Reformed Churchmen: July 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Trophimus of Arles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When Did the Church of England Begin? by Revd' David Phillips

www.churchsociety.org/crossway/documents/CWay_105_CofEBegin.pdf

Article reprinted from Cross†Way Issue Summer 2007 No. 105
(C)opyright Church Society; material may be used for non-profit purposes provided that the source is acknowledged and the text is
not altered.

WHEN DID THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND BEGIN?
By David Phillips

I received recently an e-mail from someone in which they stated that the Church of England wasbegu n by Henry VIII. This is quite a common assertion and has even been made in radio interviews to undermine the Church. But regardless of the political point-scoring is it a reasonable assertionand if not when did the Church of England begin?

Earliest Christianity

As the gospel spread through the Roman empire so Christians found their way to the British Isles. However, we know little of this progress and the earliest clear reference to Christianity in these islands is by Tertullian in AD208. When the Diocletian persecutions swept the empire one of those caught up in it was Alban who was famously martyred in AD303. The Church in Britain was able to send three Bishops, plus others, to the Council of Arles called by the Emperor Constantine in AD304. The fact that the British church had such Bishops is worth keeping in mind for some of what follows, particularly in relation to the mission of Augustine. There was clearly a Church in these islands, recognised by the rest of the churches, but we could not really call it the Church of England.

After the Romans

The Romans withdrew their last legions in AD407 but left behind a strong Romano-British culture and Christian Church. The first British theologian of note was Pelagius, who died in AD420 and was described by Jerome as ‘a big fat dog from Albion, bloated with Scotch Porridge’. Our Articles of Religion now condemn the heresy of Pelagianism.

During the 5th century, Picts, Jutes, Angles, Saxons and Frisians all settled in Britain. Some had been recruited as mercenaries by the British but then turned on their employers. Others were migrants or would be conquerors. These various tribes posed a serious threat to the British and to the Church because these Anglo-Saxons were pagan. The tide was held back by the victory of the Battle of Badon (attributed by some to Arthur), but it could not last.

A Church destroyed

The later, English, historian, Bede is in no doubt that the British failed:

Among other unspeakable crimes, recorded with sorrow by their own historian Gildas, they added this - that they never preached the Faith to the Saxons who dwelt among them.

This is a telling comment and worth reflecting on for today. The British Church, according to Bede, failed to evangelise those foreigners who settled amongst them. When the Anglo-Saxons gained superiority the British and their faith were driven to the margins.

But Bede, also comments:

But God in his goodness did not utterly abandon the people whom he had chosen, for he
remembered them, and sent this nation more worthy preachers of truth to bring them the Faith.

The resulting Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (generally seven) endured from AD500 to AD850, which is as long as from the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to today.

Augustine of Canterbury

The evangelisation of the English was multi-faceted but one of the key figures was Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury. His arrival is a genuine contender for the title of the beginning of the Church of England. In 1997 the 1400th anniversary of this event was portrayed by many as the start, and the letters from Pope Gregory to Augustine refer to ‘the Church of the English’.

However, Augustine should not get all the credit. The British had finally woken up to their failures and had embarked on an evangelistic crusade amongst their neighbours and oppressors. Some historians (David Streater in a previous Cross†Way article cited the Roman writer Montalambert)assert that the main evangelistic work amongst the English was done by Celtic (British) monks.

This was going to be significant because Celtic and Roman practices were different. Thus there was not one church, nor one nation, nor one use.

Whitby

The problems over different practices came to a head in Northumbria where the King found that he and his wife celebrated Easter on different days, one having accepted Roman practice and the other British. The King therefore summoned the famous Synod of Whitby to resolve the issues.

A wonderful note on the gentle ecumenical discussions of the Synod can be found in Bede who records the pro-Roman Wilfried saying before his opponents:

‘The only people who are stupid enough to disagree with the whole world are these Scots and their obstinate adherents the Picts and Britons, who inhabit only a portion of these two islands in the remote ocean.’ Which rather put them in their place.

The arguments could not be resolved from Scripture, and little attempt was made to do so, therefore both sides appealed to other authority. What apparently impressed the King was the claims of the Roman See for the authority of Peter (an ominous sign of folly to come) and so Northumbria adopted the Roman customs. The nations of Essex and Mercia followed not long afterwards though the British by and large did not and many of their churchmen retreated from Anglo-Saxon lands in the aftermath of the Synod. In theory at least from Whitby onwards there was one ‘use’ in the English Church, but not one organization.

Hertford

The next candidate is the Synod of Hertford in AD673. It was Theodore of Tarsus, a reluctant Archbishop sent from Rome who set about uniting the church. He travelled the kingdoms meeting the various Bishops and eventually convened the Synod at which all the Anglo-Saxon Bishops and other leading churchmen were present or represented. The Canons of the Synod are hardly exciting but they did mark the adoption of a standardised canonical system. Theodore was in no doubt that his authority as Archbishop derived from the See of Rome.

It is therefore possible to argue that the Church of England owes its institutional origins to Theodore and Hertford, and still there was not one nation.

England

When did England begin? Again, there appears to be little unanimity on this. We could argue that it was when the Anglo-Saxons won ascendancy, but they remained divided and often quarrelling nations. Egbert (802-839) tried to unite the kingdoms by the sword but it was not really until a common enemy arose that the English united.

The sack of Lindisfarne in 793 announced the next wave of invaders, the Danes. Over the next century they threatened to do to the English what the latter had done to the British. The man who stopped them is often listed as the first King of England and our only King to be called ‘Great’ -Alfred. The Norsemen (known to later generations as Vikings) were not utterly defeated (and in time were fully integrated into the mixed stock of the English nation - we even had Danish kings for a while).

What Alfred had done was stop the English being wiped out. Nevertheless, and despite his greatness, Alfred was not really king of all England, that honour goes to Athelstan (AD939) because it was he who, by conquering Northumbria, reigned over what we would recognise as England today.

We could mention the Normans, but their conquest led primarily to Norman rule, the people remained largely English.

Henry

There then passes a long, and very eventful period during which the Church of England continued as a recognisable structure and England pretty much as a single nation. Thus we come to where we started, Henry VIII. What Henry did was finally break the power of the Bishops of Rome over the English Church. It was a power that had grown and caused no end of conflict over the years. Although Henry’s motives were far from laudable by the grace of God it worked for good.

Therefore we could make a case for Henry beginning the Church of England, but it would be a weak case. All it meant was that the Church no longer accepted the rule of a foreign power, its structure did not otherwise change. Indeed the very Act passed, the Act of Supremacy (1537), makes clear reference to the Church of England as an already existing institution:

Albeit the king’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England.

In a later reference we read of ‘the Church of England, called Anglicans Ecclesia’.
If we consider Henry the originator then by the same reckoning the Church of England ceased to exist during the reign of Mary and only began again with Elizabeth.

Conclusion

I suppose what we ought to do is hold a phone-in to see what the majority think. However, since we don’t want you to inundate the phone lines at Dean Wace House, the next best thing is if I tell you my view. You are free to disagree with it, and no doubt will.

By the time of the Synod of Hertford the English nations were in existence and could be considered, in view of their close ties and despite occasional conflict, to be the land of the English, or Eng-land. This Synod achieved what the earlier Synod of Whitby had failed to do, ensure some degree of unity of organisation and practice. Therefore, albeit tentatively, my vote for the beginning of the Church of England goes to ... the Synod of Hertford, AD673.

David Phillips is General Secretary of Church Society.

Church Society - Issues - History - Christians in England - The British

Helm's Deep: The MP for Banbury

Ninth Sunday After Trinity

The Collect
A Collect for The Ninth Sunday After Trinity

GRANT to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful; that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today’s Readings
The Ninth Sunday After Trinity
(Sunday 1st August, 2010)

At Morning Prayer
1 Kings 10:1-25
Romans 2:1-16
Psalms: Day 1 Morning

At Evening Prayer
1 Kings 11:1-15 or 1 Kings 11:26-end
Matthew 16:24-28 and Matthew 17:1-13
Psalms: Day 1 Evening

At Holy Communion
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 10:1
Gospel: Luke 16:1

Comfortable Words» Blog Archive » Hugh Latimer: Lord, rule and govern thou me in the right way

Comfortable Words» Blog Archive » Hugh Latimer: Lord, rule and govern thou me in the right way

O GOD, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth; We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Eighth Sunday After Trinity

This week’s Collect echoes the Lord’s Prayer,

LEAD us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

Hugh Latimer (1485-1555), Bishop of Worcester, explained why we must pray so, and not simply labour to be obedient:

THIS petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” the meaning of it is, Almighty God, we desire thy holy majesty for to stand by and with us, with thy Holy Spirit, so that temptation overcome us not, but that we, through thy goodness and help, may vanquish and get the victory over it; for it is not in our power to do it: thou, O God, must help us to strive and fight.

It is with this petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” even as much as St. Paul saith, Ne regnet igitur peccatum in vestro mortali corpore, “Let not sin reign in your corruptible body,” saith St. Paul: He doth not require that we shall have no sin, for that is impossible unto us; but he requireth that we be not servants unto sin, that we give not place unto it, that sin rule not in us.

And this is a commandment, we are commanded to forsake and hate sin, so that it may have no power over us.

Now we shall turn this commandment into a prayer, and desire of God that he will keep us, that he will not lead us into temptation; that is to say, that he will not suffer sin to have the rule and governance over us, and so we shall say with the prophet, Domine dirige gressus meos, “Lord, rule and govern thou me in the right way.”

And so we shall turn God’s commandment into a prayer, to desire of him help to do his will and pleasure; like as St. Augustine saith, Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis, “Give that thou commandest, and then command what thou wilt.” As who say, if thou wilt command only and not give, then we shall be lost, we shall perish.

Therefore we must desire him to rule and govern all our thoughts, words, acts, and deeds, so that no sins bear rule in us; we must require him to put his helping hand to us, that we may overcome temptation, and not temptation us.

This I would have you to consider, that every morning when you rise from your bed, you would say these words with a faithful heart and earnest mind: Domine, gressus meos, dirige ne dominetur peccatum in meo mortali corpore. ”Lord, rule and govern me so, order my ways so, that sin get not the victory of me, that sin rule me not, but let thy Holy Ghost inhabit my heart.”

The Seventh Sermon Upon The Lord’s Prayer

Church Society - Issues - History - Hooker ecclesiastical position by Carter

Our Modest Deportment In Public And Private Prayer by Cyrian

Our Modest Deportment In Public And Private Prayer

Our Modest Deportment In Public And Private Prayer
Cyprian Of Carthage (d. 258)

St Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, was martyred in 258

LET our speech and petition when we pray be under discipline, observing quietness and modesty. Let us consider that we are standing in God’s sight. We must please the divine eyes both with the habit of body and with the measure of voice.

For as it is characteristic of a shameless man to be noisy with his cries, so, on the other hand, it is fitting to the modest man to pray with moderated petitions.

Moreover, in His teaching the Lord has bidden us to pray in secret — in hidden and remote places, in our very bed-chambers — which is best suited to faith, that we may know that God is everywhere present, and hears and sees all, and in the plenitude of His majesty penetrates even into hidden and secret places, as it is written, “I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man shall hide himself in secret places, shall I not then see him? Do not I fill heaven and earth?” (Jer 23:23-24).

And again: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Prov 15:3).

And when we meet together with the brethren in one place, and celebrate divine sacrifices with God’s priest, we ought to be mindful of modesty and discipline — not to throw abroad our prayers indiscriminately, with unsubdued voices, nor to cast to God with tumultuous wordiness a petition that ought to be commended to God by modesty; for God is the hearer, not of the voice, but of the heart.

Nor need He be clamorously reminded, since He sees men’s thoughts, as the Lord proves to us when He says, “Why think ye evil in your hearts?” (Matt 9:4). And in another place: “And all the churches shall know that I am He that searcheth the hearts and reins.” (Rev 2:23).

And this Hannah in the first book of Kings, who was a type of the Church, maintains and observes, in that she prayed to God not with clamorous petition, but silently and modestly, within the very recesses of her heart.

She spoke with hidden prayer, but with manifest faith. She spoke not with her voice, but with her heart, because she knew that thus God hears; and she effectually obtained what she sought, because she asked it with belief.

Divine Scripture asserts this, when it says, “She spake in her heart, and her lips moved, and her voice was not heard; and God did hear her.” (1 Sam 1:13). We read also in the Psalms, “Speak in your hearts, and in your beds, and be ye pierced” (Ps 4:4).

The Holy Spirit, moreover, suggests these same things by Jeremiah, and teaches, saying, “But in the heart ought God to be adored by thee” (Baruch 6:6.)

And let not the worshipper, beloved brethren, be ignorant in what manner the publican prayed with the Pharisee in the temple. Not with eyes lifted up boldly to heaven, nor with hands proudly raised; but beating his breast, and testifying to the sins shut up within, he implored the help of the divine mercy.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England: Volume 1

http://books.google.com/books?id=n2c2ahZaSqkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cardwell+documentary+annals&hl=en&ei=h_RRTKaRMoP-8AbVwKSfBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

This volume is consistently cited in literature as a must-read for student of the Protestant, Reformed and Catholic Church of England.

Gerald Bray: Living the Legacy (Churchman)

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_123_4_Editorial.pdf

Churchman
E D I T O R I A L

Living the legacy

As 2009 draws to an end, we look back over a year that has been punctured by an extraordinary number of significant anniversaries. It is 100 years since Robert Baden-Powell started the Boy Scouts, 400 years since the first English Baptists appeared, 600 years since Lollardy was condemned as a heresy, 800 years since the ‘founding’ of Cambridge University, 900 years since the creation of the diocese of Ely and 1100 years since the formation of the diocese of Wells (Bath and Wells since 1245). If half-centuries are included, the list is even more
impressive—150 years since the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, 250 years since James Wolfe captured Quebec, 350 years since the beginning of regular meteorological observations in London (the first in the world) and 450 years since the Elizabethan settlement of the Church of England. These events have been celebrated (or not celebrated) in different ways, though most British people would agree that the award for the most ingenious commemoration must go to the Meteorological Office in London. Having predicted a warm summer, it then sat back to record the wettest July in its history, with nearly a foot of rain falling in some parts of the country!

But of all the memories evoked by this unusually rich year, perhaps the most interesting is the coincidence that makes it the 500th anniversary both of the accession of Henry VIII (on 22 April) and the birth of John Calvin (10 July). The two men never met or even corresponded, and it is doubtful whether the King of England ever heard of the Genevan reformer, who was only getting into his stride when Henry died, but it is fair to say that between them, they had a greater influence on the course of British religion and on the development of the Church of England than any comparable figures in our history. By breaking with Rome in 1534 (coincidentally also the year of Calvin’s conversion to Protestantism), Henry VIII set the Church of England on course to becoming an independent Reformed church. It was a controversial start to what we now think of as Anglicanism, but whatever Henry’s own intentions and theology may have been, once the break was made there could be no going
back. Because (or in spite) of him, the nation became and has remained Protestant, as have the countries which grew out of its subsequent overseas expansion and settlement.

The precise shape of that Protestantism however owes more to John Calvin than it does to Henry VIII, who never really broke with the traditional Catholicism of his youth. Calvin never visited England, but he corresponded with people there and welcomed British exiles in Geneva during the reactionary reign of Mary Tudor. It was in Geneva, under his auspices, that the best and most influential early English translation of the Bible appeared (in 1560) and relations between the Swiss city and the British Isles would remain close long after his death.

Calvin’s mentor, Martin Bucer, fled to England in 1548, and although he died there within a year, he made an impact on English theology and worship that can still be detected in the Book of Common Prayer. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion follow the outline of Calvin’s Institutes to a surprising extent, and their content is similar. It is no exaggeration to say that the theologians who shaped Anglican identity in the Elizabethan era were deeply indebted to Calvin, whose major works were quickly translated into English to become the staple diet of the new-style ordinands being turned out by the universities during those years. Not everyone was equally enthralled by this, of course, but opposition was muted and divided. Anglo-Catholic apologists have tried to find a coherent anti-Calvinistic Anglicanism which they attribute to such figures as Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes, but modern non-partisan research has generally shown that their claims cannot be sustained. They are based on the widespread but false assumption that Calvinism and Puritanism are essentially the same thing and that both go back to Calvin himself. In reality, conformist opinion in England was just as imbued with Calvin’s mindset as any Puritan was. This can be seen from the career of Archbishop John Whitgift (1583-1604), whose theology was as Calvinist as anyone in Geneva could have hoped for but who was implacably opposed to Puritanism. It was not until the reign of Charles I (1625-49) that a small group of anti-Calvinists was able to influence the development of the
Church of England, largely thanks to the king’s patronage, but the end result of that was civil war and the overthrow of the high church party, which was seen by most people as an aberrant blemish on the doctrinal purity of the national church, a purity which they identified with the teachings of Calvin.

But although that is undoubtedly true, it must be said that Calvin’s reputation among Anglicans today is not high. Presbyterians and other Reformed Protestants continue to honour him as a foundational theologian comparable to Martin Luther, but while modern Anglicans are often ready to embrace Luther, they generally turn their backs on Calvin and think of him as somehow alien to their own outlook. To take but one prominent example, it is noticeable that
the present archbishop of Canterbury is more at home with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and liberal Protestants of various kinds than he is with Calvin and the Reformed tradition, towards which he exhibits a curious blindness.

Others are more openly hostile, partly for reasons of churchmanship but mainly because of what they perceive to have been Calvin’s theology. To them he was an intolerant bigot whose belief in predestination was so strong that he had no hesitation in condemning anyone who disagreed with him to hell, on the ground that if they differed from him they could not possibly be among the elect people of God. Opposition to Calvin is to be expected in high church and
liberal circles, but it is also common among many who would consider themselves to be Evangelicals. The latter have often concluded that Calvin’s stress on the sovereignty of God (with its concomitant belief in election and predestination) was such that he did not preach the gospel, because God had already saved those whom he had chosen. The fact that some Calvinistic societies have distinguished themselves by various forms of racism (apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the American South) which has occasionally been justified along predestinarian lines, has done nothing to change this perception, and it must be conceded that even now there are fringe groups on the margins of Reformed churches that continue to advocate un-Christian social policies (like the reintroduction of slavery) in the name of what they regard as Calvinism.

The fairness (or otherwise) of this assessment is seldom tested, because most of those who dismiss Calvinism for these reasons have made no effort to determine whether what passes under that name is a fair representation of the Genevan reformer’s views. It can even be suggested that the fact that Calvin is so regularly treated in this way is a sign of his enduring greatness—he is the man everyone loves to hate! Nobody treats Martin Luther or Thomas Aquinas like that, not to speak of the English Reformers, whose personal views and theological outlook are unknown to the vast majority of people. Yet mention of the name of Calvin can still raise hackles, not least among those who have never read a word he wrote and do not intend to start now. On the other hand, Calvin can also attract admirers and followers in a way that remains unusual, and it must be said that the existence of uncritical adulators tends to exacerbate the hostility that others feel towards him rather than bring light to our understanding of the man and his work. That is a pity, because not only has Calvin’s influence on Anglicanism (in particular) been strong, but the recovery of that influence is essential if the church is ever to recover its vision and sense of purpose in the modern world. Nothing has weakened modern Anglicanism more than the erosion of its doctrine and discipline, the key areas in which the English Reformers who shaped the tradition drew most heavily on the thought of the great pastor of Geneva. Their circumstances were different, of course—England was not a small city state that could be controlled from a single church tower—but Calvin never suggested that the English should copy him in every respect. What mattered to him were the
principles, not the details of their application to particular situations, and he was more willing than either the Lutherans or the counter-Reformation Catholics were to recognize that England was a special case needing special treatment. That his generosity in this respect was not taken on board by all of his followers is not his fault and it is absurd to dismiss him for that reason. His message and general approach were adopted by Anglicans in general and it is these that need to be recovered in the church today, not the exaggerations of some of his more extreme followers. Calvin’s importance for us today lies in the fact that he realised more clearly than most have done that there are three pillars of Christian teaching that must be distinguished, developed and kept in the right balance. The first of these pillars is biblical exegesis, the theme of his many commentaries. The Bible is the source of Christian doctrine and must therefore be studied carefully and consistently. It is no good reading only parts of it or interpreting some things in it in a way that makes them contradict other statements. Nor is it true that everything is of equal value in every circumstance, regardless of the context. Without good exegesis, it is possible to have a developed systematic theology and even a comprehensive pastoral practice (as Roman Catholics do) but the foundation of these is insecure. Today, the study of the Bible has progressed in ways that Calvin could not have imagined, but the task of the exegete remains as significant now as it ever was. The sad fact is that much of what passes for exegesis today is little more than special pleading for one cause or another. This has been abundantly clear in the debates over the ordination of women, a practice that can hardly be justified exegetically but which does not lack for pseudo-support from Scripture, such as the extraordinary suggestion that Mary Magdalene was the first apostle because she was the first person to have seen the Risen Christ! That otherwise serious biblical scholars can say that
kind of thing and go unchallenged is proof, if any were needed, that we are still a long way from having a church in which a sound understanding of God’s Word can be taken for granted.

The next thing that Calvin is noted for is his dedication to a coherent theology, based on the principle of the absolute sovereignty of God. That principle is important because it protects both God’s transcendent majesty and also his involvement with his creation, a balance which is easily lost by the widespread tendency to err in one direction or the other. It would seem obvious that if there is one God with one mind, there ought to be only one divine message,
and that message should make sense. Put that way, most people would agree, but the minute you start to call this coherence ‘systematic’, hesitations arise.

Many Anglicans refuse to believe that ours is a confessional church because that would imply a system of interconnecting beliefs, while others (including many who would call themselves Evangelicals) dislike systematisation because they think it goes beyond what the Bible actually says. It is certainly true that we can over-systematise things, particularly when we are tempted to digress into areas on which the Bible itself is silent or reticent. For example, logic suggests that there must be a divine decree condemning those who are not predestined to salvation to eternal damnation instead, but the Scriptures do not dwell on this. We can make the point within the limits of our understanding, but having done that, we ought to respect the silence of Scripture and say as little about it as possible. If some people object to systematisation because
others are tempted to transgress boundaries like this one, then so be it, but the temptation to overstate a case should not be allowed to lead to a position where the notion of a coherent biblical message is lost. What we say must tie in with the Scriptures as a whole, with what the Reformers called ‘the whole counsel of God’. Today, many people have a reactive theology, based more on emotion than logic, which leads to incoherence once it is examined. For instance, most Christians are opposed to euthanasia, but many think there is nothing wrong with the annihilation of rebellious souls in hell. It never seems to occur to them that ending such apparently ‘pointless’ suffering is really just euthanasia after death! God hates nothing that he has made and even allows Satan to go on existing, so why should he eliminate unbelieving human beings? We may find it hard to understand, but eternal punishment in hell is a kind of ‘life’ (in the sense of ongoing existence) and therefore preferable to death, just
as life imprisonment on earth is better than execution. Think it through and you will soon see that logic produces a more satisfactory solution to this problem than a mere emotional reaction!

Finally, Calvin’s theology was a preached theology. It is a great misfortune that his sermons are less well-known than either his commentaries or his Institutes. Sermons do not travel well, it is true, but without them we cannot appreciate the dimension of pastoral application which was essential to Calvin’s theological enterprise. A theology that cannot be applied is no theology at all, and a theologian who cannot preach convincingly is betraying his calling. Conversely, all preachers are theologians of a kind—the only question is whether their theology is good or bad, coherent or incoherent, well constructed or cobbled together out of disparate elements. What we want are effective preachers, and only those who can handle the Word of God responsibly have any hope of achieving that. Most Anglican preaching today is poor because it is based on feelings and personal opinions, not on a reflective and relevant exposition of the Bible. Calvin’s mastery of the latter serves as a model to us today. It represents a benchmark against which we can measure ourselves and a standard to which we ought to expect the church as a whole to conform.

Much more could be said about all this, but in Calvin’s anniversary year, the importance of his witness and legacy needs to be restated for Anglicans, as well as for the Christian church as a whole. He was not perfect and it is always possible to pick at details of his expositions here and there, but to do that is to miss the point. Calvin did not want the church to parrot him, but to imitate his methods and discover the hidden depths of God’s Word. It is a challenge that remains as vital now as it ever was. Our church may owe its freedom to Henry VIII but it owes its soul to John Calvin, whose message and example shaped it during the crucial decades of its formation. Half a millennium later, we are still living the legacy bequeathed to us at that time and have not yet exhausted the resources which it provides.

GERALD BRAY
296 Churchman

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

An Evangelical Who's Who Sign A Letter Declaring That Allah Is God

The dangers of dramatic conversion stories « Churchmouse Campanologist

Reformation Theology: What's In A Name? A Review of D. G. Hart's 'Deconstructing Evangelicalism'

Monday, July 26, 2010

John Van Dinther & Friends » Blog Archive » Leadership and Truth: Benny Hinn questioned in Sweden and the Word of Life Church after his sermon! (Livets Ord).

John Van Dinther & Friends » Blog Archive » Leadership and Truth: Benny Hinn questioned in Sweden and the Word of Life Church after his sermon! (Livets Ord).

A discussion of Hinn's ministry in Sweden by a Swedish leader. And Hinn's off-the-reseveration views on the Incarnation, Trinity and pre-Adam races. This is Anabaptistic Pentecostalism for ya. Assemblies of God "voted" for the Trinity in/on/about 1914. LOL. "Loondom," when no other word will work.

Do the URCs Still “Detest the Error of the Anabaptists”? « Heidelblog

Do the URCs Still “Detest the Error of the Anabaptists”? « Heidelblog

A good discussion re: covenantal theology, hermeneutics and infant baptism as applied to Reformed Church membership. We live in an Anabaptist-Revivalist nation, but "we" of the Reformation (Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran) reject Anabaptistic hermeneutics--individualistic, moralistic, therapeutic, non-covenantal and generally amnesiacal thinking. Anabaptists are schismatic sectarians. Good on the URC's, if they sustain the Belgic Confession.

Church Society - Publications - The Principles of Theology - Article 1 - introduction

Church Society - Publications - The Principles of Theology - Article 1 - introduction

By Rev. Prof. Dr. W. H. Griffith Thomas. This volume is worth having on hand for studies of the XXXIX Articles of the Church of England.

Treading Grain » Post Topic » Guest Blogger: +Fitz Allison

The Illness that Threatens the Lutheran Church | CyberBrethren-A Lutheran Blog

The Illness that Threatens the Lutheran Church | CyberBrethren-A Lutheran Blog

Lutherans aren't alone.

Wannabe Anglican: "Silly Presbyterians"

Wannabe Anglican

Anglicans Ablaze: The Anglican Tradition of Common Prayer—Part 5

Michael S. Horton - Joel Osteen and the Glory Story: A Case Study

Morning Prayer (Mattins) From The 1662 Book Of Common Prayer

Sunday, July 25, 2010

York, Protestant Cathedral: "The Sixth Canticle"

Philip Schaff's "The Creeds of Christendom"

The creeds of Christendom: with a ... - Google Books

IM Book Review: A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church | internetmonk.com

Dr. R.C. Sproul, Pastor of Saint Andrew's Chapel -- OrlandoSentinel.com

PASTOR PAULA RESPONDS TO FALSE AND MISLEADING ARTICLE | www.paulawhite.org

PASTOR PAULA RESPONDS TO FALSE AND MISLEADING ARTICLE | www.paulawhite.org

Pentecostalist loon Paula White defends herself on allegations of inappropriate romantic behaviours with fellow Pentecostalist loon Benny Hinn. My bet is on this...and you heard it here for the first time. (Read Hinn's response very closely.) Once Hinn's divorce is final, these two will get married. (Pentecostalist loon Paula White is already twice-divorced.) This will lead to a larger ministerial effort and income for both. Hinn's divorce "settlement" will get ugly since he's a millionaire many times over. Pentecostalist loons, the lot of them. TBN, the Total Bonehead Network, fathered by another loon, Paul Crouch Sr., himself involved in an homosexual lawsuit that settled out of court, will give Hinn and White a pass as they always do, e.g. Arthur Blessitt. Loons, the lot of them.

Married Toronto preacher Benny Hinn romantically linked to healer - thestar.com

Benny Hinn, the lunatical Pentecostalist,in divorce court himself, is allegedly linked romantically to another lunatical, twice-divorced Pentecostalist, Paula White. Both are leading voices on the looney-tune broadcasting outfit called TBN, or the Terrible Broadcasting Network. This blog has absolutely no use for these heretical, apostate, thieving, and deceiving Pentecostalists. Their theology is anti-Christ and anti-Christian. Their victims or their constituency follow him because of their own ignorance, lack of knowledge, imprudence, imbalance and their sectarian and schismatic inclinations.
Married Toronto preacher Benny Hinn romantically linked to healer - thestar.com

New Calvinism: Conservative evangelist R.C. Sproul launches Bible college as his message catches on with young people - OrlandoSentinel.com

Do the URCs Still “Detest the Error of the Anabaptists”? (PV, Anabaptists = Baptists)

Do the URCs Still “Detest the Error of the Anabaptists”? « Heidelblog

For that reason we detest the error of the Anabaptists who are not content with a single baptism once received and also condemn the baptism of the children of believers. We believe our children ought to be baptized and sealed with the sign of the covenant, as little children were circumcised in Israel on the basis of the same promises made to our children.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Anglicans Ablaze: The Anglican Tradition of Common Prayer—Part 4

Reasonable Christian: Gordon Fee Endorses N. T. Wright

Humbled Haggard Climbs Back in Pulpit - WSJ.com

BabyBlueOnline: A picture paints a thousand words

T-Shirt Mens Light Blue "I love Anglicanism "

Amazon.com: T-Shirt Mens Light Blue "I love Anglicanism " Religions: Clothing

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VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - HERNDON, VA: Nigerian Archbishop Rips Episcopal Church's Revisionist Agenda

Friday, July 23, 2010

The Autobiography of a ‘Meer Christian': Richard Baxter's Account of the Restoration

www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_122_2_Gatiss.pdf

Lee Gatiss

While undertaking research recently for a book on the ejection and persecution of the puritans from the Church of England in 1662,1 I had the pleasure of reading a first edition copy of Richard Baxter’s autobiography. The aim of this article is to assess the value of Reliquiae Baxterianae published in 1696 as a source for the history of the Restoration religious settlement, and to examine Baxter’s agenda and bias. Though this decisive religious settlement underwent various legislative alterations and was enforced with differing degrees of severity during the reign of Charles II, its essential foundations were laid in 1660–1662. It is to these decisive years that we will, therefore, particularly confine our attention. Baxter’s account is illuminating at this point both personally and historically, and gives us an important insight into the mindset of those who were ejected from the national church in the seventeenth century. For all its prolix verbosity, it remains a ‘must read’.

Comparing Baxter to Other Contemporary Sources

To begin with, it is instructive to compare Baxter’s account of the Restoration with other contemporary sources. Debates in the Lords and Commons from this period ‘are among the most badly reported in all seventeenth-century parliaments’; even the ‘government’s own newspapers preferred rather to suppress information than to disseminate it’.2 Where evidence exists of intragovernmental discussion and skirmishing at court ‘it is usually to be found in
the least trustworthy sources: the fading memories and anecdotes of retired politicians, or the gossip of men only on the fringes of the court’.3 Among the most valuable contemporaneous accounts are those from Edward Hyde (Duke of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor),4 Gilbert Burnet (historian and later Bishop of Salisbury),5 and Samuel Pepys (Government administrator and famous diarist).6 As Seaward points out, however, ‘Burnet spent most of
the early 1660s in Scotland or abroad: his History of my own time relies for this period on second-hand information and, written in the 1680s, the rather simplistic views of early Restoration politics which it contains are heavily influenced and distorted by later events’.7 Burnet himself admits his all too limited perspective when he writes that for the first twelve years of Charles II’s reign, ‘I had only such a general knowledge of the affairs of England as I could pick up at a distance’.8

Pepys often has invaluable information from men close to the court, and was indeed ‘the most informative’ of English diarists.9 Yet his own rise to prominence at the heart of English politics did not really occur until after 1662, and especially (given his role as a naval administrator) during the Anglo–Dutch War of 1664-1667.10 So although what he writes of the religious landscape is occasionally of interest,11 it is often merely anecdotal and of dubious trustworthiness or value. He hears, for instance, of a meeting of ‘Episcopalian and Presbyterian Divines’ in October 1660 with the King and Lord Chancellor but can give no details.12 He hears reports that the City was threatening to abandon the King if he did not favour Presbytery, which even he is slightly dubious of,13 although he is clear on 17th August, 1662 about the City’s dissatisfaction with the impending ejection of the puritans.14 There are hints in the diary of the fragility of the Restoration regime throughout 1661-1662, which recollection of daily uncertainty is an indispensable corrective for those who study the period at a distance and might consider what transpired to have been inevitable.

The ‘most detailed and most lucid contemporary exposition of the events and policies of the 1660s’15 comes from Clarendon. His Continuation of the History of the Grand Rebellion was written to defend his reputation and legacy after his fall from power (1667-1672). It has the pungent scent of self-justification about it, and although written with a certain historical awareness and purpose he was forced, because of his exile in France, to rely almost solely
on his own memory without recourse to official documents (or other actors) back in England. Although ‘no study of the 1660s can ignore it’16 because Clarendon was at the very centre of the struggles between church parties, king, and parliament in 1660-1662, it remains a source which must be handled with great care, like most politicians’ biographies.

Baxter’s account of this formative period in church relations compares favourably to these other versions of events.17 He can be praised and criticised for various similar reasons. Unlike Burnet, he was not only in the country at the time but had access to figures at the heart of the establishment. We hear of him meeting the king himself and being appointed his Chaplain-in-Ordinary;18 he is friendly to an extent with Clarendon19 and has meetings with him for
various reasons;20 he knew all the actors in the tussle for supremacy within the new religious order;21 he was elected a member of Convocation,22 and was the leader of the Puritan–Presbyterian group in the negotiations at the Savoy.23 Not only was Baxter a major player, he was, like Pepys, also a meticulous and disciplined administrator and writer. He records many details from events he experienced first-hand, and his account includes a wealth of valuable
documentation. The end result is ‘a sprawling monster’ according to Lamont, ‘containing everything but Baxter’s laundry list’.24 A. G. Matthews comments—

To Matthew Sylvester, his literary executor, he left for publication a mass of autobiographical and other papers, which Sylvester, with a pathetically exaggerated reverence for his eminent colleague’s manuscript, laboriously copied out and published without editorial selection or rearrangement. As a result there appeared in 1696, under the title Reliquiae Baxterianae, a
folio of 800 pages, in which Baxter’s personal story, often of intense interest and value, was interrupted by arid wastes of those casuistical subtleties which were the great divine’s disastrous foible.25

Sylvester’s ‘pathetically exaggerated reverence’ for Baxter’s literary legacy26 may have left us much of merely ‘casuistical’ interest, but it also ensured that various historically useful documents were preserved for posterity. Time and again in tomes such as Cardwell’s Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England or his equally useful History of Conferences or indeed Gould’s Documents Relating to the Settlement of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity of 1662 (the standard sources for documentary evidence of this period)27 it is from Baxter that the text of important papers has been drawn.28 Some of these papers were never published or officially submitted to the committees for which they were drawn up, but they were certainly discussed and argued over.29 At other times, we know who wrote certain things because of Baxter’s identification of them in his account,30 and occasionally we can glimpse the process of amendment and refinement in Presbyterian presentations.31

Besides, pace Matthews, casuistical subtlety was often a feature not just of Baxter’s writing and thought but of the puritan mindset generally; so even in what to the modern reader may appear his dull moments he is not without value for reconstructing the thought-world of a key group in the 1660s. His careful, methodical commentary and collection of documents is of immense importance.

His record of events is often no less helpful. He punctuates his narrative with the record of various events in English and international history to which he is no more accurate an eye-witness than many others or concerning which he had no first-hand access to the facts. So we hear of the Great Fire, the Anglo-French War, and other incidents of this sort. Undoubtedly he is not to be privileged as a source for everything which occurred in the 1660s.32 Yet concerning the religious settlement, he is an exceptionally useful (though far from perfect) source. In his peerless account of the Savoy Conference he writes, ‘You have had the Substance of our wandering Discourses; you are next to have our unprofitable Disputes’.33 There is no commentary on the conference so full and detailed, and which gives such an insight into the
politics and theology of the disagreements there, a snapshot of the puritan prelate
divide. He adds—

Were it not a thing in which an Historian so much concerned in the business is apt to be suspected of partiality, I would here annex a Character of each one that managed this business as they shewed themselves. But because it hath that inconvenience, I will omit it, only telling you what part each one of them acted in all this Work.34

He was certainly conscious of the possibility of writing with historical bias, being one of the major players in these events. Although his character studies of the men involved at Savoy would have been immensely interesting it is no less useful to the historian to know the part played by each of the men.35

The Purpose of Baxter’s Account

Although Baxter was aware of the dangers of writing history with ‘partiality’ he was clearly not free of it entirely. There is an agenda to his work. There is some discussion about the development of the autobiographical genre in seventeenth century England; it is said to owe much to the puritan concern for self-examination, and their desire to have a journal of God’s dealings with both themselves and the nation or church for thanksgiving or encouragement in
later years.36 As far as Pepys was concerned, his diary was for personal pleasure. It was also a way of ‘canalising the stream of experience’,37 taking the often random occurrences in his full and eventful life and reducing them to some kind of order. He must also have had an eye on the future, whether it was to be able to justify his own actions to a Parliamentary committee or to
entertain his future readers (for whom, presumably, he had the manuscript bound), though it was never designed for the press.38

Baxter’s account has similar motivations. Not only in writing up his account some years later,39 but also in his dealings with ‘the opposition’ at the time, he had a keen eye trained on the future. His prescience about the future course of events and the intentions of the ‘anglican’ extremists to exclude the puritans were notable. He made sure they were noted and recorded so that posterity could mark how clearly he knew what was at stake. This is well illustrated by the fact that when offered the chance at Savoy to present written papers rather than having a verbal debate, Baxter leapt at the chance. He gave four reasons for this, the fourth being—

But above all, that else our Cause would never be well understood by our People, or Foreigners, or Posterity; but our Conference and Cause would be misreported and published as the Conference at Hampton Court was to our Prejudice, and none durst contradict it. And that what we said for our Cause, would this way come fully and truly to the Knowledge of England and of other Nations; and that if we refused this Opportunity of leaving upon Record our Testimony against Corruptions, for a just and moderate Reformation, we were never like to have the like in hast again.40

There should be, he says, ‘a standing Witness to Posterity’ of what went on.41 As Baxter rightly notes, the Hampton Court conference of 1604 was the closest precedent for the meeting at the Savoy. That meeting between James I (plus Archbishop and eight Bishops, eight Deans, and one Archdeacon) and a party of four or five moderate Puritans saw the Puritans denied their exceptions against the Prayer Book, though they claimed the support of around 1000
ministers in the Millenary Petition.42

According to Schaff, ‘The accounts of the Hampton Court Conference are mostly derived from the partial report of Dr. William Barlow, Dean of Chester, who was present’.43 Needless to say, his published account was not at all favourable to the Puritans, whose objections he presents as frivolous and unlearned while giving an obsequiously laudatory view of the King and his
Bishops.44

The Hampton Court conference led to the enforcement of new rules of subscription for ministers which ‘caused the deprivation of some puritan ministers’.45 Baxter foresaw that this might well happen again after the Savoy Conference. So the King was reminded that the ceremonies objected to by the puritans had been ‘a Cause of depriving the Church of the Fruit and Benefit which might have been reaped from the Labours of many Learned and Godly
ministers’ who would not be able to sign up to their use. They had been the occasion for ‘great Separations from our Church…[and] may be more likely than ever heretofore to produce the same Inconveniences’.46 He warned that many ministers ‘prefer the Peace of their Consciences in God’s Worship above all their Civil Concernments whatsoever’.47

Baxter’s prescience was not appreciated by either side. Calamy and Reynolds were troubled by the plainness of what Baxter wrote during the conference, and urged him to leave out predictions of what would happen if there was no agreement between the Puritans and the Church of England, fearing it might be heard as a threat. He did not want to leave out such things ‘and thereby made them think me too plain and unpleasing, as never used to the Language or Converse of a Court: But it was not my unskilfulness in a more pleasing Language, but my Reason and Conscience (upon foresight of the Issue) which was the Cause’.48

The Bishops, on the other hand, were also offended by Baxter’s foresight. They would, he said, end up calling him and others ‘Schismaticks’ because they disagreed on some matters which were really of secondary importance— This speech they were offended at, and said, that I sought to make them odious, by representing them as cruel, and Persecutors, as if they intended to silence and cast out so many. And it was one of the greatest matters of Offence against me, that I foreknew and foretold them what they were about to do…I told them that either they do intend such a Course or not: If they do, why should they think us criminal for knowing it? If not, what need had we of all these Disputes with them? which were only to persuade them not to cast out the Ministers and the People on these Accounts. And it was but a few Weeks after this that Bishop Morley himself did silence me, forbidding me to preach in his Diocese (sic), who now took it so heinously that I did foretell it….So dangerous is it to foreknow what cruel Men are about to do.49

Clearly he always had an eye on the momentousness of the occasion and the seriousness of the consequences, acting and writing with that future which he foresaw in mind.50 As he says himself, ‘I thought that the Day and Cause commanded me those two things, which then were objected against me as my Crimes, viz. speaking too boldly, and too long.’51 He was correct about the crucial nature of ‘the Day’, and I do not doubt his insight into the probable result of the negotiations, nor judge his claims to it to be an invention of a later date. Yet he makes as much of it as he can in his written account, for obvious apologetic reasons. He carefully leaves the impression that he was correct to be so forthright, hindsight justifying him since the puritans were in fact ejected and silenced.

Yet, however, another interpretation might partly blame Baxter himself for this, given that he was not the most skilled negotiator in the Presbyterian camp. Radcliff dismissively writes of his leadership and contribution at Savoy that— Ecclesiastical politics, like secular, is the art of the possible. Baxter, a visionary, had little conception of the art. Having irritated his opponents, he was surprised and mortified by their indifference (as it seemed) to his ‘Work’. It does not appear to have occurred to him that the bishops would see in his project the promise not of peace, but of a continuance of strife.52

J. M Lloyd Thomas while more sympathetic concurs when he says, ‘He towered above most of even the leaders of his contemporaries, but he had a fatal gift for dividing his followers and alienating all but a few through-fire and-water admirers…by expecting others to have a like candour [as he had] he acted on smaller minds as a maddening irritant.53 That certainly seems to have been his effect upon the bishops.

Bias in Baxter’s Account

No historian is without bias in re-telling his narrative, least alone one who was also an actor in the story. Occasionally we glimpse Baxter’s more obvious attempts at self-justification, such as when he clears his name from accusations that he was not a Chaplain to the King.54 We see this again when his letter to Clarendon refusing a bishopric is reprinted, and we are given a chance to sample his humility in not only turning it down for himself but suggesting other good men who should be so honoured, and his suggestion that he would be content merely to return to Kidderminster as the curate.55 As N. H. Keeble points out, Baxter must have had only one audience in mind when he wrote: posterity. In large part he sought ‘to exonerate himself’ and ‘set the record straight’.56 Yet his account is more than merely ‘a careful exercise in self-vindication’ as Cooper avers.57 It is also a plea for what he himself calls ‘mere Christianity’—
I am a CHRISTIAN, a MEER CHRISTIAN, of no other Religion; and the Church that I am of is the Christian Church … I am against all Sects and dividing Parties: But if any will call Meer Christians by the name of a Party, because they take up with Meer Christianity, Creed, and Scripture, and will not be of any dividing or contentious Sect, I am of that Party which is so against Parties.58

It is this same ‘meer Christianity’ for which he argues in the Reliquiae Baxterianae. So when discussing the contending parties in debates over church government he writes— each one had some Truths in peculiar, which the other overlookt, or took little notice of, and each had their proper Mistakes which gave advantage to their Adversaries; though all of them had so much truth in common among them as would have made these Kingdoms happy, if it had been unanimously and soberly reduced to practice, by prudent and charitable Men.59

Baxter was called to be part of a Committee to draw up a list of the ‘fundamentals of religion’ as a test for toleration under the Protectorate. ‘I knew how ticklish a Business the Enumeration of Fundamentals was,’ he writes, ‘and of what very ill Consequence it would be if it were ill done.’60 His conclusion therefore was that ‘I would have had the Brethren to have offered
the Parliament the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Decalogue alone as our Essentials or Fundamentals; which at least contain all that is necessary to Salvation, and hath been by all the Ancient Churches taken for the Sum of their Religion’.61

It is this brand of moderate Christianity for which he stood during the Restoration period, and which he seeks to recommend in his historical account. His ‘constant concern is to distinguish this central body of moderate opinion from the formal excesses of the Episcopalians on the one hand, and the enthusiastic excesses of fanatics on the other’.62

His agenda here is also observable in the way he categorizes conformists and nonconformists
after the settlement of 1662. His taxonomy looks roughly like this:63 It is always instructive to note how people divide up their world, as it tells us something of their perceptions and prejudices. Baxter’s taxonomy of responses to the 1662 Act of Uniformity is particularly interesting because of the way he presents the different parties and thus positions himself amongst them. He clearly has little real sympathy with the conformists. The Presbyterians who
conformed he described thus: ‘Some were young raw Men that were never Conformists Non-Conformists Presbyterians in possession before the Restoration —those allowed by their bishop
to subscribe ‘in their own sense’ to the settlement, either with vocal reservations or in a paper.
Old School—for the old religious order, anti- Covenant, anti-Wars but couldn’t ‘assent and consent to all things’ now imposed. Latitudinarians—Cambridge men and Arminians, charitable on salvation of heathen, scholarly types. Didn’t like the settlement but not so bothered as to leave the Church over it. Reconcilers —those who abhorred party spirit, were for Ignatius’s
episcopacy but not English diocesan frame, like what’s good in all forms of govt but see bad in
all too. Hearty conformists a. prelate types by conviction who hated nonconformists. b. prelate types who were moderate towards nonconformists (and twisted the sense of subscription somewhat) c. ignorant ones who were just in it for money and power. Presbyterians Independents some good, but some ‘addicted to separations and divisions’, opened
door to Anabaptists and other sects. versed in such kind of Controversies…Some had Wives and Children and Poverty, which were great Temptations to them.’64 The implication is that they
were able to get away with something others could not countenance, or that they were forced into conforming for financial reasons.

Similarly, the Latitudinarians, he declares, place far too charitable a sense on the words of the Oaths and Laws which bind them, and are guilty of ‘Jesuitical Equivocation’.65 This sort of twisting of the sense of the conditions of conformity was also practiced by some of the prelatical Episcopal Party, though many of them were merely ‘raw, or ignorant Readers, or unlearned Men, or sensual scandalous Ones, who would be hot for any thing by which they might rise or be maintained’. Many of the conforming Presbyterians and Latitudinarians he admits are ‘laudable Preachers…their profitable Preaching is used by God’s Providence’.66 Yet he clearly has little empathy for their reasoning.

As for the Nonconformists, Baxter is also careful to make distinctions. Some he knew ‘were for the old Conformity’ pre-Civil War, but could not assent and consent to everything in the new conformity. These were few. A greater number, he says, were ‘Reconcilers’, those ‘of no Sect or Party, but abhorring the very Name of Parties’. They are described positively as peaceful, reasonable, moderate men: they are after all ‘of the Judgment which I have described my self to be in the beginning of this Book’. These, and the Presbyterians, he says ‘(if I be not taken for a partial Witness) are the soberest, and most judicious, unanimous, peaceable, faithful, able, constant Ministers in this Land, or that I have heard or read of, in the Christian World!’67 Yet clearly he is showing here more than a little partiality!

He just as clearly wishes to distinguish himself from many of the Independents. Some of them are ‘serious godly People, some of them moderate’. Yet among them are also reckoned some who are ‘more raw, and self-conceited, and addicted to Separations and Divisions, their Zeal being greater than their Knowledge’. He has in mind some like John Owen who he elsewhere described as a ‘breaker’, but also those who ‘are proper Fanaticks, looking too much to
Revelations within, instead of the Holy Scriptures’.68 Thus we see that Baxter positions himself as a most moderate and peaceable fellow in contradistinction to various extremists on both the left and the right.

Typically he can find something praiseworthy in some of those to either side of him (Latitudinarians and conforming Presbyterians; Presbyterians and some Independents) but not to certain others (intolerable Sects and Independents who are too fond of divisions; carnally-motivated Conformists). Thus we see that his attraction to ‘meer Christianity’ functions as an organising principle throughout his narrative and colours the way he sees and describes events.
Yet Baxter retains a fascinating power to surprise the reader too. Having described what happened on Bartholomew Day and the ejection and silencing of 1800-2000 ministers, he manages not to show immediate sympathy but to censure many of them— when Pastors and People should have been humbled for their Sins, and lamented their former Negligence and Unfruitfulness, most of them were filled with Disdain and Indignation against the Prelates, and were ready with Confidence to say, ‘God will not long suffer so wicked and cruel a Generation of Men: It will, be but a little while till God will pull them down’: And thus Men were puft up by other Mens sinfulness, and kept from a kindly humbling of themselves.69 Thus we see the truth of his assertion that he was no merely partisan thinker or puritan apologist.

Conclusion

To sum up, it is hard to disagree with Tim Cooper’s assessment when he says— In conclusion, the Reliquiae Baxterianae is a complicated source that must be used with extreme care. The point is, though, that it can be used. Armed with a cautious distrust, and aware of potential areas of distortion, we can extract from this difficult book an understanding of Richard Baxter that is both accurate and illuminating.70 The Reliquiae Baxterianae is equally useful, when handled with equal sensitivity, as a source for the Restoration religious settlement. Despite its
flaws, it remains the premier and vital starting point for any serious engagement with this crucial episode in English Church history. A reading of the original or of one of the more modern abridgements is highly recommended.

Revd. LEE GATISS is Associate Minister of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate in the City
of London, and editor of The Theologian: The Internet Journal for Integrated
Theology.

1. The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans (London:
Latimer Trust, 2007).
2. P. Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime,
1661-1667 (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), p. 6.
3. Ibid., p. 7.
4. As Lord Chancellor, Clarendon was Charles II’s most important minister at a time
when the role and title of ‘Prime Minister’ was not yet developed. His account of
1660-1662 is found in The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Lord High
Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxford: in which is
included a Continuation of his History of the Grand Rebellion New Edition Vol. 1
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1827) pp. 311ff. (vol. 1 p. 311 to vol. 2 p. 202).
5. Burnet’s account first appeared in 1723 and is found in Bishop Burnet’s History of
His own Time Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill, 1753) Book 2,
pages 129-285 or in the New Edition of 1850 (London: William S. Orr & Co,
1850), pp. 60-133.
6. The standard short (1096 page) edition is R. Latham, The Shorter Pepys from The
Diary of Samuel Pepys, a new and complete transcription edited by Robert Latham
and William Matthews (London: Bell and Hyman, 1985) pages 1-248.
7. Seaward, op. cit., p. 7. Burnet’s time abroad was spent profitably; he learned
Hebrew at the feet of a rabbi in Amsterdam.
8. G. Burnet, History of his Own Time (London:William S. Orr&Co, 1850) Vol. 1, p. 60.
9. Latham, op.cit., page xxxviii.
10. Ibid., p. xxvi.
11. It is interesting, for instance, to hear him report on 7th July 1660 that this was the
first time he had ever heard ‘singing-men in Surplices in my life’—the Church of
England was re-establishing its old ritual (ibid., p. 61 cf. p. 145). On the 29th July
(p. 67) he complains that at one church service with the Bishop of Salsbury (sic) the
sermon was ‘cold’ and ‘the ceremonies did not please me, they do so overdo them’.
(see similar comments on 7th Oct., pp. 84-85). By November 1660 his minister at
St. Olave’s is beginning ‘to nibble at the Common Prayer… But the people have
beene so little used to it that they could not tell what to answer’ (4th Nov., p. 91).
12. Ibid., 22nd Oct., 1660, p. 88. His patron and source here, The Earl of Sandwich,
was “a perfect Sceptique” and not interested in such details. He also reports briefly
on the restoration of the Bishops to the Lords (p. 137).
13. Ibid., 26th July 1661 (p. 147).
14. Ibid., 17th August 1662, pp. 218-19. He also narrates the festivities on the Thames
the following Saturday, with 10,000 barges and boats, which must have been a
great distraction to the populace (p. 221).
15. Seaward, op.cit., p. 7.
16. Ibid., p. 8.
17. Baxter’s account is found in Reliquiae Baxterianae (London: Matthew Sylvester,
1696), Part II ,. 215-430. I am grateful to Wendy Bell (Oak Hill College Library)
for extended access to the first edition of this work from the Latimer Collection.
18. Reliquiae Baxterianae Part II p. 229.
19. E.g. ibid., p. 300: after a letter from the Lord Chancellor seeking favour for Baxter,
he writes, ‘Can any thing be more serious and cordial and obliging than all this: For
a Lord Chancellour that hath the Business of the Kingdom upon his hand…to take
up his time so much and often about so low a Person’.
20. They had many meetings together according to Part II p. 265, and he had ‘frequent
Business with the Lord Chancellour’ according to Part II p. 279.
21. His interactions with the Episcopal players is outlined in Baxter, op.cit., Part II p.
363-4. His knowledge of the puritans (both Presbyterian, Congregational and
otherwise) is seen in his lists of ejected ministers and descriptions of them in Part
III, pp. 90-98. His acquaintance with many other substantial people is seen in the
collection of letters mingled into the account, for which see Baxter's index under L
for correspondence with John Owen, Amyraut, Dr. Manton, the Government of
New England, Dr. Bates, as well as letters to and from Earls and various Ladies of
substance.
22. He and Calamy were elected according to Baxter, op.cit., Part II p. 333 but were
not able to take their places, being ‘excused’ by the Bishop of London. The election
itself was loaded in various ways in favour of the ‘Diocesan Party’, says Baxter.
23. Baxter refers to his lead role in speaking at Savoy in Baxter, op.cit., p. 364: “As for
myself, the reason why I spake so much was because it was the desire of my
Brethren, and I was loth to expose them to the hatred of the Bishops…”
24. W. Lamont, “The Religious Origins of the English Civil War,” in G. Schochet (ed.),
Religion, Resistance, and Civil War. Proceedings of the Folger Institute Center for
the History of British Political Thought, Vol. 3 (Washington, DC, 1990), p. 6 as
quoted in Cooper, op. cit., p. 198.
25. A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised: Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy's Account
of the Ministers and Others Ejected and Silenced, 1660-1662 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1988 [1934]), pp. xvi-xvii. These comments are not quite fair. It is the book’s immense size which led to Calamy’s abridgement and subsequent enlargement of the list of ejected ministers which stands behind Matthews’s own work. And yet Baxter is far from comprehensive in all that he records—hence my difficult, for example, in identifying him as the author of the letter from ‘A.B.’ to a ‘person of quality’ in The Tragedy of 1662, p. 27, fn. 83.
26. J. M. Lloyd Thomas, citing Calamy’s report of Sylvester’s treatment of the manuscript as almost a sacred thing not to be tampered with (he was ‘cramped by a sort of superstition’) says that Sylvester ‘regarded the MS. of the Autobiography with somewhat of the veneration which is offered to the relic of a saint’ in The Autobiography of Richard Baxter edited by J. M. Lloyd Thomas (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1925), p. x. He is also careful to point out that even Sylvester did suppress and modify some portions of the text he received, so that editorial
intervention, while not intrusive, was ‘far from negligible’ in some places.
27. E. Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England being a
collection of injunctions, declarations, orders, articles of inquiry, &c. from the year
1546 to 1716; with notes historical and explanatory (Oxford: OUP, 1839). E. Cardwell, A History of Conferences and Other Proceedings Connected with the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer; from the year 1558 to the year 1690 (Oxford: OUP, 1841). G. Gould, Documents Relating to the Settlement of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity of 1662 (London: W. Kent & Co, 1862).
28. E.g., in Gould’s collection there are 35 documents and official papers (warrants, petitions, declarations, Acts of Parliament etc). Of these, 2 are taken from Clarendon’s Life, 8 are Acts or Proceedings of Parliament, 6 are from various other sources and more than half (19) are taken directly from Reliquiae Baxterianae.
29. See, for example, A Defence of our Proposals to His Majesty for Agreement in Matters of Religion in Baxter, op. cit., pp. 248-58 and Gould, op. cit., pp. 39-63 which Gould notes (quoting Baxter pp. 241-42) was never seen in the whole grand debate at the Savoy although it contains very useful evidence of the puritans’ objections to much of the ensuing church settlement.
30. E.g. The Preface to The Rejoinder of the Ministers to the Answer of the Bishops in Gould, op.cit., pp. 201-346 was written by Calamy according to Baxter, op.cit., p. 357, §229.
31. See, for example, the passages struck out of their petition to the King as presented at the end of the Savoy Conference which are retained in Baxter’s original version, as noted in Gould, op. cit., pp. 379-85.
32. Evelyn and Pepys are more useful chroniclers of the Fire and the War, for instance.
33. Baxter, op.cit., Part II p. 346.
34. Baxter, op.cit., Part II p. 363.
35. Baxter, op. cit., pp. 363-4.
36. See Keeble’s introduction to the Everyman edition of The Autobiography of Richard Baxter abridged by J. M. Lloyd Thomas, edited with an introduction by N. H.
Keeble (London : J. M. Dent & Sons, 1985), pp. xxvi-xxvii. He adds on page xxvii that in William Matthews’s bibliography of British Autobiographies there are 2 works before 1500, 14 for the 16th century, and some 200 for the 17th century. Latham, op. cit., p. xxxiii also notes that ‘the practice of keeping diaries’ from Elizabethan times onwards was stimulated by ‘the habit of self-examination encouraged by Protestantism’.
37. A vivid phrase from Latham’s introduction to The Shorter Pepys, p. xxxiv, and an
apt one for a Navy man.
38. According to Latham, op. cit., page xxxiv Pepys often drafted what he was going to write in a different book before he wrote up the final version in his diary. His diary was not just a stream of consciousness, therefore, but a deliberate attempt at literary, historical record which must surely have had a wider purpose than to titillate himself in old age with his former articulacy.
39. Much of Reliquiae Baxterianae has the hallmark of having been originally a series of diary entries, or at least to have been based on notes taken at the time of the events described. It was written up in stages some years later and finally published in 1696, five years after Baxter’s death. According to Cooper most of it was written in the mid-1660s. T. Cooper, Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth Century England: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2001), p. 198.
40. Baxter, op. cit,. p. 306.
41. Ibid., p. 306. He often claims to have foreseen what would happen; see also page 334 where he says, “And because I foresaw what was like to be the end of our Conference…”.
42. See G. Davies, The Early Stuarts 1603-1660 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1959), pp. 69-70.
43. P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996 reprint of 1931 edition), p. 708, fn. 2. Barlow’s account was published in 1604 and again in 1638.
44. Cf. also E. Cardwell, A History of Conferences and Other Proceedings Connected with the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer; from the year 1558 to the year 1690 (Oxford: OUP, 1841) ch. IV parts III-V which contain three short accounts
(including Barlow’s). See especially p. 184, ll. 24-28 where he describes some of their objections as “very frivolous” and is reminded of the saying that “A puritan The Autobiography of a ‘Meer Christian’ is a protestant frayed out of his wits.”
45. See Davies, op. cit., p. 71 who adds “The sympathy that naturally goes out to those who suffer because of conscientious scruples should not be allowed to obscure the correctness of Bancroft’s decision that ministers of the church must loyally accept its constitution or lose their benefices.”
46. Baxter, op. cit., p. 235.
47. Ibid., p. 236. Cf. Acknowledgement of some Ministers of London for the Declaration in Gould, op. cit., p. 102: “The liberty of our consciences, and the free exercise of our ministry in the work of our great Lord and Master, for the conversion of souls, ought to be, and are, more dear to us than all the profits and preferments of this world.”
48. Baxter, op. cit., p. 265 (emphasis mine).
49. Ibid., pp. 345-6. The conclusion that many would be silenced and cast out had been mooted before with Morley (see p. 340), who discussed it freely and countered with supposed examples of clerical suffering at the hands of the puritans previously.
50. Cf. also page 278 for further instances of writing with posterity in mind.
51. Ibid., p. 364.
52. Ratcliff, E. C., “The Savoy Conference and the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer,” in Nuttall, Geoffrey F. and Chadwick, Owen, From Uniformity to Unity 1662-1962 (London: SPCK, 1962), p. 127. Cf. also p. 108: “While, therefore, he sincerely desired accommodation with the bishops, he was not the most likely figure to bring it about, or to promote it.”
53. Lloyd Thomas, op.cit., pp. xxvi-xxvii. His comments about his friends were equally candid. Of Reynolds he writes (p. 364), ‘He was a solid, honest Man, but through mildness and excess of timorous reverence to great Men, altogether unfit to contend with them.’ The comment of George Marsden on J. Gresham Machen, another great ecclesiastical politician who spoke with often brutal candour, is pertinent here: ‘You can imagine that, if someone says things like this about one’s friends, that it might be easy to make enemies!’ Cf. G. M. Marsden, Understanding
Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 187.
54. He narrates how the honour was conferred upon him on p. 229 (where the certificate he received at the time is reprinted), and how it was doubted (and he attacked for claiming it) on pp. 279-80.
55. Ibid, pp. 282-3.
56. See N. H. Keeble, “Autobiographer as Apologist: Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696)”,
Prose Studies, 9 (1986), pp. 110-111 as quoted in Cooper, op. cit., p. 198.
57. Cooper, op. cit., p. 198.
58. Baxter, Church History, “What History is credible…”, f. b1 as quoted in Keeble’s ntroduction to The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, p. xx.
59. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, p. 139.
60. Baxter, op.cit., p. 197.
61. Ibid., p. 198.
62. Keeble’s introduction, op.cit., p. xxviii.
63. The following table I derive from Baxter’s descriptions of ‘the true state of the Conformists and Nonconformists in England at this time’ on pp. 386-87. He continues to describe them and their several arguments in the subsequent pages. On this see also the helpful J. Pearce, Bishops and Baxter,” Churchman 112/3 (1998): 261-2.
64. Baxter, op. cit., p. 386.
65. For the phrase, see p. 421 where he also says ‘Charity is not blind, nor will it prove a fit Cover for a Lie’. For the similar phrase ‘Latitudinarian Equivocation’, see p. 427.
66. Ibid., p. 387.
67. Ibid., p. 387.
68. Baxter, op. cit., p. 387.
69. Baxter, op. cit., p. 385.
70. Cooper, op. cit., p. 201.

How The Study Of Scripture Makes Us Spiritual In Our Understanding

Sabbath as Discipline: Outward and Ordinary Vs. Inward and Extraordinary « The Confessional Outhouse

Stanford Magnificat in C

Sung at Bishop J.C. Ryle's Liverpool Cathedral. Always appropriate for Evensong or Evening Prayer.

Psalms Box Set : The Shop at St Paul's Cathedral Online

This Psalm-set by St. Paul's Cathedral, London, is worth every cent on the dollar. It forms an excellent companion to daily use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This scribe has downloaded the CD's to the laptop and has been accessed in airports, restaurants, and other places when travelling these last several months. Although pricey (for some perhaps), it is an excellent investment. Away with American Revivalist music in any form or venue. This CD-set will get you back to the Psalms and will spare you the contemporary forces of modernity, levity, banality, dullness, juiciness, jog-trottish hyperamas, and the rest associated with American schismatical, sectarian, and Methodobaptostal religion.

Psalms Box Set : The Shop at St Paul's Cathedral Online

The Psalms of David
The Complete St Paul's Cathedral Psalter

St Paul's Cathedral has published an entirely new version of its famous Psalter, with the familiar words of The Book of Common Prayer freshly pointed by John Scott, the Cathedral's Director of Music, and a wide selection of chants brought up to date with additions alongside well-known favourites.

This recording presents the complete Psalter in sonic form on 12 CDs. The enclosed booklet contains the texts of all the Psalms and a biograhical index of all 112 composers.
The discs are also available separately.

THE CHOIR OF ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON
ANDREW LUCAS organ (Psalms 1 to 97; 102, 103)
HUW WILLIAMS organ (Psalms 98 to 101; 104 to 150)

JOHN SCOTT Director of Music

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Track Listings

Disc 1 : Psalms 1 to 17
Psalm 1: Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly [2’36]
Psalm 2: Why do the heathen so furiously rage together? [3’34]
Psalm 3: Lord, how are they increased that trouble me [2’51]
Psalm 4: Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness [3’19]
Psalm 5: Ponder my words, O Lord; consider my meditation [4’51]
Psalm 6: O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation [3’25]
Psalm 7: O Lord my God, in thee have I put my trust [5’45]
Psalm 8: O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name [2’58]
Psalm 9: I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, with my whole heart [6’02]
Psalm 10: Why standest thou so far off, O Lord? [6’29]
Psalm 11: In the Lord put I my trust [2’57]
Psalm 12: Help me, Lord, for there is not one godly man left [3’23]
Psalm 13: How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord for ever? [2’31]
Psalm 14: The fool hath said in his heart there is no God [3’54]
Psalm 15: Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? [2’38]
Psalm 16: Preserve me, O God, for in thee have I put my trust [3’36]
Psalm 17: Hear the right, O Lord; consider my complaint [5’22]

Disc 2 : Psalms 18 to 29
Psalm 18: I will love thee, O Lord my strength [14’07]
Psalm 19: The heavens declare the glory of God [4’57]
Psalm 20: The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble [3’03]
Psalm 21: The King shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord [4’17]
Psalm 22: My God, my God, look upon me [9’58]
Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing [3’23]
Psalm 24: The earth is the Lord’s, and all that therein is [3’28]
Psalm 25: Unto thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul [6’37]
Psalm 26: Be thou my Judge, O Lord [3’54]
Psalm 27: The Lord is my light and my salvation [5’43]
Psalm 28: Unto thee will I cry, O Lord my strength [4’10]
Psalm 29: Bring unto the Lord, O ye mighty, bring young rams unto the Lord [3’52]

Disc 3 : Psalms 30 to 40
Psalm 30: I will magnify thee, O Lord, for thou hast set me up [4’20]
Psalm 31: In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust [8’49]
Psalm 32: Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven [4’41]
Psalm 33: Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous [6’23]
Psalm 34: I will alway give thanks unto the Lord [6’31]
Psalm 35: Plead thou my cause, O Lord [9’31]
Psalm 36: My heart sheweth me the wickedness of the ungodly [4’38]
Psalm 37: Fret not thyself because of the ungodly [12’36]
Psalm 38: Put me not to rebuke, O Lord, in thine anger [6’49]
Psalm 39: I said, I will take heed to my ways that I offend not in my tongue [6’08]
Psalm 40: I waited patiently for the Lord [7’23]

Disc 4 : Psalms 41 to 55
Psalm 41: Blessed is he that considereth the poor and needy [4’45]
Psalm 42: Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks [4’52]
Psalm 43: Give sentence with me, O God, and defend my cause [2’54]
Psalm 44: We have heard with our ears, O God [7’46]
Psalm 45: My heart is inditing of a good matter [5’51]
Psalm 46: God is our hope and strength [3’46]
Psalm 47: O clap your hands together all ye people [2’49]
Psalm 48: Great is the Lord and highly to be praised [4’04]
Psalm 49: O hear ye this, all ye people [7’25]
Psalm 50: The Lord, even the most mighty God, hath spoken [7’13]
Psalm 51: Have mercy upon me, O God [6’33]
Psalm 52: Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant [3’32]
Psalm 53: The foolish body hath said in his heart there is no God [3’01]
Psalm 54: Save me, O God, for thy Name’s sake [2’43]
Psalm 55: Hear my prayer, O God [8’00]

Disc 5 : Psalms 56 to 68
Psalm 56: Be merciful unto me, O God [3’01]
Psalm 57: Be merciful unto me, O God [4’09]
Psalm 58: Are your minds set upon righteousness, O ye congregation? [3’56]
Psalm 59: Deliver me from mine enemies, O God [5’34]
Psalm 60: O God, thou hast cast us out and scattered us abroad [4’09]
Psalm 61: Hear my crying, O God; give ear unto my prayer [3’20]
Psalm 62: My soul truly waiteth still upon God, for of him cometh my salvation [4’15]
Psalm 63: My soul thirsteth for thee; my flesh also longeth after thee [3’54]
Psalm 64: Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer [3’49]
Psalm 65: Thou, O God, art praised in Sion [4’53]
Psalm 66: O be joyful in God all ye lands [5’50]
Psalm 67: God be merciful unto us, and bless us [3’02]
Psalm 68: Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered [11’54]

Disc 6 : Psalms 69 to 78
Psalm 69: Save me, O God, for the waters are come in [11’37]
Psalm 70: Haste thee, O God, to deliver me [2’37]
Psalm 71: In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust [7’39]
Psalm 72: Give the King thy judgements, O God [6’06]
Psalm 73: Truly God is loving unto Israel [7’32]
Psalm 74: O God, wherefore art thou absent from us so long? [8’00]
Psalm 75: Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks [3’40]
Psalm 76: In Jewry is God known; his Name is great in Israel [3’23]
Psalm 77: I will cry unto God with my voice; even unto God will I cry [7’08]
Psalm 78: Hear my law, O my people [20’25]

Disc 7 : Psalms 79 to 92
Psalm 79: O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance [5’08]
Psalm 80: Hear, O thou Shepherd of Israel [5’48]
Psalm 81: Sing we merrily unto God our strength [5’10]
Psalm 82: God standeth in the congregation of princes [2’51]
Psalm 83: Hold not thy tongue, O God [5’04]
Psalm 84: O how amiable are thy dwellings [4’15]
Psalm 85: Lord, thou art become gracious unto thy land [4’12]
Psalm 86: Bow down thine ear, O Lord, and hear me [5’25]
Psalm 87: Her foundations are upon the holy hills [2’12]
Psalm 88: O Lord God of my salvation [6’14]
Psalm 89: My song shall be alway of the loving-kindness of the Lord [13’58]
Psalm 90: Lord, thou hast been our refuge [5’24]
Psalm 91: Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the most High [4’58]
Psalm 92: It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord [4’26]

Disc 8 : Psalms 93 to 104
Psalm 93: The Lord is King and hath put on glorious apparel [2’19]
Psalm 94: O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth [6’38]
Psalm 95: O come, let us sing unto the Lord [3’29]
Psalm 96: O sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord all the whole earth [4’13]
Psalm 97: The Lord is King; the earth may be glad thereof [4’13]
Psalm 98: O sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things [3’03]
Psalm 99: The Lord is King, be the people never so unpatient [3’24]
Psalm 100: O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands [1’53]
Psalm 101: My song shall be of mercy and judgement [3’31]
Psalm 102: Hear my prayer, O Lord [8’27]
Psalm 103: Praise the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me [6’53]
Psalm 104: Praise the Lord, O my soul [9’25]

Disc 9 : Psalms 105 to 113
Psalm 105: O give thanks unto the Lord and call upon his Name [10’28]
Psalm 106: O give thanks unto the Lord for he is gracious [12’39]
Psalm 107: O give thanks unto the Lord for he is gracious [12’28]
Psalm 108: O God my heart is ready; I will sing and give praise [4’10]
Psalm 109: Hold not thy tongue, O God of my praise [9’06]
Psalm 110: The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit thou on my right hand [2’42]
Psalm 111: I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart [3’35]
Psalm 112: Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord [3’47]
Psalm 113: Praise the Lord ye servants; O praise the Name of the Lord [246]

Disc 10 : Psalms 114 to 118; Psalm 119 to verse 144
Psalm 114: When Israel came out of Egypt [2’10]
Psalm 115: Not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy Name give the praise [5’21]
Psalm 116: I am well pleased that the Lord hath heard the voice of my prayer [5’07]
Psalm 117: O praise the Lord, all ye heathen [1’07]
Psalm 118: O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious [7’51]
Psalm 119
vv 1-8 Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way [1’46]
vv 9-16 … Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way [1’55]
vv 17-24 … O do well unto thy servant that I may live [1’46]
vv 25-32 … My soul cleaveth to the dust; O quicken thou me [2’58]
vv 33-40 … Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes [2’01]
vv 41-48 … Let thy loving mercy come also unto me, O Lord [1’56]
vv 49-56 … O think upon thy servant as concerning thy word [1’39]
vv 57-64 … Thou art my portion, O Lord, I have promised to keep [1’57]
vv 65-72 … O Lord, thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant [2’51]
vv 73-80 … Thy hands have made me and fashioned me [2’15]
vv 81-88 … My soul hath longed for thy salvation [2’04]
vv 89-96 … O Lord, thy word endureth for ever in heaven [1’58]
vv 97-104 … Lord, what love have I unto thy law [3’07]
vv 105-112 … Thy word is a lantern unto my feet [2’04]
vv 113-120 … I hate them that imagine evil things [2’03]
vv 121-128 … I deal with the thing that is lawful and right [2’05]
vv 129-136 … Thy testimonies are wonderful, therefore doth my soul [1’59]
vv 137-144 … Righteous art thou, O Lord, and true is thy judgement [2’45]

Disc 11 : Psalm 119 from verse 145, Psalms 120 to 138
Psalm 119
vv 145-152 … I call with my whole heart; hear me, O Lord [2’12]
vv 153-160 … O consider mine adversity and deliver me [2’01]
vv 161-168 … Princes have persecuted me without a cause [1’46]
vv 169-176 … Let my complaint come before thee, O Lord [3’02]
Psalm 120: When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord [2’25]
Psalm 121: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help [3’03]
Psalm 122: I was glad when they said unto me [2’55]
Psalm 123: Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens [2’15]
Psalm 124: If the Lord himself had not been on our side [2’25]
Psalm 125: They that put their trust in the Lord [2’42]
Psalm 126: When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion [2’10]
Psalm 127: Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that built it [2’16]
Psalm 128: Blessed are all they that fear the Lord and walk in his ways [2’42]
Psalm 129: Many a time have they fought against me, from my youth up [2’45]
Psalm 130: Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord [3’12]
Psalm 131: Lord I am not high-minded; I have no proud looks [2’11]
Psalm 132: Lord remember David and all his trouble [5’33]
Psalm 133: Behold how good and joyful a thing it is [1’53]
Psalm 134: Behold now, praise the Lord all ye servants of the Lord [1’32]
Psalm 135: O praise the Lord, laud ye the name of the Lord [6’17]
Psalm 136: O give thanks unto the Lord for he is gracious [6’36]
Psalm 137: By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept [3’49]
Psalm 138: I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, with my whole heart [3’27]

Disc 12 : Psalms 139 to 150,
alternative settings of Psalms 121 and 150 and an Easter Anthem
Psalm 139: O Lord, thou hast searched me out and known me [7’45]
Psalm 140: Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man [4’13]
Psalm 141: Lord, I call upon thee, haste thee unto me and consider my voice [4’20]
Psalm 142: I cried unto the Lord with my voice: yea, even unto the Lord [3’49]
Psalm 143: Hear my prayer, O Lord, and consider my desire [5’16]
Psalm 144: Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war [5’07]
Psalm 145: I will magnify thee, O God my King, and I will praise thy Name [6’28]
Psalm 146: Praise the Lord, O my soul; while I live will I praise the Lord [3’43]
Psalm 147: O praise the Lord, for it is a good thing to sing praises unto our God [5’57]
Psalm 148: O praise the Lord of heaven; praise him in the height [3’59]
Psalm 149: O sing unto the Lord a new song [2’46]
Psalm 150: O praise God in his holiness; praise him in the firmament [2’29]
Alternative settings

Psalm 150: O praise God in his holiness; praise him in the firmament [2’17]
Psalm 121: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help [3’10]
Morning Canticle

Easter Anthem Christ our passover is sacrificed for us (John Scott) [3’08]