath a pleasant voice, or that can
play well upon an instrument? Then, oh! how we

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ought to use this 200th commemoration — this Bi-
centenary as it is called — to arise and awake, and
amend our sinful lives, and try to comprehend the
beauty of holiness in this blessed Book of Common
Prayer !

Will you, 0 ray own beloved flock, — many of you
deeply sensible of the blessings confirmed to you this
day, — help me, your minister, in endeavouring to bring
about a better state of things in this parish than exists
at present? Many of you, I am persuaded, could do
more than you have ever yet done with friends and
acquaintances, with dependants and those you come in
contact with, to remind them that their Church has a truer
hold upon them than they have ever acknowledged ; that
they have no right before God, if they value their salva-
tion, to sit as loose to it as they do. 1 say this because
if you will consider the whole amount of effort you have
ever made to advance the cause of the Church — and that
is the cause of God and of Christ — by these words in
season, arguments such as you would freely employ where
you were interested in any worldly matter, by using
your own personal influence to bring a man to hear
God's Word, and begging him not to go away from the
hearing with a cold remark or a jest, but saying, ' Well
now, my good friend, don't you think we ought to live
according to these things which our Bible and Prayer-
book enjoin ?' if you will consider what your work and
labour of love in this sort has been, how little, how irre-
gular, how utterly wanting in self-denial and eff'ort, you
may by God's grace come to a better mind.

I believe the work of the ministry itself has been in
these days, owing to the complications, of modern society,
strained to its utmost; so strained that helps and ad-
juncts of a doubtful kind are often suggested. 1 think

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that as a beginning of better things, and prior to any re-
guhir organization which may follow in due course, those
of the laity who are themselves penetrated with a sense
of the beauty of holiness as exhibited in our Prayer-
book, and of God's manifest grace bestowed on our
Church for missionary and other work, might, by a new
effort to uphold the work of the ministry of Christ, suc-
ceed in bringing back to their duty, as it was taught
them in their childhood and early years, our godless
artisans, our young men of business, whom you as "well
as I, can see one after another, led aside by the error of
the wicked, falling from their stedfastness ; our canal
boatmen, absolute heathens in their way; our chance
traffickers, and many others, who for want of a word in
season, which a minister has no opportunity of speaking,
fall a prey to the tempter, but which you could speak,
if you were so minded, at various times. Ask a man
whether he has ever received the Lord's Supper ; shew
him where it is written in the Prayer-book which he pro-
fesses to revere, " Every parishioner shall communicate
three times in the year." Ask him of his soul's health,
even as you do of his body's health : turn his thoughts
that way. Ask him if he ever uses the Prayer-book for
his private devotion : ask him if he is an attached mem-
ber of the Church of England : treat him as if he were
not only connected with you by flesh and blood, but by
a common glorious hope of everlasting salvation.

This if you will do, such an anniversary as this might
be an anniversary of great spiritual growth and strength
in the Church, and we might be thankful that the sifting
of the subject to which the adversaries of our Church
invited us has resulted in a call to every faithful member
of it to furbish again his breastplate, his helmet, and his
shield, to take his sword in his hand, and with prayer

13

to go forth upon his mission of love, if by any means
from henceforth he might succeed in converting either
open sinners or the careless and indifferent to a sense
of God's mercy in Christ Jesus, so as to become hence-
forth, in the use of her formularies and attendance on
her services, members of the Church.

And now I must add one other word of solemn ad-
monition as regarding the times in which we live. The
changes of the world around us, infecting the hearts of
some that believe, have induced a demand for change in
the ritual and ordinances of the Church. I advise you,
brethren, as you value your own and your children's
souls' health, not to meddle with them that are given to
change. I can speak with confidence of the effect of
these proposed changes here, that in no respect that I
can see would any of them tend to the conversion of
souls, to the healing of any differences, to the removal
of any scruples (as far as I am aware). For it is not
scruples of the nature intended to be removed by these
changes which are the real stumbling-blocks in any man's
way, but the subtle pride of his own heart. The differ-
ences which exist among Christians have a deeper root
than these changes would touch, our adversaries them-
selves being our witnesses. The conversion of souls
dead in trespasses and sins, the softening of hard hearts,
the destruction of inveterate prejudices, is to be sought
in other ways than by legislative enactment concerning
doctrine and worship. Oh ! my brethren, try to make this
holy form of doctrine, delivered to the saints of old,
handed down by them to us, effectual to your salvation,
by praying heartily in those forms of prayer to which
you say Amen ; by responding to those exhortations
which you hear, not after the manner of men, saying,
' 'Twas a good sermon or a bad, a fine sermon or

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a poor one,' but by doing faithfully uhat you were ex-
horted to do ; by embracing with all your soul the great
doctrine of the justification of sinners by faith in Christ,
and their sanctitication by the Spirit, which the formu-
laries of your Church set forth as the way of life. Thus,
and not by any of the changes which have been proposed,
will the hope of better things dawn upon us ; and after
a time, it may be, the breaches which strife and division
have made in the Lord's house shall be repaired, and the
j)urity of its ordinances, the order of its services, the
faithful attendance of its members, will be restored as at
the first. For even here, though you may say these
walls were built when corruption of doctrine had over-
spread the land, yet even here was a day when the
builders brought forth the topstone with shouting, cry-
ing " Grace ! grace !" unto it ; and the dwellers here-
abouts, I doubt not, entered into these gates with
thanksgiving and into these courts with praise, hoping
and praying — and even yet their prayers may be an-
swered— that here, in this place, God would meet llis
waiting people, and bless and keep them evermore.

J,lrinltb bg HUssrs. parhtr, (Conimarlict, C)v(ort».

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