Status Updates From Five English Reformers

I’m loving this book so far. J.C Ryle has a sort of humorous way of writing, and that’s definitely making it more enjoyable to me.

“The plain truth is, that the doctrine of the extreme Ritualistic school about the Lord’s Supper can never be reconciled with the dying opinions of our martyred Reformers.”

“We are in imminent peril of re-union with Rome.”

“From all sedition, and privy conspiracy, from the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities, from all false doctrine and heresy, from hardness of heart, and contempt of Thy Word and commandments, good Lord, deliver us!”

“Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle. By God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” -Bishop Latimer

In Thee, O Lord, have I trusted: let me never be confounded.

I do believe and confess that Christ’s condemnation is mine absolution; that His crucifying is my deliverance; His descending into hell is mine ascending into heaven; His death is my life.

Fear not death, pass not for bands,
Only in God put thy whole trust;
For He will require thy blood at their hands,
And thou dost know that once die thou must,
Only for that thy life if thou give,
Death is no death, but amens for to live.
Do not despair:
Of no worldly tyrant be thou in dread;
Thy compass, which is God's Word, shall thee lead,
And the wind is fair. - Bishop John Hooper

We live in times when many churchmen openly sneer at our Reformation, and scoff at our reformers. The martyrs, whose blood was the seed of our church, are abused and vilified, and declared to be no martyrs at all.

Rather than admit the doctrine of the real presence of Christ’s natural body and blood under the forms of bread and wine, the Reformers of the Church of England were content to be burned.