Letter to the English Churchman on Lent (Part 2)

Dear Sir,
Re: Lent and the Regulative Principle of Worship

It is unfair of Mr. Cyril Blackstock to smear the Anglican observance of Lent with the celebration of the Mardi Gras carnival associated with ordinary Roman Catholics. Such abuses at the grass-roots level does not represent the official teaching of the Roman Church albeit tolerated, as with other common errors, by the hierarchy alongside other absurdities (e.g. the case of the Marian apparition appearing on a pancake after recital of the Novena by a rosary practitioner on Shrove Tuesday). However, even the Bishops Conference of Yugoslavia was consistent in its extreme caution about Marian apparitions in Medjugorje and the Vatican has issued a public ban on pilgrimages to some supposed sites and shrines (Notification by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1974).

Nonetheless, for the Protestant to insist for a scriptural imperative for every practice by the Church - divorced from its environment - is unwarranted by the Bible itself and Church history (see Romans 14 on feast days and diet, 1 Corinthians 11 on the essential shape of the Eucharistic Liturgy --- common or individual cups? leavened or unleavened bread?, chap. 14 on the principles of worship --- instrumental accompaniment?, Acts 2 about meeting places for worship and frequency of communion --- church buildings?, chap. 6 with respect to the first ordering of deacons, chap. 12 about allusion to Jewish feast days in the apostolic church etc.). In these instances, there were no specific divine mandate regulating or forbidding non-essential/accidental customs but that they were either grounded on earlier precedents or arose out of the exigency of circumstances.

In fact, such insistence is analogous to the Roman’s & Byzantine’s demand e.g. that their peculiar formulation of the Quam oblationem and Epiklesis respectively is an integral prayer or petition/invocation in the Canon of the Mass or Liturgy that complements the Words of Institution either before its recitation by a benediction upon the species of bread and wine in preparation for the act of consecration ('Western') or the 'moment' thereof (after the Anaphora, i.e. Offering) when they are released back to the Church to be “manifested” as the Antitypes of the Body and Blood of Christ (Eastern). ('Transubstantiation' and elevation are condemned in Article 28).

Lent pre-dates the rise of the papacy and is independent of any pagan connotation. Rather, it is the so-called Orange Orders (both the Established and Independent) that are imbued with pagan rituals and Freemasonry. They are also linked by cross-membership with other esoteric societies that are in continuity with medieval secular orders whose original mission was not propagation of the Gospel but to advance the temporal ambitions of the Roman Church. These associations represent the survival of Gnostic heresies and triumph of occult circles in Christendom.

In contrast, Lenten fasting is rooted in Scripture and the example of Christ. The use of ashes from burned palm branches prominent from the 7th century onwards and adopted into the Medieval Church are legalistic mimicries of Old Testament symbolisms; nowhere to be found or sanctioned in the Prayer book and the authentic Anglican tradition (cf. 'Concerning Ceremonies', after the 'Preface' to the Book of Common Prayer).

The fervency with which classical Anglicans and successors of the Puritan separatists (i.e. pre- & post-1662) disagree on the Regulative Principle of Worship should not mean that one side should attempt to 'impose' their local tradition on the other nor should it detract from the broad liturgical spectrum that historically existed within classical Protestantism, viz. Reformed Orthodoxy and confessional Lutheranism, thus reflecting the catholicity of the Reformation Churches.

And despite internal diversity on some doctrinal issues also, there is a common and unified front over-against Rome and Constantinople (both the Chalcedon Patriarchates and the “non-canonical” Assyrian/Nestorian and Coptic/Monophysite Churches). Not only have these churches erred but grievously so on the issue of justification by faith alone resting upon the twin pillars of the total depravity of man and the absolute sovereignty of God.

May the true Church of Christ in this realm continue to guard the deposit of truth and contend against all errors supported by genuine Protestant societies in the propagation of Reformation principles, promotion of the Reformed Faith and defence of the British Constitution.