anglican-bishops

"For the safeguard of your country, if you be called to the wars, grutch [complain] not nor groan at it. Go with good wills and lusty courages to meet them in the field rather than to tarry till they come home to you and hang you at your own gates. Play not the milksops in making curtsy who shall go first, but Show yourselves true Englishmen in readiness, courage, and boldness. And be ashamed to be the last. Fear neither French nor Scot. For first you have God and all his army of angels on your side [a marginal note observes "God is English"]. You have right and truth, and seek not to do them wrong but to defend your own right. Think not that God will suffer you to be foiled at their hands, for your fall is his dishonor. If you lose the victory, he must lose the glory. For you fight not only in the quarrel of your country but also and chiefly in defense of his true religion and of his dear son Christ....What people be they with whom we shall match. Are they giants? Are they conquerors or monarchs of the world? No, good Englishman, they be effeminate Frenchmen, stout in brag but nothing in deed. They be such as you have always made to take to their heels..., saving that William of Normandy crept in among us through the civil war of two brethren, Harold and Tostig. And yet, what did he? He left his posterity to reign which were rather by time turned to be English than the noble English to become French, as our tongue and manners at this day declareth, which differeth very little from our ancestors the Saxons....Thus have we nothing to dismay us but all things to encourage us. God to fight for us, the strength of our land, the courage of our men, the goodness of our soil....Now, therefore, it is our duties to be in every wise obedient....Do you not hear how lamentably your natural mother, your country of England, calleth upon you for obedience?...I have been and am glad of you. I delight and rejoice in you above all over nations. In declaration whereof I have always spued out and cast from me Danes, French, Norwegians, and Scots. I could brook none of them for the tender love that I bare unto you, of whom I have my name. I never denied to minister to you by my singular commodities which God hath lent me for you, as corn and cattle, land and pasture, wool and cloth, lead and tin, flesh and fish, gold and silver, and all my other treasures. I have poured them out among you and enriched you above all your neighbors....Besides this, God hath brought forth in me the greatest and excellentest treasure that he hath for your comfort and all the world’s. He would that out of my womb should come that servant of his, your brother John Wyclif, who begat [John] Hus, who begat [Martin] Luther, who begat truth. What greater honor could you or I have than it pleased Christ, as it were in a second birth, to be born again of me among you? [A marginal note comments: "Christ's second birth in England"]. And will you now suffer me, or rather by your disobedience purchase me, to be a mother without my children?...Stick to your mother as she sticketh to you. Let me keep in quiet and feed, as I have done, your wives, your children, and your kinsfolks. Obey your mistress and mine which God hath made lady [queen] over us, both by nature and law. You cannot be my children, if you be not her subjects....?Thus good, truehearted Englishmen, speaketh your country unto you, not in word but in deed. Wherefore give no dull ear to hear, nor hearken to any vain blasts or voices which may draw you from the love of your country and the defense of your sovereign...."

"Every thing is what it is, and not another thing."

"It seems possible and even necessary to take a middle course between the old and the new opinions."

"In a comparatively late period – that which followed the rise of historical literature among the Greeks – we find a belief generally prevalent, both in the people and among the learned, that in ages of very remote antiquity, before the name and dominion of the Pelasgians had given way to that of the Hellenic race, foreigners had been led by various causes to the shores of Greece and there had planted colonies, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced useful arts and social institutions, before unknown to the ruder natives. The same belief has been almost universally adopted by the learned of modern times … It required no little boldness to venture even to throw out a doubt as to the truth of an opinion sanctioned by such authority and by prescription of such a long and undisputed possession of the public mind, and perhaps it might never have been questioned, if the inferences drawn from it had not provoked a jealous enquiry into the grounds on which it rests,"

"When, however, this spirit once awakened, it was perceived that the current stories of these ancient settlements afforded great room for reasonable distrust, not merely in the marvellous features they exhibit but in the still more suspicious fact that with the lapse of time their number seems to increase..."

"Settlers of purely Egyptian blood, crossing the Aegean and founding maritime cities, appears inconsistent with everything we know about national characters."

"My father's evangelicalism was deepened and darkened by his bereavement. He seemed to lose interest in everything except religion, and under the influence of some Plymouth Brethren...his religion degenerated into bigotry. He never joined the sect, but he read their literature, shared many of their opinions and grew into their narrow intolerance."

"As swift to scent the sophist as to praise The honest worker or the well turned phrase."

"A fool and his money are soon parted."

"Memoræ sacrum Joanni Still Episcopo Bathoniensi et Wellensi, Sacræ Theologia Doctori Acerrimo Christianæ Veritatis propugnatori non nienus vitæ integritate quam veria Doctrina claro qui cum Domino Diu vigilasset in Christo spe certa resurgendi obdormivit die XXVI. Februarii . Vixit annos LXIIII sedit episcopus XVI. Nathaniel Still filius primogenitus optimo patri Mœrens pietatis ergo posuit."

"A wife, domestic, good, and pure, Like snail, should keep within her door; But not, like snail, with silver track, Place all her wealth upon her back."

"The saints testify that the deeper into sanctification one goes the clearer one sees one’s sins. The more majestic the vision of God the more unworthy sinners see themselves in his reflection. Confidence is rare in the face of the text: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; so that each one may receive good or evil according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor 5:10). Confidence before such a test may be a mere product of limited self-knowledge or a small god."

"The Sermon on the Mount is a deeper unfolding of the law of Moses. It leaves no hope that human goodness can replace (or make waste of) the costly betrayal, rejection, passion, suffering, death, and resurrection of God’s action in Jesus Christ."

"If our hope lies in human ability to make all things right, the tendency is to believe that some historical action, program or ideal could bring the ultimate victory for which everyone yearns. No matter how commendable and beneficial such programs or ideals, they will inevitably become occasions of dangerous and destructive idols."

"The fact is that our freedom lies in God’s will and his service. The mystery lies in the final triumph of justice, mercy, and love and how we are, or are not, a part of that victory. Our human nature persists in attempting to abolish the mystery by the lie that in our freedom it is we who choose to have the faith that saves. Scripture and the saints have unanimously insisted otherwise: God has chosen us and our faith is his gift, not our accomplishment."

"Inasmuch as we are sinners, we see ourselves as the center of all we survey. We hope, we wish, we want to have whatever we desire. And we believe that being able to have or to do what we want is freedom. We tell such lies as “we are born free,” “he’s free to choose to take revenge or to forgive,” “he’s free to get drunk or to stay sober,” “she’s free to commit suicide or to renew her hope,” “terrorists are free to kill innocent people or to refrain from doing so.” Each destructive choice is made from bondage. Drunkenness, suicide, vengeance, and mass murder are instances of bondage, not freedom. Having no restraints is not freedom but license, a state of hazardous slavery."

"The Sermon on the Mount is the necessary, rigorous, and devastating purging of Pharisee yeast. It’s chemotherapy for the Pharisee cancer. Any confidence in one’s own righteousness before God has no authentic way to wiggle through chapters 5–7 of St. Matthew. Any genuine pilgrimage through this Sermon leaves us bereft of self-righteousness, with no pedestals from which to judge other sinners. Jesus, in these passages, leaves us in the only posture legitimately possible on Good Friday: on our knees with empty hands to receive the incomparable and desperately needed mercy of God."

"The Sermon on the Mount is not a blue print for society or an individual’s rule of life. It is an introduction to the passion, and invitation to Good Friday."

"When we realize before God that we have deserved no forgiveness, yet are forgiven, the heavy burdens of hatred, resentment, and bitterness are removed from our souls."

"When one begins with the false assumption of being free, all concern will be involved with how to keep such freedom in check, how to control sin. The result is the deadly religion of the Pharisee. If one begins with the assumption of bondage, the concern will be how to proclaim the gospel story in kindness, patience, and love so that people are enabled to be set free."

"When Christianity is reduced to a religion of control, an endeavor to keep order by condemning sinners are giving no word that enables us to escape our bondage, it loses all joy and love. People will naturally turn away from such an atmosphere and seek the worldliness of the Sadducee rather than the joylessness of the Pharisee."

"The Sermon is not some elevated ideal that we are to stretch and strive for, but a window through which to see God’s kingdom. It is not a set of rules by which to live but a vision which enables us to die to self. This vision empties us of any confidence or trust in our own center. Humility is the only appropriate posture before the cost of God’s love at the crucifixion."

"The trust that there will be justice is a Christian trust. But it includes justice for us as well, which none of us can endure. As long as I trust that my relative goodness needs less mercy than that of the murderous Idi Amin (genocidal dictator of Uganda), I am where Charles Wesley was prior to his conversion. This is not to say that there are no significant differences between Amin’s atrocities and my sins. But when the gold medal Olympic swimmer, Josh Davis, and I are in a boat together, fishing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the boat sinks, it is ultimately unimportant that Josh can swim a great deal better and longer than I can. We both drown. God’s justice is bigger than the Pacific Ocean."

"Clergy often make the mistake of thinking, when they preach from one of the Gospels, that they are preaching good news. Most of the gospel material is not gospel but what leads up to the good news of Good Friday and Easter. A large part of the Gospels is conviction of sinners, rebuke of Israel’s unfaithfulness, disappointments of expectation, and declaring salvation as a human impossibility."

"One can understand his caution in telling of God’s unmerited mercy, forgiveness and love, lest people get the impression that it is unnecessary to behave. This reaction to the gospel has been with us since the beginning, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom 6:1). Fear of antinomianism seems always to be a justification for Pharisaism."

"Neither creeds nor correct doctrines are the objects of our faith. They did not die for our salvation. Yet, as faithful guidelines to the inevitable implications of scripture and boundaries for what can be called authentic Christianity, they are far more important than is currently appreciated. There are symbols that point to God but, like dogs being trained to fetch, we look at the trainer’s finger rather than toward that to which the finger points. Faithfulness to correct doctrine and loyalty to the creeds is not the same thing as trust in the God whom the creeds describe. This is the perennial temptation of orthodoxy itself. It is like tennis players who mark off the court, put up the net, sit down and call that “tennis.”"

"St. Paul established the guidelines for all subsequent orthodoxy that race, nationality, degree of servitude, and gender are not barriers to identification with Christ’s saving humanity, and it is an Antiochene heresy to say that any of these differences is a barrier."

"Christianity did not and cannot start with people who have forsaken sin. It receives them and begins to free them from the bondage that is sin."

"“Ye shall be as gods” is as flattering now as it has been since the Garden of Eden. “All is one,” “all is God,” and “all is well” is as attractive to adults as dessert before dinner is to a child. Would the realities of the Balkans, inner-city blight, troubled marriages, rebellious children, and irresponsible parents be any less difficult to solve if we all believed we were gods? On the contrary, humans trying to be gods is precisely what is wrong in the Balkans, our cities, our marriages, our children, our parents, and in ourselves."

"A common expression: “heaven for the climate, but hell for the company” is an indication how people react to Pharisaical Christians. They would rather be in hell with other sinners than in heaven with those who thought that they were good enough to be there."

"Christians are justified by the righteousness of Christ whereby they dwell in him and are thus acceptable to God, but this is not on account of any inherit righteousness of their own. The righteousness of sanctification is that whereby we grow in grace by virtue of being in Christ. It is a grateful response to a gratuitous justification."

"When Christianity is reduced to be like Jesus, it loses its grace and becomes a mere law that can be obeyed only by inflated confidence in human nature’s ability to fulfill all obligations and/or by lowering the law to levels that one can obey."

"The righteousness whereby we are accepted by God is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us when we are incorporated in Christ."

"One of the spiritual hazards of scholarship is that it can become Gnostic. A lifetime of submersion in conceptual and subtle complexities with an ever more sophisticated vocabulary can seduce some of the best scholars into elitism, inept pedagogy, and irrelevance."

"Nothing enlarges more the gulf of atheism, than that wide passage, which lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to be Christians."

"My Lord," a certain nobleman is said to have observed to the bishop, after sitting next to Bentley at dinner, "that chaplain of yours is a very extraordinary man." Stillingfleet agreed, adding, "Had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe."

"To the same Revolution We owe That Limited Form of Government which is our only Security; Those Parliaments, in which Our own Consent frames Our own Laws; Those Laws so framed, and afterwards executed, in an Administration of Justice, with regard to the Affairs of Life and of Property, utterly unexperienced by any Nation of the Known World, except Ourselves."

"In our own Country, All Civil Freedom itself subsists in the highest Degree, by that very Freedom of Speech, which often, through Mistake or Malice, attacks Those who protect it. Liberty of finding Fault, is in a peculiar Sense the Birthright of British Freeborn Subjects. Nor shall it ever be any Argument with Me, to oppress or stifle this Liberty, that it is abused. Nay, If it sometimes becomes Exorbitant Licentiousness; I will no more admit This Exorbitance to be a Reason for taking it away, when it happens not to please or serve the Persons, or the Cause, to which I wish well; than I will plead for cutting out Men's Tongues, because They talk too freely of what They understand nothing of. If any thing be found fault with, let it be defended, if it can. If it cannot be defended, let it go on to be found fault with. The Cure of what is Evil in all this, (except in Cases of the highest Immediate Malignity to the State), is only to lie in every Man's own Breast."

"Freedom of Speech, or the Liberty of the Press, (which is only a Conveyance of that Speech to Multitudes whom the Voice cannot reach) often does Mischief. This is certain. But let It be once taken away, under what Pretence soever; and how much greater Mischiefs must follow? All the Mischiefs, of Darkness in the Intellectual World, of Baseness in the Moral World, and of Slavery in the Political World."

"I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen left on the face of the earth."

"The people are certainly the best judges whether they are well governed; and the Crown can have no rights inconsistent with the happiness of the people."

"Arbitrary taxation is plunder authorized by law."

"The idea of governing provinces and colonies by force is visionary and chimerical. The experiment has often been tried, and it has never succeeded. It ends infallibly in the ruin of one country or the other."

"The true art of government consists in not governing too much."

"It has always been a most arduous task to govern distant provinces, with even a tolerable appearance of justice."

"The primary purpose of existence is that God wants you to achieve something for him."

"Sleep on (my Love!) in thy cold bed Never to be disquieted. My last Good-night! Thou wilt not wake Till I thy fate shall overtake: Till age, or grief, or sickness must Marry my body to that dust It so much loves; and fill the room My heart keeps empty in thy tomb. Stay for me there: I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale. And think not much of my delay; I am already on the way, And follow thee with all the speed Desire can make, or sorrows breed."

"But hark! My pulse, like a soft drum Beats my approach, tells thee I come; And, slow howe’er my marches be, I shall at last sit down by thee. The thought of this bids me go on, And wait my dissolution With hope and comfort. Dear! (forgive The crime) I am content to live Divided, with but half a heart, Till we shall meet and never part."

"We that did nothing study but the way To love each other, with which thoughts the day Rose with delight to us, and with them set, Must learn the hateful art, how to forget."

"Prodigious might that union prove, Where Night and Day together move, And the conjunction of our lips Not kisses make but an eclipse; In which the mixed black and white Portends more terrour than delight."