English Reformer, Anthony Gilby (1510-85), on Rome

H/t to Mr. Andy Underhile for the following report.


I came across this little piece by Anthony Gilby (1510-1585), one of the Geneva Bible translators. It is called The Book of the generation of Antichrist the Pope, the revealed Child of Perdition, and his Successors. (1570)

Gilby writes:

“The devil begat darkness. Darkness begat ignorance. Ignorance begat error. Error begat free-will and self-love. Free-will begat merit. Merit begat forgetfulness of the grace of God. Forgetfulness of the grace of God begat transgression. Transgression begat mistrust. Mistrust begat satisfaction. Satisfaction begat the sacrifice of the mass. Sacrifice of the mass begat popish priesthood. Popish priesthood begat superstition. Superstition begat hypocrisy the king. Hypocrisy the king begat lucre. Lucre begat purgatory. Purgatory begat the foundation of pensions, and the patrimony of the church. Pensions and the patrimony of the church begat the mammon of iniquity. Mammon begat abundance. Abundance begat fullness. Fullness begat cruelty. Cruelty begat dominion in ruling. Dominion begat ambition. Ambition begat simony. Simony begat the pope, and his brethren, the cardinals, with all their successors, abbots, priors, archbishops, lord-bishops, archdeacons, deans, chancellors, commissaries, officials, and proctors, with the rest of the viperous brood.”

29 Feb 1528: Patrick Hamilton, Scotland's 1st Protestant Martyr

29 February 1528. Scotland’s 1st Protestant Martyr at the Hands of Scots-Roman policies. Lest we forget. And because God has not forgotten (it's as a yesterday to His Majesty and Rev. 6.9ff).

Mr. (Dr.) Rusten reports the following story, pp. 121-122. Rusten, E. Michael and Rusten, Sharon. The One Year Christian History. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003. http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Christian-History-Books/dp/0842355073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393302630&sr=8-1&keywords=rusten+church+history. We have added other details to the story.

Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake on 29 Feb 1528.

Mr. Hamilton was born of a noble family in Scotland and was a distant relative of a Stuart king, James V. He graduated from the University of Paris in 1520. He began digesting the Lutheran documents. He returned to Scotland in 1523. He was unhappy with the Scots-Italian church. He went to Leonard’s College, St. Andrews University, to study theology.

But, Scotland’s Parliament banned Luther’s book in 1525 (like the Anglo-Italian bishops in Canterbury and London). In 1526, Hamilton declared in favor of Luther. By 1527, he received 3 summons by Mr. (Abp.) Beaton to appear on heresy charges.
(Meanwhile, Mr. Thomas Cranmer is attempting to figure things out at Cambridge while others, like Hamilton up north, were declaring in favor of Luther. Bp. John Fisher was doing the heavy-lifting for Henry VIII in their antagonisms to Luther.)

Hamilton runs abroad and lands in Wittenberg. He met Luther, Melancthon, and the English hero, William Tyndale, himself a fugitive from the Anglo-Italians in England. Hamilton wrote his "Common Places," affirming justification by faith alone. Hamilton returned to Scotland and began preaching.

In Jan 1528, Mr. (Abp) Beaton and other Scots-Italian bishops meet at St. Andrews University, summoning Hamilton again and preferring 13 charges of heresy against him.

He was tried and was burned the same day on 29 February 1528. It would only spark further discussion of Reformation theology in Scotland.

A few questions:

• If a Roman Catholic, what say you of this and the decrees of the Council of Trent that anathematized then—and as reaffirmed recently—against the doctrine of justification by faith alone? Have you developed a 10-page bibliography on justification by faith alone consisting of the best works on it? Or, has your priest done this?

• Why has Mr. (Bp) Robert Duncan, ACNA, never appeared to articulate, assert and defend this doctrine? In Article XI of the Thirty-nine Articles? Would a discussion here relate to other Reformed doctrines?

• What do Misters (Bps) Jack Iker, Keith Ackerman and others say of Articles IX-XI? What really are “their” views here?

• Do these matters get discussed in modern centers of advertisement? TBN? Daystar Television? Word Television? Rick Warren? Or others? If so, does Paul’s Epistle to the Romans feature in their ministries?

• Have worldwide Lutherans betrayed the Reformation understanding of justification by faith alone? See: http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2009/09/cyberbrethren-betraying-reformation-sad.html

• Has Mr. (Bp.) N.T. Wright erred here?

• What is one to say of the Federal Visionists and Mr. Norm Shepherd at Westminster Theological Seminary?

• If you are a secularist, what do you say of justification by faith alone? What homework have you done on this?

• Does modern TV, internet and other forms of media serve to obscure this doctrine?

• What’s the health and status of this doctrine? One might think denomination by denomination here. Aside from the catechetical memory work as lads, do you hear this clearly enunciated?

Romans 11:6

1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)

6 [a]And if it be of grace, it is [b]no more of works: or else were grace no more grace: but if it be of works, it is no more grace: or else were work no more work.

Footnotes:

a. Romans 11:6 Although that all be not elect and chosen, yet let them that are elected, remember that they are freely chosen, and let them that stubbornly refuse the grace and free mercy of God, impute it unto themselves.
b. Romans 11:6 This saying beateth down flat to the ground all the doctrine of all kinds and manner of works, whereby our justifiers of themselves do teach, that works are either wholly or partly the cause of our justification.

Dr. Rusten cites the following sources:

Douglas, J. D. “Hamilton, Patrick.” NIDCC. 449.
Hillyer, N. “Hamilton, Patrick.” WWCH. 301.
Torrence, I. R. “Hamilton, Patrick.” DSCHT. 390-1.

Mr. (Prof.) Dickens: Purgatory and the English Reformation

Dickens, A.G. The English Reformation, 2nd Ed. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/English-Reformation-G-Dickens/dp/0271028688/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374783627&sr=1-1&keywords=a.g.+dickens

Some notes from Mr. (Prof.) Dickens about the dominant theme of Purgatory, works-salvation, and commercialization. This is probably difficult for a Western Protestant to imagine; this gets much press with Bruder Martin. (By the way, I've seen but don't have immediately at hand "detailed charts" that look like actuarial or arithmetic tables with complex charts of deeds that can be done/effected with corresponding reductions in Purgo-time. I need to find those in the library here.) "Justification by faith alone" cuts this nerve. In this sense, the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England "dewinded" and "bagged" Purgatory, invocation of saints and other schemes of justification and piety (pilgrimages, relics, etc.).  Against this background, one can see the "biblical, pastoral and wise dimension" of the Heidelberg Catechism's first two questions and answers, a potent and grand Catechism...then, like now.  What is probably needed is a much larger vision and review of medieval piety. Here are a few notes from Mr. Dickens.

Late medieval manuscripts of “popular and devotional life” in Papal Roman Anglicanism (1.0) reveal:

• “Efforts to attain salvation through devout observances, its fantastic emphasis on saints, relics and pilgrimages, its tendency to allow the personality and teaching of Jesus to recede from the focus of the picture” (4)

• A wide appeal to all socio-economic levels—poor, illiterate, but also rich, educated, nobility and kings

• Many “shrines,” including “St. Mary of Walsingham,” attracted “the highest born” as well as Henry VIII. We would add the attraction of Canterbury’s shrine of Thomas Becket. These were by no means a “mere cult of the vulgar” (5)

• Commercialization of the shrines

• “Dogmatic and detailed emphases on the horrors of Purgatory and the means whereby sinners could mitigate them”

• The average man could could anticipate a “long prison-sentence” in Purgatory” (6). The medieval man was “faced by quite terrifying views of punishment in the life to come”

• Tyndale viewed it all as a “world-wide plot” aimed at “fleecing the poor and rich alike”

• Edward VI forbad “organized intercessions for their dead parents and benefactors”

Mr. Dickens’ offers a grueling and long, but exemplary, quote from Sir Thomas More’s "Supplication of Souls" wherein the “suffering dead cry out to the living for more prayer and more masses:”

"If ye pity the blind, there is none so blind as we, which are here in the dark, saving for sights pleasant, and loathsome, till some comfort come. If ye pity the lame, there is none so lame as we, that neither can creep one foot out of the fire, nor have one hand at liberty to defend our face from the flame. Finally, if ye pity any man in pain, never knew ye pain comparable to ours; whose fire as far passeth in heat all the fires that ever burned upon earth, as the hottest of all those passeth a feigned fire that ever burned on earth, as the hottest of all those passeth a feigned fire on a wall. If ye every lay sick, and thought that night long and longed sore for day, while every hour seemed longer than five, bethink you then what a long night we will souls endure, that lie sleepless, restless, burning and broiling in the dark fire one long night of many days, of many weeks, and some of many years together…You have your physicians with you, that sometime cure and heal you; no physic will help our pain, nor plaister [sic] cool our heat. Your keepers do you great ease, and put you in good comfort; our keepers are such as God keep you from—cruel, damned sprites, odious, envious and hateful, despiteous [sic] enemies and despiteful tormentors, and their company more horrible and grievous to us than is the pain itself: and the intolerable torment that they do us, wherewith top to toe they cease not to continually tear us” (5-6).

 

D-Day+6: Tractarians, Purgatory, ACNA, REC, Virtue, Iker, Integrity (GAFCON)

by Donald Philip Veitch

10 November 1890:

Anglo-Catholics and Purgatory

Historic Anglicans have confessed for centuries: “Neither let us dream any more, that the souls of the dead are anything holpen by our prayers” (Homily Concerning Prayer. Third part).

We deal here with several things: (1) the introduction of Romanism and purgatory to Anglicanism and, by implication, (2) weak, incompetent or indifferent Anglican and Episcopal Bishops in ACNA, REC, APA, AMiA, and at http://www.virtueonline.org/.

The “Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament (C.S.B), a Tractarian Anglican group, began however to be unsatisfied with mere prayers for the dead. In an “advanced” direction, they initiated the annual “Mass for the Dead”. These men of the C.S.B. are like Roman Catholics, believing that such earthly intercessions improve the lot of the departed.

Lord Halifax, an Anglo-Romaphile, published this in the Eighteenth Annual Report of C.B.S, p.xii:

“As the cross sums up in one single act the atoning efficacy of the offering which Christ made through his whole life and by His death upon the Cross, so the Eucharist, which perpetuates and applies that offering, enables us to offer up our whole souls and bodies in life and in death as an acceptable sacrifice to the Father of all…Are we troubled about those who in the shadow of death are awaiting the Judgment? The blood of the Sacrifice reaches down to the prisoners of hope, and the dead as they are made to possess their old sins in the darkness of the grave, thanks us as we offer for them the Sacrifice which restores to light and immortality.”
(Walsh, The Secret History of the Oxford Movement (London: Swan Sonnenschin and Co., Lim., 1899)

On 14 November 1890, Rev. E. de S. Wood stated “without blush, shame or integrity”, at the “Mass for the Dead” or the “Solemn Requiem” said:

“The souls in Paradise are offering the homage of their spiritual sufferings in the realms of Purgatory, and are helped by our prayers and Eucharistic services.”

Yet, what is offered is a concordat of Bishop Peter Akinola (Nigeria), Bishop Riches (REC) and Bishop Grunsdorf (APA) is world-class accomodationism.

Grunsdorf has purgatorialists throughout the APA. Yet, Grunsdorf claims to hold the Thirty-nine Articles? Where's the integrity of Bp. Riches and his associates?

But then Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) allows Anglo-Catholic and purgatorialists under the same roof while postulating adherence to the the Thirty-nine Articles.

We look for media and investigative articles. We get none.

David Virtue lauds them all while thumping Western liberal homo-erotica. Virtue plants his head in the sand and we get silence across the entire media and ACNA-front.

We have integrity and leadership problems.