December 14, 2022 Show with Roger Salter on “Joseph Hall: Master of Meditation”

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 14th day of December 2022, and I am thrilled to have back on the program a frequently returning guest, although he has not been on for a while.

I'm so thrilled that he is back with us. His name should be immediately recognizable to anyone who listens to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with any regularity.

His name is Roger Salter. He is Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a

Reformed, Confessional, Cranmerian, and historically Protestant congregation firmly committed to the inerrant holy scriptures and the 39 articles of religion.

Today, we are going to be addressing Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend,

Roger Salter. It's grand to be on board with you again,

Chris, and I'll follow your guidance closely, but as I say, it will reconnect you.

Amen. I'm thrilled about it as well, and I've already given a fairly detailed description of St.

Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, but is there anything else you'd like to add to that, including your use of the

Book of Common Prayer and so forth? Well, you summed it up very well,

Chris, but there has been a recent production which a friend of mine alerted me to.

There's a new edition of the 1662 with some extra material in it, and we're going over to that.

This is our Manual of Worship now, so it means that our worship will be even more

Cranmerian. 1662 will be our major guide in our worship and our devotional thought.

And for those of you listening who are unfamiliar with that term, Cranmerian, that is a reference to Thomas Cranmer, who drafted the 39

Articles of Religion and was also a major part of the Book of Common Prayer and a great hero of the faith, who at one point when the

Church of England swung back to Roman Catholicism and he had a threat of execution against him if he did not recant his

Protestant faith, he caved in to that threat and renounced his

Protestant faith, but later renounced his recantation. His conscious could not bear it any longer, and he actually, when being executed, thrusted his hand that signed his

Protestant recantation into the flames first before he was executed by burning.

So that was quite a heroic way to depart this earth, refusing to maintain a denial of the true

Gospel. Anything to add about Cranmer? Just at that particular incident, his martyrdom, when he was declared guilty in the

Church where he was under extermination, and he declared his Reformational faith again with such clarity, when he was going to the funeral pyre, he was far ahead of his persecutors.

That's how keen he was to emphasize his loyalty to the Word of God in his death.

Amen. If anybody wants to learn more about Thomas Cranmer, you can look up his name in the

Iron Radio Archive. I have had interviews, in particular one that focused in its entirety on Thomas Cranmer with Ashley Null, who is a

Thomas Cranmer scholar. He is quite a brilliant brother, and so if you look that up, you could either type in Ashley Null's last name,

N as in Nancy, U -L -L, or you could type in Thomas Cranmer, C -R -A -N as in Nancy, M as in Michael, E -R.

Well, today you have chosen to discuss Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation.

If you could tell us, who was Joseph Hall? Well, Joseph Hall, originally

I came across him in a compilation of 17th century poetry, and he was included in the volume as a satirist.

It was religious satire, but I was interested in reading one or two of his poems, and then on reading

Thomas Scott's history of the Synod of God, I noticed references to Joseph Hall, so I thought, this is someone of great interest,

I must pursue my understanding of him. And the more I read of him, the more

I began to admire this great man of God, one of the greatest of the

Puritans of his era, a man of the Reformation undoubtedly, and one of my greatest finds,

Chris, was when I was in Cambridge in England, I went into a bookshop, not particularly looking for anything in particular, but as I was browsing through the second -hand books,

I found a biography of Bishop Joseph Hall, a biographical and critical study by a scholar called

Frank Livingston Huntley, and I've got that book and I've read it four times since.

I never tire of reading it, but it's a brilliant summary of his life, particularly as a literary person, because that's what

Huntley was, but also as a Christian scholar, preacher, and meditator upon the

Scriptures, and producing beautiful meditations for the edification of the people of God.

Now when you refer to Hall as a Puritan, I know that he was a bishop in the

Church of England. Was he actually, in a technical sense, a Puritan that was dispelled from the

Church, as were many others, or was he one that maintained a

Puritan theology and yet remained in the Church of England? Absolutely.

Like so many, he remained a minister of the Church of England, shared exactly the theology of the

Puritans, but believed in Episcopal government, and of course the use of the

Book of Common Prayer. So initially, at the outset of his ministry, he was hounded by the

Archbishop, Bishop William Lord, for being too Puritan. But when the

Puritans gained ascendancy in the Church towards the end of his life, he was removed from his cathedral at Norwich and punished for not being

Puritan enough. But that was not to do with theology, it was to do with Church polity.

And how was he specifically punished, other than being removed from his office?

Well, he was removed as a bishop. He would have had free accommodation, a fairly handsome salary or income.

These were taken from him, and he and his wife moved to a tiny little cottage and lived, not in absolute poverty, but on the brink, as it were, of a severe reduction of his comforts and basic needs in life.

So he still remained faithful to his theology, wrote his beautiful meditations until he died.

But it was a great comedown for somebody who'd been so influential in the nation.

He was a friend of the King's son. He was a favorite of King James's son, and a great advisor to politicians and the great people of England in the day.

But he was, when I say humiliated, I'm not talking about his own emotional response, but the downfall that was imposed upon him was quite severe.

What can you tell us about him before he ascended to the post of bishop?

What can you tell us about, if you are familiar with his childhood, how he was raised religiously, and how he rose up in the ranks in the

Church of England? Well, I can read a paragraph from Joel Beattie's account of Joseph Hall in his book

Meet the Puritans. It would probably sum up much of what I would personally want to say about him.

Had a very eventful life. He was a great scholar, a great investigator into every field of knowledge that he could pursue.

But I'll see what Joel Beattie says in a brief paragraph. The respected

English bishop Joseph Hall was born July the 1st, 1574, at Bristow Park in Leicestershire.

His father John Hall was the town agent for Henry Earl of Huntingdon. His mother,

Winifred Bambridge, was a godly woman comparable in Hall's mind to Augustine's mother,

Monica. Hall was privately tutored for several years by William Pelset, rector of Margaret Bosworth, then sent to Emanuel College, Cambridge, in 1589.

There, he gained a lifelong love to Puritan piety, though he supported

Anglican rather than Presbyterian ecclesiology. In 1595, he became a fellow of the college.

The following year, he earned a Master of Arts degree and was elected as a university lecturer in rhetoric.

During his time at Cambridge, Hall wrote a collection of sound thrashings.

In 1597, a collection of satires in Latin verse. So that was criticizing the church at the time.

In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury asked that all satires be burned because they were licentious, but that order was soon reversed.

So he had a very full life up until his being appointed to various parishes in England.

Through those parishes, fairly tied in with the upper class, as it were, he gained a reputation.

As I say, he became a very close friend and advisor of King James' son.

And I got to know him very much as an intimate friend. And he was appointed chaplain.

So two years later, he received his doctorate in divinity. And in 1612,

Lord Denny, later Earl of Norwich, gave Hall the curacy of Walton Holy Cross, Essex.

And from there on, he moved to rather distinguished parishes until King James made him a bishop originally,

I think, in Exeter. And then he moved on to his final diocese in Norwich.

Now, already, you have won me over for him, noting that he was involved in satire.

I love a Christian with a good sense of humor. Now, when he was labeled as being guilty of licentiousness in his satire, was that an accurate accusation?

Was it slander? Was his satire very earthy, like Luther's had a tendency to be?

No, it was simply slander directed towards him, because he was very critical of the episcopacy and the poor state of the church and the negligence and lack of diligence among the clergy, high and low.

So that won him a lot of unpopularity. And it was a means of preventing people from reading these valid criticisms of the church.

And when you said he was critical of the episcopacy, I'm assuming you don't mean that political form of government, that ecclesiology?

No, just the, yeah. You're talking about the people that held the post, the specific people who held the episcopacy.

Yes, absolutely. He was quite right in what he said, and that's what made the upper echelons in the church unfavorable towards him.

And as I say, I think they wanted to quash these criticisms before too many gained access to his writings.

I'm assuming that he was a thoroughgoing Calvinist, because every time you have been on this program and highlighting a great man of history, they have always been

Calvinists. Was this true of Joseph Hall? Absolutely, it was.

There were people, and I think some people still do that. I mean, some people have called

Spurgeon Arminian, you know, because of certain tendencies to proclaim the gospel invitation.

Yeah, they don't understand what historic Calvinism is, so they assume since Spurgeon didn't fit their stereotype, they will call him an

Arminian. Exactly. It's an aberration. I once saw an article on the internet years ago where this man was blacklisting all the people that he thought was not a

Calvinist, and Spurgeon was one of them. He was not a Calvinist, according to this man.

I don't know who he was. I have a feeling I know who he was, but if it's the same individual, he also condemned

John Calvin to hell for not being a Calvinist. Yes, yes, that's right. I saw that as well.

Yes, yes. The last one of the two witnesses, Chris. And were

Hall's critics thoroughgoing Calvinists as well? No, they weren't, and it was

Archbishop Lord, of course, who hated him with quite a venomous approach.

And he was, I don't know, there was an attempt to silence all of the

Reformed men at that time during the reign of Charles I. So many men, like John Davenant, the bishop of, oh gosh, down there in Wiltshire, that well -known cathedral town of Salisbury, all of these men were commanded not to preach on election and predestination.

And John Davenant did in a sermon entitled The Love of God, and he was greatly embarrassed publicly.

He was made to wear a penitent's gown or cloak and was lectured and chastised by his senior clerics.

So it was a time when the Church was being, as it were, rid of the

Reformed men who dominated the Church from the time of Edward VI until the coming of Archbishop Lord and Charles I.

Now, the specific area of Joseph Hall's life, legacy, and character that you wanted to highlight is a word that can send chills up Reformed people's spines today because it can have scary connotations.

It's the word meditation. And many people, when they hear people who are involved in meditation and are promoting meditation, are well -known for meditation, they fear that this may be a reference to Catholic mysticism, even

Eastern mysticism. And today you have all kinds of bizarre New Age understandings of meditation where the mind is emptied and we become just a sponge for whatever the spirit realm has in store for us to flood our minds as we have emptied it.

And it could be, of course, the people involved in this never admit that this may be the case, but it could be the flooding of satanic ideas and thoughts that flood the emptied mind.

So why don't you explain what you mean by Joseph Hall being a master of meditation?

Okay, Chris, could I just read a couple of commendations of Hall? Because some years ago

I was fortunate to get a book published by Tentmaker.

I don't think they're doing business any longer. I think Mike Gadosh has picked up their publications.

I'm almost certain of it. Has he? Yes, or Solid Ground Christian Books. They have a mammoth edition of Contemplations on the

Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments by Joseph Hall.

And on the back of the cover, they've got three or four really reliable commendations.

Because when we talk about meditation and thinking of the Davidic meditation in the

Psalms in Holy Scripture, he shows how, for example, Psalm 19 works on the basis that he didn't have a formula.

It wasn't organized. It was just contemplating in the presence of God, quietly, everything that we could see as evidence of his work as creator, the governor of providence, the one who initiated the plan of salvation and carried it through in Jesus Christ.

But I'll just give a couple of really good commendations on the back of this wonderful book,

Chris. It's hard to manipulate. It's heavy. It's a large size. But on the back, it says, from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Need I commend

Bishop Hall's contemplations to your affectionate attention? What a wit!

What sound sense! What concealed learning! His style is as pithy and witty as that of Thomas Fuller, and it has a sacred unction about it, to which

Fuller has no pretension. The work can be readily procured, but if its price were raised in proportion to the book, it would become one of the most costly books extant.

George Whitefield, though weak, I have often spent two hours in my evening retirements and prayed over my

Greek testament and Bishop Hall's most excellent contemplations. Richard Baxter recommends

Hall's contemplations to peace and comfort and increase of the love of God.

And a contemporary, Peter Masters at Spurgeon's tabernacle, I don't know if he's still there or even still alive, but he wrote,

To read Hall is to read the narrative passages of the Bible through eyes of a delightful saint and veteran

Puritan pastor. It is to accompany the great man on a walk through the lanes and byways of all the events in sacred record and to hear his reflections and responses of his own heart.

Seldom did anyone combine such easy prose with so many profound comments.

So he's well recommended by the constituency, Chris. And without reading

Psalm 19, he points out the three bases. Again, as I say, it's not a set formula.

It's not organized. It's just people looking around and seeing what invites you to gaze upon God, God's creator,

God's redeemer. And because he has created everything, everything can be a spur to thinking about him.

You know, for instance, if you see something made of wood, what does wood remind you of?

You think of all the trees mentioned, their significance in the Bible, but the one I go to readily is the wood of the cradle in which he was nurtured as an infant, the wood of the cross in which he died in our stead.

He says anything, anything in all creation can trigger thoughts about God.

And he sees this in Psalm 19, where he talks about the language of creation, the language of the

Word of God, God speaking as well as acting, and then the Spirit's work sanctifying us within and cultivating our thoughts and elevating them to that sort of high and sublime level of the heavenly thoughts that guide

God. It grounds to us through our meditation on him as God, creator and redeemer and governor.

So it's very flexible. It's not something that is in any way difficult.

You don't need to be a specialist. You just look around, and whatever you see prompts you to think of God.

By the way, I do want to let our audience know that they can rest at ease.

Dr. Peter Masters is still with us. He is still the pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, England.

And I'm assuming that he hasn't gone home to be with the Lord after this past Sunday when he preached there, according to their website.

So I just thought I'd make that clarification. Thank you,

Chris. We are going to our first break right now. And when we return, brother, if you could just pick up where you left off.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question on our subject today,

Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation, or if they just have a general question on Anglicanism and specifically

Reformed Anglicanism, confessional Anglicanism, historic

Anglicanism, or any topic related to the scriptures that involves

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We are now back with my friend Roger Salter. We are discussing Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation.

And if you could pick up where we left off, Roger, we were comparing and contrasting

Joseph Hall's method of meditation as opposed to the heretical idea that many of us immediately have pop into our heads when we hear the word because of the fact that we have all kinds of bizarre religious practices that involve meditation that are very foreign to the

Scriptures. So, if you could pick up where you left off. Certainly, Chris.

Before I elaborate on Bertolt Baumgartner's recommendation of meditation, which

I would say is just contemplation or gazing upon God as prompted by what we see, what we read and hear in Scripture, and what the

Holy Spirit suggests to us in the process of sanctification and illumination in our own hearts, it was not a technique.

It wasn't anything mysterious or strange, as you've indicated in other theological and spiritual tendencies.

But just to reassure folk about the reliability of Hall's theology and thought, could

I just give a couple of brief quotes? Of course. Yeah, this is from Huntley's biography of Joseph Hall, and they're quite brief.

He was chosen as one of the four delegates from the English church to represent

English Christianity at the Synod of Dort. We know that King James wanted a refutation of Arminianism, and he chose the best possible men, their character and their understanding and spirituality, to represent the

Church of England. So, I'll just read two or three brief passages, Chris.

It says, so well, in fact, did Joseph Hall get along with royalty and the

Calvinists, that the King appointed his loyal, obedient and learned servant of the

Church to be one of his four representatives at the Synod of Dort, held at Dortrecht, Holland, from November 1618 to May 1619.

There had been a long, passionate demonstration of the position that King James would have his delegates take in that famous debate.

And so one of the men he chose was Bishop Hall. And over the next page he says, the

King, to represent him at the Synod of Dort. King James chose, besides Dean Joseph Hall of Worcester, the newly appointed

Bishop George Carldon of Clanduff, John Davenant, the

Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and Dr Samuel Ward, Master of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge.

These are all devout and stout -hearted reformational men. That's me, not

Huntley. But he says, according to Thomas Fuller, who was the church historian of the day, the

King called these men to Newmarket well in advance in order to instruct them, practice your

Latin, agree among yourselves and speak for moderation. But it is clear that the purpose of sending an

English delegation to Dort was to condemn Arminianism and other hellish doctrines emanating from the

University of Leiden. In keeping with his persistent bad luck when travelling,

Hall with the rest of the party unaccountably missed the Dutch man of war especially sent for them, the ship.

And he had to leave the Synod early on account of another serious intestinal infection.

But here it is after the Synod of Dort, and John Davenant is again regarded as one of the great

Anglican Puritans, Puritan in theology if not in ecclesiastical convictions.

It says here, though the English delegates of Dort knew better than most Englishmen, except perhaps the

King, that Arminianism and Socinian gangrene were not identical.

Nevertheless they had to side with the Calvinist majority because of their ordination vows to uphold the 39 articles of the

Church of England. Writing on this question to Bishop Davenant, Hall said, and this is what

I wish, yes it's an extreme statement, but I wish all those ordained to Anglican ministry would note this, our confessional basis,

I do confidently avow, this is Bishop Hall, that those other opinions of Arminians cannot stand with the doctrine of the

Church of England, to which Davenant replied, I know that no man can embrace

Arminianism in the doctrines of predestination and grace, but he must desert the articles agreed upon by the

Church of England. So really there's a sense in which Dort is in the background of Anglican thinking.

We've got our articles to confirm our belief in reformational truth, we've got our homilies which are left to us to establish our doctrinal stance.

The other thing that's rather amusing and appealing about Joseph Hall, although he had to leave the synod early because of an infection, he was given a beautiful medal of solid gold.

The other delegates received silver replicas almost three inches in diameter and an eighth of an inch thick.

Hall wore this medal as a pectoral ornament to the end of his days. He was so pleased with that medal that he received from Dort that he wouldn't part with it, he wore it daily.

So I think that advertises quite clearly what his theological convictions were.

Well we have a question for you from Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania.

Joseph says, those outside of Anglicanism do not typically know or take advantage of and benefit from many of the great minds of Anglicanism from the past.

Typically the only two names that would come to mind by a reformed non -Anglican would be

John Owen and J .C. Ryle. Why is it that you think this is the case and is

John Hall the, is John Hall, I'm sorry, I think our listener has a typo, is

Joseph Hall well known amongst Anglicans even though he is not amongst the non -Anglican

Christians? Well first of all I must mention that John Owen was not an

Anglican, he was Congregationalist, independent, and one of the frames of the

Savoy Confession of Faith. So he was not an Anglican, he had a very important post at one of the universities of course.

I'm not sure, I didn't bring that name up, so I'm not sure why you're referring to him. No, no,

I just wanted to be, you know, so many other Puritans were Anglican and it's not to set a distinction between them.

They were all Puritan, even John Dunne, the poet. A lot of his biographers do not recognize the fact that his soteriological thought about the way of salvation was thoroughly

Puritan, as Puritan as Calvin and Augustine. He was called the

English Augustine. But Hall is known to some extent outside the boundaries of the

Reformational Anglican movement because of his godliness, his piety, and his comments on the scripture.

So many of them probably wouldn't recognize that he was, as he happened to be, a distinctly

Reformational man. But as I say, the majority of Anglicans, and there are all kinds of approaches in Anglicanism that are confusing so many tribes within the movement, but the fact is that most of them have a detestation of Reformational doctrine.

Although predestination is at the heart of our movement, Calvin, sorry,

Cranmer was wanting to construct his whole notion of the Church and how it should operate on the doctrine of predestination.

Very few people recognize that. And it's why the majority of churchmen into, you know, the following generations and centuries even despised

Cranmer. You never heard much about him. He was always replaced by Richard Hooker.

And the terrible thing is, from the point of view of Reformational faith, Hooker agreed with Cranmer on the doctrines of grace.

But the high church wanted to block this approach out. That's why it doesn't spread, because the majority of Anglicans do not accept the 39

Articles. They think of them as a museum piece from the 17th century and problems that were discussed then.

We know, and we look at it, we know from its intent that it is a confession of faith.

And if we take the theology and the grammatical expression of the Reformers, we know that that is a

Calvinistic confession of faith. Yes, and it's interesting that I have had

Arminian and Anglo -Catholic Anglicans protest some of the statements made by you and other

Anglicans that I've had on the show, who will say that Hooker was an Arminian, and they will say that even

Cranmer was a sacerdotalist. Although they wouldn't use that name, that word, they would be clear that they were teaching that Cranmer had a more

Romish understanding of the sacraments. Oh gosh, that's stupendously wrong,

Chris. I mean, I don't know how these distortions even become current.

They're simply not right, and I don't think the people are really being honest.

I think they're manipulating certain statements out of context. Cranmer and Calvin did not believe in the high church and Catholic point of view with regard to the sacraments, and there are distinct statements everywhere in their writings.

Even the Thirty -Nine Articles condemns the idolatry of Rome in regard to the sacraments.

They do. They do. It's either ignorance or prejudice that makes people make statements like this, and I'm going to be blunt because these people have spread these untruths throughout the last centuries, since the time of Cranmer and Hall.

Strictly speaking, Chris, and I'm not saying this out of prejudice, but of confessional conscientiousness.

We have a confession that Anglican ministers in most of our providences are meant to subscribe to.

If that's the case, there should be no Armenians or semi -Pelagians in Anglican pulpits, because predestination is at the center of our faith.

It so magnifies the sovereignty of God, the beauty of his love that cannot be altered from all eternity.

He has his grip on his people from beginning to end, and is wholly the author of their salvation.

Anything that falls short of that diminishes the glory of the triune God and of Jesus Christ our

Savior. He says his work isn't complete, that his accomplishment is insufficient.

You know, Wesley and others, strictly speaking, should not have been

Anglican, and there are various reasons one could give to explain this, but it's just disloyalty to the

Word of God. It's just shutting one's eyes to history and grammatical and historical documents that we know what they mean because of their authors.

I'm going to say this, there is a lot of lying and hiding from the truth and distorting it.

Within the Anglican communion, I think that's the reason for its current weakness and its crumbling condition.

And of course today, in our day and age, people are rejoicing when they even learn of a

Christian who is an Anglican rector or even bishop, who even believes in the inerrancy of scripture and so on.

But we have to go to our midway break right now. Let me remind my guest, please be as still and silent as possible, because the last time we were on a break it sounded like there was machine gun fire and other things in the background, because everything is magnified like a thousand times over.

Even the placing of a cup on a table sounds like a hammer blow. So just keep in mind to try your best to be as still and quiet as possible.

This is the midway break, which is longer than the other breaks, folks. So please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the information provided by our advertisers as possible so that you can more frequently respond to our advertisers.

And also send in your questions to Roger Salter or to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

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Chris. And there's some excellent books. I can't recall names at the moment, unfortunately, but excellent men of God.

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Those two things are commands of God in Scripture, providing for your church and your family. Providing for my radio show is not a command of God.

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and put I need a church in the subject line. I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the world find churches, sometimes even within just a few minutes from where they live.

So if that is the case with you or someone you love, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Roger Salter, our guest today.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

And I don't normally give the full name of listeners who send in questions, but since I want to promote the ministry of this listener,

I will give his full name. His name is Donald Phillip Veach from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and he runs and operates a

Facebook page called Twisse House. T -W -I -S -S -E.

I urge everyone listening to visit that page.

Twisse House, Reformed Theology, Reformed Prayer Book Churchmanship. And that is named after a great figure from Anglicanism in both the 16th and 17th centuries.

Life spanned from the middle of the 16th approximately through the middle of the 17th century.

And our listener, Donald Phillip Veach, asks,

I'm looking, I just had the question right in front of me. Here it is. I'm actually going to break up.

He has a couple of questions, so I will read the first one to you. Brother Roger, do you see any signs of hope in American Anglicanism that has reformed

Cranmerian, Bucerian, and he's referring to Martin Bucer obviously, and Calvinist Anglicanism?

Educational sites for potential ordnance? And I will read his second question after that.

Roger, did you hear that? Yes, I did, and I'm pondering hard.

And I'm not optimistic by what

I see at the moment, but God can do great things, and surprisingly, and when he intervenes, marvelous things happen beyond our expectation.

But I do not see anything specifically that encourages me to think that a good, solid, reformational

Anglicanism is being championed to any great extent. There are a lot of reformed

Anglicans around, but there doesn't seem to be a cohesive group of them who are prepared to make it clear to folk that there is a united fellowship within Anglicanism and its various expressions that cherish the

Reformation, our articles, and the lives and teachings of those men that Dom mentioned.

There's a paucity of strong, good, undiluted

Anglicanism. There's an evangelicalism that is rather weak and stops short of being thoroughly scriptural for fear, for distaste of certain doctrines.

I'm sure a lot of it is due to misunderstanding or distortion of what is propounded, but the fact is

I see nothing at the moment that one would say and endorse this is straightforward

Anglicanism in terms of an affiliation or organized movement.

So, I understand what Donald is concerned about, and I share that.

And my heart breaks, not to be too emotional and affective, but to say I feel there's a great disloyalty among Anglicans, Anglo -Catholic, liberals, and evangelicals when it comes to the pure word of God.

And I can hear in my ears my dear friend Bill Shishko's voice ringing in a gentle chastisement for mispronouncing

Bootserian for Martin Bootser. I said

Booser because that's the way it's spelled. But as soon as it came out of my mouth

I could hear Bill Shishko saying it's pronounced Bootserian, Chris. Not popularly,

Chris, Booser is the way we pronounce it in English. Oh, really? And he was in England for a considerable period of time.

And that's how his name was pronounced there, and it comes to us through literature and verbal expression.

Oh, okay. Well, then I feel a little bit vindicated. We don't say Luther correctly. It's Martin Luther.

Ah. We don't say Calvin correctly. It's Corvin. We're getting a bit too precise about some of these things.

And, of course, people may be hesitant to use the word Luther, especially when we all know what happens during blackouts and other things in major cities when

Luther is— You know, the major—could I just say something quickly? Sure. Along with Calvin, my favorite reformer is

Peter Martyr Vermigli. But everybody pronounces his name as it reads,

Vermigli. But in Italy it's Vermigli. But I've never heard a scholar speaking about this man say

Vermigli, which is the correct Italian pronunciation. We speak in English.

Well, I love clams over Vermigli in my local Italian restaurant.

No, I'm just kidding. Donald Philip Veatch's second question, what are the impediments in terms of personnel and schools?

He means in regard to his first question, what are the impediments to reformed

Cranmerian, Bucerian, and Calvinist Anglicanisms? Anglicanism in schools.

What are the impediments? Schools in terms of seminaries, universities, and colleges?

I'm assuming that's what he means. Yes, that's fine. I wasn't quite sure what was meant.

It's a very comprehensive term here. And again, one is not optimistic.

You do have tutors and seminary faculty members who are very loyal to the reformed faith, unswervingly so.

And I suppose you could name a number of good, devout Presbyterian colleges that are very loyal to the truths of the

Reformation. Anglicanism, it's not quite so clear cut.

Again, I go back to this idea that human nature, even educated, aesthetic human nature, and theological conviction does not, by nature, like the truths of the word of God.

Human helplessness and sinfulness, divine sovereignty, and eternal election.

These are things that people react against, cringe from, and depart from. And again,

I think in many cases, it's prejudice, cowardice, and trimming the word of God and compromising the divine revelation.

So, I don't have a strong hope, at the moment, for the voicing of the truth of the word in a thoroughgoing way, or for education that is absolutely loyal to the principles of the

Reformational movement and church. Okay, and lastly,

Donald Phillip Veatch says, perhaps you and I, he's talking about you, brother

Roger, perhaps you and I can do a Zoom meeting on Reformed Anglicanism for our

Facebook page, Twist House, for Reformed Churchmen and Reformed Prayer Book Churchmen.

As always, best regards. So, you can dialogue with Donald Phillip Veatch over that, perhaps you can establish something like that.

And by the way, for those of you who want to look that up on Facebook, Twist House, it's

T -W -I -S -S -E, as in Edward, Twist House. And do you want to respond in any way to brother

Veatch on that? My warmest greetings to Donald.

We met once at a meeting of Ashley Null here in Birmingham, and I'm very fond of Donald and regard his friendship as of immense benefit to me.

And I welcome so much his standing forcefully for the truth.

We simply blunt it and dilute it. And it's a great shame because, again,

I go back to this idea that the weakness of the church in our time is because we do not honour the full, plain revelation of the

Lord himself. His truth glorifies him. We reduce that glory through various moderating views of his will and his ways.

God is absolutely sovereign, and we human beings take to ourselves far too much independence from him and lack of conformity to his will.

And we simply do not recognise that before him we are absolutely nothing as creatures because we depend on his sustenance continually.

And as believers, we are just denying the most beautiful and soul -encouraging truth that scripture brings to us, the eternal love of God for his people, his effectual call, his preservation of his saints all through life into the kingdom of glory.

I feel I'm saying things that are almost clichetic and not as well as I'd like to say them,

Chris, but I endorse Donald's particular posture on these matters.

And I want to thank him for routinely promoting Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, especially but not exclusively when

I have Anglican guests on. He even has promoted the show very enthusiastically when

I have non -Anglican reform guests that he is particularly fond of, so I want to thank him for that.

We have an anonymous listener, and this anonymous listener says, I have enthusiastically and eagerly spread the word to friends of mine whenever your dear friend

Roger Salter is a guest on Iron Trumpets Iron Radio. However, one of these friends is an

Anglo -Catholic, and he has told me that Roger, with all due respect, should not describe himself as an

Anglican since St. Matthew's is an independent church and therefore with no bishop.

That is a crucial element of Anglicanism, so therefore he should not describe himself as Anglican.

How do you respond to people who make that kind of charge? A little bluntly,

Chris. As you know, I've had a lot of health problems the last few weeks, and I'm not in top form, but bluntly

I say, the thing that is least important in Anglicanism is episcopacy.

I doubt that if Cranmer lived two decades longer, we would find a great modification of episcopacy, as we found recommended by Richard Baxter and Archbishop Usher.

Where they delegated more responsibility and authority to synodical government.

Yes, I don't have a bishop. I've had various bishops, and when you look at some of the bishops available to us, we'd rather not have them.

Bishops can be a curse to the church as well as a blessing, and we don't cling to some historical idea of the apostolic succession, which is just by touching a person's head.

Apostolic succession is faithfulness to the gospel, and that is what

Anglicanism is fundamentally about. I've had bishops I'd rather put on a horse, whack the horse's bottom, and see them disappear into the distance.

That would be a great handicap for the church. Look at the English bishops for a start, and yet that church is no longer

Anglican in principle, or conviction, or character, or evangelism.

So I say that I honour a lot of Anglo -Catholics. I do not regard them as of another species, but I do regard them as another interpretation of Christianity, with which

I strongly disagree with in many aspects. But we don't need a bishop, thank you.

We've had a lot of trouble with them. If I had a decent bishop, as I did a decade ago, we would still have one.

But bishops, my word, they're a mixed blessing, if a blessing at all.

Amen. And the fact that I'm a Reformed Baptist who believes in independent and autonomous church governments,

I could care less about bishops myself. And... Chris, several years...

Sorry, Chris. No, go ahead. Several years ago, several years ago, when

I was preaching about this particular matter on the 39 Articles, and I expressed my conviction that a street -corner preacher who is presenting

Christ faithfully and Christ thoroughly in loyalty to Scripture is of more value than a bishop who doesn't uphold the glory and truth of Christ.

And one woman and her grandchild got up and stormed out of the building. But I put very little, you know, import to the office.

Yes, we need... They're moderators. They're elders. They're there to minister to the ministry.

But they don't do it in a thoroughgoing way. That's where so much of our lack of Christian education emerges from, the emptiness of bishops' heads and hearts when it comes to true faith.

Amen. And for those of you who think that my rejection of bishops is a rejection of Scripture because of the use of that word in the

King James Bible and perhaps some other translations, most

Christians I know who are familiar with Greek believe that bishops, overseers, and elders are the same office.

So I just wanted to throw that in there. Chris, could I say this? Sure. Until I get a bishop in the flesh,

I've got a bishop in Joseph Hall. Amen. Amen. Well, now we've kind of veered off the subject of Joseph Hall, and please,

I'm not rebuking my listeners for the questions that they asked outside of that topic, but if you could supply our listeners with some more ammunition, if you will, of why they should research and begin to glean from and benefit from and be blessed by the legacy of Joseph Hall.

Well, after Hall's death in Paris, this note was found among his scattered writings that had not been collected, and he was being charged by some extremists at not being reformational, and he says, can they challenge me as a close and backstair friend to potpourri or Arminianism who have in so many pulpits and so many presses cried down both?

This is Hall saying what his ministry is consisted of. Surely the very paper that I have spent in the refutation of both these, that's

Arminianism and potpourri, is enough to stop more mouths than can be guilty of this calumny.

So that's where he stood theologically, firmly, and to the final phase of his ministry.

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York asks, could you repeat the book that you mentioned in the very beginning of the show where you first discovered

Bishop Joseph Hall, and are there any other books in print that delve more deeply into this man's life, teaching, and legacy?

Chris, if it's agreeable to you, I have a couple of very small quotes from Bishop Hall's meditations.

This is not a technique like Buddhism or Hinduism or some forms of Catholicism.

It is simply pointing the mind to God through scripture, through creation, and the assistance of the

Holy Spirit so that we gaze on him, not just with our minds, but with our affection.

George Whitfield used to speak of a felt Christ. Our articles speak of a felt work of the

Holy Spirit. We are to be a people of affection, not just indoctrinated heads, as it were, and intellects, but people whose hearts and affections are directed towards and absorbed by Jesus Christ.

The truth about him is in dwelling of our hearts and lives. I've got a couple of samples of that.

But the books that I have, four books that deal to some extent, some entirely, to Joseph Hall.

There is Meet the Puritans, and that is Joe Arbighi and Randall J.

Pedersen. I think it's one of the reformed publishers, RHP, that have made that book available to our generation.

Yes, I have that book. Massive work. It's fairly massive. It is.

It's excellent. Then there's a book that's been published by a publishing company that likes to print old and forgotten books on any topic, in any area of knowledge or literary effort.

And this is Meditations for Sundays and Holidays, in a selection of extracts from the writings of Bishop Hall.

It was published in 1856. It's been republished by these folk exactly as it was printed in 1856.

And what is the publisher? What's the modern publisher? It's Kessinger, K -E -S -S -I -N -G -E -R,

Kessinger Publishing. And they are www .kessinger .net.

Oh, I've got to look them up because I've never heard of them. Yes, they do mythology, mystery and crime, music.

Anything that is of historical worth and needs to be republished and drawn to the public's attention again.

Then, and this won't be available, I don't think, unless a good second -hand bookstore has it, but Bishop Joseph Hall, 1574 to 1656, a biographical and critical study by Frank Livingstone Huntley.

And that was reprinted by, I don't know whether it's a firm, but they printed a lot of the old reformers and puritans.

They did some lovely works and biographies of great interest to the reformationally minded believers.

But you don't think it's in print anymore? It won't be in print. I'd be surprised if it has been or ever will be printed again.

Well, perhaps we should put a bug in Mike Gadosh's ear from Solid Ground Christian Books. Oh, that's an idea.

It may even need to be, you know, slightly edited to concentrate more on his specifically biblical teaching because he's recognized here too as a poet of interest.

And then, of course, that lovely Tenetmaker edition of his Contemplations, which was published not too long ago.

I picked it up in the Baptist Church, Chris. Tenetmaker Publications, Stoke -on -Trent,

Staffordshire. And this was reprinted twice, 2009 by Thomas Nelson.

Oh, that was 1860. So it's been reprinted by Tenetmaker 2009 and 2014.

Yes, and if I'm not mistaken, I believe Solid Ground Christian Books has taken over Tenetmaker.

I'll have to verify and confirm that. I'll have to confirm that with Mike after the program.

In that case... Go ahead. Go ahead, brother.

Well, in that case, Chris, I can recommend a book that I did buy from Mike Gadosh published by Tenetmaker.

And this will scotch the idea that Calvin and Cranmer accepted

Catholic views of the Lord's Supper. For them, the real presence was in the

Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, being present with his people as they received the elements of the sacrament.

And to clarify that, Mike would have perhaps still in his catalogue Cranmer on the

Lord's Supper, Tenetmaker. Oh, great. Yeah. Okay.

It's like politics. There's so much misinformation about... Well, we have to go to our final break.

If anybody would like to send in a question to Roger, I would strongly urge you to do so fairly quickly because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

I want to remind my guest Roger to please be as still and as silent as possible during the break. And don't go away.

We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Have you noticed the gap that exists between the

Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study? So often we experience great preaching from the pulpit but when it comes time to study

God's Word in those smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the

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May God bless you. Welcome back and Roger, we have an anonymous listener again who asks, do you know if Joseph Hooker, who in your description of him was a

Puritan, celebrated Christmas? Although this remains a tiny minority today, there are

Reformed Christians that seem to be on the rise who reject the celebration of Christmas since it is both pagan and Roman Catholic in their estimation.

I know that Anglicans typically adhere closely to a liturgical calendar, which would include

Christmas, but I didn't know if Hooker was among them. Joseph Hall, yes.

Yes, that was a typo, he meant Hall. Yes, yes.

We celebrated in its scriptural form of the incarnation and the nativity of Jesus Christ.

We contemplate on the scriptures that relate these truths to us. Our worship is structured around the event of Christ's coming to us as the culmination of the

Advent season, that period of time when we're anticipating the coming of Christ as did his ancient people.

And we celebrate Christmas in its true and spiritual form.

I don't deny that people can have family times together and exchange gifts and warmth of friendship, but the

Christmas that is at fault and to be avoided is the worldly, materialistic

Christmas that has no time for God and his great act of redemption and the truths concerning that great mission, that rescue mission that Christ came to fulfil.

To speak of Christmas is too broad a topic. Most people don't celebrate Christmas.

They celebrate selfishness and lusts and materialism.

That's not Christmas. You won't get Christmas, in its true sense, in a department store or a shopping mall.

You watch it, you get Christmas in the scripture. And one can call it the nativity or incarnation.

It doesn't matter as long as we acknowledge the wondrous gift of God's Son to us as our rescuer and companion through life and eternity.

Now, are you aware of whether or not Joseph Hall, as the listener asked, celebrated

Christmas? Or was he like most, if not all, of the actual

Puritans opposed to the celebration of this since it is not specifically commanded in the

New Testament? The worship of the celebration, I should say, of the incarnation.

Well, we celebrate the birth of Christ, which is Christmas, and we don't bring any of the worldly elements into that.

It's part of our lectionary, our church calendar, and so we inevitably do.

And I've got a brief quote I could have from Hall here, if we've got the time,

Chris. Yes, we do have the time. We do have the time. Well, this is pages long, but I think

I can bring to you the spirit in which, and the term Christmas, as they say, is used in various forms in different minds and their approach to these things.

Some are thoroughly godless, but anyway, this is what he says, thinking about the birth of Christ.

A strange condition of the king of all the world. He could not be born in a base or a state, yet even this he cannot enjoy with safety.

There was no room for him in Bethlehem. There will be no room for him in Judea. He is no sooner come to his own than he must fly from them.

That's to go to Egypt, that he may save them. He must avoid them. Had it not been easy for thee,

O Saviour, to have acquitted thyself from Herod a thousand ways, what could an arm of the flesh have done against the

God of spirits? What had it been for thee to have sent Herod five years sooner into his place?

What should have commanded fire from heaven on those that should have come to apprehend thee or to have thee bidden the earth to receive them alive, whom she would mean to swallow dead?

We suffer misery because we must. Thou, because thou wilt. And it's the humility of Christ's birth.

O Saviour, the humility of thine infancy was answerable to that of thy birth.

The more thou hidest and abasest thyself for us, the more should we magnify thee, the more should we reject ourselves for thee.

Unto thee, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, now and for ever.

This is the essence of Christmas. We observe it. And so I'm assuming then that you believe

Hall actually celebrated Christmas since it's a part of the lectionary and the liturgical calendar.

It was a term that was used in a sense and principally religious in his time in the 17th century.

Historically, it has meant the celebration of the nativity. Unfortunately, commercialism and the desire for money and profit has eclipsed the real view of Christmas.

So the false Christmas we don't observe, not in a religious sense, the real

Christmas with Christ as our Lord who has come and redeemed us.

We celebrate that in my career. Amen. And I celebrate

Christmas and I love celebrating Christmas. But I have to caution some of my listeners that overly vilify or even vilify at all those that have a personal conviction not to celebrate it.

And at the same time, I would caution those that have that conviction to not celebrate it, that they do not vilify those that do.

I think that this is a matter over which we can agree to disagree because there's no command in the

New Testament that we have a special day to celebrate the Incarnation other than the fact that we celebrate it as a part of our daily walk with Christ.

But we have to be cautious on either side, not to be too dogmatic about it.

Well, we have about three minutes of time that I want you to have uninterrupted to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today,

Brother Roger. Well, I think

I could best illustrate it by reading half, not the full meditation of Joseph Hall upon a pair of spectacles.

He's saying everything we cast our eye upon can be, to the regenerate mind, a prompting to think about God.

Everything in reality prompts us to think about God because Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.

He is reality. We, in abandoning God, have escaped from reality. That's why there's so much irrational and downright nonsense in our time.

But here is him talking about his spectacles. It's not the full thing, and it won't be enhanced by being part of his total work.

It's out of context, but here it is, Chris. But as these spectacles of mine presuppose a faculty in the eye and cannot give me sight when

I want it, but only clear that sight which I have, no more can these glasses of the creatures of Scripture, sorry, of creatures of Scripture, of favors and judgments, enable me to apprehend these blessed objects.

These are the things we must apprehend. Except I have an eye of faith, whereto they may be presented.

These helps to an unbelieving man about the spectacles to the blind. As the natural eyes, so the spiritual, have their degrees of dimness.

But I have ill -improved my age. If as my natural eyes decay, my spiritual eye be not cleared and confirmed.

But at my best, I shall never but need spectacles till I come to see as I am seen.

All these helps that Joseph Hall recommends, they're about age to sight.

They are not the actual sight itself. It's gazing with the heart and mind upon God, his work, his

Son, and all those wonderful topics that we derive from Holy Scripture.

Well, Roger, once again, you've done a magnificent job as my guest, and I eagerly look forward to your return to the show.

I want to remind our listeners that if they have any more questions about St.

Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, you can visit their website, stm, for St.

Matthew's, anglican .weebly .com, that's stmanglican .weebly,

W -E -E -B -L -Y .com, and you can also go to rogersalter .com,

salter is spelled S -A -L -T -E -R, rogersalter .com. I also want to remind our listeners to please take advantage of the

Royal Diadem offer to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, where they are giving us, for a limited time, we do not know the cut -off date yet, but they are giving us 100 % of the profits for any sale over $100 or $100 or more, which would include anything that they may have in stock, or if you want to have a custom -designed piece of jewelry created, an engagement ring, or a church or denomination logo turned into a piece of jewelry, or anything else your imagination can conjure up that you want custom -designed, if you mention

Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, they will give us 100 % of the profits. So please,

I'm urging you, before Christmas and before Valentine's Day, go to royaldiadem .com,

royaldiadem .com. I want to thank my brother Roger again for doing such a superb job today.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater