A lot of people seem to think so. Quite a few seem to imagine anyone interested in the Fathers must be One Of Them, or else on the road there by imperceptible degress. “On Being Protestant” at Dunelm Road leads us to “Why I am not a Catholic or East Orthodox“, by Scot McKnight. He’s bang on, too. Not all who say “Lord, Lord…”
Category: Christianity
A. Cleveland Coxe
Many of us have seen this name at the bottom of the title pages of the Ante Nicene Fathers volumes. I’ve compiled from Google Books a rather extensive Wikipedia article on the chap. He was second episcopalian bishop of New York. His poems sold well in his own time.
Yet on reading his life, I felt only melancholy. He was a busy, busy man; and yet, how little of what he did matters now! His poems, “assured” of a place in American literature, are forgotten. The diocese he laboured to build, a century on has fewer parishes now (66) than it did in 1868 (76) and espouses beliefs that the bishop would not recognise as Christian, never mind Anglican.
Nisi dominus frustra… without the Lord, all is in vain. How much of what we do today will matter in 2108?