Cranmer's Sweet Sermon

Hey you all,

Mr. Mom here! School keeps rolling along for the family while I empty the dishwasher, tomorrow take Kramer to the groomer [it appears he's taken a canine Nazarite vow], fold and put away clothes [I'd almost rather do anything else], and keep the house cleaned up.

This morning I read the English Reformer Thomas Cranmer's sweet homily [one of 21 sermons] entitled A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture. In it he writes:

"Let us diligently search for the well of life in the books of the New and Old Testament, and not run to the stinking puddles of men’s traditions, devised by man’s imagination, for our justification and salvation. For in holy Scripture is fully contained what we ought to do and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God’s hands at length. In those books we shall find the Father, from whom, the Son, by whom, and the Holy Ghost, in whom, all things have their being and keeping up; and these three Persons to be but one God and one substance."

You may remember that Mary had Cranmer burned at the stake even when at first he sent a letter to Mary submitting himself to the Roman Church. Mary didn't believe Cranmer and ordered him burned. Nichols writes:

"Cranmer's impending death brought a clarity and resolve to his true beliefs. At the very end he affirmed his his Protestant and Reformed understanding of the gospel. When the fire was lit on the stake, he put his hand into the fire first, exclaiming, 'I have sinned, in that I have signed with my hand what I did not believe in my heart.'"

Let me know how you're doing. I'm praying for you -- that you may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints [how about reading dead saints like Paul or umm maybe some noncanonical brothers like Cranmer's 39 articles?] what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.