The Cross of Wales
Those who watched the coronation of King Charles III will have seen a silver cross leading the procession into Westminster Abbey. This cross was made at the behest of the King as a gift to the Church in Wales and is to be shared between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches. It is made of recycled bullion from the Royal Mint, set up on a staff of wood from a blown-down tree and fixed to a plinth of Welsh slate.
While crosses have never been part of Reformed, biblical worship, what makes this cross particularly repugnant is that two splinters of wood, said to have been taken from the cross on which Jesus was crucified, have been embedded, in the shape of a cross, within it. These relics, which are approximately 5mm and 10mm long, are claimed by the Vatican to be authentic pieces of the “true cross” and are a personal coronation gift from the Pope to King Charles.
It is incredible that the Vatican is still peddling this nonsense; it has been said that there are enough “authentic” splinters of the cross in circulation to rebuild the Ark. Nearly 500 years ago Luther said, “What lies there are about relics! One claims to have a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel, and the Bishop of Mainz has a flame from Moses’ burning bush. And how does
it happen that eighteen apostles are buried in Germany when Christ had only twelve?”
We know that the Church of Rome venerates relics but what is extraordinary is that the Church of England, in the coronation of a Protestant king, was prepared to embrace such an artifact as part of the religious ceremony. To venerate these pieces of wood, which presumably is the intention, is a clear breach of the Second Commandment. The king has a responsibility to reign even-handedly over a disparate nation of many backgrounds and religions, but he should not give credence to superstitious popish nonsense during the coronation. The Archbishop of Canterbury should know better but clearly does not.
By way of a gift, the Pope of Rome inveigled his idolatrous system into the vanguard of the procession for the coronation of a Protestant king. FRD
Rome and Scripture
For many centuries one of the greatest spiritual crimes of which the Church of Rome has been guilty has been to withhold the Word of God from the body of her people. For many dark generations, the people under her thrall were denied access to the Scriptures in their own language and, had it not been for the Protestant Reformation, Rome would have been only too content to keep them in such a state of soul-destroying ignorance. The Lord alone knows how many of His dear children suffered extremes of cruelty and even martyrdom at the hands of the papal Church simply for possessing and reading the Word of God.
As William Cunningham remarked, “There can be no doubt that the Roman Church would exclude her subjects, in this country, from all access to the Word of God, if she could, or dared, just as she does in Italy or Spain; and the whole history of her procedure upon this point affords abundant evidence that she hates the light, because her deeds are evil, and that she is very willing to be the agent of the god of this world, in doing all she can to prevent the light of the glorious gospel of divine grace from shining into men’s hearts.”22 Cunningham’s words were written almost 180 years ago but were written by one who had a scholarly and spiritual knowledge of the history of the Christian Church and of the Roman apostasy almost unrivalled in any generation. His testimony therefore is not to be set aside despite the passage of time. If Rome remains, as she claims, ever the same, then her real position on the Word of God must remain the same also. The papal see which denounced the Protestant Bible as “deadly pastures” and “the Gospel of the devil”, in the early nineteenth century, is the same papal see still.
22 In E Stillingfleet, The Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome, Edinburgh, 1845 reprint, p.167.
Rome’s view of Scripture is the same in respect of both its sufficiency and authority. Rome today still grounds the Bible’s authority in that of the Church instead of on the testimony of Scripture itself. Furthermore, she still regards Scripture as not sufficiently clear in its witness to Divine truth and so she still puts the authority of the written Word on the same level as unwritten Church “tradition”.
Since the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Rome has sought to portray a more positive approach to allowing its people to possess and read the Scriptures. In an age of widespread literacy and instant information, the old policy of, as much as possible, withholding the Scriptures from the laity is simply untenable. But how is it with the average Romanist? If they regularly attend chapel they will hear a Roman Catholic translation of Scripture (including the uninspired Apocrypha) read aloud. But this is not the same thing as the searching of the Scriptures commended by Christ in John 5:39. And though Roman Catholics may possess a copy of the Bible if they wish, yet the emphasis in Romanist religion clearly is far removed from the attitude and practice of the men of Berea who “received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11).
What Satan knows very well is that when multitudes of Rome’s devotees will be stirred up to begin to read the Scriptures for themselves and when the “words of eternal life” come to be blessed to their souls through the irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit, his dominion over them will be broken irreparably. This he currently labours to prevent but he cannot ultimately prevail against the purpose of omnipotent grace! May we ever pray, “O send out Thy light and Thy truth” (Ps 43:3). AWM