Some Overdue Spiritual Influence

Doubtless to the disappointment of our peculiar readership, but because of the day, our theme will be secular affairs, and purely ecclesiastical subjects will have to wait for another.

Not that Trespassers W, our latter-day Dr Codex, has not been busy in the internal affairs of the Church. Time would fail me to tell of the preferments of the Bishop of Stockport and Canon White (for those who like that sort of thing), of Prebendary Thomas (for those who really don’t) and of Farther North (so good they nominated him twice), of the Archdeacon of Hackney (for those who don’t think suffragan bishops really count; by far the soundest proposition on offer). And words fail me (because of excitement, of course) to tell of the Bishop of Islington (for those who think the Church of England needs more small under-resourced organisations) and the Bishop of Richmond (because if episcopacy is good, even more episcopacy must be better).

Posing as a Jacobite

In the life of every blog there comes the time to do some navel-gazing theological reflection, reviewing the subject-matter and reach of the site, and developing some conclusions. This is, we suppose, a largely fruitless as well as a self-absorbed tradition, but we are not in the business of questioning tradition here.

We advertise our letters as containing Anglo-catholicism, reaction and whimsy; but like all Church of England publications we actually cover mostly the gays, internal church politics, and nostalgia for an impossibly golden age. For most Anglicans this utopia is the 1950s: for us, true to form, the 1670s. Or possibly the 1630s. Certainly not the 1650s, though.

Of the People

It has been said of us that, although dealing much in sacred things, we refuse to be pious about any subject. Yet, as our royal martyr might have said himself, a sovereign is no subject; and today of all days we are grave.

We are encouraged that the observance of this anniversary has not degenerated into a nostalgic dead letter, but remains still a matter of political controversy. Yet no synod has resolved that those who assent to the deed are loyal Anglicans as well as those who dissent.

A Plague On All Three of Your Houses

 

Our dilemma is twofold. In the first place it is doubtful whether it is right to appoint these new bishops; in the second place it is doubtful whether the authorities who presume to decide the question are the proper persons to do so.

Firstly the question is whether it is possible that they should be validly consecrated, and secondly whether those who allow them to be consecrated have the right. Their consecration is contrary to the tradition of the Church of England, although Jesuitical scholarship claims to have found precedent; but, on the other hand, it is convincingly urged that the conditions of the present day make it imperative to accept this development, lest the standing of the Church of England be permanently compromised.

Remember, Remember

I see no reason why treason should ever be forgot. We are baffled, therefore, that no-one remembers the events of November 5th, when a small and unrepresentative group of plotters, backed by foreign arms, conspired to overthrow the legitimate government of this kingdom.

We are not referring to the events of 1605, of course. Pace Marx, the first conspiracy ended in farce; the repeat in tragedy. But treason never prospers, we suppose. 

Still, the father, the son, and the grandson? Wherefore this rage and strife? O, the perils of false brethren, indeed!

Remember. Remember.

Many Happy Returns

We have successfully resisted every invader for the last 1000 years, according to the Prime Minister. Alas, not quite. Birthday wishes to him who was natum Regem Anglorum.

Willing to Love All Mankind

The Great Doctor writes, in a well-known passage:

How any man can have consented to institutions established in distant ages, it will be difficult to explain. In the most favourite residence of liberty, the consent of individuals is merely passive; a tacit admission, in every community, of the terms which that community grants and requires. As all are born the subjects of some state or other, we may be said to have been all born consenting to some system of government. Other consent than this the condition of civil life does not allow. It is the unmeaning clamour of the pedants of policy, the delirious dream of republican fanaticism.

Quite right, and the pedants of policy and the delirious dreamers are still clamouring, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Our Place in the Church of England

It has been a week of anniversaries. Today, of course, is the 59^th anniversary of the Coronation of Her Majesty the Queen; a strange number to celebrate with such festivities as this weekend’s, but it is all grist to the royalist mill. On Tuesday was the anniversary (the 352^nd) of the wonderful Restoration of the late King Charles, and if my acquaintance is anything to go by, this is being even more widely celebrated than the Diamond Jubilee.