Cranmer and Calvin: Not Weighing Our Merits: Calvin's Calvinism - Section IV

God therefore foreknew His own, not as foreseeing their merits--for they had none--but because He cast upon them an eye of mercy and favour, thus distinguishing them from others, and numbering them among His children, notwithstanding all their sin and unworthiness, . . .  -- John Calvin

It is interesting how Archbishop Cranmer's liturgy in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer is in agreement with Calvin's theology.  Cranmer's 1552 BCP is preserved in the official prayer book, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  The post communion prayer given after receiving the bread and the cup says:

After shall be said as followeth.

O LORD and heavenly Father, we thy humble servants entirely desire thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion. And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that all we, who are partakers of this holy Communion, may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction. And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.  The Lord's Supper.

Compare that with what Calvin says to refute the semi-pelagian (and the Arminian) doctrine of divine foreknowledge as opposed to absolute predestination:

If, then, no one man has anything good which he hath not received from God, what can one man bring into God's sight more than another in which he can excel his fellow man? God therefore foreknew His own, not as foreseeing their merits--for they had none--but because He cast upon them an eye of mercy and favour, thus distinguishing them from others, and numbering them among His children, notwithstanding all their sin and unworthiness, according to that word of Paul, "Who maketh thee to differ?" But Pighius' free foreknowledge, which he calls naked (that is, naked of all preference in the mind of God), is no foreknowledge at all. With what feathers of merit or acceptableness, then, will Pighius adorn his foreseen and predestined man, so as to prevent him from coming before God naked and deformed in every part? For the Scripture declares aloud, that whatever there is in fallen and corrupt man by nature is hateful in the sight of God. And it pronounces, with a voice equally loud, that nothing is acceptable to God but His own image in those who are created anew in Christ.  Calvin's Calvinism - Section IV

Who then is foolish enough to argue that Cranmer's theology is compatible with the theology of the Arminians or the Anglo-Catholics, both of which are blatantly semi-pelagian?  The modernist tendency to reconcile contradictory systems of theology which are obviously incompatible is both irrational and illogical.  Would that Calvinists today were consistent with Scripture and with the Protestant Reformers who had no qualms about calling out the heretics on their irrational views.

Charlie