10/10/2019

Was the Anglican Church Founded because Henry VII Wanted a Divorce? or What are the Real Foundations of Anglican Belief?

The Anglican Way of Theology – Session 4

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“There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted.” (Thomas Cranmer, The Preface to the Book of Common Prayer)

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Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity.

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• 1532—Cranmer Consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury • 1538—Great Bible • 1544—Great Litany: First English Liturgy • 1547—Book of Homilies • 1549—First Book of Common Prayer • 1552—Second Book of Common Prayer • 1553—The Forty Two Articles of Religion • 1553— Cranmer Arrested for Heresy • 1556—Cranmer Burned at the Stake • 1557—The Thirty Nine Articles • 1559—The Third Book of Common Prayer • 1562—John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England • 1611—The King James Bible 5

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“There can nothing be more spitefully spoken against the religion of God than to accuse it of novelty, as a new comen up matter. For as there can be no change in God himself, no more ought there to be in his religion…no man can now think our doctrine to be new, unless the same think either the prophets’ faith, or the gospel, or else Christ himself be new.” (Apology)

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“[Catholics] stand this day against so many old fathers, so many doctors, so many examples of the primitive church, so manifest and so plain words of the holy scriptures; and yet have they herein not one father, not one doctor, not one allowed example of the primitive church, to make for them…Of all the words of the holy scriptures, of all the examples of the primitive church, of all the old fathers, of all the ancient doctors, in these causes they have not one.”

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“It is true we have departed from them, and for so doing we both give thanks to Almighty God, and greatly rejoice on our own behalf. But yet for all this, from the primitive church, from the apostles, and from Christ, we have not departed…Let them compare our churches and theirs together, and they shall see that themselves have most shamefully gone from the apostles, and we most justly have gone from them.” (Apology)

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Appeal to Scripture

“For at that time made the Catholic fathers and bishops no doubt but that our religion might be proved out of the holy Scriptures. Neither were they ever so hardy as to take any for a heretic, whose error they could not evidently and apparently reprove by the self-same Scriptures.”

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Appeal to Scripture

“Wherefore if we be heretics, and they (as they would fain be called) be Catholics, why do they not as they see the fathers, which were catholic men, have always done? Why do they not convince and master us by the divine Scriptures? Why do they not call us again to be tried by them? Why do they not lay before us how we have gone away from CHRIST, from the prophets, from the Apostles, and from the holy fathers?”

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Appeal to Antiquity

“Further, if we do show it plainly that GOD'S holy Gospel, the ancient bishops, and the primitive Church, do make on our side; and that we have not without just cause left these men, but rather have returned to the Apostles and old catholic fathers.”

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Appeal to Antiquity “We for our part, have learned these things of CHRIST, of the Apostles, of the devout fathers: and do sincerely, with good faith, teach the people of GOD the same. Which thing is the only cause why we at this day are called “heretics”... O immortal GOD! Hath CHRIST himself, then, — the Apostles — and so many fathers, gone astray? Were then ORIGEN, AMBROSE, AUGUSTUS, CHRYSOSTOM, GELASIUS, THEODORET, forsakers of the catholic faith? Was so notable a consent of so many ancient bishops, and learned men, nothing else but a conspiracy of heretics? Or is that now condemned in us, which was then commended in them? Or is the thing now, by alteration only of one man’s affections, become schismatic, which in them was counted catholic?”

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Local Real Mode of Presence Presence Presence in in H.C. Heaven Roman Y Y substantial change; transubstantiation

Lutheran ~N Y substantial presence in and under the elements; consubstantiation Zwinglian Y N symbol or token; memorialism

Calvinist Y Y substantial presence in worthy reception through the Holy Spirit; receptionism

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