The year is 1515 AD. Richard Mabon, Dean of Jersey, has just returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He is very, very enthusiastic.
There is something Christian (now forgotten but possibly a kind of “Jerusalem hospice”) at the prehistoric burial place of a tribal chief at La Hougue Bie. The Dean owns La Hougue Bie and surrounding land. He decides to re-build a chapel atop the mound. It’s still there now.
Salvation at that time was proclaimed and preached as by and large to be purchased, to be earned through what one did. People needed to try to please God by pilgrimage to Jerusalem, by going to church, by giving tithes, by making donations.
Dean Mabon decidedto help Jersey people to earn their way to heaven. There would now be a place of pilgrimage in Jersey....... And a statue in the newly built chapel which automatically thanked folk for their tithes even when no priest was present to receive them.
Let Marguerite Syvret and Joan Stevens take up the story in their own words. (Extract from Balleine’s History of Jersey 1981 Revision).
“Others, however, like Luther, began to draw from St Paul’s Epistles a new concept of salvation, not as a prize to be worked for, but as a gift to be received. ‘We are saved’, they said, ‘not by pious observances, but by faith alone; not by the love we show, but by the love we trust. Cast yourself in simple faith directly at the feet of Christ. Give up trying to earn salvation and trust Him to save you’.
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