Knots Untied, Being a Plain Statement on Disputed Points in Religion from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Clergyman, by J C Ryle, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 483 pages, £15.00.1
During his ministry in Suffolk, John Charles Ryle (1816-1900) began to write tracts. Though some of these were just a few pages long, and were meant for wide distribution with a direct evangelistic objective, others were much longer. Apart from his Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, most of his books were collections of modified versions of these longer tracts. Knots Untied, along with the other major volumes of Bishop Ryle such as Old Paths, Holiness, Light from Old Times and Practical Religion, were all collections of these updated versions.2
Ryle’s ministry coincided with the rise of Tractarianism in the Church of England. This was the designation given to the early Oxford or Anglo-Catholic movement in the nineteenth century. Its leaders produced tracts advocating the re-introduction of Romish practices into the Church of England. Many of the chapters in this book are refutations, by one who was an Evangelical Anglican and an outspoken Protestant, of the errors of the Romanising party in the Established Church. Although the original collection of updated tracts that are included in Knots Untied was first published in book form in 1874, when he was the Vicar of All Saints, Stradbroke, many of them had been written much earlier.
The edition under review is reproduced from the tenth edition, of 1885, after Ryle had become first Bishop of Liverpool. In the preface to the tenth edition, Ryle writes: “The general principles which I asserted and maintained when I was much younger than I am now, I firmly assert and maintain in 1885. I find nothing to retract, cancel, or withdraw in the nineteen papers which compose the volume. I frankly admit, after careful examination of Knots Untied, that I observe in its pages occasional sharp and strong expressions which perhaps I should not use if I wrote the book over again in the present year. But I think it better to make no change, and to leave the original language alone. I wish my readers to understand that the views which I held as a presbyter I still hold as a bishop; and I fear that any alteration might lead to misconstruction and misrepresentation” (p vii).
The chapters in this book on “The Thirty-Nine Articles”, “Baptism”, “Re-
1Knots Untied and all the other volumes by Ryle published by the Banner of Truth referred to in this review are available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
2Ryle’s ability as a tract writer is reflected in the title of a recent biography by Alan Munden, Bishop J C Ryle: Prince of Tract Writers, Day One, 2012.
generation”, “The Lord’s Supper,” “The Real Presence”, “The Church”, “The Priest”, “Confession” and “Idolatry” are all fine Evangelical Anglican refutations of the Romanising views of the Anglo-Catholic party in the Church of England. Ryle’s article on the “Real Presence” is typical of his approach, where he explains the biblical teaching of the spiritual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ with His people and refutes the Anglo-Catholic teaching of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. The one unconvincing chapter in this category is his defence of the Prayer Book against accusations that it taught Baptismal Regeneration. Whilst his arguments may well have had weight with the Evangelical Anglican constituency for which this tract was primarily written, they are far from compelling to Scottish Presbyterians.3
It would be misleading, however, to portray this volume as entirely given over to the refutation of Anglo-Catholic doctrine. All the chapters we have referred to, besides refuting error, provide positive and helpful statements of the doctrines with which they are dealing. In addition, the book contains several chapters that were originally very popular tracts dealing with the centralities of the faith. Among these are the chapters on “Evangelical Religion”, “One Way of Salvation”, “The Sabbath”.
The chapter on the Sabbath is a very fine statement of biblical teaching. With regard to the movement, then underway, to remove the legal hedge round the Sabbath, Ryle comments, “Nothing, in short, I believe, would so thoroughly advance the kingdom of Satan in England, as to withdraw the legal protection from the Lord’s Day. It would be a joy to the infidel; but it would be an insult and offence to God” (p 334). On the literature on the Sabbath and on the change of day he writes, “The whole subject of the change from the seventh-day Sabbath to the Lord’s Day is one which the reader will find admirably handled in the sermons of Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, on the Lord’s Day. Those sermons, and Willison on the Lord’s Day, are by far the two best works on the Sabbath question” (p 240).4
3Some of the words in question were: “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, let us give thanks to Almighty God for these benefits” (The Book of Common Prayer, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp 412-3). Ryle’s defence was along several lines: (1) Those who critique the Prayer Book words are taking isolated expressions out of context, which is how the Romanists defend transubstantiation and Arians seek to prove the Lord Jesus Christ is inferior to the Father. (2) If the Prayer Book taught Baptismal Regeneration it would conflict with the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Homilies, which reject such teaching; therefore, it must be read in line with these other documents.
4The volumes to which Ryle is referring are Daniel Wilson, The Divine Authority and Perpetual Obligation of the Lord’s Day, London, 1832 (reprinted by the Lord’s Day Observance Society, 1956), and John Willison, “Treatise Concerning the Sanctification of the Lord’s Day” in The Practical Works of John Willison, 1846, Glasgow, pp 1-126.
A third group of chapters deal with the importance of the maintenance of sound doctrine. In this category are those headed: “Pharisees and Sadducees”, “Divers and Strange Doctrines”, “The Fallibility of Ministers” and “Apostolic Fears”. The chapter on “Pharisees and Sadducees” is based on the text, “Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Mt 16:6). Ryle sees the Pharisees as the forerunners of formalists and tradition-worshippers and the Sadducees as the forerunners of free-thinkers and rationalists. He then asks, “Who were they to whom the learning of this text was addressed?”
This is his answer: “Our Lord Jesus Christ was not speaking to men who were worldly, ungodly, and unsanctified, but to His own disciples, companions, and friends. He addressed men who, with the exception of the apostate Judas Iscariot, were right-hearted in the sight of God. He spoke to the twelve apostles, the first founders of the Church of Christ, and the first ministers of the word of salvation. And yet even to them He addresses the solemn caution of our text: ‘Take heed and beware’” (p 364).
Whilst stressing the importance of orthodoxy and the defence of the faith, Ryle wisely adds, “The day of controversy is always a day of spiritual peril. Men are apt to confound orthodoxy with conversion, and to fancy that they must go to heaven if they know how to answer Papists. Yet mere earnestness without knowledge, and mere head-knowledge of Protestantism, alike save none. Let us never forget this. Let us not rest till we feel the blood of Christ sprinkled on our consciences, and have the witness of the Spirit within us that we are born again. This is reality. This is true religion. This will last. This will never fail us. It is the possession of grace in the heart, and not the intellectual knowledge of it, that profits and saves the soul” (p 404).
As in many of Ryle’s excellent volumes, there are occasional comments from which Free Presbyterians will demur, such as his statement: “I find no confession which comes near the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England” (p 75). Knots Untied is still, however, classic JC Ryle and contains some very fine material which we heartily commend to our readers. The volume has been re-typeset and is produced to the Banner of Truth’s usual high standards.
Roy Middleton