Anglican

June 3, 2021


Now online: 16th c. Collection: Authority & Synods, Interpretation, Penance & Discipline

“ 16th c. Collection: Authority & Synods, Interpretation,
Penance & Discipline
 ”

Please welcome a first for Anglican.net: a collection of various 16th century reformers on the topics of church authority, synods, scripture interpretation, and aspects of church discipline. This we hope will add a new type of resource found on Anglican.net: collections of salient statements of 16th century theologians on various subjects.

Much of the thoughts and writings from the 16th century Anglican Reformers has become hard to come by, because of the tumult of the times, and the pattern of several authors combining multiple themes within the bounds of a single work. As a result, popular interest and even academic scholarship has bypassed much of the literature from the Reformation in the pursuit of a more familiar format of a single author and some one specific identifiable theme.

And yet the Reformers had written much that could be of interest to later generations, which fits our mission of enabling popular access to the historic Anglican theological treasures. Being a primarily popular rather than academic resource, we could not simply reprint the Reformational literature such as it was; and yet omitting to bring it to light also seemed unacceptable. Thus we’ve devised a new format, the first result of which is the work you see here. This is a collection from a wide array of reformers, divines, synods, that illustrates the position of the Church of England in the 16th century on the topics of church authority and synods; the role of the church in helping to interpret scripture; as well as the methods of discipline, penance, and excommunication, that were a part of the Anglican ecclesiastical practice in the 16th century. This work has been a long time coming, and much effort went into assembling these works into something which a regular modern reader would find approachable. We hope that you enjoy!


“ 16th c. Collection: Authority & Synods, Interpretation,
Penance & Discipline
 ”