On 21st of March I had the honour and privilege of attending the service in the University Church at Oxford to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.  Cranmer's present day successor - Archbishop Rowan Williams preached a mighty word at the service, which was, of course, according to the unsurpassable 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  Such a significant anniversary cannot go unmarked so I reproduce below the address I gave at Prayer Book Evensong on the Sunday preceeding the anniversary.

On 21st March 1556 - exactly 450 years ago Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was burnt at the stake in Oxford.  An eyewitness observed: -
"Fire being put to him, he stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good space before the fire came to any other part of his body, crying with a loud voice he said - 'This hand hath offended'.  As soon as the fire got up, he was very soon dead, never stirring or crying all the while."

In that magnificent gesture the Church of England revived.

The career of Thomas Cranmer falls into two distinctive periods of almost equal length.  As a boy of fourteen, he went up from Nottingham to Cambridge in 1503, and remained there as a scholar for twenty-six years.  The remaining twenty-seven years of his life were spent on a more perilous and public stage; for in 1529 he was brought to the notice of Henry VIII as a man who had ideas, which might resolve the deadlock in regard to "the King's matter" - the annulment of his marriage to Catharine of Aragon.  Henry sent Cranmer on important diplomatic missions to see the Pope in Rome, and, on the death of William Warham, promoted him to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, which Cranmer accepted with some reluctance for he was more scholarly than ever he was ambitious.  His unworldliness was almost naïve; but because he was without guile, and kept out of politics, Henry trusted him as he trusted no other man.

Cranmer's influence upon the English Reformation was in many ways decisive, but it was by no means definitive.  Nor do Anglicans look to Thomas Cranmer in the same way as Lutherans look to Martin Luther or Calvinists look to John Calvin.  The reason being - that with Cranmer - the break with that which went before wasn't as severe or as definite as it was with the continental Reformers.  When we look at the worldwide church we would call the Latin, the Orthodox and the Oriental Christians - "Catholic" - broadly speaking they would place a greater emphasis upon the Sacraments rather than upon the Word.  But then we have a whole body of Christians who would reverse that order - placing greater emphasis upon the Word rather than the Sacraments; these we would label Protestant or Evangelical.

But on the 450th anniversary of his martyrdom in Oxford - we meet to commemorate one who under God's providence infused into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ certain neglected graces, a new alignment, neither solely Catholic nor solely Protestant.  In the course of time this new alignment has come to be called Anglicanism.  We are proud to bear that name.  Now it would not be right or fitting to call Thomas Cranmer the Architect of Anglicanism - but he did through his liturgical genius become the first great figure in Anglicanism.  He steered us along a thoroughfare, which has been called the Via Media.  Now the doctrinal Reformation in England took a long time to evolve, it began in 1535 and was not completed until 1662.  Most of Cranmer's work has in fact been mediated to us by his successors.  Yet, to him we owe our English Bible and the English Book of Common Prayer.

These two great volumes - the Bible in English and the Book of Common Prayer were the two great accomplishments of his life.  In the famous portrait of Thomas Cranmer painted in 1546 by Gerlach Flicke - it is good and fitting to see the great man of letters reading a book with other books spread out on the table in front of him.  He wears his Tudor Canterbury cap upon his head and around his neck he sports a warm and comforting fur tippet or preaching scarf.  He was far happier with his books as companions than he was with those intriguing courtiers and political prelates who surrounded the king.  Within the Book of Common Prayer - probably the key word is the essential element of God's divine "grace".  "Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of lightÖ"  It's there in that wonderful Advent Collect and is to be found over and over again throughout the entire Prayer Book.  So, one of the great treasures of the Book of Common Prayer, which we lose at our own theological peril, is the prevailing doctrine of God's good "grace".

I count it a great blessing in my life that I was among the very last generation to be solely brought up on the Book of Common Prayer - for when I was a chorister in the diocese of Durham in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s - the 1662 BCP was the only legal rite that could be used within the Church of England.  I was nurtured by it and continue to have a great love for it.
Cranmer in his genius created worship that the people could understand - no longer in the mysterious Latin tongue but in vernacular English.  The style of his Liturgy is not only beautiful but also extremely simple - almost, at times, homely - with a predilection for words of one syllable:- "We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep . . . . We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done;  And there is no health in us."  - Forty-two words of one syllable and only one word of two syllables.  Thomas Cranmer most wonderfully conveyed to us in his Prayer Book a spirit of large-hearted serenity, which breathes a timeless faith and hope in Christ's redemption, and the glory of the Blessed Trinity in unity.  Through his incomparable liturgical skills his enduring work has been there to speak from God to us and to speak from us to God, we remain in his debt.

                                                 Every Blessing,
                                              FATHER DAVID