15 thoughts on “Shepherd Stealing?”

1. Like many Protestant denominations, I think the Anglican church struggles between Pietism (Puritans and the Wesley brothers) and tradition (such as the Oxford Movement).

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2. As a “Cranmerian” at heart, I have nonetheless given up on the Anglican Church as a realistic expression of Reformed Christianity. I came out of the “experiential” side of Evangelicalism to The 39 Articles and BCP (1662) which do effectively present the faith that was recovered by the likes of Calvin, Cranmer, Bullinger, et al. Alas, there is no modern Anglican church that holds to or reflects that 16th century reformed heritage. Over the past number of years, due to the influence of a number of those directly or loosely connected to WSC, my wife and I have found refuge in the OPC… and may even have to consider it a step up! 😉

   But I gotta say, Daryl, I love that last sentence of your post:

   “Why they affirm predestination in ways that make Reformed Protestants jealous.”

   XVII. Of Predestination and Election.
   Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God’s purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

   As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

   Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

   Amen.

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3. Jack, thank you for copying the XVII. Of Predestination and Election in your comment.

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4. “…though Rome’s own sex scandal and its opposition to contraception would apparently pose barriers.”

   Darryl,
   Was that an intentional play on words? “Contraception” “barriers”…

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5. How traditionally Anglican do you expect the intellectual heirs of John Henry Newman to be?

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6. Chris, you wrote: How traditionally Anglican do you expect the intellectual heirs of John Henry Newman to be?

   Please do not forget examples like the now retired Bishop FitzSimons Allison. He is a gem and is a stellar example of contending for traditional orthodox Anglicanism. Remember his book: The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter?

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7. Lily – Bishop Allison is not an Anglo Catholic.

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8. Yes, Chris, I do understand that Bishop Allison is not Anglo-Catholic. I wanted to remember the diversity within Anglicanism and that there are respected leaders in the church who will resist the offer from Rome. Like you, I think it is the Anglo-Catholics who will be most tempted by Rome’s offer. I do wonder that it is harder for the ones in England than the ones in America. If I understand things correctly, American Anglo-Catholics have the option of fleeing to the ACNA or Rome, while the only option in England is Rome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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10. Church Society Response to the Roman Catholic Church: The Church of England is Reformed and Protestant

    Response to proposals from Rome

    Response from the Council of Church Society to the plans by the Church of Rome to receive disaffected Anglicans.

    According to its own doctrinal standards and history, the Church of England’s true nature is that of a Protestant, Reformed, Evangelical and catholic (in other words, universal) church. Orthodox Anglicanism is therefore defined by reference to these characteristics only, which are set out in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Church of England’s submission to the over-arching authority of Scripture alone.

    Church Society seeks to defend and promote these defining characteristics, especially the Gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone which is at the heart of the message and mission of the Church of England. While acknowledging the correct stand taken by Anglo-Catholics against theological liberalism (the features of which do not represent true, Biblical Anglicanism), it should also be noted that the true doctrine of the Church of England does not embrace any of the teachings or practices which characterise the Church of Rome.

    For instance, the Church of Rome is fundamentally flawed in its claims about its own nature and authority and in its teaching about the means of salvation. A proper rejection of theological liberalism should therefore not be accompanied by a turning to the Church of Rome and its unbiblical teachings and practices.

    Rather, both theological liberalism and the unscriptural teachings and practices of the Church of Rome are contrary to the Bible and to the historic doctrines of the Church of England as a Protestant, Reformed, Evangelical and catholic church. The longing of Church Society is that all Anglicans, whether in England or elsewhere, would see and understand both the destructive nature of theological liberalism and the false nature, teachings and practices of the Church of Rome. We grieve that the Church of England, along with our nation, has fallen so low in its spiritual and moral condition.

    We pray that God would pour out His Spirit on both church and nation.We rejoice that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone and we pray that the Church of England will return to full adherence to its doctrinal standards, acknowledging the supreme authority of the Bible as God’s Word and seeking to shape its teaching and practices by what He has revealed.

    The statement was agreed by the Council at its meeting on 4 November 2009.Church Society exists to uphold biblical teaching and to promote and defend the character of the Church of England as a reformed and national Church.

    For further information visit http://www.churchsociety.org. Further information relevant to this statement can be found here

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11. The entire episcopal bench excoriated this Tractarian, Goth-driven, Romanticistic movement led by John Newman.

    William Simcox Bricknell collects these episcopal decisions in his “The Judgment of the Bishops upon the Tractarian Movement.” That was in 1842. By WW2, accomodation was the rule rather than the banishment of this Romanism within a once-Reformed body.

    http://books.google.com/books?id=9lZCAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+simcox+bricknell&hl=en&ei=SPJSTZOwG5DBtgf0iJnDCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

    As an aside, am told by one Oxford D.Phil and classical Anglican, that: 1) English Anglo-Catholicism is more sophisticated than the American counterpart and 2) stiffer resistance to Tractarianism was offered in England–as it developed–than in America.

    Bishop Fitz is an evangelical Episcopalian, but where has he been on Tractators? What publication? What has he written about that pure-breed Pelagian catechism in the 1979 BCP?

    Exile is difficult, but it is invigorating too.

    From an Anglican in exile.

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12. 24 Nov 1843–Duplicity from John Henry Newman

    24 November 1843

    Scene 1. Player: John Henry Newman. Occasion: letter to close friend and fellow Tractarian or Oxfordian. Manner: private letter for the cognoscenti, “those in the know.”

    Let us hear from Newman himself in his letter to the Rev. J.B. Mozley, dated 24 November 1843.

    “Last summer four years (1839) it came strongly upon me, from reading first the Monophysite controvery and then turning to the Donatist, that we were external to the Catholic Church. I have never got over this. [DPV, this is a conviction in 1839, but the thought had been there since 1833 also]. I did not, however, yield to it at all, but wrote an article in the British Critic on the catholicity of the English Church, which had the effect of quieting me for two years. Since this time two years the feeling has revived and gradually strengthened. I have all along gone against it, and think I ought to do so still. I am now publishing sermons, which speak more confidently about our position than I inwardly feel; but I think it right, and do not care for seeming for seeming inconsistency.”[i]

    Walter Walsh in The Secret History of the Oxford Movement says:

    This “inconsistency,” or double-dealing, or whatever it may be called, was only a part and parcel of his ordinary conduct at this time.

    His friend Isaac Williams says that the “feelings and thoughts he [Newman] would express to one person or at one time, differed very much in consequence from what he might express to another or on another occasion;” and he adds that it “was long before it was publicly known that Newman’s thoughts really were, and he was for some time accused by some of dishonesty and duplicity.”[ii] He was working in the dark, yet actively carrying on the secret underground conspiracy to bring back the Church of England to Rome.[iii]

    Let us see the contradictions in Newman, the duplicity, in his Letter to the Bishop of Oxford on Occasion of Tract XC on 29 March 1841. Bear in mind the quote given above:

    “The inestimable privileges I feel in being a member of that Church over which your lordship, with others, preside.[iv] “…the Church over which your lordship rules is a Divinely ordained channel of supernatural grace to the souls of her members.”[v] “…And I consider the Church over which your lordship presides to be the Catholic Church in this country.”[vi] “…it is plain that the English Church is at present on God’s side.”[vii]

    Follow the timeline we have been developing.

    Let’s listen to one of Newman’s close associate in conspiracy to de-Protestantize England.

    It comes from a letter by the Rev. William George Ward, dated July 1841, to another co-conspirator Edward Pusey of Oxford. Ward says of the advancing Ritualistic and Romanizing views:…the following doctrines and practices allowed by the Articles:

    (1) Invocation of saints;
    (2) Veneration of Images and Relics;
    (3) An intermediate state of purification;
    (4) The Reservation of the Host;
    (5) The Elevation of the Host;
    (6) The infallibility of some General Councils;
    (7) The doctrine of desert by congruity, in the received Roman sense;
    (8) The doctrine that the Church ought to enforce celibacy on the clergy.[viii]

    “Restoration of active communion with the Roman church is the most enchanting earthly prospect on which my imagination can dwell.”[ix]

    What’s on offer by John Henry Newman and co-conspirator Rev. William George Ward, advanced Romanizers working surreptitiously, was the sufficient Romanizing of the Church of England for reunion with Rome.

    Modus operandi: (1) say one thing to many and (2) conceal the agenda and communicate the real idea, Romanization of England.

    The Society of the Holy Cross was a group of shock troopers, controlling the agenda and timeline of the Romanizers. Amazingly, this group was/is tolerated within the worldwide Anglican communion, including the U.K., the U.S.A., and my native land of Canada.

    Also, Bishop Grunsdorf of the Anglican Province of America has one of these S.S.C. churchman in his Holy Cathedral of Orlando. This is what the once anti-Tractarian Reformed Episcopal Church resisted.

    Before my own eyes, however, the REC sought union with the APA. Leo Riches signed a Concordat allowing Anglo-Romanists in REC pulpits.

    We learn from John Henry Newman about corruption, deceit, hegemonies, dishonesty and lies in high places. Romans 3.15: “Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips.”

    ——————————————————————————–

    [i] Walsh, op.cit., 194.
    [ii] William’s Autobiography, Vol.II, 340.
    [iii] Walsh, op.cit., 195.
    [iv] Newman’s Letters, Vol.2, 33.
    [v] Newman’s Letters, Vol.2, 34
    [vi] Newman’s Letters, Vol.2, 34
    [vii] Newman’s Letters, Vol.2,
    [viii] William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, 176, as cited by Walsh, op.cit., 195.[ix] William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, 176, as cited by Walsh, op.cit., 196..

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13. I wish “Rome” would make the men who pope adopt the celibacy vows. I would like to see those Presbyterian (and other) ministers who pope, be told: Give up your wife and children and you will be accepted into the Roman communion. They should have to pay a price for their apostasy.

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14. Hear! Hear, Cris!

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15. Of course George Brandt’s characterization of the Ordinariates and Anglicanorum Coetibus leaves a lot to be desired in the accuracy department:

    1. A.C. and the Ordinariate was a response to ouvertures by English Anglo-Catholics, the American church is not primarily in view.

    2. A.C. does not “outline the manner in which Anglican parishes can become Personal Ordinariates, effectively shadow parishes within a Catholic diocese”. He is confusing it with the “pastoral provision” dating back to 1980, which does indeed deal with parishes. A.C. establishes Ordinariates, structures within a given territory, which function as quasi-dioceses for (former) Anglicans who entered the Catholic Church as groups (that’s the “coetibus” in the title of the constitution: groups).

    Some further comments on this post:

    If the Revealer indeed talks about what you quote, it is misinformed — the members of six congregations and their priests have not yet joined, and in any case, so far there is exactly one Ordinariate, the one in England.

    “Rome’s own sex scandal” — at least Rome acknowledges that it is a scandal, and tries very hard to deal with it. TEC, ACiC and other revisionist sections of the Anglican Communion have made scandalous behaviour acceptable and even the norm. That is a crucial difference.

    Celibacy: nothing awkward about it. The Eastern Rite Catholics have had married priests all the time, and even before the Ordinariate and the “Pastoral Provision” converting clergy of certain churches (Anglican, Lutheran) were frequently ordained despite being married. It’s just bishops that absolutely cannot be married in the Catholic (and Orthodox) churches.

    Cris Dickason: are you really so lacking in charity that you suggest the Catholics should encourage people break their marriage vows? You speak of apostasy: that suggestion is moral apostasy.

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