These gathered conversations and excited tete a tetes in the tavern, formed the matrix for the main features of the protestant movement. The joyous news of justification by faith alone was soon to create the break with medieval superstition and the hopeless hard labour of works righteousness that oppressed and depressed the minds of innumerable anxious souls over the generations. These gallant men stamped our Anglican heritage with their, ink, sweat, and blood. We cannot measure their labors or count their personal losses, and we must never lose the legacy they won for us.

Current Anglicanism in its weakness and wobbliness exhibits little of the fibre of the framers of our classic doctrinal stance. Whatever our preferred weight of emphasis on this topic, Predestination, Sovereign Grace, Free Salvation, undergird the structure, the framework, of the Scriptural tradition of Anglicanism we seem to be more and more consigning to oblivion in our appetite for ritual, pomp, and unreformed principles on the one hand, or our craving for novelty, sentimentalism, and self-gratification in religion on the other. Augustinian orthodoxy does not automatically guarantee orthopraxy, harmony, and holy living in the church, but it can put some iron in the nerve when courage and firmness in the affairs of the church are required. Mincing, mumbling, milky-mild bishops and leaders are destroying us and there is little on the current scene to encourage us of a return to the sources of our strength in the Lord and his cause. A Christian body without confidence in predestination, a sense of the divine purpose of God that cannot be thwarted, pursues an uncertain destination that is deemed likely to be frustrated by the ill will of men, devils, or any other existing powers alien to God (such a possibility is countered by reflection on Romans 8:37-39).

We must return to Scripture with Reformational ardour and thoroughness and not pick and choose only its sweet scented flowers for our beautiful thoughts and cozy feelings. We must dig deep so that the word enters our intellect and consciences in a deep, almost unbearable way. The biblical message does not suit us by nature and we instinctively sift much of it out of the way of recognition and acceptance. We must give weight and worth and substance to our worship and engage minds strenuously in honour of God as well as emote extravagantly for our self-satisfaction. We must re-adopt our Reformational standards and formularies before we drift into the mists of complete spiritual vagueness and nothing-ness forever. Through loss of verity and valor we are in a vacuum that anything deceitful and evil could rapidly fill. Our church has commenced its lurch into utter irrelevance and extinction. Our credibility is cancelled.

There is another strand to the story of the Reformation in England that is more intimately personal than straight-forward accurate theological debate and its academic development, as unquestionably important as these grand things happen to be. Sometimes the academy underplays and lacks the spiritual elements of heartfelt worship and prayer that foster a trustful humility of mind before God - an attitude of modesty before the Almighty. This moving facet of Anglican history is related by the godly French academic Professor Jean Henri Merle D' Aubigne (1794-1872).

D'Aubigne singles out a trio of significant proto-protestants to show how the Spirit of the Saviour works effectively through Scripture to fit his servants for the tasks assigned to them in their vocation as Christians. The Reformation is principally Christ himself at work in the midst of his people. When we think of church history we must move in close to God and meditate under the cover of his wings. Our research is not mere curiosity and intellectual activity resulting in shouts of triumph at our splendid academic acumen. We are beholding the action of God with the aid of his discernment. Our findings are not to our credit but due to the kindness of God. Grace is the Golden River we are navigating.

In a chapter entitled The Greek Testament Awakens the Dead (The Reformation in England Vol One) our gracious historian first describes the conversion of Thomas Bilney. Anxious about his salvation Bilney consults the priests about the state of his soul but leaves them in greater anguish than before, "Alas! my last state is worse than my first". Bilney hears news of the availability of Erasmus' Testament. His confessors had strictly forbidden access to this dangerous book. "Urged, said he, by the hand of God, he walked out of the college, slipped into the house where the volume was sold in secret, bought it with fear and trembling, and then hastened back and shut himself up in his room. He opened it - his eye caught these words: This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. He laid down the book, and meditated on the astonishing declaration. 'What! St.Paul the chief of sinners, and yet St. Paul is sure of being saved!' He read the verse again and again. 'O assertion of St. Paul, how sweet art thou to my soul!' he exclaimed. This declaration continually haunted him, and in this manner God instructed his heart. He could not tell what had happened to him; it seemed as if a refreshing wind were blowing over his soul, or as if a rich treasure had been placed in his hands . The Holy Spirit took what was Christ's , and announced it to him. 'I also am like Paul, the greatest of sinners! . . . But Christ saves sinners. At last I have heard Jesus.' ''

William Tyndale was a stellar languages scholar at Oxford. He made rapid progress, says D'Aubigne, "under the finest classical scholars in England - Grocyn, William Latimer, and Linacre - and took his degrees. A more excellent master than these doctors - the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture - was soon to teach him a science which it is not in the power of man to impart". The tale of Tyndale and his accomplishments is well told in many places (especially David Daniell and Brian Moynahan). Here was a genuine man of God and innocent martyr moved by the influences of Scripture, Luther, Lollardy possibly, and Augustine who breathed the spirit of truth and tenacity into incipient Anglican protestantism, buttressed by the message of the Bible as to the impotence of the unregenerate will and the omnipotence of God in saving his chosen ones through the victory of Christ (this is at the crux of discussions on Augustinianism. Does the Lord Jesus only pave the way for possibilities in the matter of human rescue or does he succeed in his holy intent? - John chs 6, 10 & 17, etc. It is the awareness of his glory that is at stake in all our theology. Calvinists are often accused of being speculative but maybe it is the philosophy of Arminianism that stumbles because of speculation and assumptions on the nature of freedom and the degree to which creatures possess that capacity, We often confuse freedom with responsibility as Simeon seems to do in his reported dialogue with Wesley. The "seepage of Simeonism", great as he was, has contributed to the compromise of Reformed Anglican thought).

D'Abigne is worth quoting in full on his third candidate for concentration. "John Fryth, a young man of eighteen, the son of an innkeeper of Westerham in Kent, was distinguished among the students of King's College by the promptitude of his understanding and the integrity of his life. He was as deeply read in mathematics as Tyndale in the classics, and Bilney in canon law. Although of an exact turn of mind, yet his soul was elevated, and he recognized in Holy Scripture a learning of a new kind. 'These things are not demonstrated like a proposition of Euclid,' he said; 'mere study is sufficient to impress the theories of mathematics on our minds; but this science of God meets with a resistance in man that necessitates the intervention of a divine power. Christianity is a regeneration.' 'Through Tyndale's instructions,' says John Foxe, 'he first received with his heart the seed of the Gospel and sincere godliness'".

The most unlikely pairing of minds eventually fashioned the character of Anglicanism in its early stages - contending controversialists Erasmus and Luther; the first as translator and the second as teacher. The removal of the massive errors of Romanism began with the emergence of Erasmus' New Testament and the exposition of its meaning.

With continued reliance on D'Aubigne we conclude, "Thus the English Reformation began independently of those of Luther and Zwingli - deriving its origin from God alone. In every province of Christendom there was a simultaneous action of the divine Word. The principle of the Reformation at Oxford, Cambridge, and London was the Greek New Testament, published by Erasmus. England in course of time learnt to be proud of this origin of its Reformation".

The Rev. Roger Salter is an ordained Church of England minister where he had parishes in the dioceses of Bristol and Portsmouth before coming to Birmingham, Alabama to serve as Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church