F. S. Rising (#5): "Are There Romanizing Germs in the Prayer Book?" (29ff.)

Are there Romanizing germs in the Prayer Book? Yes. The Baptismal Office of “seeing this child is regenerate” in the plain language teaches it. English BCP-Evangelicals have tried to skirt it. Can the Americans skirt it? Probably not, since systematic theology and exegesis are not native to the modern American Anglicans, although older men like Bishop Cummins, Bishop Cheney, Bishop Meade, and others were “pained” by language. Often most heard, it’s a “charitable presumption” of regeneration. The “charitable hypothesis. Nice try, but it’s equivocating. Do we teach our children to equivocate and use double-talk? The plain language is a stative verb “is” in the present tense—not a past tense nor future tense, but a statement of being. Often, English Evangelicals would have the “mental reservation” in using the office, e.g. Rev. George Gorham. Bishop Meade, the American Evangelical Episcopalian, said, “Why could not another prayer on the same plan be introduced into the Baptismal Service, and allowed to be used in the place of the one which we now must use, but which I never do without pain because its plain, literal meaning contradicts my belief?” (32). Or, as Neal noted historically, “Neither among the Eastern Offices of Baptism, all of which I know well—Constantinopolitan, Copto-Jacobite, Armenian, Syro-Jacobite, Ethiopic, Nestorian—nor, to the best of my belief, among those of the West, is there one which so unequivocally asserts the unconditional regeneration of an infant as our own Office” (33). Well, now, the Reformed Episcopalians in the USA took the lead in correcting such, but they now allow saints’ invocations and Bread-Worshipping and “Cannibalism R’ Us.” Mr. Rising turns to the Lord’s Supper and notes equivocating language that has allowed Romanizing fruit to grow. And all this was the focus of England’s Reformation—Bread-Bone-Munchers. The Black Rubric forbids such, but ACNA and the American Continuers opt for Roman authoritarianism, Episcopal Power-Poohbahs, and Priestly interpositions between God and the Churchman. More could be said.