It is curious, and may not be uninstructive, to observe how from time to time the assailants of Primitive Antiquity have shifted their ground, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. During the struggle of the Reformation, men had felt instinctively, if they did not clearly see, that the Fathers were against them, so far as they had begun to rationalize, whether in ecclesiastical practice, or in theological inquiry. But it was many years before they ventured to avow this feeling distinctively to themselves, much more to maintain and propagate it. It was not until divines of this class had thoroughly wearied themselves in vain endeavours to reconcile the three first centuries with Calvin and Zuinglius, that Daillé published its celebrated treatise Of the Right Use of the Fathers: in which under the pretence of impugning their sufficiency as judges between Papist and Protestant, he has dexterously insinuated every topic most likely to impair their general credit; professing all the while extreme respect for their sanctity and their wisdom; although perhaps an attentive reader may perceive his ironical meaning, disclosing itself more and more, as his argument draws to a point. However, by his skill in rhetorical arrangement, and by a certain air of thorough command of his subject, which he has been very successful in assuming, he became at once the standard author for all who took that side of the question: opening (if so homely a simile may be allowed) a kind of cheap shop, to which all who had a fancy for wares of that kind have ever since found it convenient to resort.
If you have somehow made it through that first paragraph, I salute you. John Keble was an influential poet, pastor and preacher in the early-mid 1800's. His so-called sermon on national apostasy (Assize Day Sermon, 1833) seems for many to mark the beginning point of a movement within the Anglican church which has come to be known as the Oxford Movement. Over the course of the nest several weeks (or maybe months) a group of us are looking at the works of influential Anglican Christians of the last 200 years. And, as is my preference, rather than spending a whole lot of time reading what others have said, we will turn to the writings of these Christians themselves. First up we will be having a look at some of the writings of the leaders of the Oxford Movement with a view to several questions: what did they say, why did they say it, and how can their thoughts and prayers help form our own discipleship as followers of Jesus in the "Anglican way"?
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