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a summary of religious devotion. It was done also at the right moment in history, a moment which unavailed of would have been lost forever. The juncture of the new and the old constituted a plastic creative hour; and the man met the hour, who was devoted to the Christian faith as revealed in Scripture, but who without prejudice or reactionary tendency was able and glad to discern in the religious consciousness of the past whatever bound it to the present or to the future. No great and pure religious instinct was overlooked. Indeed there was some concession to the weakness of those with whom past associations were too sacred to be sundered sharply or rudely.

Thus in the stately offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, constituting the staple and normal worship of the people, it is the forgiveness of God which is offered; and in the Reformation, it was God's forgiveness, and not that of the Church or of the priesthood, which was most desired and needed, and most highly valued. But for those with whom the consciousness of God was weak or who shrank from the Divine approach, those who were sick or at the point of death, the forgiveness of man was allowed, as in the phrase of the form of absolution of the thirteenth century, - ego te absolvo. It

is something to be valued - the forgiveness of man as representing the Church; but there is a higher forgiveness for which the soul hungers in its highest mood, which no lower forgiveness will satisfy. But this is one of the few concessions to the religious mood bred by medievalism. For the predominant note in the Prayer Book is God, revealed in the sacred and eternal Trinity,

the divine love and the divine forgiveness; and the response of man implies the cultivation of moral character, as what God desires. It is this which lends dignity and weight to the exhortations distributed throughout the book.

Another feature giving high distinction and value to the Prayer Book is its conservative tone, which becomes a strong apologetic for the Christian faith. To discard the devotions of past ages, in the effort at reform, would have implied that the work of Christ had been in great part a failure, that the Church preserved no continuous faith or life. Such a temptation, and it existed, Cranmer rose above - even if circumstances had not favored his purpose. He could believe that the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria had erred in matters of the faith, that the Church of Rome had grievously erred; but he also believed that they had conserved the Christian faith to a saving extent,

and that they remained true churches, despite their errors. He could hold that General Councils had erred in matters of faith, and yet retain for them high reverence as having set forth and maintained the fundamental truth of the coequality of the Son with the Father.

In the age of the Reformation the Bible was distinguished from other books, as the Word of God. It was the Word of God, when compared with ecclesiastical traditions which were the commandments of men; the Word of God as revealing the Divine will, and because the scope of the whole is to give all glory to God; the Word of God, because it contained all things necessary to salvation; the Word of God, preeminently, for it carried the portrait of Christ, the life and character and teaching of Him who is the Word of God made flesh and dwelling among men. Further than this the Anglican Church did not go. It makes no answer to the questions, How or Why. It offers no theory of inspiration, no dogma as to mode of composition of the various books, their date, or their authorship. It is content to trust the Scriptures to the clergy and laity for their devout study, throwing on them the individual responsibility for the interpretation of its contents, by the aid of sound

learning, and by the use of such helps as minister to the knowledge of the same. In its conception of the Bible the Anglican Church differs from the unreformed churches, Greek and Roman, in not placing tradition or the creeds above the Bible, or in valuing the Bible chiefly as the bulwark of the creeds, in accordance with which its interpretation must be confined. Hence there is no sensitiveness, no fear about the Bible, as with those who subordinate it to the creeds. The Anglican Church has made no effort to guard the Bible by theory, definition, or dogma. Not even its infallibility is asserted. It is Romanism or Puritanism which asserts the inspiration of all and every part of Scripture.1 Theories about the Bible devised in the seventeenth century, and chiefly by divines of the Puritan school or by Lutheran theologians, are very often attributed to the Anglican Church, and fastened upon her, by a preponderating sentiment from without her pale, which it is sometimes hard to resist. But the most careful search of Anglican standards reveals no trace of them. It must be remembered in this connection, that in the age of the Reformation, while the Bible was held in love and reverence, yet

1 Cf. "Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent," Session IV, "Westminster Confession," Ch. 1.

there was also greater freedom in its interpretation than in the age which followed. Luther's Biblical criticism to a later age would appear like the destructive attack of modern rationalism. He thought it a matter of indifference whether or not Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He compared the books of Scripture with each other and assigned them a relative importance according to their subject-matter or their mode of treatment. To the Gospel of St. John he gave the preference above the Synoptics, and thought the Epistles of St. Paul of greater authority than the gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, or St. Luke. If one had St. John's Gospel and St. Paul's Epistles, he had all that it was necessary to know. He found no inspiration in the Epistles of James or Jude, or in the Book of Revelation. The test with Luther was the appreciation of the Person and work of Christ. Our view has changed about the relative value of the books of Scripture; but what it is important to recognize here, is that opinions, such as those of Luther, were well known in England at the time when our formularies were issued, and may be responsible for the somewhat cautious and moderate language used in defining Scripture, as the "Word of God, containing all things necessary to salvation." Cranmer, who is re

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