Bromiley reminded us that the key to understanding Cranmer is to remember that grace always precedes faith: “Justification is not even by faith but only by grace.” For Cranmer, God always takes the initiative

I went to church hoping to meet God, but the preacher handing out marching orders instead. You can imagine how disappointed I was! I went hoping for some relief for my weary soul, but I left with the example of a better Christian to emulate.

There are so many contradictions in it, how can an intelligent person possibly believe it?

When people have access to the Bible and begin to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest God’s Holy Word - look out!

Unless he could be exempted from the use of the vestments specified in the Ordinal (ordination service) that still suggested a Catholic mass and sacrificing priesthood, he would prefer to remain a traveling preacher.

I have been talking about the un-free will for thirty years and have never has a single person agree with me on my first attempt. People instinctively rise up against the idea. I repeat, I have not experienced a single instance, in thirty years…

Nothing is missing, all has been accomplished, the full price has been paid, and those who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. I will never be more loved or have more of God than I have at this very moment. 

He is the quiet rector behind Henry VIII and Edward VI using “the full powers of his position as Primate of All England to inculcating the Protestant faith into every fibre of English life and law” (Ashley Null).

“I thirst” (John 19:28).

One of seven last words that Jesus spoke from the cross.

They knew that it wasn’t Christ sitting on the altar bodily any more than Jesus was in two places at the Last Supper - the host of the dinner and the bread and wine on the Passover table. They felt that God is much bigger and than making him fit into an automatic understanding of communicated grace in Holy Communion, and far more transformative.

We are blessed to have Ashley Null on our Board for the Center for Reformation Anglicanism. Ashley is well known for his research and writing on Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation, and has contributed to the vocabulary of God's love for undeserving sinners - guilt, grace, and gratitude.

Anglican theology and worship as seen in the Elizabethan Settlement is thoroughly biblical, beautiful, and generous in its balance between doctrinal essentials and liberty in nonessentials.

So what would happen if there was unity and clarity around our theological core? If our highest concern was the same as Thomas Cranmer and the English reformers, and Anglicans throughout our history, who invented and defined this expression of Christian worship and practice?

Catholic scholars claim that he was too gentle and kindhearted to support the systematic extermination of evangelicals in England, but in fact this last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury led a cleansing at Cambridge University of the menacing evangelicals January 26, 1557.

"The Lord our Righteousness" was the sermon preached March 20, 1757 at St. Mary's Church in Oxford. The preacher, William Romaine, so offended just about everyone that he was invited to never preach there again.

Sometimes the gospel is told simply, in a picture, poem, or song. We want to think that we find Christ - that we raise our hands with all heads bowed and eyes closed - that he is a result of our long search. But the gospel is about God, not us. In one of his prayers Thomas Cranmer reminds us that “forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee.” Any impulse in us towards God is a gift of God.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has rendered himself irrelevant, an unnecessary and unhelpful appendage to the worldwide Anglican Communion. Our honorary leader shows himself unwilling to lead the Anglican Communion with any biblical conviction. This shouldn’t bother us, though, since we can live a long and healthy life with our appendix removed - I haven’t had mine since 1978! 

Such a surprising conversion happened in the heart of Cyril Lucaris (1572-1638). While serving as the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria, and later ascending to the highest position in Orthodoxy to be the Patriarch of Constantinople, he became Protestant in his understanding of the authority of Holy Scripture.

They don’t need a preacher’s boot on the neck, they need a message of God’s perfect love for sinners, the promise of absolution for sinners, and the it-is-finished word of Jesus from the cross for our salvation (and assurance!).