Affinity Meeting 2023

Paul Yeulett introducing the Theological Study Conference 2025

There was another opportunity to hear about the work of Affinity yesterday and as it was at London Seminary, on my doorstep, I gladly took the opportunity to go along. My new assistant Eddie is living at the seminary so it was an oppoortuntity to catch up with him too. Graham Nicholls works for Affnity only one day a week officially but he does seem to lap up the opportunities to speak on local radio, etc, and get the evangelical viewpoint acoss. We ought to be thankful for that. Finances are okay and the work of Foundations, the social issues bulletin, the theological conference, etc, all carry on too. Nice to catch up with Mark Thomas and others too. How encouraging.

Affinity Meeting 2022

A little while ago I recevied a communication from Affinity, an umbrella organisation that we belong to as a  church. The email informed me that now they are a cio they were obliged to hold an annual meeting and I was invited to attend either in person or online. It seemed like an obvious thing to attend - and in person as it was being held in North London not far from where I live (at the Highbury Centre). Anyway, I went along last Monday and as it turned out I was the only one to turn up in person apart from the committee! There were also eight online. (In the deep and distant past I served on the BEC committee that predates this one). It was good to hear Graham Nicholls and others reporting on the various activities (finance, Foundations, the coming theological conference, media opps, etc). I knew several of the committee and enjoyed meeting more of them. They even stood me a meal, which was kind. Affinity is a great idea and it was good to touch base afresh.

BTW theyve just revamped their website. Check it out here.

In Writing 130 from the Evangelical Library

IW130 is now out. Do look out for your copy if you are a member of the Evangelical Library. Otherwise copies can be purchased for £1.50. This edition includes  Lee Gatiss on J C Ryle at last.

Evangelical Library Annual Meeting

Here Lee is presenting the Library with two Ryle
books recently published for Church Society

The annual lecture of the Evangelical Library is always a special time and last night was no exception, when the 2016 lecture was given by Lee Gatiss, Director of Church Society. About 30 or so were present. This year, of course, sees the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of J C Ryle. Lee helpfully took us through the details of Ryle's life, which for most of the time was spent in small rural parishes but that closed with his sudden elevation to the new see of Liverpool. He spoke of his churchmanship and evangelism, his church history writing and his tracts, his illustrious offspring, none of whom, sadly, appears to have shared his faith.

Perhaps the best parts of the paper were where Lee let Ryle speak for himself. He was endlessly writing tracts and his one on what we owe to the Reformation ends stirringly like this:

"Work, everyone, both publicly and privately, for the defence of Christ’s truth and the maintenance of Reformation principles. But work together in an organized and systematic way, or else you will do little. Associate, unite, organize, work together, keep together, and much may be done.

Things look black in every direction, I freely admit. But there is no reason to despair. The day is not lost. As Napoleon said on a memorable occasion, “There is yet time to win a battle.” Come what will, let us not desert our position. Let us not please our enemies by spiking our guns and marching out of our fortress with- out a fight. Rather let us stand to our guns, like Latimer and Ridley, and in God’s strength show a bold front to the foe. The Church of England has done some good in days gone by, and the Church is still worth preserving. If we fall in the struggle, let us fall with face to the foe and colours flying; but, like the gallant sentinel of Pompeii, who would not stir when Vesuvius was in eruption, let no man leave his post. My own mind is fully made up. I say the Church of England had better perish and go to pieces than forsake the principles of the Reformation, and tolerate the Sacrifice of the Mass and Auricular Confession. But whether she is to perish or not depends, under God, on the action of her members."

How many ejected?

One of the things that arose in Lee Gatiss's paper on 1662 is a question of how many were ejected. In my book on 1662 I say this

Estimates vary but it seems that, including those ejected before 1662 and some who jumped rather than waiting to be pushed, nearly two thousand ministers and others were silenced or ejected. There will always be some vagueness about the figure as some changed their minds. A G Matthews says that some 210 later conformed. A contemporary writer, John Walker, says of an Evan Griffiths of Oxwich in South Wales, who was ejected but then conformed, that he became as violent against dissenters as he had once been against royalists. Also, the ejection included not only ministers but also lecturers and even private tutors. Further, some such as Cornishman Francis Howell 1625-1679 present anomalies. Howell, “a man mighty in the scriptures” according to Calamy, was expelled both as Principal of Jesus College, Oxford in 1660 and as incumbent of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant in North Wales in 1662.

In his Nonconformist Memorial Calamy deals with some 2,465 people altogether. Matthews and Watts say that the number unwilling to conform in 1662 was 2029, around 936* in England and 120 in Wales. Some 200 of these were university lecturers. Matthews points out that a further 129 were deprived at an uncertain date between 1660 and 1663 and with the ejections of 1660 as well, he gives a total of 1760 ministers (which is about 20% of the clergy) thrust out of the Church of England, silenced from preaching or teaching because they could no longer conform by law and so deprived of a livelihood.

Gerald Bray comments that “almost all of these were Puritans, and so the Act may be said to represent the expulsion of Puritanism from the national Church.” On the other hand, John Spurr points out that Puritans remained within the state church and others, like Quakers and General Baptists, were ejected. He quotes John Corbet 1620-1680, saying, "it is a palpable injury to burden us with the various parties with whom we are now herded by our ejection in the general state of dissenters."
*I seem to have that figure wrong. Perhaps it should be 1,936

Westminster Conference 2012 01

The Westminster Conference began today. The opening paper was on 1662 and all that and the speaker was Lee Gatiss, perhaps controversially, an Anglican. Being an Anglican he was a little afraid that we would be bored and so we began with 15 minutes of introduction that included some audience participation as we were examined on a range of beliefs such as what we thought about keeping pistols ready at home or the Queen as head of the church. The serious point behind this apparent frivolity was to demonstrate that things have changed a great deal since 1662 and few of us hold to a range of views quite acceptable in days gone by. We then had half an hour on 1662 itself, which included what I thought was a controversial attempt to get the numbers of the ejected as low as 900 and to claim that even these were not all Puritans. The rest of the time was spent defending Anglicanism - quite understandable from an Anglican I guess.

Dr Robert Oliver chaired and some good points were made from the floor, especially Iain Murray's about the need to recognise spiritual movements and political movements, which sometimes coalesce but inevitably oppose each other. We were probably far too gentle with Lee I guess whose view seems to be that 1662 was a massive mistake but the Anglican church hasn't been all bad since and indeed has improved in some ways. Certainly there was no sign that 1662 gives him any pause to consider leaving.

Westminster Conference 2013

This is just a reminder that the Westminster Conference is on next week (Tuesday, Wednesday Dec 4 and 5) at Regent Hall (The Salvation Army) 275 Oxford Street, London W1C 2DJ.

The programmes is as follows

 

1662 and all that (Lee Gatiss)

Two eminent ejectess, Philip Henry and Samuel Jones (Andrew Davies)

Hagiography and history (Andrew Atherstone)

 

Pascal: Truth Through the Mind and Through the Heart (David Gregson)

Christian attitudes to Islam (Roger Welch)

Henry Martyn (Peter Law)

 

The cost is £40. More details here.

 

Gatiss on Toplady

While at the Affinity Conference my attention was drawn to this relevant article by Lee Gatiss that appeared in the Gospel Magazine at the end of last year. See here.

THERE is great debate in parts of the Evangelical world at present over the inerrancy of the Bible. This was, of course, a matter of controversy several decades ago in the so-called “Battle for the Bible”. One might be forgiven for thinking, therefore, that the doctrine of the Bib1e’s utter trustworthiness had been adequately defined and defended already. Yet scholars unhappy at the traditional teaching, such as Peter Enns with his recent controversial book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, and another book by Andrew McGowan called The Divine Spiration of Scriptare: Challenging Evangelical Perspectives, have brought the subject back onto the agenda.

The esteemed former Editor of the Gospel Magazine, the Rev Augustus Montage Toplady, held to the traditional view of God’s Word. In his day, the word “unerring” was a far more common term than “inerrancy” or “inerrant” which, while not entirely unknown from as early as the 1650s, only seem to have entered common theological use among Protestants in the l9th century. Toplady often spoke warmly of “God’s unerring oracles”, asserting plainly that “the Bible is the unerring Word of God”. For him it was the rock of faith, “an authority which cannot err”, and “that unerring standard” by which all doctrines and practices were to be judged.

Moreover, Toplady did not downplay or ignore the human aspect of the Word, as advocates of inerrancy are often accused of doing. Instead, he recognized that God worked through the human writers of Scripture. At one point he speaks of, “The Holy Spirit, making the apostle’s pen the channel of unerring inspiration”,

adding that the epistles and the Gospels were “written under the unerring influence of the same Holy Spirit”. He also used the word “infallible”, more common in British Evangelical circles.

Where did Toplady learn this allegedly rationalistic and supposedly much later doctrine? He was certainly not the only Reformed Evangelical Anglican of the 18th century to hold to such a view of the Bible. George Whitefield speaks in one of his sermons of “the unerring rule of God’s most holy Word.” James Hervey, in

his Contemplation on the Starry Heavens, speaks of the Word of God as “this unerring directory”, and of its “infallible guidance”. John Newton writes in his letters of “the unerring Word of God”; eg Letters 20 and 32 in Letters, Sermons, and a Review of Ecclesiastical History (1780).

While researching Toplady for my book The True Profession of the Gospel: Augustus Toplady and Reclaiming our Reformed Foundations (Latimer Trust, 2010), I recently discovered another possible source of his view on the Bible. It turns out that some editions of the Book of Common Prayer; including those published in Dublin in I750, 1753, and 1757 (while Toplady was a student at Trinity College), spoke of God’s “unerring Word” in their version of the Psalms; eg at Psalm l.l9:8l, 114, and 144:

My soul with long expectance faints

to see thy saving grace;

Yet still on thy unerring word

my confidence I place.

My very eyes consume and fail

with waiting for thy word;

O when wilt thou thy kind relief

and promised aid afford.

My skin like shriveled parchment shows,

that long in smoke is set,

Yet no affliction me can force

thy statutes to forget.

Did young Augustus Toplady pick up this phrase, and this confidence in the unerring Word of God, from singing Psalms in church on a Sunday?

Readers of the Gospel Magazine will no doubt be aware, however, that the thirty-nine Articles themselves indicate the confidence we can have in God’s trustworthy Word. Article 21 reminds us of the non-inerrant nature of church authorities:

General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together (forasmuch. as they be an assembly of men, whereof will be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God), they may err; and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of/ Scripture.

The last line of the Article is most interesting here, as it appears to simply assume that alongside erring and errant General Councils, the holy Scripture itself is alone to be considered as finally trustworthy. Naturally this is because it is “God’s Word written” as Article 20 so straightforwardly puts it, and yet the implication is that the Word itself is, by contrast to human authority, without error and cannot lead us astray. This view is also shared by the Homilies of the Church of England; see for example Homily 22 which describes the Bible as “His infallible Word.” So Toplady may have learned from other Evangelicals, from Anglican tradition

and Anglican formularies to speak of God’s Word as “unerring.” But ultimately, we must acknowledge that this is in line with the Bible’s own presentation of itself. “Every word of God is pure,” says Proverbs 30:5, “he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him” (KJV). The flawless, tested, genuine, refined Word of

God is utterly trustworthy. What Scripture says, God says (as Augustine famously put it), and when we believe and trust in the Word, God Himself will be our shield, and will vindicate that trust.

This no doubt was why, when he wrote in his Journal that he “burnt with zeal, for the glory of God, and for the spiritual welfare of my flock”, Toplady declared, “I wished to spend and be spent in the ministry of the Word, and had some gracious assurances from on high that God would make use of me to diffuse His gospel, and call in some of His chosen that are yet unconverted”.

Many seem to have dropped this vital adjective, “unerring,” in recent years, perhaps embarrassed by allegations of “fundamentalism” or obscurantism in the debates over inerrancy. Have we also lost confidence in the dependability of the Word of God to bring spiritual life and growth to God’s people? May we recover once again the joy and delight of the writer of Proverbs 30, the Reformers of the Church of England, and the Evangelicals of the l8th century in the unerring Word of our unerring God.