English Spirituality Quotes

“When the Prayer Book is studied and used, publicly, privately, and constantly, then it takes on its true character of a comprehensive system. And the more it is used privately, the more it is seen to be the basis of an integrated religious life; something to be found not neatly stacked in the church bookcase but in the kitchen and in one's pocket.”
― Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition

“Recollection is not just a religious exercise but that which controls and colours practical daily life: to the Carolines all the duties of one's station, to the Benedictine, manual labour.”
― Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition

“The book of Common Prayer is fundamental to our understanding of all ages of English spirituality. It is the development and con- summation of our patristic and biblical tradition, it embodies principles for which the fourteenth-century asceticists had been groping, and in its final form it is the product' of the Caroline age.”
― Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition

“Ascetical theology and spiritual direction, far from being esoteric subjects on the fringe of Christianity, are at the very heart of all theology which can claim to be incarnational, and of all pastoral practice whatsoever.”
― Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition

“Christ is made known to us through the Scriptures, through the Sacraments, and through creation, for they all reveal him in different ways and all are necessary to full understanding.”
― Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition

“To the Christian, then, ascetical theology is the key to the art of living as fully, creatively, and indeed joyfully, as mankind is capable.”
― Martin Thornton, English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition