"He being dead yet speaketh": JC Ryle and loyalty to the Church of England

http://ugleyvicar.blogspot.com/2008/01/he-being-dead-yet-speaketh-jc-ryle-and.html

[The Ugley Vicar] 25 Jan 2008--Writing a hundred and thirty years ago, to a different crisis, Bishop JC Ryle has potent words both for the Anglican Communion today and for those who represent orthodoxy:

“In the last place, would you understand what the times require of you in reference to the Church of England? Listen to me, and I will tell you. No doubt you live in days when our time-honoured church is in very perilous, distressing and critical position. Her rowers have brought her into troubled water. Her very existence is endangered by papists, infidels, and liberationists without. Her life-blood is drained away by the behaviour of traitors, false friends and timid officers within. Nevertheless, so long as the Church of England sticks firmly to the Bible, the [39] Articles, and the principles of the Protestant Reformation, so long I advise you strongly to stick to the church. When the Articles are thrown overboard, and the old flag is hauled down, then, and not till then, it will be time for you and me to launch the boats and quit the wreck. At present, let us stick to the old ship.