http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/documents/CAT030_RyleEastward.pdfThere was a day when Anglicans would have understood Ryle. The evangelical Anglicans of Britain understood this matters in the Tractario-Ritualist context, that anti-Protestant drive of Newman, Keble, Pusey, Manning and other self-loathing Anglicans.
Two claimants to the continuuing Protestant Episcopal tradition in the United States exist. They are micro-groups with little to offer other than an handful of clerks and websites. They use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the "Eastward Position." The Traditional Protestant Episcopal Church and the Anglican Orthodox Church, both fondly reciting Ryle, harmlessly, but without Ryle's sense of it. Woe be to one of their clerks who raises questions, however, about their 1928 BCP. Several of us experienced that and, as a result, are independent Anglicans--an oxymoron if there ever was one. Trust is an huge issue and problem. One group tolerates an anti-Calvinist without discipline, a lad with no seminary, a high decibel level, and one bad experience with the German Reformed . Several of us simply want no part of more Anglican weaknesses and won't support it.
The Church Society has seen fit to re-publish Ryle on this point of the Eastward position. However, a regiment of Anglicans Josiahs today will not be able to undo the wrath of God upon Anglicans for over a century of compromises going back to the days of Manasseh and Amon, the hundreds of doctrinal compromises. Historians will sort it out.
And then, there is the ever anafractous breed of Anglo-Catholics with their 58 denominations over a 30-year history. That's another consequence of earlier failures in biblical discipline.
We won't even speak of the compromisers in the new Manglican configuration.
Thank God we have books.
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