The History and Theology of the Episcopal Church

1. The History and Theology of the Episcopal Church Part Four: The Old High Churchmen (1800-1850)

2. A point of order (BCP 1789) The Bishop. Will you then give your faithful diligence always so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church hath received the same? . . . Will you reverently obey your Bishop, and other chief Ministers, who, according to the Canons of the Church, may have the charge and government over you; following with a glad mind and will their godly admonition, and submitting yourselves to their godly judgments? Answer. I will so do, by the help of the Lord.

3. A point of order (BCP 1979) Bishop Will you be loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them? And will you, in accordance with the canons of this Church, obey your bishop and other ministers who may have authority over you and your work? Answer I am willing and ready to do so; and I solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation; and I do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church.

4. John Henry Hobart • Bishop of New York, 1816-1830 • Like Griswold, Hobart modeled a more active episcopate. • He was a leader in the establishment of the General Theological Seminary (1817).

5. A brief literary intervention “Mr. Slope declared that the main part of the consecration of a clergyman was the self-devotion of the inner man to the duties of the ministry. Mr. Arabin contended that a man was not consecrated at all, had, indeed, no single attribute of a clergyman, unless he had become so through the imposition of some bishop’s hands, who had become a bishop through the imposition of other hands, and so on in a direct line to one of the apostles.” Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857)

6. Doctrine of the Church • The church is of divine origin. • Without the episcopacy there is no visible church. • The Church is the regular and ordinary channel by which the blessings of Jesus Christ come to us. • The Church is the safeguard of the truth as it is in Jesus. • We must receive what has been believed in the Church semper, ubique, apud omnes.

7. Our Church, temperate, judicious, firm, un-awed by Papal threats, unmoved by what she considers the unjust reproaches of some of her Protestant kindred, takes her stand where Apostles and Martyrs stood; and in her Apos-tolic Episcopacy, cleared of Papal usurpations, shines forth to the wandering members of the Christian family, as that city “set on an hill,” where they may find repose from the tumults of schism, and communion with their Redeemer, in those ministrations and ordinances which he has established as the channels of his grace, and the pledges of his love.

8. Evangelicals tend to be Calvinists; high churchmen tend to be Arminians. The evangelical tends to say that Jesus died for the elect; the high churchman tends to say that Jesus died for all. High churchmen talk about justification by faith, but it is a faith that is active in love. Hobart: “Faith is essential, but the Church knows no true and lively faith, no justifying faith, which does not produce the fruit of good works.” Doctrine of Salvation

9. Doctrine of the Sacraments • “The merits of the Redeemer are applied to the soul who humbly participates in the ordinances of the Church, administered by a priesthood who derive their authority by regular transmission from Christ.” • The regenerate life begins in baptism; subsequent sanctification is in the Eucharist. • Hobart rejected transubstantiation as contrary to the nature of a sacrament.

10. Some final words • “Be sure that in all your preaching the doctrines of the Cross be introduced: no preaching is good for any thing without these.”