III. its indepen of Rome by re In the face of this and similar testimony' how say some that the Church of England, before the period commonly called the Reformation, It reclaimed when a free people' declared publicly dence of the See to the whole world the venerable an- storing itself to tiquity, the independence, and contin- its primitive integrity. uity of their National Church as a pure branch of the Catholic Church, was Roman Catholic, and that during this period a new Church was created? The assumption need only be mentioned to be refuted by every page of History. "The ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII.'s reign had for its object nothing else than the exclusion of papal power, and the supremacy of the British Crown, not over a new Church then created, but over the existing Church of England. . . . It did but carry out to their full consequences, under the circumstances of that time, principles admitted in Anglo-Saxon times, for which Norman and Plantagenet Kings had contended, which had been embodied in the acts of their Councils and Parliaments, and in which the ecclesiastical authorities of the realm had either actively concurred or at least practicallp acquiesced "The unvarying doctrine of those by whom these changes were carried out was that they were restoring 1 Supra, cap. iii. 2 The three estates of the Realm: 1. Lords Spiritual. 2. Lords Temporal. 3. The Commons; the sovereign being the head. 3 That such assertions can be made and believed, in this nineteenth century, in the full light of History, and in defiance of every page of it, is simply amazing. 4 Lord Selborne, the ancient regal jurisdiction and abolishing one that had been usurped." Nothing was further from the mind of Henry VIII. or of Elizabeth, than the thought that either of them was doing any thing new."" "His full purpose and intent is . not to separate himself or his realm any wise from the unity of Christ's Catholic Church, but inviolably, at all times, to keep and observe the same, and to redeem the Church of England out of all captivity of foreign powers heretofore usurped therein into the Christian State that all Churches of all realms were at the beginning, and to abolish and clearly put away such usurpations as heretofore the Bishops of Rome have, by many undue means, increased to their great advantage," etc., etc. 1 Mr. Gladstone, quoted by Turnock, pp. 48, 49. ? Prof. Freeman, Disestablishment and Disendowment. Cf. also Canon xxx., A. D. 1603. "So far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doeth with reverence retain those ceremonies which do neither endamage the Church of God, nor offend the minds of sober men, , and only departed from them in those particular points wherein they were fallen 'both from themselves in their ancient integrity and from the Apostolic Churches which were their first founders." Just as the reformation of the Church was the purifying of an existing organisation-not the creation of a new one-so our Prayer Book is simply a recasting and revision of her ancient offices."-Turnock, p. 55. A Roman Liturgy the Church of England never had. 3 Letter by Bishop Tunstall of Durham written in the name of Henry VIII. to Cardinal Pole, July 13, 1536. "We do not arrogate to ourselves a new Church, a new Religion, "We maintain that our Church, and the Pastors thereof, did alway acknowledge the same Rule of Faith, the same fundamental Articles of the Christian Religion, both before and since the Reformation; but with this difference, that we then professed the Rule of Faith with the additional corruptions of the Church of Rome, but now, God be thanked, without them." 1 A. D. 1509-1662. What the nation did in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth was simply this: to free itself from the sovereignty of the Pope,' and to free the National Church from certain new and corrupt doctrines consequent thereon. And what the nation did in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. was to confirm this, and to free itself 3 or new Holy Orders. Our religion is the same, our Holy Orders the same, differing from what they were only as a garden weeded from a garden unweeded."-Abp. Bramhall, i. p. 119. Vid. Wordsworth, p. 173. 1 Bp. Bull's Works, vol. vi., Oxford, 1827, c. ii. p. 205. 2 The Pope claimed power, and exercised it, to dethrone Kings, to dispose of their kingdoms, to prohibit Bishops from taking oaths of allegiance to their sovereign, and to release all subjects from allegiance to their lawful sovereign. Pope Paul, A. D. 1535, commanded the subjects of Henry VIII. to rebel against him. Paul IV., A. D. 1558, and Pius V. dethroned Elizabeth and commanded her subjects to rise in insurrection against her; they did rise in the majesty of their power, not against their lawful sovereign but against a Spanish Armada that threatened to bring them in subjection to the Pope, and in the greatest naval battle of the world swept it away forever from British waters. 4. 3 Such doctrines as: I. Propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass. 2. Transubstantiation. 3. Communicating under one kind. Purgatory. 5. Invocation of Saints. 6. Veneration of Reliques. 7. Worship of Images. 8. Mariolatry; Infallibility of the Pope, etc., etc. and the National Church from a foreign Puritanical tyranny as intolerable and oppressive as ever was that of the Bishop of Rome. Here we find no break in the organic continuity of the Church. IV. As the reign of Mary had cured the nation of Roman Catholicism, so that when Elizabeth ascended the throne there were only 192 out of And emerged from the gloom of the reign of more than 9000 clergy who refused to Mary and the subscribe to the Prayer Book, and only terrorism and the eighty of these religious an- regicide Crom- churches.1 Church of the So the reign of terrorism and religious anarchy of the Regicide Cromwell had cured it of a new Papalism of Geneva2—as 1 Strype, Annals, i. p. 106. Heylin, ii. 295. 2" The triumph of the Puritan conception and presentation of righteousness was so at war with the ancient and inbred integrity, piety, and good nature and good humour of the English people, that it led straight to moral anarchy, to the profligacy of the Restoration. It led to the Court, the manners, the stage, the literature which we know. It led to the long discredit of serious things, to the dryness of the eighteenth century, to the irreligion which vexed Butler's righteous soul, the aversion and incapacity for all deep inquiries concerning religion and its sanctions, to the belief so frequently found now among the followers of natural science that such inquiries are unprofitable.”—Matthew Arnold, Essay on Falkland, p. 170. 'It checked and cramped that intellectual and literary development which was the glory of Elizabeth's reign. An alien in every sense, by birth and adoption, it has been a source of discord to the English Church-choking the freedom of her growth and deadening her spiritual power-breeding that widespread and unhappy dissension and disunion which is the present agony of the English intolerable and crushing as ever was that of Rome— when Charles II. came to the throne and the restoration of the Church to its primitive integrity was completed. The triumph of either of these alien religions would have been the destruction of the old National Church of England; but through the tender mercy of our God, her continuity was saved and her candle was not removed. And it has pleased the Great Head of the Church to permit her candle to continue to burn, and it burns brightly in every portion of the vast Empire God has been pleased to permit us to rule, and it burns brighter to-day, both in the Empire and in the Anglo-Saxon Republic of North America, than it did even in the days of S. David, Patrick, Columba, Augustine, Aidan, Theodore, Lanfranc, Langton, Wycliffe, Cranmer, and Laud. With the struggles of these periods we have here nothing to do. We contend for a historical fact-the organic continuity of the Anglican Church. We maintain that it is as much of a fact as the continuity of the nation itself. It is coextensive with it. Throughout the whole period we have reviewed— from the day when the Church was first planted in Britain in Apostolic times to the year 1662—there has been no break in the historical continuity of the Church, no departure from her ancient organisation and constitution, no interruption in her Apostolical succession. Matthew Parker the man of blameless life and great learning -was duly, validly, and lawfully chosen as the sixtyninth Archbishop of Canterbury, to succeed the sixtyeighth Archbishop-Cardinal Pole-and was lawfully speaking Protestant world."-Rev. T. F. Gailor, S. T. D., lecture v., Church Club Lectures, p. 258. |