Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. & A. 95

Westminster Larger Catechism

Q. 95. Of what use is the moral law to all men?

A. The moral law is of use to all men, to inform them of the holy nature and the will of God, and of their duty, binding them to walk accordingly to convince them of their disability to keep it, and of the sinful pollution of their nature, hearts, and lives: to humble them in the sense of their sin and misery, and thereby help them to a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and of the perfection of his obedience.

This question and answer goes to our beloved Book of Common Prayer (BCP).

Anglicans did not embed and embrace these Westminsterian standards as they should have. Extremist Anglicans and Puritans could not get past their problems.

A new Reformation is in order to embrace these standards--with a few modifications--alongside the 1662 BCP. This question and answer also goes the issue of original sin of all and residual sin (Rom.7.14-25) in the believer. The XXXIX Articles, though workable for a Calvinist Anglican, are insufficient for the foundation of a new Anglican faith-cluster.

Bias at www.virtueonline.org

The Rev. Paul Taylor, LLM, is one of the moderators in the comments-section of David Virtue's http://www.virtueonline.org/.

Numerous complaints to David Virtue have been urged against Mr. Taylor for his anti-Reformed and anti-Calvinistic excisions and removals of various posters. They are never explained; it just happens. It has been noted by many.

Here is one of the more recent shut-downs of communication by Mr. Paul Taylor.

See the comments at the end:

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10657

Protestant (Catholic), Reformed, Confessional and Evangelical Anglicans were/are routined deleted. A handful of Anglo-Catholic posters get free ride without rebuttals. One almost wonders if his dozen or so Anglo-Romewardizers are on payroll. It is a clique and cadre of repressors.

Here's who Mr. Taylor really is. See:

http://www.1928bcp.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=795

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Below is an email sent to about 800 people, including David Virtue.

From: D. Philip Veitch
To:
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 6:15 PM
Subject: Rev. Paul Taylor, LLM, Virtue's Heavy-handed Censor and Moderator

http://www.1928bcp.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=795

An open repudiation of Calvinistic Anglicanism by one of David Virtue's moderators, the Rev. Paul Taylor, LLM. At least he's an honest Churchman in this respect and garners my support.

Although we've asked before, his scholarship and education is in question...and has never, despite repeated requests, been answered. We've complained to no avail.

However, Paul's very unfair handling of Protestant (Catholic), Reformed, Confessional, and Evangelical Anglicans who post at www.virtueonline.org has been that---unfair and biased. Many of you have already experienced it.

The other moderator, Robert Turner, turned sarcastic last week, as well, and we kept you appraised.

The new ACNA can only exist by failures to to do theology, exegesis, and history.

The VOL blogs are run by well, you get the point. AC-hacks write routinely on the blogs--about a dozen of them. One wonders if they are on the payroll. Turner and Taylor give them free passes.

As usual, I always copy David when I openly address VOL issues. Hey, I've read David since 1996, consider him a friend--with whom I have serious disagreements, yet, as a courtesy keep him informed.

Thank God for the web presence of the Church Society. www.churchsociety.org. You won't be getting news and theology from the modern centres of Anglican disadvertisement and utopian revisionism.

It is time for a Reformation of this ACNA Reformation, based on the truth.

Phil

Interview with St. Paul

Another interview with St. Paul re: "God has a Wonderful Plan for your Life." Campus Crusade and Charismatics will enjoy this.

http://socialhazard.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/gods-wonderful-plan-for-your-life/#comment-281

How Dare St. Paul to write such a divisive piece like Galatians

A good and humourous article. How dare St. Paul write such a divisive piece to the First Christian Church at Galatia.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=96064909799&h=8wItz&u=0j0-t&ref=mf

Enjoy the spoof.

Without spoofery, however, Anglo-Catholics, your Gospel is a Galatian one, a false Gospel, like Rome's and Protestant mainline liberals. How dare St. Paul arise to criticise you?
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Here's the spoof. You won't hear this either from the ACNA.

If Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians was Published in Christianity Today
Posted on 20 February 2009
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Dear Christianity Today:
In response to Paul D. Apostle’s article about the Galatian church in your January issue, I have to say how appalled I am by the unchristian tone of this hit piece. Why the negativity? Has he been to the Galatian church recently? I happen to know some of the people at that church, and they are the most loving, caring people I’ve ever met.
Phyllis Snodgrass; Ann Arbor, MI
————————————————————————
Dear Editor:
How arrogant of Mr. Apostle to think he has the right to judge these people and label them accursed. Isn’t that God’s job? Regardless of this circumcision issue, these Galatians believe in Jesus just as much as he does, and it is very Pharisaical to condemn them just because they differ on such a secondary issue. Personally, I don’t want a sharp instrument anywhere near my zipper, but that doesn’t give me the right to judge how someone else follows Christ. Can’t we just focus on our common commitment to Christ and furthering His kingdom, instead of tearing down fellow believers over petty doctrinal matters?
Ed Bilgeway; Tonganoxie, KS
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Dear CT:
I’ve seen other dubious articles by Paul Apostle in the past, and frankly I’m surprised you felt that his recurrent criticisms of the Church deserved to be printed in your magazine. Mr. Apostle for many years now has had a penchant for thinking he has a right to “mark” certain Christian teachers who don’t agree with his biblical position. Certainly I commend him for desiring to stay faithful to God’s word, but I think he errs in being so dogmatic about his views to the point where he feels free to openly attack his brethren. His attitude makes it difficult to fully unify the Church, and gives credence to the opposition’s view that Christians are judgmental, arrogant people who never show God’s love.
Ken Groener; San Diego, CA
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To the Editors:
Paul Apostle says that he hopes the Galatian teachers will cut off their own privates? What kind of Christian attitude is that? Shame on him!
Martha Bobbitt; Boulder, CO
—————————————————————————-
Dear Christianity Today:
The fact that Paul Apostle brags about his public run-in with Peter Cephas, a well-respected leader and brother in Christ, exposes Mr. Apostle for the divisive figure that he has become in the Church today. His diatribe against the Galatian church is just more of the same misguided focus on an antiquated reliance on doctrine instead of love and tolerance. Just look how his hypercritical attitude has cast aspersions on homosexual believers and women elders! The real problem within the Church today is not the lack of doctrinal devotion, as Apostle seems to believe, but in our inability to be transformed by our individual journeys in the Spirit. Evidently, Apostle has failed to detach himself from his legalistic background as a Pharisee, and is unable to let go and experience the genuine love for Christ that is coming from the Galatians who strive to worship God in their own special way.
William Zenby; Richmond, VA
——————————————————————————
Kind Editors:
I happen to be a member of First Christian Church of Galatia, and I take issue with Mr. Apostle’s article. How can he criticize a ministry that has been so blessed by God? Our church has baptized many new members and has made huge in-roads in the Jewish community with our pragmatic view on circumcision. Such a “seeker-sensitive” approach has given the Jews the respect they deserve for being God’s chosen people for thousands of years. In addition, every Gentile in our midst has felt honored to engage in the many edifying rituals of the Hebrew heritage, including circumcision, without losing their passion for Jesus. My advice to Mr. Apostle is to stick to spreading the gospel message of Christ’s unconditional love, and quit criticizing what God is clearly blessing in other churches.
Miriam “Betty” Ben-Hur; Galatia, Turkey
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Christianity Today apologizes for our rash decision in publishing Paul Apostle’s exposé of the Galatian church. Had we known the extent in which our readership and advertisers would withdraw their financial support, we never would have printed such unpopular biblical truth. We regret any damage we may have caused in propagating the doctrines of Christ.

The Real Presence in the Formularies of the Church of England

http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/documents/CAT025_RealPresence.pdf

The Real Presence by the Rev’d. William Francis Taylor.

It is important to understand the historic and confessional Anglican position on this. This article spells that out.

The term “Real Presence” was, in the minds of the English Reformers, equivalent to the “Popish doctrine of Transubstantiation.” The Tractarians and Ritualists made much of this phrase. The Reformed Church of England does not hold to the natural and corporal body and blood of Christ in, with or under the elements at the Lord’s Table. His body or Christ is at God’s right hand, but He is very present to us—decisively and savingly—by His Word and Spirit. All redemptive benefits are apprehended by the faith of the believing recipient, just as surely as he or she eats the Bread and drinks the Cup. Articles XXVIII and XXIX spell this out. Cranmer, Hooker and Taylor spell this out also in contrast with the Lutheran and Roman views.

Rev. Taylor exhorts us:

“Protestant Churchmen, enough has now been written, not merely to assent, but to prove that the doctrine of the Real Presence as taught by the Ritualists of our day, is unscriptural, anti-Reformational, and expressly condemned by the formularies of the Church.”

You also won’t hear this from modern, Anglican centres of advertisement, news, and commentary. The Church Society does us a great service by the publication of their tracts.

Righteousness by Faith by Bishop Charles Petit McIlvaine

Righteousness by Faith by Bishop Charles Petit McIlvaine, a Protestant champion against the creeping, crawling, and slithering inroads of Tractarianism and Ritualism into the Protestant Episcopal Church camp in the mid-to-late 19th century. There are several works by the Bishop available through a name and book search at www.books.google.com. Here is a free, downloadable pdf.file of the Bishop's dependable work.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=108628830002&h=0Bkb3&u=EEPC5&ref=nf

The Anglican Position Towards Rome

“The Anglican Position towards Rome and the Papacy,” Tract 429 from the Church Association.

http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/documents/CAT429_Anglican-Rome.pdf

Do not look for similar treatments anywhere in modern Protestant literature, although the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, maintains a Confessional view similar to that advocated by this article.

Do not look for this view from Western Anglicans nor from the recently gathered (M)Anglican or Manglican Church of North America, 22-25 June 2009. Do not look for this article to be posted at http://www.virtueonline.org/, a modern and major news outlet for worldwide Anglicanism.

Do not look for such views in the general Anglican blogosphere. Do not look for them in the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). Do not look for it from Anglican Mainstream or Stand Firm in the Faith. Most certainly do not look for it from those in Forward in Faith. Avowedly, do not look for it from Bishops Jack Iker, Schofield, or Ackerman, all of ACNA-fame. You also will find nothing from Reformed Episcopal Bishops. Do not look for it from the African or South American Bishops.

Most certainly, look for opposition and resistance from Dr. James I. Packer to this article and well as from the signatories to Evangelical-Catholics Together. Is it the conspiracy of silence? Or, it is a conspiracy of opposition to the English Reformation?

This Church Society article on the position of the English Reformation towards Rome gets no play from moderns; look for no analyses on Romish theology from the Manglicans.

The staunchest Anglican is largely unaware of how deeply the Reformed Church of England “indicted” Rome and the Papacy. That is the fault of the present leaders, writers, teachers, and pastors, a few of whom have been mentioned.

All manner of ingenuity has been offered to mitigate the facts that the English Reformed Church was rigorously anti-Roman. Ridley, Cranmer, Latimer, Bradford, Hooper, Parker, Grindal, Sandys, and Whitgift held that Rome was Anti-Christian and Anti-Christ. Archbishop Whitgift’s successor, Richard Bancroft, was responsible for passing a canon at the Convocation of 1606 that would censure “any who should deny the Pope to be the Man of Sin.” Bancroft’s successor to the Archbishopric of Canterbury was George Abbot, who held the same view.

Other Reformers such as Luther, Bullinger, and John Jewel (the “Jewel” of the English Reformation)--a mere sampling--as well as the Book of Homilies at several places assert likewise, not sparing the Papacy of just censures. The Church of Ireland in its 1615 Convocation and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) affirm the similar indictments against that “Man of Sin” and his false Gospel.

It is time for another Reformation, with a solid sweep of the modern leaders with replacements by those who understand the Reformation. But don't look for that either; the elites and hegemonists control the centres of advertisement and the levers of power.

However, where two or three are gathered in His name, there is our LORD, as we are reminded from St. Chrysostom's Prayer in the Order for Morning Prayer. Numbers do not norm or govern our thinking.

Those with investments and vested interests—including pensions and other perks, etc.—won’t be stepping up to the plate as did our Reformers, whose blood was spilled for these truths of the Gospel.

The moderns think these Reformers were culturally-conditioned "kooks" with little to say for our times. Read widely.

Prayers for the Dead is Repugnant to Scripture--A Vain and Fondly Imagined Thing

Prayer for the Dead.

http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/tracts/CAT003_PrayersforDead.pdf

Prayers for the dead is attached to the Romish doctrine of Purgatory which the Church of England declared repugnant to God’s Word and a “fond thing vainly invented.” It is unscriptural, yet, Bishop Jack Iker of the ACNA and Nashotah House, a sponsor of http://www.virtueonline.org/, practices and teaches these things in contravention of the Protestant and Reformed Church of England.

It is unscriptural. It is contrary to the New Testament, to wit, that believers, at death, are absent from the body and present with the Lord. These prayers were rejected in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. Prayers for the dead are condemned by the Homilies. Bishops Jewel, Cooper and Ussher condemn such. The usual arguments for the practice are quickly rebutted in this fine article.

The 1928 BCP reintroduces the practice.

The Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology

The Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology: A Complete Analytical Arrangement of the Charles by the Rev. William Simcox Bricknell.

A free, downloadable version of this important work is available at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=9lZCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR1&dq=bricknell+judgement+of+the+Bishops&as_brr=1&ei=NStJSpi8OZSCNqjFvcYG

This scribe has read this wholesale indictment of the Tractarians by the Episcopal bench of the Church of England. We would invite our readers to submit a book review for possible posting.

My email address is reformationtoday@yahoo.com.

The Christian Priesthood

The Christian Priesthood by the Church Association.

Available for download at:
http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/documents/CAT002_ChristianPriesthood.pdf

The Reformed and Protestant religion of the historic Church of England does not have sacrificing priests, no propitiatory Masses, no “altars,” and no sacraments that are opus operatum.

This is why the 1552 Book of Common Prayer changed the word "priest" to "minister," to avoid possible mutilations towards Romanism. We regret that this was re-inserted in future Books of Common Prayer.

It is time for another Reformation. The Puritans were not all wrong in their critiques.

Biblical Ignorance in Britain

http://www.evangelicals.org/news.asp?id=1017

Robin Jordan at http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com/

http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com/

One evangelical Anglican in the USA, Robin Jordan, takes a look at the Canons and Constitutions for the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), indicating centralization of episcopal power as well as a bias towards Anglo-Catholics.

We refer you to Robin Jordan's blogsites for further amplifications at:

http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com/

and

http://heritageanglicannetwork.wordpress.com/

The Teachings of the Tractarians are not the Teachings of the Church of England by Bishop John Charles Ryle

The Teachings of the Tractarians and Ritualists, or in modern parlance, Anglo-Catholics, is not the teaching of the Reformed Church of England. Another helpful tract from Bishop John Charles Ryle (Liverpool).

http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/tracts/CAT004_RyleRitualism.pdf

The English Reformers cast off the fictions, fabrications, errors and idolatries of Roman priest-craft that disfigured the apostolic faith. The Anglo-Romanists, to this day, denounce the English Reformation as mutilated. When they call themselves “Catholic,” they mean Roman or Romewardizing. We would invite our readers to evaluate Walter Walsh’s The Secret History of the Oxford Movement for a further development of this point.

The latter work is available for a free download in pdf.format at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-9AQAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=walter+walsh+secret+history+of+the+oxford+movement&ei=FxZJSvCdMqHwygSPoMw_

These Anglo-Romewardizers long for union with Rome. See the recent moves of TAC for the prelature of the Vatican over Bishop Hackworth’s group. They revile Protestantism as a heresy, pestiferous, a cancerous, monstrous figment and they vilify the Reformers in vigourous and often abusive terms. The Thirty-nine Articles, contextually interpreted according to the theology and intent of the authors, remains an ugly and immoveable thorn in the Tractarians’ sides. It is the pebble in the shoe. Their general modus operandi is neglect and a denial of them, while those Romewardizers who are more conscious of history simply interpret them revisionistically.

An example of one silly attempt of this very poor piece of revisionism is "The True Unity by the
Cross" at the Reformed Episcopal website. See:

http://rechurch.org/Txtpdf/trueunity.pdf

The Anglo-Romewardizers, or Anglo-Catholics, as they dub themselves, hold to seven sacraments in violation of the XXXIX Articles. They pray to and venerate Mary. Bishop Jack Iker, of the new ACNA, recently returned from the Walsingham Shrine, England, where he visited “The Shrine of our Lady,” praying to Mary. They also invoke saints, forgetting that the Reformed Church of England called this “repugnant” to God’s Word. They also set up images and other Romish pictures. They have perverted the Lord’s Supper into a Mass with a sacrificing priest. They practice the reservation of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, while adoring, lifting up, and carrying about the elements. They pray for the souls of the dead. They deny the five solas of the Reformation, including sola scriptura.

These intractable Tractarians need to be driven out of the Reformed Church of England, as well as other Anglican communions. This is not historic Anglicanism, yet it is tolerated by people like Dr. James I. Packer, David Virtue, and other leaders in Western Anglicanism.

It is high time to tell it like it is and man the ramparts for the Gospel. These Tractarians are revisionists. We are seeking repentance from these leaders and issue this open call for them to be loyal sons of the True and Catholic Church, the Protestant and Reformed Church of England as embodied in her formularies and writings of her best sons.

Episcopal Condemnation of Tractarianism, Ritualism, and Anglo-Romewardizing

An excellent compendium from the Episcopal bench of the Church of England in late 19th century; it contains the signatories of 2 Archbishops and 22 Bishops against Tractarianism, Ritualism, Anglo-Romanism, and the illegal and arrogant defiances by some clergy; these interlopers and squatters have no place in the Reformed Church of England.

See:

http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/documents/CAT015_EpiscopalCondemnation.pdf

Westminster Larger Catechism, Q.94

Westminster Larger Catechism

Q. 94. Is there any use of the moral law to man since the fall?A. Although no man, since the fall, can attain to righteousness and life by the moral law:[402] yet there is great use thereof, as well common to all men, as peculiar either to the unregenerate, or the regenerate.[403]

We will be offering feeds from this great document that Anglicans should have embraced with a few modifications. Nontheless, it represented the theology of many Anglicans of that day without the rebellions of the Puritans.

Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland was one such man. For a free download of Ussher's works, see:

http://books.google.com/books?id=_ssrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=james+ussher&as_brr=1&ei=ZypJSqi5LaaGNaTyxMsO

This particular question from the Westminster Larger Catechism informs us about the lamentable reduction of the evangelical gospel in the 1928 BCP---the penitential dimension is diminished, as it is in our time.

That reduction, however, does not norm or govern our behaviour or duties. It is time for another Reformation within Anglicanism.

Why Anglicans cannot accomodate the Anglo-Catholic 1928 Book of Common Prayer

http://heritageanglicannetwork.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-with-the-1928-book-of-common-prayer/

John Foxe and Thomas Cranmer

The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, Vol. VIII (London: R.B. Seely and W. Burnside, 1839). This volume contains a preliminary dissertation by the Rev. George Townsend, M.A., Prebendary of Durham and Vicar of Northallerton, Yorkshire.

Volume Eight starts in bloody Mary’s reign,1556, and concludes in Elizabeth’s, 1559. The storyline is summarized thus: “…from the bloody murderings of God’s saints with the particular processes and names of such Godly martyrs, both men and women, as in this time of Queen Mary, were put to death.”

This eighth volume is available at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=uRMXAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA470&dq=john+foxe&as_brr=1&ei=kxJISreuHqa6zgTNz8Vk

This particular volume in the pdf.format is 805 pages. This work contains an exquisite time-line, a dream time-line, from a lawyer’s standpoint, to wit, the perspective of “what did you know, when did you know it, and when did you do it?” Additionally, having read Foxe in years bygone and once last year, they were abridged versions. This volume is not abridged and the Protestant and Reformed ethos starts on page one. The Anglo-Catholics won't be liking this version either.

The story starts with a 140-page rehearsal of the situation with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was from a gentleman’s family in Nottinghamshire and ultimately matriculated at the University of Cambridge. In time, he would become a fellow at Jesus College. The standard fare of academia was the Schoolmen. Divinity was controlled by distinctions and questions that obscured the perspicuity of Scriptures. Cranmer was schooled along these lines. The story shall be continued.

Questions for discussion. How did Cranmer develop in his love for Scripture? How did Cranmer relate Scriptures to patristics and the Creeds? We are aware that, as an Examiner for ordinands, he demanded knowledge of the Scriptures before the Schoolmen. He turned many ordinands away for the deficiency in the knowledge of Scriptures. Up0n improving their store of Biblical knowledge, they were glad for it in later years. What was his growth during the 1520’s? We’ll leave the 1530-1556 for later discussions.

We are aware the sola Scriptura was a growing and governing concern for the Bishop in the 1520’s.

That story is for another day. Perhaps others inquiring into Anglicanism will afford us comments on this book.

Regrettably, we are confident that US Anglicans will not be addressing these works. However, that amnesia does not norm or govern our behaviour or duty to understand the DNA of Anglicanism...as her loyal sons.

To be continued.

The Manglicans at VOL

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10717

We offer a few quotes:

"But that might not be the biggest issue at all. The powerful, uniting service at Christ Church, Plano, was barely over when an evangelical bishop whispered in this reporter's ear that there is an ecclesiastical tug of war brewing over Anglo-Catholic verses Evangelical dominance of the new province.......

So it is clear that evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics can work together to make common cause over the gospel and much more."

For the thinkers and readers, this is Utopianism. The Manglicans are true to form, gnostic, indifferent to biblical doctrine, indifferent to historic Anglicanism, and subjectivistic.

The English Reformers' Teaching on Scripture

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_107_1_Strickland.pdf

The English Reformer: William Tyndale's Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue

Tyndale’s Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord after the True Meaning of John VI and 1 Cor. XI and William Tracy’s Testament Expounded, ed. By Parker Society (Cambridge Press, 1850).

This work is available, free, and downloadable at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TOLOU6-00yUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tyndale+parker+society&lr=&as_brr=1&ei=MOtHSqqNKIzayQSB9NRA

Again, the frontispiece to the Parker Society editions gives this purpose:

“For the publication of the works of the fathers and early writers of the Reformed English Church.”

Unabashedly, the term “Reformed” is employed for Anglicanism.

The contents include:

1. Introductory Notice to Answer Sir T. More
2. Preface to the Answer
3. Answer to Sir T. More’s Dialogue—to the Four Books Contained in the Dialogue
4. Introductory Notice to the Supper of the Lord
5. The Testament of W. Tracy, Esq. and the Exposition of it
6. Specimens of Tyndale’s Translations

We have Tyndale's answers to Sir Thomas More, but also Tyndale's view of the Lord's Table, a controverted point between Lutheran and Reformed divines.

In the Introductory Notice, we are told that by 1528 Sir Thomas more was regarded as perhaps the most accomplished scholar in England. He received permission from Bishop Tunstall (some spell it Tonstal) to read the works of the Reformers in order to refute them. Sir Thomas More set to work within the year to craft The Dialogue, a discussion of two friends over the religious opinions of the day.

Here’s the dedicatory by More:

A dialogue of Sir Thomas More, knt. [sic] one of the council of our sovereign lord the king, and chancellor of his duchy of Lancaster. Wherein he treated divers matters, as of the veneration and worship of images and reliques, praying to saints, and going on pilgrimages, with many other things touching the pestilent sect of Luther and Tyndale, by the one begun in Saxony, and by the other labored to be brought into England. Made in the year of our Lord, 1528.” [emphasis added]

The Dialogue consists of four books.

Written in 1528, it was published in the summer of 1529. Tyndale answered the work in 1530, but it came to the press in late 1531. But by that time, More had been promoted from Chancellorship of the Duchy to the Chancellorship of England.

One of the features of More’s work is the constant reference to Martin Luther’s marriage to Katherine von Boren. One had been a priest and the other a nun. Ergo, their marriage on More’s view was illegal. One would hardly expect to find the tweaking of Tyndale and his theology by this issue of Luther’s marriage, let alone the abusiveness of the language. It is an argument of guilt by association. Normally balanced and wise, More betrays another side.

Originally, The Dialogue had nine books. The lengthy and wordy arguments moved from Tyndale to another Lutheran Anglican, Barnes. However, after twenty-five years, no one could find the nine-book set. We are left with four books. In the older version—the longer one—is an allusion to A Disputacyon of purgatorye made by Johan Frith, another English Reformer in More’s cross-hairs.

It is impossible to overlay Anglo-Romanism on the English Reformed Church; to have done so—as has been done—is a testament to the ignorance of the English Reformation.

We will bring you more by way of biography and analysis of this work.

What's Wrong with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer?

"What's Wrong with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer?" by Robin G. Jordan

http://heritageanglicannetwork.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-with-the-1928-book-of-common-prayer/

Robin Jordan says by way of introduction:

"In this article I seek to answer from a Reformed perspective the question, “What’s wrong with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer?” Classical Anglican Evangelicalism had disappeared from the Protestant Episcopal Church by 1900.The 1928 Prayer Book was adopted at the time the Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church movements were the dominant schools of thought in the Protestant Episcopal Church and the book reflects their doctrinal emphases. At the 1925 General Convention Anglo-Catholics and Broad Churchmen united to remove the Thirty-Nine Articles from the American Prayer Book. They adopted a resolution dropping the Articles from the Prayer Book. However, they were thwarted by the denomination’s Constitution that required an amendment of the Constitution to abolish the Articles. The resolution, which required the ratification of a successive General Convention, was quietly dropped at the 1928 General Convention........"

The English Reformer: Professor William Whittaker

William Whittaker’s A Disputation on the Holy Scripture Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton, ed. Parker Society (Cambridge Press, 1849).

On the frontispiece of this volume the purpose is stated: “For the Publication of the Works of the Fathers and Early Writers of the Reformed English Church.” Clearly, the use of the word “Reformed” was operative with the editors of this infamous collection.

A downloadable version is available at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=PhYXAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+whittaker+scriptures&as_brr=1

This work consists of the following sections:

1. Preface by the Editor
2. William Whittaker’s Dedicatory to Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s secretary
3. Preface to the Controversies
4. First Question: Number of Canonical Books
5. Second Question: Authentic Versions of the Scriptures
6. Third Question: The Authority of Scripture
7. Fourth Question: The Perspicuity of the Scripture
8. Fifth Question: Of the Interpretation of Scripture
9. Sixth Question: Of the Perfection of Scripture, against Unwritten Tradition
10. Closing: To the Reader

It will be clear from this volume that cardinal difference between the Reformed/Reformational communions and the Roman communion on the subject of Sacred Scriptures.

William Whittaker (1548-1595) remains one of the greatest Anglican theologians of the Elizabethan period. He was the Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge and one of Cambridge’s leading divines.

Whittaker was born in Holme, Lancashire, 1547, and nearly related to Alexander Nowell, the celebrated dean of St. Paul’s and author of Nowell’s Catechism. His uncle, Dean Nowell, sent Whittaker to St. Paul’s in London followed by entrance to Trinity Hall, Cambridge in October 1564. He received his B.A. (1568). In 1571, he began his Master’s work. Throughout his labours, his uncle assisted Whittaker by defraying costs and granting Whittaker “leases.”

He proved himself an indefatigable student of the Scriptures, varied commentators, and the Schoolmen. John Whitgift, Master of Trinity and the future Archbishop of Canterbury, took note of the young scholar.

By 1578, he had been admitted to the degree of B.D. at Oxford. By 1579, he had distinguished himself and was appointed the Queen’s Professor of Divinity. In 1580, Queen Elizabeth added the Chancellorship of St. Paul’s, London.

His teachings were consistently Calvinistic and, in some quarters, were viewed as puritan-leaning. However, in a letter to Bancroft, he is no friend to the radical puritans and had “small sympathy” for them. However, he shared with the Puritans an hostility for Arminianism which was making inroads to the Church of England. He embraced the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles in their intended, not Tractarian, sense. By 1582, he was engaged in opposing Romanism and took part in a disputation, Pontifex Romanus est ill Antichristus, or The Roman Pope is that Antichrist.

He also published Dec Ecclesia, De Conciliis, De Romano Pontice, De ministris et presybyteris Ecclesiae, De sanctis mortuis, De Ecclesia triumphante, De Sacramentkis in genere, De Baptismo, and De Eucharistia. A longer list is provided in the Preface.

Were Professor Whittaker, the Anglican and Calvinist alive today, he would not be accepted in any Anglican body in the United States. Dr. James I. Packer would not accept Professor Whittaker's positions today, not to mention any from the Anglican Church of North America.

Through the influence of John Whitgift and Sir Burghley, Whittaker was appointed by the Crown to be the Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge. The college grew in numbers and Calvinism was the dominant ethos.

In 1587, he was granted the D.D. and by 1592, the Mastership of Trinity College. In 1594, he published De Authoritate Scriptura with a dedication to Whitgift. The book that is before us is one of the great textbooks on the doctrine of Scripture.

Cardinal Bellamarine was his principle foe who had enormous respect for Professor Whittaker’s academic and theological prowess. It was reputed that Bellarmine’s fellow-Jesuits would comment on the picture of Whittaker maintained in Bellarmine’s office; it was a mutual respect between two academic lions, one a Calvinist, the other a Papist.

Whittaker is a must for every bibliography for an Anglican Churchman. It was copiously used by the late Rev. Dr. Philip Edcumbe Hughes in The Theology of the English Reformers.

To be continued. Part One

Call to Confessional Recovery in Anglicanism

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_116_3_Harp.pdf

A clarion and sage call by Professor Gillis Harp to recover Confessional Anglicanism. It is time to adopt additional clarifications to the XXXIX Articles to preclude liberals, Arminians, charismatics, and Anglo-Romewardizers.

The English Reformer: Miles Coverdale

Miles Coverdale (1488-1569). Writings and Translations.

Coverdale's The Writings and Translations is a free and downloadable book in pdf.file format. It is available at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=QVgYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR12&dq=miles+coverdale+parker+society&lr=&as_brr=1.

His first document in this work is “The Evident Declaration of the Holy Faith.”

It is commended for college students—with no Bible backgrounds--as an introduction to the OT. It would also be useful for modern Anglican Bishops to measure themselves against in terms of knowledge—to the shame of the moderns. Solid Christological views of the OT are expressed as well as commitments to the infallibility of Scriptures. This work is clear and eminently readable abounding in Scriptural references and allusions.

However, does Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, reflect his Continental wanderings and any Lutheran perspective in his OT overview? Coverdale was and has been known to have Lutheran views? Was he a Lutheran? Does his view of the Table change after a stay in Switzerland? After his return from exile, he was not reinstated to his bishopric but served a congregation in London. There may have been issues over vestments. As to his book, Coverdale captures the issues of justifying faith, justification, trust, and Christ-centeredness in the OT, from Adam till Christ. There is an excellent handling of faith and works.

Coverdale also does mention the false Church of Rome--of merits-salvation, invocation of saints, Masses for the living and dead, pilgrimages, pardons for sale, unnecessary “pomp” in religion, and other Roman matters. It is clear where he stood. It is also clear where he would stand today in relation to the Anglo-Romewardizers.

However, while speaking of these things, Bp. Coverdale uses a gentle hand; yet he views the Pope and Muhammad as anti-Christs. He blames the Pope for six hundred years and Muhammed with nine hundred years of suppressing Christ’s Church and Gospel. Coverdale calls the Pope a “braggart” and an Anti-Christ. In this, he stands foresquarely where all Reformers stood.

The book would have value for Anglican Bishops, Reformed Episcopalians as well. We include Dr. James Packer in his Manglican, mangled, mismatched and ineffectual accommodations to Anglo-Papalism within historic Anglicanism.

Any Anglican rector would do well to rehearse and teach this book to Vestrymen, other church leaders, and adult classes. This also would be a good text for college level students.

As a parallel, it would be an interesting history to read the writings of all Exeter Bishops from Miles Coverdale to the present. Of note, this would include a comparison between the Reformer, Bp. Coverdale, and an Old High Churchman, Bp. Phillpott, of fame in the Gorham trials of 1850--where the evangelical view of infant baptism was upheld against Bp. Phillpott—and to the chagrin of the emerging Tractarians.

The Phillpott and Gorham case was the same as (REC) Bishop Cheyney’s case in Chicago (c. 1870-ish).

Further information about the Exeter Cathedral is available at:

http://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/home.ashx.

To be continued.

Evangelicals and Catholics Together?

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_110_3_Murray.pdf

Evangelicals and Catholics Together--A Movement of Watershed Significance by Iain Murray.

While this document from the Church Society explores the conundrums and collisions of the ECT-movement with numerous heavy-weights involved, to wit, that both Evangelicals and Romanists are ministerial co-labourers and brethren not to be proselytized, there is room for a parallel analysis of the ECT to the recent mish-mash of the Manglicans in the Anglican Church of North America.

These Manglicans have mish-mashed and mangled the Gospel. Bob Duncan, their new Archbishop, has noted that we are not going back to the past, but moving forward with these tensions--or, as we dubbed them, conundrums and collisions.

How can Anglo-Catholics, Charismatics and Calvinistic Anglicans possibly work together?

English Calvinist: George Whitfield and Justification by Faith Alone

An excellent post on the Calvinistic Anglican, the famous evangelical George Whitefield.

http://reasonablechristian.blogspot.com/2009/06/george-whitefields-sermon-on.html

Thomas Cranmer and the Scripture Principle

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_109_1_Elliott2.pdf

Thomas Cranmer and the sufficiency, infallibility, and function of the Sacred Scriptures. Clearly, Archbishop Cranmer was in the Reformed and Reformational stream of cleansing the fallible church of errors, superstitions, and false teachings.

The Catechism of an English Reformer, Thomas Becon

The Catechism of Thomas Becon, ed. Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1844). This work contains “The Catechism,””The Jewel of Joy,””The Principles of the Christian Religion,””Treatise of Fasting,””The Castle of Comfort,””The Solace of the Soul,””The Fortress of the Faithful,””The Christian Knight,” and ”An Homily against Whoredom.”

The book is available and freely downloadable in pdf-format at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-8t6T7EhnXoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+catechism+of+thomas+becon

Becon writes this as a father to his two sons, Basil and Theodore, and his one daughter, Rachel. Eph.6.1ff. is his textual basis. David raised Solomon in godliness and on his deathbed exhorted Solomon to not leave the God of the forbears. This reflects David’s covenanted loyalties and adherence to the Word of God. Philip the evangelist (Acts 8) raises four godly daughters. St. Paul exhorts Timothy to fidelity to his scriptural training, 2 Tim.3.14ff.; the Scriptures alone are able to save to the uttermost and instruct the man in godliness and righteousness unto maturity, with doctrine and reproof.

Becon expresses his lifelong desire to rear his children in this very spirit and with biblical doctrine. He exhorts his children to receive the Bible and to follow it as his paternal or patrimonial bequest to them. The catechism is formed along dialogue-lines between father and son.

The son is six years old. The son asks the father to consider his slender attainments, to which the father responds. The father indicates that catechetizing is an ancient custom in the churches. Amazingly, the work in the downloadable pdf.file is 670-pages. This was what Thomas Becon thought a six-year old should be exposed to…what shall we say in 2009 in the Anglican tradition? That horrible Catechism in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer?

There are six parts to the catechism: repentance, faith, law, prayer, sacraments, and the office of degrees.

The father runs the son through standard definitions and numerous biblical references, to which the son gives amplifications with the father’s further explanations.

The second part is faith. “Repent and believe” was the substance of Christ’s instructions. Again, numerous biblical references and Heb.11.1—faith is strong, assured, and undoubted, enjoying what God promises. One notes here the Reformation-perspective rather than the doubts and anti-Niceanism implicit to Romanism.

Faith is a gift; it does not come of ourselves. A long list of Calvinistic biblical text are provided. We noticed at the recent assembly for the Anglican Church of North America, Bedford, TX, 22-25 June 2009, that an Orthodox Bishop called Calvinism an “heresy.” Thomas Becon and his son were, according to this Easterner, “heretics.”

See the OCA Bishop's comments at:

http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2009/06/reformation-today-oca-enthuses-and.html

The Apostles Creed has twelve articles of faith. The father runs through the Apostles Creed with copious references and theological development. It is Reformed. It also is straightforward federal theology with the vicarious penal atonement of Christ. The nature of the atonement is definitive and all-conquering. The son expresses joy over the great benefits which are received through Christ. Christ’s burial and resurrection means that sins should never accuse us again. Christ’s descent to hell assures us that the victory over death and the devil is real and complete. The cross of Christ is the “Altar” of sacrifice. The resurrection shows Christ to be the “valiant conqueror of death, devil and hell.” We are justified, not in the process of justification as Rome would have it. The son is asked to prove the Ascension of Christ from the Scriptures, which the lad does, quoting texts in full. This copious use of Scriptures alone evinces the conviction that Thomas Becon was a Reformer. The benefits of Christ’s ascension and session are presented. In heaven, Christ is our effectual Mediator, Advocate and Intercessor. The invocation of saints isn’t even mentioned; Anglo-Romewardizers have no place in Becon’s Catechism. The English Reformers and historic Anglicanism tore those Romanist roots of disrespect straight-up out of the ground. Christ’s victory is a “most certain and sure testimony of our ascension into the kingdom of heaven.”

Preliminary conclusion: this Catechism would work in our time. Actually, it is better than other Reformation catechisms, in some ways. And again, this was written for a father and a six-year old boy.

To be continued.

The Works of the English Reformer: James Pilkington

The Works of James Pilkington (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Press, 1842). From Parker Society Series. A series most highly commended for students of the Reformation in general and of the English Reformation in particular.

This book is available and freely downloadable at:

http://www.books.google.com/books?id=y6BfjCs6PDoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+works+of+james+pilkington&lr=&as_brr=1.

B. 1520. D. 1576. He was the Bishop of Durham, 1561-1576, home to the ancient Norman Cathedral.

James Pilkington entered Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1536, but moved to St. John’s college, Cambridge where he obtained his BA in 1539 (MA, 1542; BD, 1550). It is believed that he was ordained before 1550. According to the introductory biography, Pilkington was a zealous and learned Reformer, reading gratuitously theological lectures from the Book of Acts to public schools. He also skillfully defended Reformation theology in debates on Romanism at Cambridge in 1549.

In 1554, during the reign of Queen Mary I, he moved to the Continent, staying variously at Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Frankfurt. Our biographer notes that he lectured on Ecclesiastes, 1 & 2 Peter, and Galatians. We infer here and from other places that Pilkington was apprised of the Reformation solas and the different doctrines of Scripture, God, man, sin, Christ, justification, salvation, ecclesiology sacraments, and eschatology held in the Reformed, True and Catholic Church compared to the False Church of Rome.

When Mary I died in 1558, English exiles prepared to return to England. Pilkington was one of them; we find him at Frankfurt, Germany, home to the famous debacle and contentions between John Knox’s anti-BCP-party and Cox’s pro-1552-BCP party. The stench of that debate was odious to Frankfurtians, other Germans, Lutheran and Reformed, but also to the Swiss Reformers.

Prior to the repatriation of the exiles to England, a letter was sent from Geneva to the English Reformers counseling unity and unanimity in matters liturgical and ecclesiological. They were not to make ceremonies and other pieties matters of contention, but were to submit to lawfully ordained authorities. Pilkington wrote a response to Geneva, called the “Peaceable Letter.”

Upon return to England in 1559, Pilkington found himself associated with the luminaries of the English Reformation: Parker, Grindal, Cox, Guest, Whitehead, and May. He was appointed by Royal order to serve on a committee with these gentlemen in the revision of the 1552 BCP.

Furthermore in 1559, he was appointed Master of St. John’s College and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, replacing the ousted Romanist, Dr. Bullock. Widely favoured, he was an active preacher in Cambridge and London; he was appointed to the Royal Visitors’ Commission to collect fealty oaths to Queen Elizabeth; in order to obliterate the indignities to the remains of Reformation stalwarts Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius perpetrated by Cardinal Pole (exhumation and burning of the bones), Pilkington was appointed to preach at the memorial service at Cambridge for both Reformers.

He was eventually nominated Bishop of Durham on 2 March 1561 and was seated 10 April 1561, the first Protestant and Reformed Bishop of Durham. In the same year, October, he resigned his Mastership at St. John’s College.

(For current information on the See of Durham (home to Bishop Tom Wright), see:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/durham.diocese/diocese/index.htm and http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/.)

As Bishop, Pilkington found the diocese to be in disorder and found recusancy strong in the north, along with power struggles between the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland. He found corruption, laxity in conducting services, little preaching, and ecclesiastical pensioners with livings but without replacements, e.g. Bishop of Man. The new Dean of Durham (1563), William Whittingham, became Bishop Pilkington’s strong ally in the appointment of numerous, committed Reformers for this area with entrenched recusancy.

A northern rebellion occurred in 1569. The insurgents took control of the Durham Cathedral and celebrated the Romish High Mass. Pilkington and his family narrowly escaped. His letter to Elizabeth’s senior counselor, Sir William Cecil, outlines the difficulties for the Reformation in north-eastern England. The biographer notes that Pilkington was vigourous but modest, learned and grave, reverend and determined to establish the True Catholic faith.

He died in January, 1575, at the age 55. His body was reburied on 24 May 1576 at the head of Bishop Beaumont’s tomb in front of the high altar of the Durham Cathedral.

This book contains an Exposition of Haggai, Obadiah, and Nehemiah, “The Burning of St. Paul’s (1563), “Answers to Popish Questions,” “Sermons on Bucer and Fagius,” a “Tract on Predestination,” along with assorted letters.

He published Haggai and Obadiah to stir up the people to press forward with the Reformation. His work on Popery is unsparing and affords no liberality of sentiment to the false church. His work on a fire at St. Paul’s was designed to address aspersions cast by recusant-Romanists, to wit, that the fire was the result of Divine Judgment for theological libels, heretical sermons, transformed liturgies, and Protestant theology.

It is felt by scholars that there were other lost manuscripts that bore Bishop Pilkington’s notes.

Haggai did not bear the customary dedication. Pilkington felt it was the duty of all Christians to promote kingdom-issues and that the Prophet, Haggai himself, was a sufficient noteworthy. He calls the past “a Romish slavery”, like Luther a “Babylonian Captivity,” with the current days a new liberty to build God’s house. The Word of God is always working, saving those who believe and working condemnation upon those who disbelieve. Recalling Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple, Pilkington calls the church to change the “Pope’s market place” into God’s House. He recalls the munificence of the princes and leaders in offerings for the Temple, as well as beneficentCyrus and Artaxerxes of later times. Justianus, Theodosius, and Charlemagne. “Let us abhor popery, avoid sin and cleave to God.” “If God didn’t rule us every minute, we’d forget him and ourselves.” Fidelity to God’s Word, in season and out of season, in life and doctrine called for. He calls the recent Marian persecutions as God’s whip to Gospel fidelity.

Hag.1.2—Prophet speaks only in God’s name and with faithfulness to God’s Word. Similar call to Englishmen. He recites Gal.1.6 re: the Gospel and Dt. 4, the exhortation to neither add nor subtract to God’s Word. The Jews had failed for almost 40 years in building the Temple. “Papists” pull God’s Word from people; they claim the people can’t chew meat. Kings, princes, priests, and family-heads are to regularly teach the Scriptures, not the “John Mumble-Matins” of the Church of England. God takes away His Word as a form of judgment, Amos 8, and the false clerks are an instrument of the divine scourge. Pilkington lists several OT scourges and judgments. Yet, despite manifold mercies, the people claim, “It is not time to build God’s house.” Ingrates and self-service predominates. Whether rich or poor, all called to serve God—including fathers in their homes. PV—education and literacy grew with the Reformation and the exhortation to family-devotions with prayers and Bible reading, something unknown in the Church of Darkness. Zerubbabel, the Governer and Joshua, the High Priest, are rebuked as leaders of the many, with the call to pull down idols, restore the worship, and lead by example. The rulers are to be blamed, principally, although the rank and file do not escape censure. “Lay hand quickly on no man” means qualified ministers. Pilkington observes that England has failed here and that God and Cranmer sought biblical reforms. As God took Haman in his plot and pogrom in Esther’s day, so has God delivered many “Gospellers” from the persecutions of Romanists. He notes how God has prospered Germans, but England is still beset by problems.

Hag.1.3-4. God’s house to be built before one’s own house is built. “Is this not a setting of the cart before the house” asks Pilkington. Pilkington speaks of slugs. PV—one cannot escape the conviction Pilkington lays forward. There is no excuse for not building God’s Temple. God is to be obeyed over man, e.g. Daniel praying three times a day contrary to the royal order. Princes and nobility are not excused. “The rich men would not; the poor could not.” The pulling down of monasteries and chantries was well and good, but many sought a financial profit. The “fearful, abominable” will have no place in God’s kingdom. 2 Tim.4.2 obtains for all clergy. As Gregory and Chrysostom note, offense of people is often required for the preservation of the truth. (Hah! Tell that to Anglican accommodators! Weaklings!) Pilkington continues to run through biblical texts…if this isn’t sola scriptura in exposition and application, not sure what would be.

Hag.1.5-6. Sin brings spiritual insensitivities and judgments. This section could be read from a pulpit verbatim. More scriptural examples of sloth, indifference, and self-service. “A thin diet with the fear of God is better than a feast without the fear of God.” This section is quite a challenge; personally, after simply giving up on these fat-cat Anglican bishops, indifference and despair is the natural choice; this would not fly with Pilkington of whom a contemporary noted that north-eastern, English ungodliness, itself, vexed and killed the man. As is so often true with these English Reformers, they are concatenaters of Scripture upon Scripture—they were clearly exercised in God’s Word. Aside from Bishop Herter and Dr. Van Til, I have not heard a single modern pulpit that compares with these Scripture-men. The cumulative effect of “fire for effect” is massive demoralization before the witness of God’s Word; Pilkington leaves no room for wiggle-room. Residual sin (Rom.7.14ff.) will do no man any good, ergo, “battle-stations daily.” Artists paint varied nationalities in the customary dress, millinery and haberdashery, but always paint an Englishman as “naked.” More comments on greed. Pilkington chides the failure to advance the “Reformation” by all hands—it’s every man’s duty, rich and poor.

Hag.1.7-8. Strong words must pull down “stubborn stomachs.” Where there is stiff-neckedness, hard words. Where fear, encouragement and nurture. Ergo, go get the building materials and get on with it. Pilkington chides the Pope for his taxes and fiscal behaviours. Pilkington likens the individual Christian as the temple of the Holy Spirit, to be built, not just churches. No more idols at Canterbury, Ipswich and Walsingham. More chastisements of Papal pardons, pilgrimages, etc., and Masses for sale—serving the rich which mitigates Purgatorial sufferings, while the poor without such means are excoriated longer. Churches are for schoolmasters (pastors) and scholars (parishioners), a good metaphor for anti-intellectual Americans like charismatics. Again, all hands, royalty included, are to build God’s house, including heads of homes. All offenders are to be corrected without respect to rank or place. More Scripture again.

To be continued.

Calvinism in the Church of England

The Historic Proofs of Calvinism in the Church of England.

The Works of Augustus Toplady.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=120570822817&h=x9pby&u=6vRxb&ref=nf

OCA "Enthuses" and "Confuses" at ACNA Assembly

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/6/24/oca-synod-enthusiastic-about-dialogue-with-acna

Only Anglo-Catholics will enjoy this article. This speech by an Orthodox Bishop blasting the Reformation as "heretical" was well-applauded by the Anglicans at the ACNA Assembly, or "Alphabet Church of North America" without its Reformational anchors or roots.

Also, a video clip can be seen at AnglicanTV.

Mr. Jonah's (OCA Bishop) comments can be found: http://www.anglicantv.org/

Recovering Anglican, Reformed, and Lutheran Musical Classics

Creator God, our Sovereign Lord
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33k5tA0j3Xw

O God our Help in Ages Past
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asrwlIxLeko&feature=PlayList&p=65F2C8536DD0545C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

All My Hope is Founded on God
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asrwlIxLeko&feature=PlayList&p=65F2C8536DD0545C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Old Hundredth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asrwlIxLeko&feature=PlayList&p=65F2C8536DD0545C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Psalm 23: The King of Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asrwlIxLeko&feature=PlayList&p=65F2C8536DD0545C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Thine Be the Glory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asrwlIxLeko&feature=PlayList&p=65F2C8536DD0545C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Thine Be the Glory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asrwlIxLeko&feature=PlayList&p=65F2C8536DD0545C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

The Lord is My Shepherd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HndQZlmJPpc&feature=related

Praise my Soul the King of Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AezOmQ8vDk&feature=related

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deLc8Egb0Js&feature=related

Now Thank We All Our God
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v8kHKX61fg&feature=related

The King of Love, My Shepherd Is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMSa5cQjvoo&feature=related

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCQJcX_N08E&feature=related

The Church's One Foundation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=molBcp8S_Ng

Crown Him with Many Crowns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUpVH_PCemk&feature=related

O Worship the King
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUpVH_PCemk&feature=related

Holy, Holy, Holy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzqQGmXo22Y&feature=related

Youtube Readings from Bishop J.C. Ryle

Gospel Treasures by Bishop J.C. Ryle, Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ75a1ANCds

Gospel Treasures by Bishop J.C. Ryle, Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Hz8Lx9FM4&feature=related

The Way of Salvation by Bishop J.C. Ryle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y44mt9vkYms

Not Corrupting the Word by Bishop J.C. Ryle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S8h0eawjwk&feature=related

Suppose an Unholy Man Went to Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swGcsc7oUfE&feature=related

Dead or Alive by J.C. Ryle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swGcsc7oUfE&feature=related

Thought for Young Me (Section Five) by Bishop J.C. Ryle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDOMDS-VKYg&feature=related

Who was Bishop J.C. Ryle?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpq72E_oXoE&feature=related

A free, downloadable book. Facts and Men: English Church History by Bishop J.C. Ryle
http://books.google.com/books?id=r_gCAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:John+inauthor:Charles+inauthor:Ryle&ei=hihFSpj4Kqb0ygTwyphd

Memorial of the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas Cranmer by John Strype

Memorial of the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas Cranmer, Volume Two, by John Strype. This work can be downloaded, saved or read, by way of a Pdf-file (upper right corner) at this URL) at: http://books.google.com/books?id=ikQJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=thomas+cranmer&as_brr=1&ei=8gVFSp3MIoeyyQT87sxG

John Strype (1643-1737) was an English historian of the first rate order of magnitude. He was born in London of a French Huguenot family that had escaped Romanist persecutions in France. He was educated at Jesus College and Catherine Hall, Cambridge (B.A., 1665, and M.A., 1669). In 1674, he was licensed by the Bishop of London to preach and expound the word of God. He held later posts, variously. He died at the age of 94 as a Reformed and Protestant Churchman in the Church of England. He was buried in the church at Leyton.

Through his friendship with Sir William Hicks, Strype obtained access to the papers of Sir Michael Hicks, the secretary to Lord Burghley, from which he made extensive transcripts; he also carried on extensive correspondence with Archbishop William Wake and Bishops Gilbert Burnet, Francis Atterbury and Nicholson.

The materials he obtained were used in his extensive historical and biographical works, which related chiefly to the period of the Protestant and English Reformation. Most of his original materials have been preserved and are included among the Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Museum.

As such, John Strype figures into many works and bibliograpies on the English Reformation and Reformed Anglicanism. With the internet, it is now possible for Global Anglicans to access these writings without being near large and historic universities. A click of the button to save the work and read from a computer.

Reformed Churchmen need to read these varied sets as an innoculation against the various, uncorrected, tolerated Romewardizing germs in Anglicanism.

The more monumental of Strype's works are:
(1) The Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1694 (ed. for the Eccl. Hist. Soc., in 3 vols., Oxford, 1848-1854; and in 2 vols. with notes by PE Barnes, London, 1853)
(2) Life of the learned Sir Thomas Smith (1698)
(3) Life and Acts of John Aylmer, Lord Bishop of London (1701)
(4) Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, with his Treatise on Superstition (1705)
(5) Annals of the Reformation in England (4 volumes: vol. I 1709-1725; vol. II 1725; vol. III 1728; vol. IV 1731, 2nd ed. 1735, 3rd ed. 1736—1738)
(6) Life and Acts of Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury (1710)
(7) Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury (1711)
(8) Life and Acts of John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury (1718)

Why were our Reformers burned at the stake?

Don't ask Virtue and the ACNA-amalgamasists this question. It is most highly regrettable that Mr. Virtue and his two moderators, Turner and Webber, say little on the English Reformation.

http://www.churchsociety.org/issues_new/history/iss_history_rylemartyrs.asp

"Why were our Reformers Burned?" Good question. The modern ACNA-ers have not answered this question other than allowing a rebuke to Reformers ("heresies" was his word) by an Orthodox Bishoo at the recent ACNA assembly in Bedford, TX, 22-25 June 2009. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10693

David Virtue? Repression of Protestant, Reformed, Confessional, Evangelical Anglicans

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10657

Virtue's moderators, Paul Taylor and Robert Turner, routinely excise sage and insightful blog-commentaries from literate, Protestant, Confessional, Evangelical and Anglican sources.

This bias by VOL has been widely reported in England via the English Churchman. It is less well-known internationally. Send this world-wide. Virtue and his moderators are ill-trained.

Virtueonline? Would Archbishop Cranmer be comfortable at the Anglican Church of North America?

Herein, we get Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's view of the Papacy. http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_109_2_Elliott.pdf

And yet, at the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) meeting, 22-25 Jun 2009, an Orthodox Bishop states his desire for union and recognition of the ACNA by his Greek Church upon the grounds of repudiating the "heresies" of the Reformation, specifically, Calvinism. The attendees applauded the Greek Bishop.

We expect little to nothing from David Virtue on this. www.virtueonline.org or his Anglo-Catholic moderators.

Dr. James I. Packer on Dr. W.H. Griffith Thomas' Principles of Theology

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_092_1_Packer.pdf

An helpful introduction by Dr. James I. Packer is offered concerning the Rev. Dr. Professor W. H. Griffith Thomas and his stellar Principles of Theology. Thomas' work is an article-by-article commentary on the Thirty-nine Articles. If interested, email me for pdf.files containg the work. It is also available in hard copy on the wider market. This work has been a solid staple for Protestant, Reformed, Calvinist, Evangelical, Anglican Christians. Lucid, scholarly, yet eminently readable.

Contextually, Professor Thomas had the Tractarians and Ritualists in view as he laboured to present the Reformed and Reformational perspective on the Church of England and her children worldwide. Professor Thomas had been a Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, UK and a Principal of Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.

Walter Walsh: The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England, 1833-1864

Walter Walsh, an Evangelical Anglican, exposed the war plans against Protestant Anglicans by the 19th century Tractarian, Oxfordian, and Ritualistic Romanisers (TORR hereafter). The toxicity of battle is exposed in The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England, 1833-1864. The book is freely downloadable at www.books.google.com with an author-book search.

TORR had governing, global, national, doctrinal, liturgical, and anti-Reformation objectives. Subordinate the English Church to Rome, seize assets, livings, institutional structures, and obliterate the Protestant face of worldwide Anglicanism. Newman, an instigator, penned Tract XC as an early broadside.

In Tract XC, Newman sought to obliterate the Protestantantism of the XXXIX Articles with this goal: “… ascertain the ultimate points of contrariety between the Roman and Anglican Creeds, and to make them as few as possible.” His opinion of Article XXII’s adverse language (purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration of images and relics) referred only to corrupt Roman practices. Romish doctrine did not mean Tridentine doctrine. Pardons were only “reckless indulgences from the penalties of sin obtained on money payments.” Other hot zones emerged: prayers for the dead, supremacy of the Rome, auricular confession, reservation in communicating religious knowledge, pardons, processions, altar crosses, crucifixes, processional crosses, raised stone, mixing water with the wine, elevation of the elements, bowing to the elements, crossings, genuflections, Requiem Masses for the dead, sacerdotal vestments, ornaments, and the establishment of convents.

Tract XC also sought to stanch secessions to Rome. Rev. Lockhard noted, “On us young men Tract XC had the effect of strengthening greatly our growing convictions that Rome was right and the Church of England wrong.”

If De-Protestantization failed, some were to fight from behind the lines. Writing to De Lisle, Newman noted: “I perfectly agree with you in thinking that the Movement of 1833 is not over in the country…also, I think it is for the interest of Catholicism that individuals should not join us, but should remain to leaven the mass.”

Derision was frequently used. Keble: “Anything which separates the present Church from the Reformers I should hail as a good idea.” Rev. William Palmer expressed vitriol. “I utterly reject and anathematise the principle of Protestantism as a heresy…And if the Church of England should ever unhappily profess herself to be a form of Protestantism then I would reject and anathematise the Church of England…In conclusion, I once more publicly profess myself a Catholic and a member of the Catholic Church, and say anathema to the principles of Protestantism….especially to those of the Lutherans and Calvinists, and British and American Dissenters.”

Rev. Dodsworth summarized TORR victories. “I think its tendency towards Rome has been very decisive and very extensive. Look at the Church of England as it was fifty years ago, or even thirty. At that time it would have been thought Popish to speak of the Real Presence; the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice was scarcely known in the teaching of the Church. Auricular Confession, counsels of perfection, the Conventual life…we all identified with Popery. But now these doctrines and usages are quite current amongst Anglicans…just it not also be admitted that the revival of these things amongst Anglicans is so far a witness in favour of Rome?”

However, Protestant Churchmen rallied to the battle line. Four learned adversaries opposed the TORR-agenda (March 8, 1841). The Oxford tutors were: T.T. Churton, Vice-Principal of Brasenose College, H.B. Wilson, Fellow and Senior Tutor of St. John’s College, John Griffiths, Tutor of Wadham College, and A.C. Tait, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College. “Dangerous” was the term for Newman’s subterfuges.

Stiff resistance came from a meeting (March 15, 1841) between Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, the Heads of Houses, and Proctors. The leadership reaffirmed that that every Oxford student shall be instructed in and subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. Further, “the modes of interpretation as are suggested in the said Tract, evading rather than explaining the sense of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and reconciling subscription to them with the adoption of errors which they were designed to counteract, defeat the object, and are inconsistent with the due observance of the above-mentioned Statutes. P. Wynter, Vice-Chancellor.”

Evangelicals had target-acquisition as the Ritualistic paper, Church Review (Jun. 21, 1865) observed, “The Protestant is quite right in recognising the simplest attempt at Ritual as the ‘thin edge of the wedge.’ It is so….It is only the child who is not terrified when the first creeping driblet of water, and the few light bubbles announce the advance of the tide; and the Protestant is but a child who does not recognise the danger of the trifling symptoms which are so slowly and surely contracting the space of ground upon which he stands.”

Rev. Simcox Bricknell marshaled a literary salvo with The Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology (1845). Bp. Musgrave (Hereford) spoke of sophistry, evasion, and Jesuitical dishonesty. Bp. Monk (Gloucester and Bristol) invoked terms such as astonishment, concern, ingenuity, sophistry and vanity. Bp. Phillpott (Exeter) summoned terms such offensiveness, indecency, absurdity, incongruity, unjustness, sophistry, and variations from the facts of the Reformation and English Reformers. Bp. Blomfeld (London) referred to Tridentine colouring to the XXXIX Articles and the duty of the Episcopal bench to ‘banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines.”

William Goode, the able champion against Tractarians, wrote The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice. The Lord Chancellor Selborne summed it up. “When William Goode, afterwards Dean of Ripon, in his Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, called the Fathers themselves as witnesses in favour of the direct use of Scripture for the decision of controversies, some of those who placed confidence in the Oxford Divines, but were themselves ignorant of the Fathers, waited anxiously for answers which never came.”

An overwhelming broadside appeared with the publication of the 55-volume Parker Society Series (1840-1855), a series from the pens of the English Reformers. Supported widely by Bishops throughout England, these works are still our finest weapons.

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.