Short Reasons for Communion with the Church of England / Or, The Churchman's answer to the question, "Why are you a Member of the Established Church?"

by Thomas Tregenna Biddulph

REASON VI.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her mode of worship is primitive and scriptural, and in my judgment best calculated to promote general and individual edification.

“Mr. Wheatly has proved (referring us to the testimonies of Josephus, Philo, Paul Fagius, &c.) that the ancient Jews did always worship God in public by precomposed forms. Dr. Lightfoot not only affirms the same thing, but sets down both the order and method of their hymns and supplications. Now it appears from the general tenour of the four Gospels, and particularly from Luke iv. 16. that our Saviour habitually attended at the service of the Temple, or of the Synagogue, on every Sabbath-day. [12a] He therefore, by this act, from week to week, gave a public sanction to all the Jewish forms of Divine worship. And had it been otherwise, the Scribes and Pharisees, His implacable foes and persecutors, would not have failed to load Him with their severest reproaches, as an open enemy to all godliness. He lived and died a member of the Jewish Church. He moreover gave a set form of prayer to His Apostles, which has ever since been used in the Christian Church. And it is evident from many passages in the book of their acts, that they also, in conformity to His Divine example, did attend on the service both of the Temple and Synagogue; and it is expressly said, (Acts xvii. 2.) that it was ‘the manner’ of Paul so to do. The apostolic practice is therefore another sanction to the same religious institution.

“Mr. Wheatly has also shown, by sundry appeals to ancient Christian writers, that the three first centuries joined in the use of precomposed set forms of prayer, besides the Lord’s prayer and Psalms; and that these were styled by so early a writer as Justin Martyr, who died in the year of our Lord 163, ‘Common Prayers;’ by Origen, ‘Constituted Prayers;’ and by Cyprian, ‘Solemn Prayers.’—From hence the inference is fairly drawn, that a liturgy composed for public use, is warranted by the practice of our Saviour, of His Apostles, and of the primitive Christians.” [12b]

REASON VII.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her Liturgy is scriptural in its doctrine, plain in its style, comprehensive in its addresses to the throne of mercy, and therefore adapted to general use.

In confirmation of this reason, I shall content myself with the declaration of one, whose testimony may have the more weight in consequence of his being unconnected with the Church whose liturgy he has extolled, the eloquent and candid Robert Hall. At the Leicester Bible Society he spoke thus of our Liturgy. “I believe that the evangelical purity of its sentiments, the chastised fervour of its devotion, and the majestic simplicity of its language, have placed it in the very first rank of uninspired compositions.”