Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Thursday, October 15, 2009

2-Archbishop Matthew Parker

Archbishop Parker by William Paul McClure Kennedy (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1908).

Part Two. 92ff. The Marian Reaction

Edward vi dies on 6 July 1553, age seventeen. Northumberland proposed immediately that his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, be placed on the throne. There was little popular support. Mary raised a standard and there was conflict. Mary, the victor in the dynastic chaos, became the Queen.

The Romish service-book was at once restored. The countryside acquiesced while the larger urban centres, the centres of Reform, “could be easily controlled." (93) Through the Papal legate, Cardinal Pole, the kingdom “was absolved from schism,” as if Rome had that divine power. The full Papal system was back in play.

Mary deprives married clergy of their offices at once. If they put their wives to the side, after due penance, they may be restored to ministerial labours. Parker had three options: (1) play Mary’s game and enjoy preferments, as penshioners, hirelings, and time-servers generally do, (2) retire to Frankfurt or Strasbourg like many of his brethren, or (3) retire to obscurity.


He took the latter. He resigned his mastership of Corpus in 1553. In the following months, he was “canonically deprived.” He was approximately fourty-nine years old…and he lost everything in terms of this world. He had no assurances that providence would guide otherwise.

Lessons to be learned. (1) Integrity, honour and courage, sorely lacking in the ACNA. Politics over truth. (2) Confessional integrity that is checkered, flawed, and highly problematic with the PCA, based upon recent reports and some observations. (3) Courage in opposing the rampant Arminianism, charismaniacs, and this bizarre music. Parker sticks to his guns.

He lived a quiet life of study and contemplation, sharing retirement with Guest who later became his Chaplain at Canterbury and who would be Elizabeth 1’s Chaplain.

Parker says of this retirement:

“I lived as a private individual so happy before God in my conscience and as far from being either ashamed or dejected that the delightful literary leisure to which the good providence of God recalled me yielded me much greater and more solid enjoyments than my former busy and dangerous kind of life had ever offered me. What shall befall me hereafter I now not, but to God who cares for all men, who will one day reveal the secrets of the hearts, I commit myself wholly and my good and virtuous wife, with my two very dear children And I beseech the same most merciful and almighty God that for the time to come we may so bear the reproach of Christ with unbroken courage as ever to remember than there we have no continuing city, but seek one to come by the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all honour and dominion, Amen."

Lessons learned: (1) Retirement to reading and study—as it is for this scribe—is one of unmitigated joy. In fact, providentially, this season of retirement for Parker probably outfitted him in better ways when he would assume the leadership from Canterbury. However, time at Frankfurt or Strasbourg could have been useful, although Parker did not choose that course. (2) We don’t point to Canterbury as the summum bonum of ecclesiology, but to the City of God, our true home, to Christ, the True and only Head of the Church. The lustophiles in Anglicanism for CANTAUR's nod are not content with Christ's approval. (3) In retaining his wife and children, yet violating the will-worshipping, Romish doctrine of demons against marriage—then, as now, Parker maintained his conscience void of offense towards God and men. (4) Rome is still institutionally inebriated with itself. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.” Rome is full of ducks and quackeries; they still haven't learned. (5) The modern leaders in the ACNA need to be retired for about five years for study, reflection and maturity--they aren't reflecting much of it these days.


Thank God for Parker and other English Reformers, men of courage and integrity, or we'd still be waking each morning to a routine round on the rosary beads (as is done by some at TESM and by many at Hashotah House).

To be continued.

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