http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_089_4_Toon.pdfDr. Peter Toon on Bishop Ryle's comprehensiveness in the Church of England. Both men have difficulties. Comprehensiveness did not include Tractarians and Ritualizing Romewardizers for Ryle; it did for Toon. That concern re: Tractarians is gone now and is integral to the sycretism today.
I recollect a dinner with a Royal Navy Chaplain aboard our carrier. Upon inquiry re: the XXXIX Articles, he--best read--scoffed politely. "Irrelevant" was his term. I remember the rejoinder, "Well, what does that say for your ministry?" Not much of a response other than to politely move on.
Upon further discussion, we came to J.C. Ryle. He noted that Ryle was still highly regarded for his work on the Gospels, albeit noted, that his actual scholarly work was his own that he kept from the pages of his Exposition of the Gospels. Ryle kept detailed footnotes out of that work. In his work on the Gospels, he routinely consulted with 70-80 commentaries. Rather than risk academic obscurantizing of the perspicuous Word, he insisted upon clarity, directness, and application. The point: Ryle was more than just a direct, plain-speaking Churchman; he was scholarly as well, but would not allow that to interfere with preaching the Gospel.
Re: the Royal Navy Chaplain above, after dinner, we went to the Ship's Chapel where he led a modern-day Prayer Book Service (unrecognizable to me, unrelated to the 1662 or affiliate versions). I remember wondering while he was reading his book, "The Articles on God, Creeds, Scripture, etc., are irrelevant?"Had I been a young sailor, with *that kind of leadership,* I would never have done further work on the Articles.
Since then, the more mature me, observes that that kind of claim--as far as the US is concerned--has resulted in a exactly that ignorance of the contextual background and straight-forward interpretation of those Articles.
I have a bagful of stories about Episcopal clerics...which are worse than the Royal Navy Chaplain.
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