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Lost and found: abounding grace and the Supper of the Lord

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At Parish Communion on the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 14.9.25 Luke 15:1-10 “And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’.” [1] It is a common scene across the Gospels. The Pharisees - the spiritual elite, the righteous ones who kept the Law of Moses, the custodians of the Scriptures of Israel, who knew what it was to be the chosen of God - condemned Jesus for welcoming into His presence those who are termed “the tax collectors and sinners”. The chief problem with the tax collectors was that they raised taxes for the occupying Romans and therefore associated with pagan Gentiles - those outside the chosen people of Israel. To be a tax collector, then, was spiritual treason, to have abandoned the chosen, elect people of God. As for the term “sinners”, it refers to those amongst the common people who fell short of the rigours and rituals of the religious purity laws upheld by the Pharisees: such ritual impurity was reg...
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Yale Apostasy Day: an Irish Bishop's defence of the Prayer Book and New England Anglicanism

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Tomorrow is Yale Apostasy Day. On 13th September 1722, the day after commencement at Yale, seven New England Congregationalist ministers publicly declared their intention to seek episcopal orders in the Church of England. Four of the seven were ordained deacon and presbyter in the Church of England the following year, with three returning to minister in America. For New England's Congregationalist establishment, it was indeed 'apostasy', a rejection of the 'New England Way' and the introduction of the Church of England to the land of the Pilgrim Fathers. Central to the 'Yale Apostasy' was Samuel Johnson. Having previously taught at Yale, he became minister of a nearby Congregationalist church in 1720. Influencing his thinking was a significant figure in the late 17th/early 18th century Church of Ireland, William King, Bishop of Derry 1691-1703 and Archbishop of Dunlin 1703-29. In his Life of Samuel Johnson , Thomas Bradbury Chandler - a protege of Johnson an...
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'When the Church was governed by Superintendents': episcopacy as the renewal of superintendency in Jacobean Scotland

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In his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) reminded his opponent - "the Libeller" - that presbyterian government had not been the fixed order in the Church of Scotland since the Reformation.  Particularly addressing the charge that the Perth Assembly was not "free and lawfull" because the ministers in the Assembly had not been chosen by presbyteries, Lindsay points to how episcopacy followed the system of superintendency by which the Church of Scotland had been governed until 1592: The Libeller .... thinks, that because it was the custome while the Presbyteriall gouernment stood in force, that all Commissioners, at least of the Ministrie, should bee chosen by the seuerall Presbyteries, it should now bee so: But he must remember that sort of gouernment is changed, and now they must haue place in Assemblies, that are authorized by their calling...
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'Signs and tokens of the marvellous works and holy effects which God worketh in us': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner'

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In his Answer to Gardiner (1551), Cranmer responds to Gardiner's allegation that he taught, regarding the Sacraments, "there is nothing to be worshipped, for there is nothing present but in figure, and in a sign: which whosever saith, calleth the thing in deed absent". In doing so, Cranmer emphasises that while the water, bread, and wine of the Sacraments do not have within themselves grace, they are yet holy for they are signs of the truth and reality of God's grace: And as concerning the holiness of bread and wine, (whereunto I may add the water in baptism,) how can a dumb or an insensible and lifeless creature receive into itself any food, and feed thereupon? No more is it possible that a spiritless creature should receive any spiritual sanctification or holiness. And yet do I not utterly deprive the outward sacraments of the name of holy things, because of the holy use whereunto they serve, and not because of any holiness that lieth hid in the insensible creature...
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'This great master of the Ancient Fathers': Robert Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull' and the patristic confidence of the 18th century Church of England

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One might have expected Roman Catholic missionaries not to feature in Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull . Nelson was writing after the Glorious Revolution, when the idea of restoring England to the papal fold was, to say the least, a quixotic cause. In this section of the Life , however, we are in the years between the Restoration and the Revolution, a time when Charles II died in the communion of Rome, and James II would become King in spite of being a Roman Catholic. It was still the case, therefore, that a certain glamour and sense of monarchical approval could be associated with swimming the Tiber. In addition to this, memories of high status conversions to Rome under Charles I and of the commitment of Roman Catholic families to the Royalist cause could add lustre to the idea of conversion. It is against this background that we see Bull address the activity of "Romish missionaries" in his parish: While Mr. Bull was Rector of Suddington, the Providence of God gave...
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Gloriana Day: Bishop Aylmer and the Elizabethan Settlement

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Yesterday was Gloriana Day. Elizabeth I was born on 7th September 1533. When the Book of Common Prayer was lightly revised in 1604 following the Hampton Court conference, at the beginning of the reign of James I/VI, a black letter day for the obscure Saint Evurtius was introduced to the Kalendar on 7th September. It was a way of marking the anniversary of Elizabeth's birth. Gloriana Day invites us to give thanks for the Elizabethan Settlement and recognise how that Settlement, despite the awkward embarrassment of 21st century Anglicans, offers a wise path for a contemporary Anglicanism so often confused about its identity. We see this wisdom in one of Elizabeth's bishops, John Aylmer (1521-94), Bishop of London from 1577. Strype's 1701 Historical collections of the life and acts of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Aylmer  offers us an insight into how Aylmer embodied the Elizabethan Settlement.  Aylmer's allegiances were made abundantly clear when he, then an Arch...
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Beyond the progressive echo chamber: how might the established Church offer a distinctive Christian vision in the public square?

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Recent days have witnessed the Church of England yet again clumsily demonstrate the default progressive views of its senior hierarchy. With widespread and significant public concern regarding illegal immigration - immigration has overtaken the economy as the primary concern of UK voters - the Archbishop of York responded to Reform's proposal for deporting those who illegally entered the UK by saying "we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term kneejerk 'send them home'". In other words, illegally entering the UK should carry no sanction. Attempting to control the UK's borders, according to the Archbishop of York, is "isolationist".  As one commentator stated, the Archbishop's statement "is not part of Christian teaching, it is not a logical outworking of any Christian principle ... It is just the personal view of a generic leftish middle-class English person in 2025". There is significantly increasing public disdai...
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