It is happy for us, my Brethren that we have, in our Book of Common Prayer, a standard of faith and worship, conformable to scripture, and agreeable to the practice of the Church in the earliest and purest ages of Christianity. It will be the object of the present discourse to recommend to you a strict adherence to this standard; shunning, on the one hand, those corruptions and superstitions of the Church of Rome, which it was so carefully framed to avoid, and equally rejecting, on the other hand, the errors connected with ultra-Protestantism, and all the extravagances which have recently sprung from it.
The Holy Scriptures, as they were interpreted by the Church during the first two centuries after the ascension of the Saviour, not as they may chance to be interpreted by the wayward fancies of individuals, constitute the only sure basis for us to rest upon.
Guess the speaker and the date before you look (my emphasis).
Boy, that’s sad.
Cranmer?
Oops! Look at the title for a clue!!!
Oh how the Nutmeg has fallen….
I am puzzled by this:
“as they were interpreted by the Church during the first two centuries after the ascension of the Saviour”
Why only two centuries? Lancelot Andrewes singled out “the five first centuries” and the Act of Supremacy of 1559 declared that any doctrinal positions contrary to the decrees of the “first four councils” (the fourth of which met in 451) were to be legally regarded as heresy.
#4 I was surprised by this also. But I do think the principle of the importance of the early Christian Community’s reception of and understanding of Holy Scripture comes through loud and clear.
I might use the same play that Rush uses with the minimum wage: if two centuries are okay, why not three? If three are okay, why not four? If five centuries, why not ten? It’s not as though people 200 years later knew any better than people 500 years later.
Recently, I saw some pictures of what early Christians did to pagan statues in the early days as they were ‘converting’ the masses. Considering the blood and gore committed by the early church, I think we can dispense with the illusion that their `understanding’ was worth much. To quote another Rush Limbaugh favorite: this is a world governed by the use of force. No institution ever has grown to such power or ever maintained such power in the long run without giving up that principle of loving one’s neighbor. That’s history, and that’s the future.