James Clark is the author of The Witness of Beauty and Other Essays, and the Book Review Editor at The North American Anglican. His writing has appeared in Cranmer Theological Journal, Journal of Classical Theology, and American Reformer, as well as other publications.
The self-evident focus of Article XVI is the possibility of repenting from post-baptismal sin and, to an extent, the nature of “sin against the Holy Ghost.” Yet it is in the context of this Article, rather than Article XVII (“Of Predestination and Election”), that Browne chooses to discuss extensively the doctrine of final perseverance: The…
The pernicious doctrine opposed by Article XVI—that deadly sins committed after baptism cannot be forgiven—is rarely encountered in our dissolute age. If anything, we are more likely to fall into the opposite error of diminishing the seriousness of sin and the damage it inflicts. Yet tender consciences, suffocating beneath the burden of grievous sins, are…
The Anglican Office Book, 2nd Edition. Edited by Charles Lance Davis. Lake Almanor, CA: Whithorn Press, 2023. 2,247 pp. $125 (leatherette). The first edition of The Anglican Office Book was published in 2021, with the purpose of presenting “the entire Divine Office, through the prism of the classical Prayer Book tradition, in a format designed…
Browne’s Exposition originally appeared in two volumes, the first volume—which ended with his discussion of Article XV—being published in 1850, a few years before the Romish doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854: We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed…
In his treatment of Article XV, Browne makes the following comment on the relationship between Adam and Christ: Adam had a liability to sin, and therefore was susceptible of temptation, before he was actually guilty of sin, and so defiled and corrupted by it. And Christ, who was the second Adam, who came on purpose…
The doctrine of supererogation is bound up with the Roman system of indulgences, so a few words should be said about the latter first. According to the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, issued by Pope Paul VI, “An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their…
When my review of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism was published, Fr. Ben Jefferies—a former member of the Liturgy Task Force of the Anglican Church in North America, and a once frequent contributor to The North American Anglican who cut ties after my review was not retracted—posted a comment calling both the book…
While the Articles only mention the concept of merit de congruo by name in Article XIII, Browne explains the term earlier in his commentary on Article X: [The school-authors] thought…that some degree of goodness was attributable to unassisted efforts on the part of man towards the attainment of holiness; and, though they did not hold…
The necessity of good works for Christians is clearly established in Article XII: good works “do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith,” we are told, “insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by the fruit.” The necessity spoken of here is a logical…
During the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became common among Anglican divines to refer to works as a “condition” of justification. Alister McGrath traces this development to the fact that “the idea of justification sola fide came under suspicion, perhaps reflecting a growing concern about its possible links with antinomianism.” Hence figures such as…