Matthew Parker was the first Reformed Archbishop of Canterbury after the Marian persecutions ended. His task was far from easy as Mary’s tyranny and popish superstitions had left a dirty stain on the entire country. Parker’s person, work, testimony and deep learning, under Providence, enabled England to sweep away the past and embark on a veritable Golden Age for the Church which lasted throughout Elizabeth’s and James’ reigns until brought to a halt in the middle of the following century. I have chosen the term ‘Golden Age’ carefully, not so as to deny the many problems both theological and political that faced England throughout this period but to affirm that hardly any other age since then, including even the Great Awakenings of the 18th century,…

It has long been my conviction that not half of the story of the Reformation has yet been told. Happily, great men and women of God who were true pioneers and upholders of reform are now being rediscovered causing a radical alteration in our knowledge and even convictions concerning how the true faith was revived after centuries of papal superstition. I have previously striven in these pages to rehabilitate forgotten English Reformers and introduced the great reforming work of Continentals such as Martin Bucer. Perhaps no Reformer, however, has been neglected in modern times as much as Swiss-born Henry Bullinger, once called, not inappropriately, ‘the common shepherd of all Christian churches’. Today, few seem to know that Bullinger produced far more sound Christian writings than…