From today's article by Ruth Gledhill "Nationwide, more than 560 men and women will join the Church of England's clergy this year - the highest since 2000. To mark this, CofE hq has jus sent me a study edition of a new Common Worship publication that brings together the Common Worship ordination services and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer ordinal. Contains everything from seating arrangements to how to vest properly. Worth investing in if you're a bishop, I'd say."

Conclusion of Chapter IV Not for one moment are you asked to live thus upon the resources of nature. “Without Him you can do – nothing.” But it is “God who is,” not only who may be, “working in you, both to will, and to do, for the sake of His good pleasure,” for the sake of His blessed will. Recollect that fact, and find in it a transfigured life. “The will of God”! Let us, to animate and endear every thought of it, remind ourselves often of its blissful purposes. True, it is sovereign; let us bow low before its sovereignty, its irresponsible and unknown ways. But in all its infinite range it is the will of Him whom we know in Jesus Christ, and who has told us such gracious things about it through Jesus Christ. If it wills for us immediately toil and trial, contradictions, disappointments, tears – as it sometimes does, as it once did for our Lord and Life – what does it always will ultimately, and with infinite skill and power to attain its end? It wills, He wills,...

Folks: I've been out of town and will be again next week, so things here will be slow for a bit.

A must read: EXTRAMURAL ANGLICANS (a lecture given in 1987), by Bishop Robert Mercer, C.R. Special to VirtueOnline http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6203

Continuing Chapter 4 and referring to Ephesians vi. 6: Such blessed lives – were they not blessed indeed then, as they are eternally blessed now in the life of glory? – St. Paul contemplates, takes for granted, and writes for, in this passage. He knows that the experience is not visionary, for he knows these slaves as Christians indeed. That is to say, he knows them as redeemed, regenerated, sanctified. He knows them as Christ’s purchased ones, ransomed with the blood of the Lamb, and united by the Holy Spirit to the plenitude of their Redeemer’s life and power. They were human, mortal, sinful. Of themselves they could do nothing. But they were in union with Christ by grace, and by grace they could receive out of Him “all sufficiency” for all actual demands, for all the will of God expressed in circumstances. Each one of them was “joined into the Lord, one Spirit.” Therefore, “in Him that strengtheneth, they could do all things – all things of the will of God in Christ Jesus ...

I was recently at a party where I met a woman who had left the PCA and was attending an Episcopal church in town. Her reason for doing so was that she liked to see “both sides of God” represented in the liturgy; she specified the presence of both men and women in officiating capacities. Such an idea, that God is both Father and Mother, is hardly a biblical concept. Simply look at a concordance. There is no defining, categorical statement that God = mother. A passage or two may be found where his compassion and mercy are compared to that of a mother, but that does not define him as a mother. His compassion is elsewhere compared to that of a father and even a chicken. These are similies, not definitions. If you want motherhood identified in the Church, well, it is the Church herself. St. Paul, Gal.4;26: "But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all." If you look for references to God as Father in the concordance, the contrast with the la...

Sorry, folks. I've been out of the country the last week. Will post again soon.