Cranmer Quotes & Sayings

I have never had better opinions of woman than I had of her — Thomas Cranmer

I was just going over London Bridge and I saw someone had attacked the Madonna's statue. Knocked off the baby's head.'
'That was done a while back. It would be that devil Cranmer. You know what he is when he's taken a drink. — Hilary Mantel

I doubt if it is given to the human being to understand completely the blessed passion and precious death, the mighty resurrection and glorious ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. I know that I do not understand. But I also know that it has nothing to do with the angry unforgiving God who so upset my young friend. If the basic definition of sin is lack of love (that love without which all men are dead in the sight of God, as Cranmer wrote in one of his collects), then an inability to forgive is lack of love, and if God is unable to forgive us then he is lacking in love, and so he is not God. At least, he is not the God who makes glad my heart. — Madeleine L'Engle

Whereof it followeth Rome to be the seat of antichrist, and the pope to be very antichrist himself. I could prove the same by many other scriptures, old writers, and strong reasons. — Thomas Cranmer

The learning of the Christian man ought to begin with the fear of God. — Thomas Cranmer

Design is the key to everything. If you learn how to design you can do anything. — Doug Cranmer

I revel in flowers without let,
An atom at random in space;
My soul dwells in regions ethereal,
And the world is my dreaming-place. — L. Cranmer-Byng

There was never anything so well devised by men which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted — Thomas Cranmer

Cranmer says, 'We will try again with More. At least, if he refuses, he should give his reasons.'
He swears under his breath, turns from the window. 'We know his reasons. All Europe knows them. He is against the divorce. He does not believe the king can be head of the church. But will he say that? Not he. I know him. Do you know what I hate? I hate to be part of this play, which is entirely devised by him. I hate the time it will take that could be better spent, I hate it that minds could be better employed, I hate to see our lives going by, because depend upon it, we will all be feeling our age before this pageant is played out. And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts. And written them these many years. — Hilary Mantel

Young Surrey now lays down his knife and begins to complain. Noblemen, he laments, are not respected as they were in the days when England was great. The present king keeps about himself a collection of men of base degree, and no good will come of it. Cranmer creeps forward in his chair, as if to intervene, but Surrey gives him a glare that says, you're exactly who I mean, archbishop. — Hilary Mantel

Worship itself is made up of ordinary stuff. We use plain words. Some of the most the glorious words in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer are, well, common and plain enough to make you weep - "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us." We are baptized in plain water. We consume plain bread and wine. And it all is lifted up by plain people. — Tish Harrison Warren

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ... I see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. — Thomas Cranmer

In the Scriptures be the fat pastures of the soul; therein is no venomous meat, no unwholesome thing; they be the very dainty and pure feeding. He that is ignorant, shall find there what he should learn. — Thomas Cranmer

And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine. — Thomas Cranmer

Lordship" petition: It is asking God to extend his royal power over every part of our lives - emotions, desires, thoughts, and commitments. It is reminiscent of Thomas Cranmer's "collect" for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, "that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command." We are asking God to so fully rule us that we want to obey him with all our hearts and with joy. — Timothy Keller

What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. — Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer in his 'Homily of Salvation' explained that three things had to go together in our justification: on God's part 'his great mercy and grace', on Christ's part 'the satisfaction of God's justice', and on our part 'true and lively faith'. He concluded the first part of the homily: 'It pleased our heavenly Father, of his infinite mercy, without any our desert or deserving, to prepare for us the most precious jewels of Christ's body and blood, whereby our ransom might be fully paid, the law fulfilled, and his justice fully satisfied.'15 — John R.W. Stott

One of Cranmer's goals in writing and revising the Book of Common Prayer was to get Scripture into the ears of the people so that their hearts might be turned to God and their lives transformed by his love. Cranmer — Michael Jensen

In the midst of life we are in death, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection. — Thomas Cranmer