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J. C. Ryle’s Significance for Today – Part 2

Author
Category Articles
Date April 12, 2016

Indebtedness to the Reformation

In his paper Lessons from English Church History, Ryle draws out the benefits that have accrued from the Reformation.

Whatever England is among the nations of the earth, as a Christian country, whatever political liberty we enjoy, whatever freedom we have in religion, whatever safety for life and property there is among us, whatever purity and happiness there is in our homes, whatever protection and care for the poor — we owe it, in very great measure, to the Protestant Reformation.

He argues that as Archbishop Laud’s want of sympathy with the Re­formation and attempts to ‘unprotestantise’ the Church of England resulted in tragedy for the Church and nation, so Ritualism in nineteenth-century England was a fresh departure from the principles of the Reformation and a move towards Rome; as such it endangered the very existence of the Church of England. Many, said Ryle, would argue that it is not a Romanizing move­ment, but simply a desire to introduce more ornate ceremonial. ‘I have no sympathy with that opinion at all.’ Ritualism is a Rome-ward movement and leads to popery. It is proved by the writings of the leading Ritualists of the day. ‘I believe that Ritualism has done and is doing universal damage to the Church of England, and that unless it is checked or removed, it will prove the destruction of the Establishment.’

At the conclusion of this paper he declares:

There can be no real peace while our church tolerates and fosters popery. God forbid that we should ever sacrifice truth to a love of peace. What others think I do not know. My own mind is made up. I have come to one decided conclusion. I say, give me a really Protestant and evangelical established church or no established church at all. When the Reformed Church of England renounces her Protestant principles and goes back to popery her life and her glory will have clean departed, and she will not be worth preserving. She will be an offence to God and not a resting place for any true Christian.

With those solemn words of warning ringing in our ears, let us now trace out something of what has happened to the Church of England since they were uttered. I shall confine myself to those movements which have gone on as a natural progression from those which Ryle himself castigated and con­demned in his writings, and they are, in the first place, concerned with the drift towards Rome.

The Anglo-Catholic movement, which Ryle saw as threatening the very existence of the established church, soon after his death manifested the very signs which he feared of actively seeking reunion with Rome. In the 1920s an attempt was made with the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Davidson, at a rapprochement with the Church of Rome, through the Malines conversations. Cardinal Mercier and some other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church met with Lord Halifax and several other Anglo- Catholics. The conversations were held from 1921 to 1926. After the death of Cardinal Mercier they broke down. Later it was disclosed by the Vatican that it had never envisaged the re-union of the Roman Catholic and Angli­can churches, but only a rapprochement with Anglo-Catholics. This caused much astonishment at the time. However, the ice had been broken and the way prepared, despite the self-confessed duplicity of Rome, for further con­versations, which came about after the Second World War, when Archbishop Ramsey and the Pope set up the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission in 1966.

This was a much more serious attempt than the Malines Conversations to seek unity, and it is evident by its fruits that it has made considerable progress towards the re-unification of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches. In 1982, ARCIC, as this body is known, published its Final Report, which claimed substantial agreement between the two sides on Eucharist, Ministry and Authority. Major concessions were made by the Anglican side in the acceptance of the Lord’s Supper as a propitiatory sacri­fice and in the nature of substantial change in the elements, though much of it was concealed in ambiguous and recondite language. The Report also affirmed the sacerdotal character of the ministry. It unashamedly uses the term hiereus, or sacrificing priest, for the Christian minister, which is never used of ministers in the New Testament. Finally, the Report states, ‘In a reunited church a universal primacy will be needed, and that primacy should properly belong to the Bishop of Rome.’

Would it not have been well with the Church of England if at all times she had heeded Ryle’s words, and ‘cultivated a godly simplicity in all her statements about the Lord’s Supper’? ‘There is’, he said, ‘no sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper, no real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine, no change in the elements, no grace conferred ex opere operato, no altar at the east end of our churches, no sacrificing priesthood in the Church of England.’ A godly simplicity is indeed required of us. ‘Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay’ — no shifts, stratagems and ambiguities — ‘for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.’

In a cleverly scheduled operation, the Pope visited this country for the first time in 1982, just after the publication of this report. He was received by the Queen in Buckingham Palace and took part in a service in Canterbury Cathedral. I doubt that Ryle, had he been able to witness these scenes, would have been altogether surprised. Had he not repeatedly warned of what would happen if the Anglo-Catholic movement were not checked? But he would nevertheless have been horrified at the apostasy of the national church.

But that is by no means all that happened. Following these unprecedented events, the General Synod in 1985 debated the ARCIC Final Report and approved it in several motions, which were passed with significant majorities in all houses of bishops, clergy and laity. The following day The Times carried a report which stated: ‘The Church of England, through its representative body, declared its willingness to take into its system the office of universal primate, the Bishop of Rome. That was a historic moment.’ And so indeed it was, for it meant an effective cancelling out of the Reformation in the Church of England. Warning had been given before the vote was taken, by Church Society, that it was not merely a motion for talks to continue between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, but, as the resolution stated, ‘for the next concrete steps to be taken towards the reconciliation of our churches’.

However, the story does not stop there. The same resolutions were sent down to all the diocesan synods and were similarly approved by every one without exception. And, finally, in 1988 the same Report and resolutions came before the Lambeth Conference representing the whole Anglican Communion and were overwhelmingly endorsed by all the bishops present, save one. What would Ryle have thought of all this had he been there? But we must bring the story up to date.

Immediately following the approval of ARCIC by the whole Anglican Communion, Dr Runcie made arrangements to go to Rome to meet the Pope. He was going to Rome with the special mission to deliver up the Church of England and the Anglican Communion to the Pope, to bring him this glittering prize and to receive a reward for what he had done. But he returned a very disappointed man. The Pope was no doubt pleased with what had been done, but he made it clear that it did not by any means go far enough. The primacy of the Pope that the Church of England must accept is not merely a primacy of honour, but of jurisdiction. Until that was forthcoming there could be no reunion. I saw Archbishop Runcie on television immediately following his return, and he was a broken man.

Since then the ARCIC process has continued with a view to educating Anglicans into full acceptance of the primacy of the Pope. That is the sig­nificance of the latest statement of ARCIC entitled The Gift of Authority. The Rubicon has already been crossed; the primacy of the Pope has been accepted by Anglicans in principle; the only thing now for ARCIC to do is to show what that really means. It means a primacy of jurisdiction. The Gift of Authority declares: ‘Within his wider ministry, the Bishop of Rome offers a specific ministry concerning the discernment of truth, as an expression of universal primacy’ (para. 47). And it goes on, Anglicans must be open to and desire a recovery and re-reception under certain clear conditions of the exercise of universal primacy by the Bishop of Rome.’

This would have fulfilled all of Ryle’s worst fears. Does not his ultimatum — ‘Give me a really Protestant and evangelical established church or no established church at all’ — now come to have immediate relevance and force?

But somebody may say, What about his words, ‘So long as the Articles and the Prayer Book are not altered, we are in an impregnable position’? The response is that since then the Prayer Book has virtually disappeared; and as for the Articles, ARCIC has not altered or removed them, but simply ignored and gone round them. Between the wars, the French built a great line of defence against the Germans called the Maginot Line. They said it was impregnable, and I believe it was, for it was never breached. But when war was declared, the German army ignored it and pushed through the Low Countries, out-flanking the Maginot Line and capturing Paris. ARCIC has out-flanked the Thirty-Nine Articles. It has left them standing, but the operative doctrine of the Church of England now is no longer the Thirty- Nine Articles but the ARCIC Statements. The fact that the Articles remain unaltered is of very little significance.

The Church of Rome has had long experience of doing things this way. She has the Scriptures and the Catholic Creeds, but they do not determine her theology. They have long been overtaken by the tradition of the Church of Rome and by her Councils, especially the Council of Trent; and her doctrine is now determined not by Scripture, but by those traditions. What does the celebrated Bishop Hall say in his book No Peace with Rome? ‘Look on the face of Rome and she is ours and God’s. Look on her back, and she is quite contrary, Antichristian . . . Rome doth both hold the foundation and deny it. She holds it directly, she destroys it by consequence . . . in that she destroys it, whatever semblance she makes of piety and holiness, she is a Church of Malignants.’ And what coquetry and harlotry she has learned over the centuries, she is now teaching her little sister, who seems eager to learn and to imitate her.

What the Anglican Church is now doing is the same as Rome has done, putting in place a tradition based upon ARCIC which will, indeed already has, superseded the Articles as the determinant of Anglican doctrine.

Before leaving the question of reunion with Rome, I must refer to a matter of great moment, and that is the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In his paper The Fallibility of Ministers, Bishop Ryle says: ‘There is no doctrine about which we ought to be so jealous as justification by faith without the deeds of the law.’ It is clear that Ryle, like the Reformers, attached enormous importance to this great doctrine of Scripture. He refers to the incident at Antioch, when Paul ‘withstood Peter to his face, because he was to be blamed’:

What article of the faith had Peter denied? None. What doctrine had he publicly preached that was false? None. What then had he done? He had done this. After keeping company with believing Gentiles, he had publicly withdrawn from them. He seemed to think they were less holy and accept­able to God than the circumcised Jews. He seemed to add something to simple faith, and to be saying in answer to the question, What must I do to be saved? not merely ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ’ but ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be circumcised, and keep the law’.

So this doctrine, which is so fundamental to the church, must be guarded jealously in all ages. There is no place here for sleights of hand, ambiguity or sloppy thinking.

This doctrine of justification by faith alone, without the works of the law, is essential to true peace . . . It is the doctrine that Satan hates and above all seeks to overthrow . . . He is always trying to seduce churches and ministers to deny and obscure its truth. No wonder that the Council of Trent directed its chief attack against this doctrine and pronounced it accursed and heretical . . . The doctrine is gall and wormwood to un­converted hearts.

It is essential to the true success and well-being of the church. And Ryle added, ‘Its schools may be in every parish, its buildings may strike the eye all over the land. But there will be no blessing of God in that church, unless justification by faith is preached from its pulpits. Sooner or later its candle­stick will be taken away.’

These, indeed, are solemn words. What would Ryle think of what is taking place today? When the ARCIC report on Salvation and the Church was published in 1986, I was invited to give a paper on it to the Church of England Evangelical Council. I pointed out that the statement on justifica­tion was deliberately ambiguous. Its intention was to make a bridge between the Roman and Protestant doctrines; to subvert the scriptural teaching, namely, that it declares the believing sinner as righteous, by combining with it the Roman teaching that it is an inward infusion of righteousness. I was attacked by an evangelical bishop as uncharitable and wrong. I cannot remember that anyone came to my aid.

But since then we have had Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a further attempt to skew the teaching on justification in a Rome-ward direction. It has been signed by leading Evangelicals. What would Ryle have made of all this? I think the answer is quite clear. In his paper Apostolic Fears he wrote, ‘False doctrine is the engine Satan has chosen to corrupt and pollute the church . . . Unity is worthless if purchased at the cost of truth.’ In his paper Pharisees and Sadducees, he wrote, ‘We must not think that a man, once an evangelical, can do no wrong.’ ‘Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, i.e., false doctrine. He [the Lord] gave this as a perpetual warning to the church . . . There is no security against the doctrine of the Pharisees unless we resist it at the very beginning.’ (I fear that in the case of ARCIC it has been allowed to run for too long now to be remedied). ‘Beginning with a dislike to “evangelical religion” as “old-fashioned”, “narrow” and “exclusive” (precisely the epithets used about it at Keele) you may end up by rejecting every leading doctrine of Christianity — the atonement, the need of grace and the divinity of Christ.’

Again, in the same paper he says:

Let us beware of the insidiousness of false doctrine, the very small be­ginnings . . . Every heresy began at one time with some little departure from the truth. There is only a little seed of error needed to create a great tree . . . it is a little leaven that leavens the whole lump . . . Very striking is the vision in Pilgrim’s Progress which describes the hill Error as ‘very steep on the furthest side’.

I fear Ryle’s words of warning have not been heeded, and the Gadarene rush, having once begun, cannot now be turned back.

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