So, here is my reworking of John Cosins’ Precepts:
Or: Renunication, Prayer, and Accountability
So hear me out: what if the dissolution of the monasteries (under Henry VIII) was not so bad after all? But the real tragedy was the jumping into the same model with rules and canons at the restoration of religious life? What if rather than useful sisterhoods (which only happened because priests needed help) an eastern model was used?
All monks and nuns share the same ascetic call and belong to a single, all-embracing ‘order’ or ‘estate’; yet within that one ‘estate’ there is a wide variety of patterns and a constant flexibility.
So there is one estate – the monastic – which the individual, male or female, enters through tonsure. More freedom! And then the individual has a choice:
The wide variety of patterns is reduced by St John Climacus (d. circa 649) to three main types: “The monastic way of life takes three general forms: to live in ascetic withdrawal and solitude; to be a hesychast with one or two companions; to dwell with patient endurance in a coenobium.” These three forms—the coenobitic, the eremitic, and the middle or semi-eremitic way of the hesychast who dwells with one or two others—are found at the very outset of Christian monasticism in fourth-century Egypt.
Ware, Metropolitan Kallistos; Walls in Solitude and Communion: Papers on the Hermit Life (Fairacres Publications), 48.
So one estate in three forms. With movement between the forms. Some years active, some years solitary, and some years in the middle. Yet there is one more point that is vital and has been complete (methinks) missed in Anglican “religious life”:
… from the start primary importance was attached to the need for personal spiritual direction under an ‘abba’ or ‘elder’—what the Greek sources call a gerôn and what the Russians were later to term a starets. The variety and flexibility of Eastern monasticism must inevitably seem ill-disciplined and untidy to the Western mind, unless it is remembered that underlying this variety there is the direct personal relationship between the spiritual father or mother and his or her child. This relationship, while it ensures inner order within seeming confusion, is not something that can be contained within institutional forms or controlled by rules.
ibid, 51
So one estate in three forms under the guidance of an “elder”. No need to institutionalise. No need for bishops to be involved and worry about vows. The model, methinks, is that of living one’s baptismal life rather than celibate marriage (to Jesus or the Church).
I suspect this was present in the life of anchorites in England before the Reformation:
The ambivalence in this relationship [between monastic rules and ‘rules’ for solitaries] reflects an underlying tension between monastic and anchoritic ideals. The monastic life is based on obedience, the anchoritic life on independence; one requires the renunciation of the will, the other the exercise of free choice.
Innes-Parker, Catherine; Yoshikawa, Naoë Kukita. Anchoritism in the Middle Ages: Texts and Traditions (Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages), 34.
So missed opportunity?
Life in Religion is the ultimate wager on the existence of God. The Church should always be engaged in doing things that make no sense if God does not exist. This is the reason why I hold the Religious life in the highest esteem. Through the commonality of goods, the life of obedience and above all the commitment to shape life around the Opus Dei (that is, prayer), the monastic life models for all Christians what it means to live fully and abundantly, with and for Christ.
The Most Rev’d Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury (2013 – 2025), Foreword to: Anglican Religious Life 2016-17
“Coates by Stow, the tiny beautiful church at the end of a farm road in Lincolnshire.”
The Decision
The president addresses the candidates directly, or through their parents, godparents and sponsors
We all wander far from God and lose our way:
Christ comes to find us and welcomes us home.
In baptism we respond to his call.Therefore I ask:
Do you turn away from sin?
I do.Do you reject evil?
I do.The candidates, together with their parents, godparents and sponsors, may turn at this point.
Do you turn to Christ as Saviour?
I do.Do you trust in him as Lord?
Common Worship – Baptism
I do.
The consecration of Reginald Heber Weller as an Anglican bishop at the Cathedral of St. Paul the Apostle in the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac.
Seated (left to right):
The Rt. Rev. Isaac Lea Nicholson, Episcopal Bishop of Milwaukee;
Rt. Rev. Charles Chapman Grafton, Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac;
Rt. Rev. Charles P. Anderson, Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor of Chicago.
Standing (left to right):
Rt. Rev. Anthony Kozłowski of the Polish National Catholic Church;
Rt. Rev. G. M. Williams, Episcopal Bishop of Marquette;
Rt. Rev. Reginald Weller,
Rt. Rev. Joseph M. Francis, Episcopal Bishop of Indianapolis,
Rt. Rev. William E. McLaren, Episcopal Bishop of Chicago;
Rt. Rev. Arthur L. Williams, Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor of Nebraska;
St. John Kochurov, Russian Orthodox protomartyr of the Bolshevik Revolution;
St. Sebastian (Dabovich),
St. Bishop Tikhon
The Lesson from the Holy Gospel according to John
AT that time: Jesus said unto his disciples: If ye love me, keep my commandments. And so on, and that which followeth.A Homily by St. Gregory
IT would be well, dearly beloved brethren, to make our comments brief as may be, so that we may di at greater length on the meaning whereon suddenly there came a t this great festival. For this is the d from heaven, and the Holy descended upon the disciples thereby changed the carnal mind men, filling them with love for hi self. Thus, whilst there appeared outwardly cloven tongues like as of fire, inwardly their hearts began to burn. At the same time that they perceived God in this fiery manifestation, they were all set on fire of love in its sweetness. The Holy Ghost himself is love. Whence it is than John saith: God is love. Whosoever then, desireth God with all his soul, the same hath already entered in possession of him whom he loveth. And except he possess him that he loveth, he cannot love God.BUT here consider this. It we to ask anyone of you whether he loveth God, he might perchance answer with all boldness and quietness of spirit: I do love him. But in this day’s Lesson, ye have heard what the Truth saith: If a man love me, he will keep my words. proof of love, therefore, is its manifestation in practice. Hence the same John hath said in his Epistle: The man that saith, I love God, and keepeth not his commandments, the same is a liar. For we do truly love God, and keep his commandments, if we deny ourselves the gratification of our appetites. Whoever abandoneth himself unlawfully desires, such an one plainly loveth not God, for thereby he setteth himself against God’s good pleasure.
NOTE the words: And my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. Think, dearly beloved brethren, what a dignity it is, to have God abiding as a guest in our hearts. Surely if some rich man, or some powerful friend, were to come into our house, we would hasten to have the whole house cleaned, lest perchance when he came in, he should see aught to displease his eye. So let him that would make ready his soul as an abode for God, cleanse it from all the filth of evil works. But consider once more what the Truth saith: We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. There a some hearts whereunto God cometh, but maketh not his abode therein. This is because they feel reverence for God when their conscience doth prick them; but in time a temptation they forget their conscience, and turn again to their sins, as though they bad never repented.
However, the general tone was of praise and support for Religious Life. The contribution which stands out, however, as one reads the debate a century later, came from Charles Grafton, Bishop of Fond du Lac in the USA, the only bishop present who had been a member of a community. He made three important points.
Petà Dunstan, Bishops and Religious 1897-1914
- First, he believed Religious Life was a vocation and should be treated as such.
- Second, it did not belong, as priesthood did, to the corporate life of the Church, but instead belonged ‘to the economy of the Holy Ghost’. Obedience to a Religious superior was a voluntary action of love, not the result of the legislative action of the Church. Unlike ‘the fixity of ministerial orders’ then, he believed the work of the Holy Ghost in the call of Religious Life manifested itself in a variety of different forms. Bishops had to trust this call to have a corrective power in itself.
- Third, he reminded the Conference that in Religious, bishops were dealing with ‘special devotional temperaments’ that could be ‘personally emotional’ about small matters of worship. A high-handed approach would not therefore be advisable. He went on to echo the arguments put forward in Father Puller’s paper, and concluded by suggesting bishops should regulate communities only in relation to property, financial donations and in insisting on communities ‘having sound government.
Joseph Leycester Lyne
- The restoration of the ascetic life and continual prayer in the Church of England;
- home mission work, by preaching, visiting the poor, and teaching the young;
- to afford a temporary religious retreat for the secular clergy;
- to raise the tone of devotion in the English Church to a higher standard by showing the real exemplification of the evangelical counsels;
- to aid in bringing about the union of Christendom.
a fool and his prayer book 