PURITANS’ PROGRESS - Dr Alan Clifford

A 350th Anniversary Commemoration of the Norwich & Norfolk Ministers Ejected from their Churches by the Act of Uniformity, 1662. 

Dr Alan C. Clifford

Norwich Reformed Church

Remember those ... who have spoken the Word of God to you, 

whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct - 

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and for ever.

(Hebrews 13: 7-8)

We now attempt to understand why around 2000 Puritans—including all our local heroes—refused to submit to the Act of Uniformity in 1662. Since he was part of the later history of British Nonconformity, we allow Alexander Drysdale to summarize the issues for us.

[for Drysdale's scanned summary, see the attachment]

A 1662 AFTERTHOUGHT: BISHOPS, THE BIBLE & ANGLICAN TEXTUAL TAMPERING

Dr Edmund Calamy (1671-1732)—the ‘Nonconformist Champion’—commented on the deception resulting from defective translation as it relates to Acts 20: 28. Had the AV men used ‘bishop’ rather than ‘overseer’, the whole ‘PC’ Episcopalian case would been blown out of the water, since the Ephesian ‘elders’ (= ‘presbyters’) are therefore ‘bishops’. This is why Presbyterians always opposed Anglican-style bishops. Calamy further demonstrates that, to avoid the irrefutable Presbyterian case, the readings from Acts 20 and 1 Timothy 3 used in the ordination of Priests in the 1552 BCP (also in the 1549 and Queen Elizabeth’s 1559), were confined by the Restoration Anglican churchmen to the ordination of Bishops and Archbishops in the anti-Puritan 1662 Prayer Book.  

Regarding Acts 20:28, the NKJV wrongly follows the AV, which likewise agrees with Tyndale. Even the Geneva Bible is defective at this point. In this respect, the NIV is consistently accurate in using ‘overseer’ for ‘episkopos’. 

‘I cannot find that in Scripture the word Bishop ever signifies one that is superior to other ministers in power or jurisdiction, or any way above them, unless when it is applied to our Lord Jesus Christ, the Great Bishop of Souls...For which reason, I have often thought it could not be without design that our translators have in my text used the word Overseers rather than Bishops. For had they rendered it as they should have done in this manner: ‘Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Bishops’, these words spoken to Elders or Presbyters, might have filled them with thoughts not very favourable to the Hierarchy...In the sense of Scripture, I can find no difference between Bishops and Presbyters. Our blessed Lord Jesus appears not to have made any difference between them;...nor does St Paul seem to have known any differences between Bishops and Presbyters’ (Edmund Calamy, Sermon Preached at the Ordination of Mr John Munckley, 1717, pp. 18-19, emphasis mine).

One is inclined to ask if all this matters any more. Lee Gatiss, the Director of Church Society states that ‘the old seventeenth century debates over church government or ceremonial may not divide as they once did’, having said in the beginning of the sentence that ‘the established church persists in refusing to recognise non-episcopal ordination and confirmation’ (The Tragedy of 1662, London: The Latimer Trust, 2007, pp. 55-6). This surely means these issues are still alive and highly divisive if Nonconformist ministers are not regarded as true pastors, as surely as the Roman Catholic Church does not recognise Anglican orders! However, if Dr Calamy’s case is as solid as it appears to be, that the Bible sets the standard for valid ministry, then neither Roman nor Anglican priests are valid in the sight of our Lord Jesus Christ. This, in fact, is the high theological ground demanded by the Truth of God.

Iain Murray tends to minimise the importance of all we’ve considered when he concludes:

We should greatly underestimate the seriousness of 1662 if we imagined that the cleavage which then took place was only over phrases in the Book of Common Prayer and forms of Church order. These things were involved, but the Puritans regarded them as only a part of a much wider issue, namely, what is the nature of true Christianity? The Nonconformists believed that in acting as they did they were acting for the Gospel’ (Sermons of the Great Ejection (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1962, pp. 7-8).

It seems more correct to say that the Puritans objected to more than ‘phrases’ in the BCP.  They took issue with dominant features of the book precisely because they viewed them as a denial of ‘true Christianity’. At best, because of most (but not all) of the Thirty-nine Articles and many good features of the Prayer Book, it was an unholy mixture. Baxter and his brethren could not therefore give ‘unfeigned consent to all and everything’ in it, as agreeable to the Word of God. This is serious. It can only mean that if the Puritans ‘acted for the Gospel’, then the conforming Anglicans and their Episcopal lords were acting against the Gospel. One cannot imagine a more serious charge, when today’s Nonconformists—especially those involved in the former-BEC AFFINITY umbrella body—seem to have grown weary of their distinctives just when a highly lax and compromised evangelicalism seems more firmly ensconced than ever within the present confused and corrupt Church of England.