Theological leadership is raised up in due season. We have no comparable tomes such as Jewel’s Defensio Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae or Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, but the Reformed English Church persists because there is no better expression of English identity: it is the Ecclesia Anglorum. If it is ‘crucified between two thieves’ – the Puritans and the papists – it is because it has tasted the unmerited grace of God in Jesus Christ and maintains continuity with the Church of the Middle Ages and the early Fathers. It is catholic and reformed; moderate and reasonable; rigorous yet pastoral. And these are held in tension, in the brokenness of the cross, and there are undoubted frequent imbalances, in the imperfection of our fallenness. The Ecclesia Angliae has endured through numerous threats – the Roman Catholic Church, the Puritans, the Enlightenment and science, and ecumenism. So Cranmer is sure that it can survive feminism and pluralism.
Cranmer
Knight is not quite so sure the Church of England can survive but, when in the dark, whistle.
