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, August 28, 2014

28 August. 1662 Book of Common Prayer: St. Augustine the Greater—Bishop of Hippo


28 August.  1662 Book of Common Prayer:  St. Augustine the Greater—Bishop of Hippo.


St. Augustine, Bishop (354-430), the great Bishop of Hippo, and father of Latin Theology, who has perhaps more than any other writer affected Christian thought, especially on the doctrines of Justification and Predestination, and whose influence was dominant with all the great leaders of the Reformation. He was a native of Tagaste in North Africa, in his youth a student of literature and teacher of rhetoric, inclined to passion and self-indulgence, an inquirer in the Manichean and other schools, and even by the prayers of his saintly mother Monica not persuaded to be a Christian. At Milan he was converted and baptized by St. Ambrose at the age of 33, ordained priest and consecrated Bishop at Hippo in 395, where he ministered till, just before the conquest of North Africa by the Vandals, he was taken from the evil to come, in 430. The personal and spiritual force of his Confessions and Retractions; the profound theology of his writings against Manichæism and Pelagianism, Arianism, and Donatism; his wonderful Commentaries on Scripture, Sermons, and Letters; his contrast of the "City of God" with the kingdom of the world, expiring in the fall of Rome -- all have laid hold of the mind and heart of Christendom with a power fairly unexampled in the history of the Church, if not of the world. -- August 28th.

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