J. C. Ryle

John Charles Ryle (10 May 1816 – 10 June 1900) was an English Anglican bishop, preacher, and writer in the evangelical and Calvinist traditions. He was the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool.

Life

J.C. Ryle was born at Macclesfield, Cheshire on 10 May 1816, as the eldest son of an old and wealthy English family. His father was John Ryle of Park House, Macclesfield, a private banker and the M.P. for Macclesfield 1833–7. His mother, Susanna, was the daughter of Charles Hurt of Wirksworth, Derbyshire.

He was educated at Eton, where he excelled in rowing and cricket. From Eton, he entered the University of Oxford, where his career was unusually distinguished. He matriculated into Christ Church as a Fell Exhibitioner on 15 May 1834. He was Craven scholar in 1836, and was placed in the literæ humaniores in 1837.

In the winter of 1837, during his time at Oxford, Ryle experienced a religious conversion upon hearing Ephesians 2:8 ("For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God"). In a letter to his family, he wrote:

Nothing I can remember to this day appeared to me so clear and distinct as my own sinfulness, Christ's preciousness, the value of the Bible, the absolute necessity of coming out of the world, the need of being born again, and the enormous folly of the whole doctrine of baptismal regeneration. All these things seemed to flash upon me like a sunbeam, in the winter of 1837, and have stuck in my mind from that time down to this. People may account for such a change as they like, my own belief is that it is what the Bible calls conversion. Or, what the Bible calls regeneration. Before that time, I was dead in sins, and on the high road to hell. From that time, I had become alive, and have had a hope of heaven, and nothing to my mind can account for it but the free sovereign grace of God.