Anglican Bishops

"There is little doubt that the Prayer Books are Cranmer's personal legacy to the Church. Though he did not act alone, the final form of the text comes from his own hand."

"My duty towards my neighbours is to love them as myself. And to do to all as I would they should do to me. To love, honour and succour my father and mother. To honour and obey the King and his ministers. To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters. …. To hurt nobody by word or deed. To be true and just in all my dealing. To bear no malice or hatred in my heart. To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking, lying and slandering. To keep my body in temperance, soberness and chastity. Not to covet or desire others’ goods. But learn and labour truly to get my own living, and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me."

"[E]ven those who will not go as far as claiming Cranmerian authorship for the collects outright have agreed that the balance of probability lies very much towards establishing him as the translator of a number of Latin collects of the Sarum rite for the new Prayer Book, and the composer of collects for occasions where no model existed, or where the existing model was not adopted. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to explain their consistency of style, their economy of expression, and in the case of those that are translations or adaptations of Latin originals, their skilful negotiation between two languages, and their deft adjustments of content to conform to Reformation doctrinal precepts."

"You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle if you do not pity Jesus in the slum."

"All the synoptic gospels show Jesus in close relationship with the ‘outsiders’ and the unloved. Publicans and sinners, prostitutes and criminals are among his acquaintances and companions. If Jesus were homosexual in nature (and this is the true explanation of his celibate state) then this would be further evidence of God’s self-identification with those who are unacceptable to the upholders of ‘The Establishment’ and social conventions."

"Jesus' disclosure shows that in his very nature God is self-effacing, whereas Christian orthodoxy has thought of him as the opposite; majestic, glorious and triumphal."

"Certainly in the gospels Jesus manifested love, but it was very different from what is generally supposed. It included a certain ruthlessness in his care and concern, a willingness to condemn not individuals but classes, a hatred of bigotry and pretence."

"Men usually remain unmarried for three reasons: either because they cannot afford to marry or there are no girls to marry (neither of these factors need have deterred Jesus); or because it is inexpedient for them to marry in the light of their vocation (we have already ruled this out during the ‘hidden years’ of Jesus’ life); or because they are homosexual in nature, in as much as women hold no special attraction for them. The homosexual explanation is one which me must not ignore."

"The philosophical consequences of the General Theory of Relativity are perhaps more striking than the experimental tests. As Bishop Barnes has reminded us, "The astonishing thing about Einstein's equations is that they appear to have come out of nothing." We have assumed that the laws of nature must be capable of expression in a form which is invariant for all possible transformations of the space-time co-ordinates and also that the geometry of space-time is Riemannian. From this exiguous basis, formulae of gravitation more accurate than those of Newton have been derived. As Barnes points out..."

"Although he was trained in mathematics and was not a biblical scholar... Barnes, undertook to write a book about the origins of the Christian religion. Published in 1947, The Rise of Christianity caused a stir because it was so frankly dismissive of traditional Christian dogma, especially the miraculous. In this book, for example, Barnes calls the birth stories "edifying legend." He observes that the roots of the story of the Virgin Birth are "pagan." He questions the dogma of the Logos—the eternal word incarnate in this man, Jesus—set forth in the first chapter of John's Gospel. And he denies the bodily resurrection of Christ. Like Thomas Jefferson, he admires Jesus' character and teaching."

"The Roman Catholics were already prominent in the debate on abortion in Britain in the 1930s. It is notable, for example, that only two religious groups were keen to give evidence before the Inter-Departmental Committee in Abortion between 1937 and 1939 or sent written statements to the Committee. One was the Modern Churchmen's Union, and in particular its most prominent supporter, though not a member, Ernest William Barnes, the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, which was concerned to advance the cause of abortion on eugenic grounds, and the other was the Roman Catholics... No representatives of the Protestant Nonconformist Churches took part or made statements (Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee 1939)"

"The only Bishop (Ernest William Barnes...) in the Royal Society appears to have contracted the habit so prevalent among popular scientists of making stupid and unsupported statements... In his book, Scientific Theory and Religion, he tells us that the flatness and fixity of the earth were "taken over into the Christian Creeds." Which creeds? ...he describes as erroneous the "authorized teaching of the Roman Church" regarding the date of creation. What date did the Church authorize? He also refers to the "doctrine of the special creation of the species." There is no such doctrine. Incidentally one of the most eminent of English mathematicians, Professor Whittaker, F.R.S., severely criticizes the mathematical theories that are put forward in this book by Bishop Barnes."

"Revelation can be supplemented by reason. Christ Himself gave reasons for His belief, and put in modern form, these reasons are, to my mind, conclusive. You remember the passage in the earliest Gospel: "But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err" (Mark xii, 26 R.V.) Herein, in a form adapted to Jewish thought is "the one great argument which has made most sincere believers in God believers in Immortality also."

"Barnes was notorious for delivering what the press called his "guerilla sermons," in which he pointed out the need for the church to be honest in admitting how much of its traditional dogma would have to be abandoned if evolution theory was accepted. Even a progressionist, teleological evolutionism required a reinterpretation of the doctrine of original sin. To begin with, Barnes said little about the actual process of evolution, but he seems to have assumed that it was purposeful and aimed at the production of higher mental states. In 1930, though, he obtained a copy of R. A. Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection and began a correspondence with Fisher, who had studied under him while a student at Cambridge. Barnes was one of the few clergymen who could actually understand Fisher's mathematics (although even he admitted that it was hard going)... He did not concede that the selection theory offered a complete explanation, and he continued to believe that evolution was intended to produce beings with higher mental and spiritual qualities, but he was now aware that the more simpleminded forms of teleology were unacceptable."

"With a view to recalling Clausen's identity, we begin by introducing the generalized Gaussian and Clausenian hypergeometric function defined, in the notations of Leo Pochhammer and Ernest William Barnes... as already pointed out by Barnes, the generalized hypergeometric function pFq originated with Clausen and was studied, among others, by Johannes Karl Thomae, Édouard Jean-Baptiste Goursat, and Pochhammer whose voluminous work on the subject provides a detailed development of the theory."

"There has been the assumption that men are finite spirits. They are, that is to say, not only animals with a brief terrestrial existence, but in them is an element which comes from, and belongs to, the spiritual world. This world we postulate to be the world of eternal reality, of God; and we assume that in it whatever is of God, the things that are good, beautiful and true, will exist for ever with Him. We have then, to justify our belief that, because such God-like qualities exist in human personality, that personality will survive the destruction of the body."

"We see in man three elements; the material body, the life principle and the element of human personality. The last has only slowly reached its present complexity and is still far from the power and perfection that we can imagine it will some day possess."

"Man is what he is, because a spiritual element has entered into, and taken possession of, animal consciousness. This spiritual element is not, according to Christian teaching, divine: but it is capable of entering into relations with God. It can perceive Him: in thought, it can reason as to His nature and actions: in will and feeling, it can serve and love Him, or disobey and fear Him. Such activity shows itself in what we call the working of conscience."

"In general, Protestants of that era [late 1930s] did not object to state involvement in reproductive control; indeed, some of the Protestant Churches had originated as extensions of state power in the first place. Many protestants embraced eugenics as part of a broader trend towards acceptance of the secularization of modern societies. ...Many Protestant theologians were outspoken eugenicists, and some even supported eugenic sterilization: in Britain, William Ralph Inge, the dean of St. Paul's and Ernest William Barnes, the Bishop of Birmingham; in Germany, Hans Harmsen... in Romania, Alfred Csallner... Such direct involvement with eugenics demonstrates that a religiously sanctioned programme of human improvement was possible."

"The astonishing thing about Einstein's equations is that they appear to have come out of nothing."

"The conclusion seems to be irresistible that such laws of nature as the principle of conservation of energy, the principle of conservation of momentum and the law of gravitation are necessary consequences of our modes of measurement. They are, in fact, elaborately disguised identities which could have been predicted a priori by a being of sufficiently powerful analytical insight who fully understood all that is implied in the way we measure space-time intervals."

"Our own attitude to intercourse with "spirits" must be determined not by the authority of great teachers of the 13th or any other century, but by our examination in the light of the best secular knowledge of our time of the revelation of spiritual truth given by Christ."

"A perfectly evil human society is unthinkable: it would be self-destructive. We therefore deny that any society of absolutely evil spirits could be permanent. Evil in short, cannot be a unifying spiritual principle: to put it colloquially, there must be some good in the Devil or he must ultimately destroy himself. It is certain that the Devil cannot be the creative source of evil in the same way that God is the creative source of good."

"Human experience has pronounced "black magic" a delusion. Its practice is criminal folly: criminal because its objective is evil, folly because the means employed are futile."

"No statement about God is simply, literally true. God is far more than can be measured, described, defined in ordinary language, or pinned down to any particular happening."

"I say that it is possible to have some knowledge without the help of the senses. For in the Divine Mind all knowledge exists from eternity, and not only is there in it certain knowledge of universals but also of all singulars. ...Similarly, intelligence receiving irradiation from the primary light see all knowable things, both universal and singulars, in the primary light itself. Moreover, the Divine Mind, in the reflection of its intelligence upon Itself, knows the very things which come after Itself, because it is itself their cause. Therefore, those who are without any senses have true knowledge."

"I hold that the first form of a body is the first corporeal mover. But this is light, which as it multiplies itself and expands without the body of matter moving with it, makes its passage instantaneously through the transparent medium and is not motion but a state of change. But, indeed, when light is expanding itself in different directions it is incorporated with matter, if the body of matter extends with it, and it makes a rarefaction or augmentation of matter; for when light is itself charged with the body of matter, it produces condensation or rarefaction. So when light generates itself in one direction drawing matter with it, it produces local motion; and when light within matter is sent out and what is outside is sent in, it produces qualitative change. From this it is clear that corporeal motion is a multiplicative power of light, and this is a corporeal and natural appetite."

"The highest part of the human soul, which is called the intelligence and which is not the act of any body and does not need for its proper operation a corporeal instrument—this intelligence, if it were not obscured and weighed down by the mass of the body, would itself have complete knowledge from the irradiation received from the superior light without the help of sense, just as it will have when the soul is drawn forth from the body, and as perhaps those people have who are free from the love and the imaginings of corporeal things."

"The first corporeal form, which some call corporeity, I hold to be light. For light of its own nature diffuses itself in all directions, so that from a point of light a sphere of light of any size may be instantly generated, provided an opaque body does not get in the way. Corporeity is what necessarily follows the extension of matter in three dimensions, since each of these, that is corporeity and matter, is a substance simple in itself and lacking all dimensions. But simple form in itself and in dimension lacking matter and dimension, it was impossible for it to become extended in every direction except by multiplying itself and suddenly diffusing itself in every direction and in its diffusion extending matter; since it is not possible for form to do without matter because it is not separable, nor can matter itself be purged of form. And, in fact, it is light, I suggest, of which this operation is part of the nature, namely, to multiply itself and instantaneously diffuse itself in every direction. Therefore, whatever it is that produces this operation is either light itself or something that produces this operation in so far as it participates in light, which produces it by its own nature. Corporeity is therefore either this light, or is what produces the operation in question and produces dimensions in matter in so far as it participates in this light itself and acts by virtue of this same light. But for the first form to produce dimensions in matter by virtue of a subsequent form is impossible. Therefore light is not the form succeeding this corporeity, but is this corporeity itself."

"One cause, in so far as it is one, is productive of only one effect. I do not rule out several efficient causes of which one is nearer and another more remote in the same order. Thus when I say simply 'animal', I do not exclude another substance or particular substance. Hence motion, in so far as it is one, is productive of only one effect. But motion is present in every body from an intrinsic principle which is called natural. Therefore an efficient cause simply proportional to the motion is present in all bodies. But nothing is present in common in every body except primitive matter and primitive form and magnitude, which necessarily follows from these two, and whatever is entailed by magnitude as such, as position and shape. But simply through magnitude a body does not receive motion, as is clear enough when Aristotle shows that everything that moves is divisible, not, therefore, simply because of magnitude or something entailed by magnitude is a body productive of motion. Nor is primitive matter productive of motion, because it is itself passive. It is therefore necessary that motion follow simply from the primitive form as from an efficient cause."

"Because the purity of the eye of the soul is obscured and weighed down by the corrupt body, all the powers of this rational soul born in man are laid hold of by the mass of the body and cannot act and so in a way are asleep. Accordingly, when in the process of time the senses act through many interactions of sense with sensible things, the reasoning is awakened mixed with these very sensible things and is borne along in the senses to the sensible things as in a ship. But the functioning reason begins to divide and separately consider what in sense were confused. ...But the reasoning does not know this to be actually universal except after it has made this abstraction from many singulars, and has reached one and the same universal by its judgement taken from many singulars."

"In 1307 a general application was made to Clement V. for the purpose by the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, who sent one of their number, Robert de Killingworth, to Rome with that object and also by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, London, the Abbot and convent of Osney, King Edward the First, Greenfield, Archbishop of York, and the University of Oxford. ...The most interesting testimony is that from the University of Oxford, which says that he never did anything connected with the office he held or his pastoral care through fear of any man, and that he was ready, if need be, to suffer martyrdom for what he believed to be right. It also speaks of his magnificent services to the cause of science, and of the admirable character of his "regency" at Oxford. What was the precise influence which prevented his canonisation is unknown, though his attitude of sturdy independence may have contributed to the result."

"Every operation in nature is in the shortest, best ordered, briefest, and best possible way."

"To compare him to the modern doctors is as the comparison of the sun to the moon when it is eclipsed."

"His main reason for advocating the study of Hebrew was to promote the conversion of the Jews. He was not hostile to the latter, and saved many of them from being massacred. ...Robert was not simply a great scholar, but a courageous man. He did not fear to repress the evil tendencies of his flock, nor reprove those of the Roman curia."

"A large number of writings are ascribed to him; allowing for the fact that some are probably apocryphal, his literary activity must have been tremendous. He wrote commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, and on the Physics of Aristotle. His treatise on the compotus (c. 1232) includes a discussion of the reform of the calendar, which was repeatedly quoted by subsequent writers from Bacon to Peter of Ailly. … The majority of his scientific treatises deal with physical and meteorological questions. ...He was much concerned with the complex subject called "perspective" and with optical questions in general. He was well aware of the magnifying properties of lenses, a knowledge which he probably transmitted to Bacon. (Which suggests that other items of Bacon's encyclopedic knowledge were probably obtained from Grosseteste). Many of these physical writings were ascribed by Bacon collectively to Grosseteste and to Adam Marsh. Grosseteste... showed interest in astrology and alchemy, but was remarkably free from magical fancies."

"Lux was probably Grosseteste's ingenious substitute for the immaterial pneuma of the Neoplatonists and the 'animal spirits' of medical writers."

"This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances, or to count sand, or seed, or any sort of minute objects."

"The diligent investigator of natural phenomena can give the causes of all natural effects... by the rules and roots and foundations given from the power of geometry."

"Grosseteste's experimental method was quite different from a method of controlled experiment. Grosseteste made no use of such a method in his writings, deriving his conclusions on the basis of a mix of considerations, appealing to authority and everyday observation (the Latin “experimentum”). He made use of thought experiments and certain metaphysical assumptions, such as the assumption of a principle of “least action.”"

"The treatise on light (De luce)... reflects a significant influence of Aristotle's scientific thinking. ...Its model of the expanding universe stimulated speculation as to whether in 1927... was aware of Grosseteste's thinking when he introduced the modern 'Big Bang' model... Grosseteste develops the consequences of his metaphysics of light towards a physics of light... This connection between the perfect heavens and the imperfect earth is an astonishing intellectual feat, rooted on the premise that there exists a fundamental unity..."

"He lived in a corrupt age, and he aspired to be the great reformer of the Church of his day as his friend Simon de Montfort was of the State. ...Robert Grosseteste was also the most learned man of his time, not only in England, but in all Europe, and one of the most voluminous writers that England has produced. He was the greatest theologian, the greatest natural philosopher, the greatest master of language, of his day. His works which are almost all still imprinted are more than 200 in number and are upon almost every subject of theology and science."

"He was an open confuter of both Pope and King, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the supporter of scholars, a preacher to the people, a persecutor of the incontinent, the unwearied student of the Scriptures, a hammer and despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant, and affable; at the spiritual table devout, tearful, and contrite. In the episcopal office he was sedulous, dignified, and indefatigable."

"The name which he afterwards acquired being doubtless due to the peculiarity of his personal appearance, the largeness of his head. Matthew Paris speaks of him as "Robert who is known by the surname of Grosseteste," or "Robert called Great-Head." Nicholas Trivet says, "he was surnamed by many Great-Head.""

"There is scarcely a character in English history whose fame has been more constant, both during and after his life, than Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1253. As we find his advice sought universally during his lifetime, and his example spoken of as that which almost all the other prelates of his day followed, so was it also after his death. If threats from Rome and excommunications from Canterbury fell harmlessly upon him while alive, his example nerved others in subsequent years—as in the case of Sewal, Archbishop of York—to bear even worse attacks without giving way. And probably no one has had a greater influence upon English thought and English literature for the two centuries which followed his time; few books will be found that do not contain some quotations from Lincolniensis, 'the great clerk, Grostest.'"

"Grosseteste aimed consciously at producing a synthesis of the cosmogony of Genesis and the cosmology of [ Aristotle's ] De Caelo. ...His intution led him to the conviction that mathematics, far from being an abstraction from aspects of the physically real, is the very internal texture of the natural world, presiding over its coming to be and controlling its functioning, that, in the words of Kepler, 'Ubi materia, ibi geometria' [Where there is matter, there is geometry]. Of course, this faith was metaphysical; but then so to was much of the high-level inspiration of scientists in the seventeenth century. It was abstract, because the mathematical structure of reality is not given to the senses, but intuited in or believed by the mind. What it afforded was not so much scientific results as delight in the pure understanding of the essence of things, and, what Grosseteste valued most of all, a glimpse beyond the beauty of the harmonious textura of things to the mind of the primus numerator [premier calculator], the lux prima et inaccessibilus [first and inaccessible light]. The novel aspect of Grosseteste's world-system goes back entirely to this conception of God as the great calculator. For the first time, it would appear, in the history of Christian belief, God is addressed as a mathematician whose ideas for creation are mathematical operations realizable in matter and form."

"Robert Grossetest... described a compelling, unified version of the universe in which light was the fundamental force. Differing from Aristotle and others who had argued that heavenly bodies consisted of some pure, quintessential substance unlike any found on Earth, Grosseteste maintained that the stars themselves are composed of the four earthly elements. Like the attraction of a lump of iron to a magnet, light from the stars attracts comets, which themselves are a form of purified fire. His model also explained the moon's influence on the tides in terms of the way its light causes water to swell and move upward."

"The head is borne towards the heavens and has two lights, as it were the sun and moon."

"The experimental universal is acquired by us, whose mind's eye is not purely spiritual, only through the help of the senses. For when the senses several times observe two singular occurrences, of which one is the cause of the other or is related to it in some other way, and they do not see the connection between them... And from this perception repeated again and again and stored in memory, and from the sensory knowledge from which the perception is built up, the functioning of the reasoning begins. The functioning reason therefore begins to wonder and to consider whether things really are as the sensible recollection says, and these two lead the reason to experiment... But when he has administered many times with the sure exclusion of all other things [that could be mistaken for the cause]... then there is formed in the reason this universal... and this is the way in which it comes from sensation to a universal experimental principle."

"Power from natural agents may go by a short line, and then in its activity greater... But if by a straight line then its action is stronger and better, as Aristotle says in Book V of the Physics, because nature operates in the shortest way possible. But the straight line is the shortest of all, as he says in the same place."