In this morning's Order of Prayer, we read Psalm 109 which is David praying to God in respect to King Saul. One notices immediately that David's attitude is very different from the erastian prayers that one finds in the Book of Common Prayer in respect to the head of State.
While on the one hand we know that David never sets his own hand against "God's anointed", the psalm plainly sets forth an example to us of how we must pray for the State. David prays not that the king will be blessed by the Lord, but that the Lord will be blessed by the king. In short, David's heartfelt prayer is this:
Minister. Reign supreme, O God, over the powers of this world.
Answer. And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee.
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In the first revision to the Articles of Religion (1571), Article 28 had an important paragraph removed. In Thomas Cranmer's original 42 Articles (1553), he explained at length why the Body of Christ is not 'in' the sacrament of the Lord's Supper except spiritually and by faith. Here is the paragraph unwisely removed by Archbishop Parker when the 39 Articles were revised.
"Forasmuch as the truth of man's nature requireth, that the body of one and the selfsame man cannot be at one time in diverse places, but must needs be in on certain place; therefore the body of Christ cannot be present at one time and in many and diverse places. And because, as Holy Scripture doth teach, Christ was taken up into heaven, and there shall continue until the end of the world, a faithful man ought not either to believe or openly to confess the real and bodily presence, as they term it, of Christ's flesh and blood, in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper."
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John Newton... from slave ship captain to Reformed Anglican:
"The Lord must have loved me before I was born or else He would not have seen anything in me to love afterwards. I am quite certain that if God had not chosen me, I should not have ever chosen Him. I am sure that He chose me before I was born or else He would have never chosen me afterwards. And He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me because I could never find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love."
Newton's view of grace and election is precisely the teaching of the 39 Articles.
XVII. Of Predestination and Election.
PREDESTINATION to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, He hath constantly decreed by His counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honour. Wherefore they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God's purpose by His Spirit working in due season; they through grace obey the calling; they be justified freely; they be made sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ; they walk religiously in good works; and at length by God's mercy they attain to everlasting felicity.
As the godly consideration of Predestination and our Election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons and such as feeling in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: so for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation or into wretchlessness of most unclean living no less perilous than desperation.
Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth in Holy Scripture; and in our doings that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God.
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