Our Reformation Anglican service is little changed from the services of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer about which Vol. VIII, The British Reformers, p. 271 states, “At this time (A.D. 1549) Archbishop Cranmer asserted before Parliament that in the Prayer Book which he asked might be authorized by that body for general use in the Church of England were the same prayers which had been in use in Britain for over fifteen hundred years… ‘I will by, God’s grace, defend not only the common prayers of the Church… to be more pure and according to God’s Word than any other that has been in use in England these thousand years…’ The same doctrine and usage is to be followed which was in the Church fifteen hundred years past, and we shall prove that the order of the Church set out at this present in this realm by an Act of Parliament is the same that was used in the Church fifteen hundred years past.”

Fifteen hundred years past take us back to A.D. 49, the very days of the early Church, and to the time of the Apostles themselves. We may say, then, that our Book of Common Prayer was in being in the days of the Apostles.

Much of our distinctiveness from other churches was hammered out during the English Reformation of the 16^th century.

The English Reformation differed from those on the European mainland in that both Scripture and the Early church practices were kept as guide. …Scripture by itself was and is a sufficient guide to faith and practice. Anglicans took a more moderate approach, stating that the Church cannot teach anything as necessary to salvation which cannot be proved by Holy Scripture (see Article V, BCP). Devotion to saints was severely curtailed.

The Church of the Good Shepherd believes that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.” We believe and teach the Ancient Faith of the Ancient Church: the Church “built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Cornerstone.” “For other foundation can no man lay than that (which) is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” This same faith was confessed in the New Testament Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, taken to the British Isles in Ancient Times, preserved in the Church of England, enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer, and brought to Virginia in 1607. We uphold the sanctity of all human life from conception and the sanctity of the marriage covenant as a monogamous relationship between one man and one woman for life. We join with all faithful Churches in preserving this Apostolic Faith for our children and our children’s children.

On May 13, 1824, Chief Justice John Jay said,

In May of 1802, the wife of John Jay, one of the chief architects of the Constitution, began to fail rapidly, and on May 28, with her husband and children at her bedside, she died. When he saw death had claimed her, Jay took the children into the next room and began to read firmly to them from Chapter 15 of First Corinthians:

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? …Behold I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed… Death is swallowed up in victory.

(Monaghan, John Jay, 428)