Great piece from a friend of mine on the practice of Ash Wednesday before the Oxford movement: https://adfontesjournal.com/miles-smith/ash-wednesday-in-the-pre-tractarian-church-of-england/ Reformed Anglicans should not shy away from it
And the Anglo-Catholics could learn that it is possible to have an Ash Wednesday service that is not Low Mass. Look at all of the possibilities in the rubrics: Or, in the 1662, you get the Commination service.
That's a good one to put online. I'll put that on our list, and maybe our social media can feature it as well! There are other texts which also attest to the strong interest in the various parts of the Lenten season, such as these 1660 texts entitled, "Shrovetide," and "Lent." Shrovetide is armed with meat, while Lent is armed with fish: I have in my list about half-dozen other texts which in detail describe and discuss the "Lenten fast," all predating 1800, if anybody is interested.
Pre-Tractarian observation of Ash Wednesday in the Church of England appears to have been tied to the tripartite recognition of mortality, the wages of sin, and the depths from which God can nonetheless forgive sinners. Anglican church historians and liturgists will understandably debate Ash Wednesday’s place in the Calendar for some time, but it seems worth noting the practice had a life in the Church of England before the Tractarian controversy, and that the practice was not connected to explicitly Roman theological commitments............ Odd I thought that his was what it was always about