"You Can't Handle The Truth!"

I am - for now anyway - still a member of a Facebook group owned and moderated by two crypto-puritans associated with Donald Philip Veitch, and which is ostensibly dedicated to "prayer book Anglicanism".  I say "still"  because I was thrown off Veitch's group and was consistently blocked from posting on another group run by one of the two above-referenced fellows, resulting in me leaving the group.

The "prayer book Anglican" group severely moderates me (this comment later deleted dy the admins), but so far they still allow me to comment - that is, until I start winning debates.

The comment posted below is one of several they deleted in a discussion about the 39 Articles, but not before I was able to copy its text as it was being edited by me and simultaneously being deleted by one of the moderators. Having become used to their censorious modus operandi, I now get screenshots of everything, and I have screenshots of the other comments they deleted from this particular discussion.  This comment, however, was preserved by copying the text as it was being deleted while I was in the process of editing it.  It states an inconvenient truth, one they just can't handle, and like the Puritans of old they simply cancel their opponents or those who think differently.  It was posted in response to someone who suggested to me that if I can't toe the "Anglicanism-As-Established" line, I should hush my mouth:

"Well, if you disagree with the theology of the denomination, I think it most appropriate to not teach against it, but to keep private judgments to oneself."

My reply:

"(Ah), 'the theology of the denomination. . . .'

The theology of the denomination has evolved over time, with the original Reformed Cranmerianism left mostly behind and the theology and praxis of the Puritans being completely rejected, which is why most of them took off for New England. What's more, since the English Reformation, many Anglican theologians and clergymen have expressed varying degrees of unease with one or more of the Articles and/or their authority in general, as well as that of the Homilies. Correspondingly, the subscription requirements for clergy became much more lax over time. Few if anyone suggested they should shut up about their assessments or leave the communion, and they didn't. Quite the contrary.

The term "Anglican" didn't come into usage until about 1800, long after Edwardine divinity was left in the dust and only 30 years before the Oxford Movement.

What I meant in my reference to lex orandi lex credendi was that if it becomes clear that one or more of the Articles or Homilies have erred, we fall back on the principle that what we pray is what we believe. For those of us in the United States, that means an anaphora that is shaped by the Non-Jurors and the Scottish Episcopal Church, who became much more concerned about faithfulness to the teaching of the Early Church Fathers, especially as it pertains to the Eucharist, and altered their Canon accordingly. The Tractarians would move even more decidedly in a Catholic direction, and although they were strongly criticized and sometimes persecuted by Evangelicals in places of power in the Church and State, they managed to retain the titles "Anglican" and "Episcopalian."

All to the chagrin of the Anglo-Calvinists, who happily ended up in the margins, whence they noisily pontificate about who is an Anglican and who is not.