Save the Date–EFAC USA 2019 Conference

 

America’s J. C. Ryle

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the 19th century leader of the evangelical party in the Episcopal Church, bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine, having read about him here and here. Tom Isham has a new article about McIlvaine in the latest issue of Crossway, the quarterly magazine of Church Society, arguing that he is America’s equivalent of England’s J. C. Ryle. Ryle is also familiar to our readers—too many posts about him to list here, type his name in our search box and you’ll find dozens.

More information about Crossway, including a subscription form, can be found here; the new issue also has articles on the life and ministry of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the advantages of long-term persistent expository preaching, an article on “preaching the negatives” as well as the positives, and a helpful look at the confusing subject of transgenderism, and how Christians should respond to it.

 

 

Lessons for TEC from one of its Victorian bishops

At the recent conference of Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church, Tom Isham brought a wonderful message from the leader of the evangelical wing of the 19th century House of Bishops (believe it or not, Evangelicals and Revisionists were pretty evenly matched in those days): no matter how few of you there may be, keep a high view of Scripture, a warm spirituality, a sound and well defined theology, an informed conscience, and the courage of your convictions. Check it out here:

 

Bishop McIlvaine

An evangelical layman, Tom Isham of Trinity Episcopal Church in Marshall, Michigan, is working with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to add the 19th century evangelical bishop, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, to the calendar of the Episcopal Church. The Commission is more likely to do this if there are already commemorations of McIlvaine taking place in some Episcopal Churches, and clerical readers of this blog are asked to consider using the propers below, and the brief biography, on or near March 12, the anniversary of his death.

Readings:

Proverbs 4: 20-27
Psalm 119: 121-136
Romans 8: 31-39
Mark 8: 31-38

Collect:

O gracious God, you kindled in your servant Charles Pettit McIlvaine a burning zeal for the salvation and sanctification of souls, and equipped him to those ends with great gifts of leadership, preaching and writing. Grant us to heed the example and teaching of this your servant Charles, that we too may have a hand in bringing to faith those whom you have called; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Biographical note:

As a man of great and varied gifts, Charles Pettit McIlvaine did many things and he did them well. Combining evangelical fervor and liturgical dignity in equal measure, he distinguished himself as a leader, author, scholar, educator, preacher, revivalist, reformer, ecumenist, and Sunday school pioneer. His literary and scholarly gifts advanced the evangelical cause in the Episcopal Church, defended Christian doctrine, and addressed social issues. He was an active delegate at the first Lambeth Conference.

Throughout his career, Bishop McIlvaine emphasized spiritual rebirth. Hence he preached at numerous revivals, conducting them in good Episcopal fashion, ‘decently and in order.’ His awakening at age seventeen matched the experience he recommended. ‘It was in the college of which I was a student,’ he recalled. ‘It was powerful and prevailing, and fruitful in the conversion of young men to God; and it was quiet, unexcited, and entirely free from all devices or means, beyond the few and simple which God has appointed… In that precious season of the power of God, my religious life began. I had heard before; I began then to know.’

Though raised in the East, McIlvaine served as Ohio’s second bishop for forty-one years. Earlier, he served churches in Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn, N.Y.; twice served as U.S. Senate chaplain; lectured on Christian evidences at the University of the City of New York, and served as chaplain and professor at the U.S. Military Academy, where he transformed the reigning secular ethos into one of Christian awareness, setting a new tone for the nation s officer corps.

During the first dozen years of his episcopate, he also served as president of Kenyon College and Seminary. He stabilized the college’s finances, built academic structures and faculty housing, and set the standard for racial harmony.

Early in the American Civil War, he served President Lincoln as envoy to Britain, where his wise counsel and diplomatic bearing assured the British would not ally themselves with the Confederacy. Later, he brought the Gospel to soldiers in the field, tended the wounded, and sought reconciliation between victors and vanquished.

It will be important to report any commemorations held to the SCLM; any reports added to this post as a comment will be forwarded to them, or you can e-mail Tom directly at ishamthomas [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

 

Puritan Stock

Tomorrow is commencement at Harvard. Their commencement hymn, which I believe they still sing, assumes those who have studied there have ‘deepen’d the streams/That make glad the fair city of God’, and prays ‘Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side/ As the world on truth’s current glides by’, and urges the graduates to ‘Be the herald of light, and the bearer of love,/Till the stock of the Puritans die.’

No doubt many of the graduates hold fast to the biblical principles which guided those who founded the school, but they didn’t learn them there, and nor did anyone who came there without having learned them. (‘There’ being the institution itself; no doubt there are some wonderful campus ministries and local churches bringing students to faith.) As far as Harvard is concerned, the stock of the Puritans is already dead.

John Harvard was a Church of England clergyman, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, founded during the English Reformation for the express purpose of training preachers. He took 400 books with him when he sailed for Massachusetts, and served briefly as a minister at Charlestown. He died of consumption after only a year in the new world, leaving his books and half of his capital to the school being organised not far away. Since that bequest tripled the seed money for the proposed college, it was named after him.

In 1638, the year of his death, many of its clergy, even those serving in the plantations, still hoped that the Church of England would complete or return to its reformation, depending on how they read the history, Emmanuel graduates especially. It is those who still have that hope for the Church of England’s daughter in the new world that are Harvard stock, and they are not dead.

 

Evangelical laity wanted

In various conversations in which I’ve taken part recently, a desire has been expressed for evangelical lay people to be involved in one project or another, but in the diocese where I serve, at least, they have been hard to find, and hard to recruit when found. One rector I approached, asking for names of such people in his parish, told me that those he knew were ‘gun-shy’—presumably a reference to what it was like the last time they became active outside their own parish.

When the English Reformation was brought to a sudden halt on the death of Edward VI, and Protestants who refused to return to Roman Catholicism were threatened with death at the stake, the vast majority of those who refused to be intimidated were lay people—men and women, some of them still in their teens. Matthew Foxe, who kept a record of all those who were put to death, said of one congregation that its members were “exceedingly well learned in the holy Scriptures, as well women as men, so that a man might have found among them many that had often read the whole Bible through, and that could have said a great sort of St Paul’s epistles by heart, and very well and readily have given a godly learned sentence in any matter of controversy”. When any controversial question arose, Anglican lay people knew that the answer was to be found in Scripture, and they knew their Bibles well enough for any of them to be able to answer for themselves. In the trials that led to the burnings, the question was constantly being asked, “Who are you, a tailor or a housewife or a miller, to challenge the judgement of the best theological minds of the Church?” The inquisitors—many of them conforming Anglican clergy just a year or two earlier—were scandalised that ordinary people claimed to be as able to “give a godly, learned sentence” as the theologians, but they did claim exactly that, because they had learned God’s word.

The Episcopal Church needs another generation of lay people who have learned God’s word so well that they are no longer reluctant to face those who would order the church according to the word of Man rather than the word of God. The cure for timidity in the face of false teaching or immoral living is a better knowledge of God’s word. When evangelicalism began to revive in the Episcopal Church in the 1960s and 70s, the means of reforming the church was the foundation of an evangelical seminary to train clergy. That doesn’t seem to have worked. It’s time for lay people to reclaim their Anglican birthright.

 

Evangelical Mysticism

Not a few Evangelicals in recent years have longed for some point of contact with Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, and have tried to blend one of those traditions with our own. Dewey Wallace‘s book, published last year, Shapers of English Calvinism 1660–1714 (Oxford University Press), reminds us that if we will only revisit our own tradition, this un-natural blending will not be necessary. He examines the life and thought of five Church of England Calvinists, including Peter Sterry, the Calvinist mystic. Michael Brydon, reviewing the book for the latest  Journal of Theological Studies, observes that ‘Calvinists are supposed to be hostile to mysticism, for fear that it might compromise the evangelical message of the Reformation. In fact, the tradition of Reformed mysticism can be traced back to Calvin, and Sterry continued to give it a distinct identity by setting out a mystical model that was to be lived not by solitary celibates, but within the family and community. He was also able to describe classic Calvinist emphases in mystical ways, as shown by his description of predestination as the ravishing of the soul by God.’

The idea of my soul being ravished has no appeal for me, even (especially?) when described in terms of predestination, but some readers of this blog will be glad to know. The stained-glass window featuring him is in the chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Anyone willing to read up on Sterry and tell us more?

 

A Born Again Episcopalian

I’ve been reading and enjoying Thomas Isham’s recent biography of Bishop McIlvaine, the best known of all the evangelical bishops of the Episcopal Church in the 19th century. He was Bishop of Ohio from 1832–1873, and a famous defender of the Protestant heritage of the Episcopal Church when Anglo-Catholicism was beginning to undermine it. He was also well known for his preaching (which caused a revival among West Point students when he was chaplain there), and his insistence that those who upheld the authority of Scripture had to support the abolition of slavery. Isham covers every aspect of McIlvaine’s ministry, and readers of this blog will find much in this biography to encourage their own witness to the authority of Scripture in today’s church. It’s also worth reading just for the joy of knowing that there once was a time when it was not unusual for a bishop to stand so publicly and uncompromisingly for that authority.

Isham is a member of the Episcopal Church, and was a member of EFAC-USA when that organisation was active. Thanks for keeping McIlvaine’s evangelical witness before the church!

The book is available here. The Banner of Truth edition of a collection of McIlvaine’s sermons, Preaching Christ: The Heart of Gospel Ministry, is also still in print, and available here.

 

RIP John Stott

John Stott, who transformed Anglican Evangelicalism, sleeps today where he has lived for over seventy years, in Christ. There’s nothing the Barnabas Project can add to the obituaries, a selection of which can be read here and here and here, except to say how much he supported the ministry of Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church when he had the opportunity, urging people to stay and work for the reform of the church rather than leave it. Memorial services are being planned in London, Wheaton, New York, Dallas, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Delhi, Bangalore, and no doubt more to be announced. A memorial web-site has been established here by the Langham Partnership, the hub of his ministry for the last few years, and designated by him to carry it on into the future.

We truly will not see his like again. But God uses all of us, so let’s continue to work for the reform of the Episcopal Church anyway.

 

Evangelical Ministry

On the SCLM blog page for Sam Shoemaker Lamar Vest, President & CEO of the American Bible Society, added a comment saying how much Sam’s poem, ‘So I Stay Near the Door’ meant to him as a young man. The poem sums up evangelical ministry. Here’s the whole thing.

SO I STAY NEAR THE DOOR

By the Reverend Canon Samuel Moor Shoemaker, Jr., D.D., S.T.D.

I stay near the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world–
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside, and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it – – –
So I stay near the door.
The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door–the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch–the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man’s own touch.
Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter–
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it–because they have found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him – – –
So I stay near the door.
Go in, great saints, go all the way in–
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics–
It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, or sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening – – –
So I stay near the door.
There is another reason why I stay there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
For God is so very great, and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia.
And want to get out. Let me out! they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, they have seen too much;
Once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving–preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them too,
I stay near the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay too long,
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door–
Thousands of them, millions of them.
But–more important for me–
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
For those I shall stay by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
I had rather be a door-keeper . . .
So I stay near the door

 

Anglo-Puritans

From Peter Adam, writing in the online journal The Theologian:

At least two groups of writers on Puritanism prefer the theory that Puritans cannot be Anglicans, nor can Anglicans be Puritans.  Some Non-Conformists take this stance because they want to emphasise the gulf between Anglicanism and Puritanism, to show that true Puritanism is found outside Anglicanism. Some Anglican writers take this stance because they want to claim that Puritanism has no place in mainstream Anglicanism.

However Patrick Collinson has shown that Puritanism was part of Anglicanism: ‘our modern conception [that] Anglicanism commonly excludes puritanism is…a distortion of part of our religious history,’ and A. G. Dickens claims that ‘Puritanism in our sense was never limited to Nonconformists; it was a powerful element in the origins of the Anglican Church and it was through that Church that it won its abiding role in the life and outlook of the nation.’

The leaders of Puritan Anglicans included: Archbishop Grindal of Canterbury, who tried to defend Puritan practice against the attacks of Queen Elizabeth; Archbishop Williams of York, author of The Holy Table, Name and Thing, a sturdy defence of the Reformed theology and practice of the Lord’s Supper; and Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who together with Richard Baxter promoted a Reformed model of Primitive Episcopacy. Nigel Atkinson has shown that Richard Hooker, that great architect of Anglicanism, was clearly in the Reformed tradition, and was closer to Calvin in theology than some of his Puritan critics. Even in the days of the Commonwealth, 300 Episcopal Puritans [called ‘Evangelicals’ by a contemporary writer] used to meet regularly in Oxford for Anglican worship…

Just a reminder of the heritage we contemporary Evangelicals ought to live up to, or to which we ought to live up.

 

Evangelicals Right or Left?

David Wilson, one of several Evangelicals in the Diocese of Pittsburgh who followed Anglo-Catholic Bob Duncan into the Anglican Church in North America, has written a description of a group of mostly evangelical clergy in the Pittsburgh diocese who met together for fellowship and encouragement from the mid-1980s to the division of the diocese in 2008. The group was given the nickname ‘Thunder on the Theological Right’ by Pittsburgh bishop Alden Hathaway, and became known as TOTTR.

It seems to me, though, that Hathaway got it wrong. Not about the ‘thunder’—if you know any of the people involved, you won’t quibble about that. But surely when Evangelicals thunder, they thunder on the left. It’s Anglo-Catholics who share characteristics with the political right: conservative, traditionalist, opposed to change, authoritarian. Evangelicals, on the other hand, are the party that has sought change in the church since before the Reformation, and who have never been satisfied that the degree of reformation so far achieved is enough; ‘but halflie reformed’ was our view of the Elizabethan church, and what Evangelical would say it’s any better today? Evangelicals have only one tradition, the truth in God’s Word Written, agreeing with Augustine that ‘custom without truth is error grown old’. Evangelicals are those who treasure the ‘blessed change’ wrought in them by the Holy Spirit, and pray for similar change in others and further change in the same direction for themselves. And Evangelicals have always asserted the Scriptural standard of shared ministry rather than clerical dominance, and preferred the designation ‘minister’ to ‘priest’ because of the hierarchical and authoritarian implications of the latter term.

If Hathaway had got it right, they would have been TOTTL, not TOTTR; ‘Total’, rather than ‘Totter’, might they have said? In my foolish dream, this simple change of nomenclature would have kept us standing together, rather than tottering, and there might still be a reform movement in the Episcopal Church.

 

A Lament and a Hope from Early Methodist/Episcopal History

Hobnobbing with some of my fellow Methodist colleagues for our community Good Friday service today, I could not help mourning what could have been had the early Methodists and Episcopalians united early on.  In the chaos after the American Revolution, John Wesley set apart Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as “superintendents” to continue to spread the Gospel and set up Methodist Societies in America.  However, the American societies, already functionally operating as churches, conferred upon them the title of “bishop.”  Coke extended an initial olive branch to Bishops White and Seabury.  Seabury’s response is unknown if he had responded, yet Bishop White met with Coke on three other occasions.  The exact substance of their conversations is lost to history, aside from speculations by White that Asbury did not seem to care about being a bishop as such, and that Coke seemed more keen on having “official” episcopal authority for the sake of his Methodist flock.  All  we know is that nothing akin to merger ever happened.  Perhaps the same forces were at work that split Methodism from Anglicanism in the U.K. came to the fore earlier in America thanks to the Revolution.

Yet to think of the potential impact in terms of missions, evangelism, even ecumenical endeavors is an exercise worthy of consideration.  If we can picture what an alternative past would have looked like, it can help us conceive of a different future we would like to work toward.  Jesus was willing to die to bring us back into relationship with himself.   How much are we willing to give in striving for a kingdom-focused approach to ministry?

 

1662 and all that

From a fascinating article by Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of the now standard biography of Thomas Cranmer:

“The Restoration Church [ie the Church of the 1662 Prayer Book]… destroyed the latitude that had made it possible for Lancelot Andrewes, Antonio del Corro, Elizabeth I, and Walter Travers more or less to coexist in the same church. Anglicanism has been asking questions about latitude ever since; but perhaps it has been hiding from some of the answers.”

Andrewes was high church catholic, del Corro a unitarian, Elizabeth more lutheran in theology than anything else, and Travers a presbyterian. And there really was room in the Elizabethan church for all of them and more besides. The idea that today’s Anglican Church, let alone today’s Episcopal Church, is a hotbed of diversity is… well, you tell me. But that’s only one of the answers from which the church has been hiding, according to MacCulloch; others will be of more interest to Anglo-Catholics than to Evangelicals—but they will need their smelling salts.

The article is called ‘The Latitude of the Church of the England’ and can be found in a collection of essays edited by Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, entitled Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England (Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2006).

 

Richard Baxter’s Cure for Church Divisions IV

As we continue this occasional series of principles suggested by Richard Baxter for those who would like to avoid fomenting division in the church, he has some questions for the clergy of his day, and perhaps of ours, concerning their attitudes towards those from whom they differ

Principle IV
If others shew their weakness by any unreasonable opinions or divisions, show not your greater weakness by passionate, impatient or uncharitable criticism of them: especially when self-interest provokes you.

None usually are so spleenishly impatient at the weakness of Dissenters or Separatists as their Pastors are. And what is the cause? Is it because the Pastors abound in Love for the souls of those who offend, or those who are endangered by them? If so, I have no more to say to them. But when we see that the honor and self-interest of the Pastors is most deeply concerned in the business, and that they are carried by their impatience into more uncharitable behavior than the others are by their separation from them; and when we see that they put up with such sins as this in themselves; and that they can bear with such sins in people with plenty of patience when their own self-interest does not raise their passions; in such cases we have reason enough to fear that pride and selfishness have too great a part in much of the schism in the world.

Parents must not be so patient with sin, as to leave their children uncorrected: But correction must not be the effect of impatience, but of Love and Wisdom and dislike of sin, and must be chosen and measured so as to cure it. It’s one thing to be angry on God’s behalf against sin, and it’s another thing to be angry on our own behalf because our wills and interests have been challenged: And it’s one thing to correct so as to achieve a cure, and another thing to exact revenge.

Is it seemly for those who are the fathers of the flock and should excel their people in Love and lowliness, in patience and gentleness and meekness, to be so proud and passionate, as to storm against conscientious persons, because they reject our Ministry, and submit to others who are as able and as faithful and more profitable to them than we? When we can more easily bear with a swearer or drunkard or the families that are prayerless and ungodly, than with the most religious, because they do not choose our Ministry, but prefer some others as more edifying? When we can bear with them that have no understanding or seriousness in Religion at all, but make the world or their lusts their idols, but cannot bear with the weak irregularities of the most upright and devout? And to shew the height of our pride, we still are confident that we are the persons only that are in the right, and therefore that all are in the right that follow us, and all are in the wrong that turn away from us; That it is Unity and duty to follow us and adhere to us, and all are Schismaticks who forsake us and choose others. And thus the selfishness and Pride of the Pastors, making an imprudent and impatient stir against all who dislike them, and applauding all however bad who adhere to them and follow them, is as great a cause of the disorders of the Church, as the weakness and errors of the people.

Language modernised a bit; originally published in 1670.

 

The Bible and the Anglican Communion

Anglican Bishop in Egypt Mouneer Anis addresses the Mere Anglicanism conference in South Carolina on the Word of God for the Anglican Communion:

“There are four areas:
1) the importance of the Word of God as we see it in the Bible
2) The importance of the Word of God as affirmed by the early Anglican reformers, the Thirty Nine articles and Lambeth Resolutions
3) Where we have fallen
4) How we recover the importance of the Word of God for our Anglican Communion today.”

Read it all here.

 

Charles Simeon on the Prince of Peace

From his sermon outline on the Nativity of Christ:

“By him all who believe have peace with God (Isaiah 12:1, Romans 5:1); he plants peaceable dispositions in the hearts of his subjects (James 3:17); his government promotes peace in the world (Hebrews 12:14); and when the nations of the earth bow down to him, and acknowledge him as their Sovereign, they shall learn war no more (Isaiah 2:4).”

May the Prince of Peace establish his peace among us this Christmastide!

 

Thanks for Broken Chains

With Thanksgiving Vespers at hand this evening, I briefly considered reading an old time sermon for tonight.  A quick Google search with the words “Anglican, Episcopal, sermon, Thanksgiving” yielded this interesting tidbit from Absalom Jones at Project Canterbury.  It seems especially apropos considering the OT Reading in the Lectionary for Thanksgiving Day.

There are many chains that human sinfulness places into the hands of Satan, whereby we are made slaves.  It can be the literal slavery of Israel or the African diaspora in America.  It can be the figurative slavery of drugs and alchohol, codependent relationships, or a broken sexuality.  Yet I am reminded of the chorus of an old Gospel song, “Jesus breaks every fetter.  Jesus breaks every fetter.  Jesus breaks every fetter, and He sets me free.”  Let us give thanks to the God who rescues us from shackles both without and within.  He who the Son sets free is “free indeed” (John 8:36).

 

Faith and Worship

Thanks to Bruce Robison for pointing out this helpful piece on Anglicanism by Gerald Bray, here. These words were especially interesting, I thought: “Tragically, it seems that the current spiritual lethargy of Anglicanism in the English-speaking world is connected to the demise of the Prayer Book since the 1960s. However, there is still a faithful remnant that keeps its witness alive, both in the traditional 1662 form and in modern-language adaptations, and there are signs that a spiritual renewal may be developing that will influence the Anglican Communion in the next generation.”

Many Evangelicals in the Church of England at the time thought the 1662 book a sad decline from its predecessors, giving too much glory to bishops and re-establishing unbiblical ceremonies that had been little used for a generation. I think they had a point, but the declines since have made the situation so much worse that a return to 1662 would be progress beyond my wildest dreams.

 

Richard Baxter’s Cure for Church Divisions III

Written for all who teach the faith, clergy, Bible study leaders, parents etc

In all your public teaching and private conversation, stress the necessary conjunction of holiness and peace; and of the love of God and man; and make your hearers understand that love is their holiness, and the sum of their religion; the goal of faith, the heart of sanctification, and the fulfilling of the law: And that as love of God units us to Him, so love of man unites us to one another. All teaching or practice which is against love and unity is against God and against Christ and against the great work of the Spirit, and is enmity to the Church and to mankind. Press these things on them all the year, that your hearers may be bred up and nourished with these principles from their youth.

IF ever the church is to recover from its wounds, it must be by the peaceable dispositions of clergy and people. And if ever they are to come to a peaceable disposition, it must be by peaceable doctrine and principles: by the full and frequent explication of the nature, pre-eminence, necessity and power of love: that they may hear of it so much, and so long, till Love be made their religion, and become the natural constitution of their souls. And if ever anyone is to be brought to this, it must be by daily drawing it from those breasts which nourish them in the infancy and youth of their religion, and by learning it as the sum of Godliness and Christianity. The older experienced ripe and mellow clergy and people must instil it into those still learning, and into the younger clergy, that there may be nothing so commonly in their ears and in their studies, as Uniting-Love: that they may be taught to know that God is Love, and that he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him (I John 4. 16). And that the love of God always works towards His image in man (I John 4. 7, 11, 12, 20). And that all people have some of God’s image in their nature, in that they have reason and the power to choose (Genesis 9.6). And therefore we must love men as men, and saints as saints; it is love of God and man, which is true holiness, and the new creation, to which Christ came to bring back fallen man, and for which the Holy Spirit is sent, and for which all the means of grace are intended and fitted, and for which they must be used, or they are misused. In a word, that FAITH WORKING BY LOVE, or LOVE and THE WORKS OF LOVE KINDLED BY THE SPIRIT BY FAITH IN CHRIST, is the sum of all the Christian Religion (Galatian 5. 6, 13, 22, I Timothy 1. 5).

He that proclaims holiness and zeal, without a due commemoration of love and peace, deceives his hearers about that very holiness and zeal which he commends.

Language modernised a bit; it was published in 1670, after all. ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose‘…