Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Turretin: The Church Obscure, Church Asunder, Church Inglorious


Posted by Francis Turretin on FB, yet without an academic citation.  Nevertheless, these are excellent thoughts on the church under age, obscured and rent asunder and asore.



Our opinion is confirmed by various reasons. The first is drawn from the condition of the church under the Old Testament, under which it is evident that she was not rarely obscured and destitute of all splendor (which can easily be demonstrated by her various intervals). Who can deny that she was without splendor before the flood, when all flesh had corrupted its way (Gen. 6:12), and in the flood when reduced to eight souls, she was included in the ark? In the time of Abraham before his call from Ur of the Chaldees, she lay concealed in a paternal family given to idolatry (Jos. 24:1, 2). What was the splendor of the church in Egypt, where she was so long a captive without any form either of a state or of a sacred ministry? What was her splendor under the judges, when after the death of Joshua the Israelites, having left the God of their fathers, went after other gods (Jdg. 2:7; 3:8, 12), concerning which times Azariah says, "Now for a long season...

Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law" (2 Ch. 15:3)? What appearance and splendor did the church have in the time of Elijah, when he thought that he was left alone to worship God (1 K. 19:10); God in the meantime consoling him with this-that he had preserved seven thousand believers known to himself alone who had not bowed the knee to Baal? What splendor had the Jewish church under Ahaz, Manasseh, Ammon and other wicked kings under whom the sacrifice was interrupted by law, the gates of the temple closed, an altar built after the form of those of Damascus by Uriah the high priest and idolatry introduced everywhere (as we read in 2 K. 16:11, 12, 14; 2 Ch. 28:3, 4, 24, 25)? And if we come down to the Babylonian captivity, where was the splendor of the church after the city had been razed, the temple polluted, the sacred vessels taken away, sacrifice abolished, the worship of God interrupted (which could not be performed except at Jerusalem) and the people brought into the most direful servitude? Hence the pious most mournfully lamented that the prophets and all the signs had been taken away (Ps. 74:9). In fine, what appearance and prominence could the church have had under the most dreadful persecutions of Antiochus and his successors, mentioned in the book of Maccabees and by Josephus (JW 1.30-40 [Loeb, 2:16-23]). In that time, Paul says believers "were stoned...were slain with the sword...being destitute...tormented, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; in deserts, and in mountains and in caves of the earth" (Heb. 11:37, 38).

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