Reformed Anglicanism: Charles Hodge's Bracing and Confessional Letter to Pope Pius IX on Behalf of Presbyterians Declining Attendance at Vatican 1

Phil Veitch has posted a helpful letter from Charles Hodge, professor of Bible and theology at the Old Princeton Seminary, to the pope in 1869. A portion of that letter indicates the issues which still remain between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Many Evangelicals today are moving closer to Rome and further from the Bible and the Scriptures. Hodge's remarks in this quote from the letter should be taken to heart by all who consider themselves Reformed and Anglican:

But although we do not decline your invitation because we are either heretics or schismatics, we are nevertheless debarred from accepting it, because we still hold with ever increasing confidence those principles for which our fathers were excommunicated and pronounced accursed by the Council of Trent, which represented, and still represents, the Church over which you preside.

The most important of those principles are: First, that the Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Council of Trent, however, pronounces Anathema on all who do not receive the teachings of tradition pari pietatis affectu (with equal pious affection) as the Scriptures themselves. This we cannot do without incurring the condemnation which our Lord pronounced on the Pharisees, who made void the Word of God by their traditions (Matt. 15:6).

Click here to read the letter posted over at Reformation Anglicanism: Reformed Anglicanism: Charles Hodge's Bracing and Confessional Letter to Pope Pius IX on Behalf of Presbyterians Declining Attendance at Vatican 1