In support of his thesis Morris turns to the words of a distinguished Baptist Old Testament theologian. "H.H. Rowley reminds us that the doctrine of election 'would seem to be fundamental to the thought of the Bible in both Old and New Testaments' (The Biblical Doctrine of Election, London, 1952, p15). Of church members of the New Testament he says, 'They were not men and women who chose to be Christians, or who of their own initiative decided to attach themselves to the Church, but men and women on whom the constraint of God had been laid, who were chosen in Christ and redeemed by Him, and who in individual loyalty had responded to that grace and pledged themselves without reserve to the obedience of their Lord'" (op.cit,. p. 170).

The decidedly Biblical doctrine of election receives classic, careful, and compassionate expression in the Confession of the Church of England, adopted still it seems, if only nominally, in the majority of the provinces in the Anglican Communion. Atonement and Election, in all their ramifications, are the constitutional pillars of Anglican Faith. Anything that weakens or denies the essence and effectiveness of these two principles leads to the undermining and demolition of Anglican gospel witness. We have seen these two great and foundational criteria of orthodoxy whittled away over recent generations. Anglicanism has passed through several emanations since the Reformation era and now is almost beyond recognition were it not for the presence of a Reformed Catholic remnant that retains the best insights of the Church over the ages.

Article Seventeen must be taken and applied on its own terms determined by historical context, the conviction of its authors, and the plain Biblical grammar that they employed, just as it comes to us off the page. We can neither shrink nor stretch its meaning to our mental reservations or preferences. Not one of the original Reformers would propound a doctrine of election based on divine foresight of any human quality, spiritual disposition, or likely response to the gospel. Even the most cautious of them, namely Latimer and Hooper for example, knew absolutely that salvation was entirely a work of divine grace solely and alone in its initiatory stages of regeneration and the gift of faith. Articles Nine and Ten preclude any thing tending toward synergism and are absolutely not patient of any imposed reconstruction along the lines of Arminianism or of Faberism (ecclesiastical chosen-ness - the election of the church and those included within it through baptism). Subscribers to the Articles need to do so with a clear conscience and compliant conviction. Charles I in his Declaration concerning the Articles is bound to smuggle in a hint of doctrinal equivocation, carefully not specifically, given his revealed tendency to Laudian Arminianism, his opposition to Dort, his inclination towards ritualism and his leniency toward the Catholicism of his French consort. He consorted with categories of churchmen who rued the Reformational emphases of the Church that he misguided in his appointment of proto-Arminian bishops and agreement with the banishment and humiliation of Calvinistic bishops such as the devout and learned John Davenant who courageously defied Laud's ruling not to preach on election, which he resolved to do in his sermon the Love of God. Afterwards the incomparable Davenant had to perform a demeaning exercise in humiliation as punishment.

Love to the unworthy is at the root of Anglican teaching on election. Only the utter humiliation of the wretched and helpless sinner can appreciate the beauty and allure of Electing Love. Pride is our prime disposition and only as it is increasingly demolished within do we gain an appreciative apprehension of predestination. On sovereign mercy alone do we rely.

Not that it is a matter of prime importance, or of particular deference to Calvin - Anglicanism is mature enough through Cranmer to come to its own mind on such things - almost all of the statements averred in Article Seventeen could be culled and compiled from the vocabulary of Jean Calvin. The substance and style are identical because they are patently Scriptural. The same divine source, the Word of God, shapes the doctrine of Anglican belief and witness.

*Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour.

The divine intent is formed before the act of creation or the existence of "the creatures" to be saved. The future people of God are foreseen as fallen, rebellious, and doomed apart from the intervention of undeserved, unsought divine compassion. God's plan of rescue is firm, immutable, and distinguishing (taken out of mankind), not in an unruly, random, and arbitrary way but sovereignly through the free association of certain persons with his beloved Son, who alone can rescue them as the unique and appointed God-man by his own obedience, effort, and sacrifice that will render them worthy of divine acceptance. These folk constitute the seed, the inheritance promised to the Son as the purchase of his death (Isaiah 53:10-11). Before a single human breath is taken on earth the Lord prospectively attaches countless human individuals to the Name, merits, virtue, and righteousness of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. These chosen ones, on a basis and scale secret to God, are loved in the Beloved. There is no other apt response to the mystery of this divine determination than that spoken by Moses to Israel and deduced from his teaching in Deuteronomy amounting to this: You are chosen because you are loved and loved because you are chosen. It is a circular heavenly logic precious to the human heart. The Holy Spirit gives his meek ones the talent to grasp in their souls truths beyond verbal explication. "In enquiring into the truth of Christianity, always remember that the supreme necessity is the faculty of holy judgment" (Richard Glover, The Teacher's Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Zondervan, 1956).

Christ brings those given to him by the Father to everlasting salvation (e.g. John chs 6 & 17). This purpose cannot be frustrated because it is guaranteed by omnipotent, irreversible grace. Our article recognizes that the decree of salvation is constant. It found no loveliness or attraction in the chosen, it arrays the elect in the loveliness and attractiveness of Jesus, and nothing in the elect will be ultimately repellent. Grace prevails as the guide and protector of the persons of the chosen. Christ reigns within the elect, always restorative in his interior operations and influences. They are vessels not possessing honour but made to honour. They are God's workmanship - recreated (Ephesians 2:8-10).

* Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

The effects of a definite divine election are certain and inevitable in the lives of the chosen, a number that cannot be increased or decreased, and not being known by us is no impediment to belief of the Gospel or hindrance in seeking salvation. Salvation is offered and granted if we ask for it in Biblical terms, i.e. true repentance and unfeigned faith (sincerity of heart). If we desire salvation we shall have it. If we respond to an offer we shall benefit whatever is in the mind of a benefactor. There is no break in the process of salvation delineated in the Article, no breakdown or failure in the achievement of the divine goal.

The elect are recipients of everlasting salvation. There is nothing here that is contingent, temporary or revocable. We are dealing with the divine purpose and not human fickleness. The purpose is constant. Saving grace is never finally extinguished or utterly erased (John 10). It commences with a call that issues from the sovereign Lord and carries over to the heart on the wings of a Dove, the Holy Spirit "working in due season": the right time in an effectual way. The plan for the elect is realized in installments. What God commands grace enables.

The elect are permanently right with God through the comprehensive, complete redemptive assignment wrought by the Lord Jesus in every aspect of his human life. "By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation,. . . By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, - Lord have mercy upon us" (The Litany). New birth establishes believers as children of God; not by nature are they children of God but by the new nature created within by the Holy Spirit, which causes resemblance and kinship to the Elder Brother who holds and protects the destiny of the chosen in his own integrity and competence.

Election and grace do not regard or find human beings as automata. Being marked out as elect is a decision of intensely personal love. Being enabled by grace means that God lives in believers and they in him. The love and life of Christ are now found in souls once dead to God and destitute of any vitality, value or virtue. Animated by the Spirit believers become true to themselves and true to God in liberated and righteous motivation. Willingly "they walk religiously in good works" because that is to walk hand in hand with their soul's Lover, and when that walk arrives at its destination they enter the boundless joy and abundant pleasures of the divine dwelling.

The election of grace, the pre-destination of divine affection, confers innumerable and priceless blessings upon those who would never desire nor seek them by nature. Their own honesty before God tells them this.

The sweetest consolation of election in Christ is to know deeply and intimately the One through whom we have been won and brought to God, and, in concurrence with the sentiments of William Cunningham, we are able, "to love Him with all our hearts, at once as Creator and our elder Brother, - to rest in him alone for salvation - to yield ourselves unto Him as alive from the dead, - and to rely with implicit confidence on his ability and willingness to make all things work together for our welfare, and to admit us at length into His own presence and glory (Historical Theology, Volume I, The Banner of Truth Trust,1969).

TO BE CONTINUED...