Externalities, however important, are not of the essence of the Christian faith, but rather union with Christ. The Church of God must be gathered, organized, and administered, but the external phenomenon is not an accurate representation of the true people of God and it consists of "wheat and tares" at every level of participation from leadership through tenuous membership.

The organization is the manifestation of credible adherents. Faith alone identifies those who believe from the "organ of the heart". Official councils, creeds, clergy have their place but they are only valid when they serve and edify the truly faithful and summon the unbelieving to authentic faith. The religious organization is only reliable and beneficial insofar as it complies with and communicates the gospel, pastors the people of God, and seeks the lost. Fussy obsession with the outward form of the church is simply toying with ecclesiastical paraphernalia, and the assertion of superiority over those not similarly organized (as a low church curate I was placed by the bishop in an Anglo-Catholic parish). Anglicanism knows that there is a fellowship of faith that overlaps denominational boundaries, that there exist various legitimate expressions of the faith of Christ to reflect the multi-faceted revelation of God and the ministry of the Spirit to various needs and circumstances. For example, the Augustinian fold embraces some Catholics, some Anglicans, many Baptists, few Methodists, and, confessionally speaking, all Presbyterians, except the Cumberland variety (see Baptist theologian N.R. Needham's incontrovertible proof of Augustine's "Calvinism" and monergism in his published work, The Triumph of Grace: Augustine's writings on Salvation, Grace Publications Trust, London). The divine endorsement of this commonly held faith is seen in the sanctification of character and the God-given success in ministry and mission as recorded in church history and Christian biography. Warm-hearted fellowship and holy flexibility among believers as to external organization is a feature of "truly evangelical" Christians (i.e. Biblical) whose primary aspiration is the "showing forth of Christ" (John Donne). The best definition of the catholic (universal) church comes from John Wycliffe. It is the total number of the predestinate. The unity of the Church already exists "in Christ" and in demonstrations of mutual recognition and co-operation. It is a union in truth and love, not jurisdictions, organizations, patriarchates, and provinces, which often behave corruptly and in contradiction of the gospel. Criminality tarnishes many of our religious organizations. The true bride of Christ is bashful and communes with him in the secrecy of the spirit (authentic heart union). "Your life is hid with Christ" (Colossians 3:3).

It is not easy to sum up succinctly the development of Christianity in England but to attribute its origins to Joseph of Arimathea is to resort to unsupported legend and to exaggerate the supposed benefits of the influence of those whose lives were contemporaneous with the Lord. Many such folk were erroneous in attitude and action (e.g Peter) and such proximity to the events of the life of the God-man does not guarantee absolute reliability. "But where history is silent, legend and tradition have produced strange and wonderful stories of journeys to this island made by S. Paul or S. Philip, or S. Joseph of Arimathea and the founding of a Christian church at Glastonbury" (The History of the Church in England, J.R.H. Moorman, Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, PA). The earliest written reference to Joseph of Arimathea occurs in the Chronicle of William of Malmsbury c. 1250 (Moorman page three). For the sake of brevity, and where it can be traced, the pre-Reformational influence of Augustinianism (the parent of Calvinism) was prevalent at several points in English church history through Bede, Bradwardine, Wycliffe, and Rolle (e.g Call to witness any perfect clerk/That in the schools there is great altercation/About this matter, and great disputing./ And has been among a hundred thousand men./But I cannot sift it to the kernel,/ As can the holy doctor Augustine,/Or Boetheus, or the bishop Bradwardine, etc, The Nun's Priest's Tale, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales).

As to Calvinism which EO insists we should relinquish, it is commonplace to aver that Calvin was not the originator of the doctrines associated with him. "Calvinism" is a convenient label to attach to the belief of those who adhere to the precious truth of electing love, which is asserted abundantly in Scripture and makes its mark rather conspicuously at various stages of church history according to the church's clarity of comprehension and its faithfulness to the witness of Scripture. Calvin was a student of the doctrines of grace defended at the second Council of Orange (529) and propounded by many significant pre-Reformational figures including, not in any order, Prosper, Fulgentius, Ratramnus, Gregory the Great, Isidore, Gregory of Rimini, Anselm, Aquinas, Wycliffe, Lombard, Bernard, Hus, etc. Calvin's principal deceased "tutors" were Augustine and Bernard and his contemporary guides were Luther and Bucer (a former Dominican scholar of the sovereign grace theology of Aquinas). Bucer's thought and phraseology can be detected in the Institutes. Calvin loved the honey sweet statements of Bernard of Clairvaux, his fellow Frenchman, and Calvin had the soul of a poet ravished by the love of Christ.

The Reformation in England was characterized by the Augustinian emphasis in full accord with the Reformed Catholicism of the Continental leaders of 16th century renewal. It is amazing as to how a selective recitation of English church history cites Jewel, Abbot, and the Carolinian divines approvingly at the expense of a whole bench of 16th century bishops and other theologians such as Cranmer, Ridley, Parker, Whitgift, Grindall, Hooker, Bradford, and Hooper when, in actuality, Jewel and Abbot were like-minded men and also part of the English Calvinistic company.

John Jewel was "coached" by Peter Martyr, an avowed predestinarian, and he anguished over ritualism and especially the little cross retained in Queen Elizabeth's private chapel. This man, Jewel, was a true Augustinian Protestant whose study of the fathers was intense and extensive but did not allow that their views were unanimous or infallible. "Yet they may not be compared with the word of God. We may not build upon them; we may not make them the foundation and warrant of our conscience; we may not put our trust in them. Our trust is in the name of the Lord . . . . Some things I believe, and some things they write I cannot believe." Citing Augustine Jewel writes, "We may mislike and refuse somewhat in their writings, if we find that they have thought otherwise than the truth may bear" (Theology of the English Reformers, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Horseradish, 1997). The fathers were admirable witnesses to the truth, but not uniformly accurate, and they were not considered authoritative en bloc with Holy Scripture by the English Reformation.

Concerning election, Jewel commented in his Exposition of the Epistles to the Thessalonians (pages143,144, London 1611); "God hath chosen you from the beginning. His election is sure for ever. The Lord God knoweth who are his. You shall not be deceived with the power and subtlety of anti-christ. You shall not fall from grace. You shall not perish . . . . Let him that standeth take heed that he fall not. But God hath chosen me to salvation. His mercy shall go before me, and his mercy shall follow in me. His mercy shall guide my feet, and stay me from falling. . . . He hath loved me; he hath chosen me; he will keep me. . . . He hath chosen you and prepared you unto salvation, and hath written your names in the book of life. But how may we know that God hath chosen us? how may we see this election? or how may we feel it? the Apostle saith, Through sanctification, and the faith of truth. These are tokens of God's election. This (viz. the Holy Spirit) comforteth us in all temptations; and beareth witness with our spirit that we be the children of God; that God hath chosen us: and doth love us, and hath prepared us to salvation; that we are the heirs of his glory; that God will keep us as the apple of his eye; that he will defend us; and we shall not perish". The Reformers testified to continuity with the fathers but not complete agreement, which the fathers did not enjoy among themselves. They need to be approached with due discernment.

According to R.E.D. Clark in his article on George Abbot in the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church the Archbishop preceding William Laud, who bitterly opposed him with his fellow High Churchmen, was the outstanding leader of the English Calvinists with strong sympathies towards the Puritan party. In fact, until the Laudian domination of the church, and for a time afterwards, Anglicans and Puritans (many of whom remained in the national church) agreed in the matter of soteriology (yes, Augustinian monergism) and differed only over ritual and church polity. Marchette Chute in her volume entitled, Two Gentlemen: The Lives of George Herbert and Robert Herrick, points out that most English Protestants in Herbert's day were brought up as Calvinists. Such was Herbert, and so he remained, assuring Andrew Melville the Scottish church leader, and obviously Calvinist, that though he attacked him on church services his doctrine of the sovereignty of God in salvation was the same: "Who gives to man, as he sees fit, }Salvation. }Damnation."

John Donne was similarly in conflict with the Puritans over liturgy and church government, but as William H. Halewood demonstrates in, The Poetry of Grace: Reformation Themes and Structures in English Seventeenth-Century Poetry, Donne's theology of grace was identical to that of the Puritans. As regards the operation of faith in the penitent sinner Donne observes, "No man can prepare that worke, no man can begin it, no man can proceed in it of himselfe. The desire and actual beginning is from the preventing grace of God" (Sermons, 2, 305).

Calvinism is intrinsic to the fabric of Anglicanism and any vendetta against Calvin himself cannot erase this historical and theological fact. Anglicanism is drenched with Augustinianism. To impugn Calvin is to besmirch the reputation of Jesus Christ whom the Genevan Reformer exalts so greatly, highly, effectively, and affectionately. He does so well that which the people of God are meant to do: show forth Christ, the credential of any true believer and representative of the gospel. No man is to be placed on a pedestal, but there are some from whose shoulders we see so much more than we could gain by ourselves. [Some of the reformed would discard the label "Calvinistic" but whatever the tag the doctrine will be repudiated by those so inclined. Apologists for sovereign grace should always strive to be courteous, but never back into a corner under pressure from those who wish them to be cowed into silence].

Visible unity among Christians should be enterprised only if the process enables an improved and more complete "showing forth of Christ". To forsake truth at the bidding of another body in order to accomplish institutional oneness, and to placate their sensibilities, would be a betrayal of the Anglican cause. The Western understanding of grace, broadly speaking, is more radical than that of the eastern expression of the faith. With Augustine, and, we believe, Holy Scripture, Anglicanism in its classic form has arrived at a healthy pessimism as regards human nature and a full blooded optimism grounded in the grace of God alone. None of this debate would have been necessary or so extended if a guest speaker at an Anglican convention had not advised Anglicans to breach a core conviction, and any Anglican body that pursued unity with the source movement of this exhortation would be abandoning its quintessential identity (mutual respect, yes, but not integration). Those who advocate such a move ought to make it for themselves as individuals and not endeavour to drag an entire communion into an incompatible partnership. Anglicanism has its own valid integrity and ought to stand boldly by it at whatever cost. May those who seek a different destination graciously and honestly consider as to whether they ought to remain on the bus. There is a place, a spiritual home, for every conscientious believer. It is the honourable thing to find it, go with it, and forward it's welfare with might and main according to conviction and temperament; not to unsteady a communion with which they are disappointed, or attempt to undermine its doctrinal foundation and recruit others for an opposing cause. As long as the Articles remain as the Anglican interpretation of the word of God Augustinians may regard Anglicanism as their home - sweet home - and do all that they may to preserve it intact.

May God bless his church catholic and every sincere believer wherever they are nurtured, and may he foster our true unity in the Spirit and his truth.

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