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'Eternal Life is not to be obtained without Works': Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull', 'Harmonia Apostolica', and the Protestant Confessions

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Last week, in our readings from Robert Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , we reached a crucial, defining moment - the publication, in 1669, of Bull's Harmonia Apostolica . The heated controversy surrounding this work on justification is addressed at some length by Nelson. In the edition we have been reading, Nelson's account of the controversy and the various debates surrounding the work extends from page 89 to page 276, one-third of the entire book. This itself provides some idea of the significance of the work and the debate it provoked.  Despite this, Nelson presents the opposition to Bull's work as unnecessary. He notes at the outset, for example, that, from the perspective of 1713, Bull's understanding of the relationship between faith and works had become the settled view of the Church of England: The best of it is, this Contention was of no long Continuance: For not long after this Treatise was Printed and received with much Applause on one side, and Con...

'Fight the good fight of the faith': duty, courage, and identity in Christ

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At Parish Communion and Holy Baptism on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, 28.9.25 1 Timothy 6:12a “Fight the good fight of the faith …” [1] Saint Paul’s words in his First Letter to Timothy might make some contemporary Christians rather cautious: can such military language be used about the Gospel of peace? The answer must be ‘yes’ because this language is used in a number of places by the Apostle Paul in the Scriptures of the New Testament.  Our reading today was from Paul’s First Letter to Timothy. In his Second Letter, he also exhorts Timothy to be “a good soldier of Jesus Christ” [2]. In his Letter to the Ephesians, he encourages Christians to “put on the whole armour of God” [3]. In his Letter to the Philippians, he refers to someone ministering alongside him as his “fellow-soldier” [4]. The use of military language to describe Christian faith and life, then, is very clearly Scriptural. What is more, it has resonated with Christians across the centuries. John Chrysostom, one...

'Through the ministrations of angels': Calvin on Psalm 91

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As Michaelmas approaches, words from Calvin's commentary on Psalm 91:11-12 , demonstrating how a lively understanding of the ministry of the angels was present in Reformed thought (as also seen in the writings of Bullinger ): The Psalmist adds, "all your ways" in the plural number, to convey to us more distinctly that wherever we go we may expect that the angels shall always extend their guardianship to us. The course of our life is subject to many windings and changes, and who can tell all the storms by which we are liable to be tossed? It was necessary, therefore, to know that the angels preside over all our particular actions and purposes, and thus to be assured of their safe-conduct in whatever quarter we might be called to move ... "They shall bear thee upon their hands." He gives us a still higher idea of the guardianship of the angels, informing us, that they not only watch lest any evil should befall us, and are on the alert to extend assistance, but bea...

'Ceremonies are but temporal': the case for conformity and ecclesial peace in the Jacobean Church of Scotland

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'Christ giveth himself truly to be eaten': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner'

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What other text is rest of the there in Scripture that encountereth with these words of Scripture, This is my body, whereby to alter the signification of them? There is no Scripture saith, Christ did not give his body, but the figure of his body ... Gardiner's words, quoted by Cranmer in his Answer to Gardiner  (1551), aptly summarise the core of his critique of Cranmer and, indeed, the core of the Roman and Lutheran critiques of the Swiss eucharistic theologies: "This is my body". The Swiss and their English supporters, it was alleged, pervert the Lord's words, emptying them of content, leaving only an empty figure. Cranmer's response is not to flee from or equivocate on the key affirmations of the Swiss eucharistic theologies, but to robustly reaffirm them: The Scripture is plain, and you confess also, that it was bread that Christ spake of, when he said, This is my body. And what need we any other Scripture to encounter with speech these words, seeing that all ...

'Against the prevailing Antinomian Opinions': the origins of Harmonia Apostolica and Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull'

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Our readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull now reach the publication of Bull's first work, the work which would establish his reputation as the leading divine of the Arminian Conformist stream of thought in the post-Restoration Church of England. His  Harmonia Apostolica   quickly became a defining text of what Samuel Fornecker's excellent study terms Arminian Conformity. It is this which makes Nelson's opening comments on the work particularly interesting: In the Year 1669, he first Printed that excellent Piece, his Apostolical Harmony, &c. which was begun by him, when but Young, with a View of settling Peace in the Church, upon a Point of greatest Importance to all its Members. This Book he Dedicated to his Diocesan the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. William Nicholson, a very proper Judge and Patron, who had very much also encouraged and supported him in this Work. I have previously mentioned in this series that Stephen Hampton places Nicholson amon...

'Best kept by giving God thanks for the excellent persons, and by imitating their lives': saints' days and the Prayer Book

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O Almighty God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the receipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist: Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Yesterday many of us who are Anglicans will have observed Saint Matthew the Apostle , one of twenty observances of saints in the Book of Common Prayer 1662. This was, of course, a matter of some controversy in the Elizabethan Church and beyond. According to the 1572 Admonition to the Parliament , the inclusion in the Prayer Book of "holydayes ascribed to saincts" was evidence of its reliance upon "that popishe dunghil, the ... Masse boke ful of all abhominations". Such observances were contrary to "the best reformed churches". There is a sense in which the Anglo-catholic tradition might affirm this, seeing in the observances of saint...

'Not worthy to be called bread': Jeremy Taylor against wafers

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Engaging with a Tridentine apologist who dismissed "the Protestant Communion" as "their bit of bread only", Jeremy Taylor - in The Second Part of the Dissuasive (1667) - responded rather robustly by highlighting how the use of the wafer at the Eucharist was significantly different to the use of bread as indicated by the Apostle's words in 1 Corinthians 10 and the practice of the Eastern Churches: he might have considered, that if we had a mind to find fault whenever his Church gives us cause, that the Papists' wafer is scarce so much as a bit of bread, it is more like Marchpane [i.e. an early form of marzipan] than common bread, and besides that (as Salmeron [a Jesuit theologian, writing on 1 Corinthians 10:16] acknowledges) anciently, 'Olim ex pane uno sua cuique particula frangi consueverat' ['in the past, each person was accustomed to breaking off a piece of bread from one loaf'], that which we in our Church do was the custom of the Churc...

'Warranted by the practice of all good Christian Princes in most ancient Synods': the Royal Supremacy in the Jacobean Church of Scotland

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Having considered how David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 - articulated the case for episcopacy and conformity in the Jacobean Church of Scotland, we now turn to his defence of another significant pillar of the Jacobean vision, the Royal Supremacy. Lindsay addressed the allegation that the Royal Commissioners - representing James VI - voting in the decisions of the Perth Assembly was a rejection of previous practice in Scotland. He did so by pointing to ancient precedent for monarchs and their representatives engaging in the decision-making of councils and synods: Whatsoeuer his Maiestie in former times hath done, remitting of his owne right, for causes knowne to himselfe, should be no preiudice to his Royall priuiledges; especially amongst these that haue abused, and set themselues obstinately to crosse his Royall and iust designes. The practice of thes...

The succession of Ratramnus, Berengar, Wycliffe: Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner'

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One of the lines of argument used by Gardiner in his critique of Cranmer's Reformed eucharistic theology was that such a view of the Sacrament was an innovation, contrary to established 'catholic' (the term was, of course, contested) teaching. Gardiner pointed to condemnations of Ratramnus, Berengar, and Wycliffe to illustrate this.  In his Answer to Gardiner (1551), however, Cranmer turns this argument against his opponent. The very fact that Ratramnus in  De corpore et sanguine Domini (c.831), Berengar in  De sacra coena (c.1050), and Wycliffe in De Eucharistia Tractatus Maio  (1379) denounced corporeal presence and affirmed a spiritual partaking of Christ by the faithful, is evidence of antecedents of Reformed teaching across the centuries.  Cranmer first considers Ratramnus (Bertrame): And as for Bertrame, he did nothing else but at the request of King Charles set out the true doctrine of the holy catholic Church from Christ unto his time, concerning...

'He was not less concerned to relieve their Temporal Wants': Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull' on the parson, parish, and the poor

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In the Middle Ages, the poor were regarded as our brothers and sisters in Christ to whom we were bound in love. After the Reformation, poverty came to be seen as a sign of God's punishment and ... a problem to be dealt with through discipline and often punishment. So said Timothy Radcliffe OP - now a cardinal - in a 2012 letter to the Daily Telegraph , critiquing the late Hilary Mantel's praise for Thomas Cromwell. It is, of course, a rather standard Roman Catholic meme, entirely lacking in serious historical research, the result of 'Merrie England' fantasies encouraged by some readings of Duffy's panegyric of pre-Reformation English religion. Ironically, Radcliffe's letter opened by stating that Mantel "is not as good a historian as she is a novelist". At the heart of this fantasy is the view that with the dissolution of the monasteries, the care for the poor provided in pre-Reformation England by religious orders was abolished, to be replaced by grub...

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...

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...