Whole systems of religion are devised to facilitate our understanding of salvation-by-increments.

In this via media (Calvin and Cranmer), Christ’s body is objectively offered, but not objectively or automatically present apart from faith.

Perhaps the best marker for the beginning of the English Reformation is not Erasmus, Martin Luther or Thomas Cranmer, but John Wyclif.

Richard Baxter was big enough to have big faults and make big errors.

I am praying for Michael Nazir-Ali this morning that God will use him to show the folks in the Ordinariate the beauty and freedom of the gospel of salvation by grace alone.

Andrewes, who was Laudian Arminian in his theology, still believed that the righteousness that saves is not self-righteousness (or infused/inherent righteousness), but the righteousness of Christ credited to the account of undeserving sinners.

Her greatest influence for reformation in England might well have been the impact she had on Henry's children, Elizabeth and Edward.

It would be hard to overestimate the influence of Martin Luther on the theology of the Church of England.

It is completely possible (even probable!) that you can go to an evangelical church and hear a thoroughly biblical message about what we can and should do for God, and never once hear what God in Christ has done for you.

In 1548 the task of writing a Book of Common Prayer was given to a committee of six bishops and six other learned men (mostly Tudor humanists) under Cranmer’s leadership.

I remember one time after hearing me preach a few times, he said to me, “Chuck, that was good, but you only have one sermon." Over these 40+ years of ministry I have come to see this as the high compliment he meant it to be.

Why schism is, at the same time, always regrettable and sometimes necessary - the only proper response to an institutional church that refuses to reform itself according the authority of Holy Scripture

If all this sounds formulaic, propositional and cold, it wasn’t so for Thomas Cranmer and the reformers, and neither is it for Christians today. It is a life-changer! Dane Ortland reminds us that “the gospel offers us not only legal exoneration - inviolably precious truth! - it also sweeps us into Christ’s very heart.” Saving faith is much more than a legal agreement for adoption signed in some far-away heavenly courtroom; it is adoption! It’s not just about having our sins forgiven; it’s union with the one who created us and loves us for such a relationship. Now that our salvation is “finished,” he is not sitting around waiting to see how we do with it - in heaven he lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). “Intercession is the constant hitting ‘refresh’ of our justification in the court of heaven (Ortland).”

The 16th century Protestants understood the Christian gospel to simply say that we do nothing; God does everything. We add nothing to the sufficiency of God’s saving work, not even our faith. “Just lift your sorry heads and look at the bronze serpent held high in the crowd of sick and dying people and you will be saved” (Nu 21:6-9)! Five hundred years ago, when they began to read the Bible, the original ad fontes source, they quickly discovered the Bible’s central teaching: justification by faith. What this means, of course, is justification by Grace received by faith.