godly order agreeable to the word of God and the primitive Church."11 In Queen Mary's reign Cranmer offered to justify the English Communion Service both from the authority of Scripture and the practice of the primitive Church.12 What indeed was his defence of our Communion Service? What his objection to the Mass? Of the first he asserted, “it is conformable to the order which our Saviour Christ did observe and command to be observed, and which his Apostles and the primitive Church used many years; whereas the Mass in many things hath not only no foundation of Christ's Apostles or the primitive Church, but is manifestly contrary to the same, and containeth many horrible abuses in it." "And when they, the Papists, boast of the faith which has been in the Church these thousand years, we will join them on this point: for that 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 by act of Parliament is the same that was used in the Church fifteen hundred years past. And so shall they never be able to prove theirs."* In like manner the imprisoned clergy, in that reign of terror, made a similar but more extensive offer to justify the reformed doctrine and worship by scripture and antiquity, and this under the highest penalties. 11 Collier, ii. 320. 12 Collier, ii. 347. Archbishop Cranmer's " Declaration concerning the Mass." Works, IV, p. 2, 3. Jenkyn's Edit. Their expressions, indeed, are as striking as they are strong—" If they failed in maintaining the homilies and service set forth in the late reign, or in proving the unlawfulness of the popish liturgic forms, and that by Catholic principles and authority, they were willing to be burnt at the stake, or to submit to any other death of ignominy or torture."13 On the accession of Elizabeth in 1559, a public and authorised disputation was held between the abettors of Popery and the upholders of a Reformation. On the side of the Reformers the most prominent was Horne, Dean of Durham, and he commenced by professing at once the deference which his friends acknowledged to be due to the authority of the Catholic Church, declaring the willingness of the English Reformers to refer the whole controversy to the Holy Scriptures and the Catholic Church, but maintaining at the same time that by the Word of God they meant only the canonical Scriptures, and by the custom of the primitive Church, the general practice of Catholics for the first five centuries.14 In the same sentiment did the laity concur, when in a subsequent act of Parliament the authority of the first four general Councils was recognized.15 We have heard already the declaration of one sovereign at the commencement of our Reformation, that it was not intended to set up a new 13 Collier, ii. 378. 14 Coll. ii. 416. Conf. Strype's Annals, Appendix, 1465. Burnet's Records, ii. 474. 15 1. Eliz, c. 1. sec. 36, A.D. 1558. religion, but merely to correct abuses in the Church, and precisely the same assertion was made, at its completion, by Queen Elizabeth. In her reply to the Roman Catholic Princes she proclaimed "that there was no new faith propagated in England; no religion set up but that which was commanded by our Saviour, practised by the primitive Church, and approved by the Fathers of the best antiquity."16 Moreover, the very convocation of 1571, which originally enjoined subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, confirmed, at the same time, the principle of the English Reformation, by decreeing that nothing should be taught as an article of faith, except what is supported by the authority of Scripture and catholic tradition," which principle is again authoritatively proclaimed in our 30th Canon, wherein it is affirmed that "it was not the purpose of the Church of England to forsake or reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and practised, and that therefore it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies which do neither endamage the Church of God or 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 Apostolical Churches which were their first founders."* 16 Coll. ii. 436. 17 Can. de Concionatoribus. Wilkins' Concilia, iv. 267. I shall not detain you by pointing out how that principle was still avowed and acted on when, in the reigns of James I. and Charles II., some further reformations were effected in our Church, but I proceed to shew how another principle was introduced among the English Protestants. The foreign Reformers were not placed under the same advantageous circumstances as favored the proceedings of those who conducted the reformation of the English Church. They were not generally the rulers and governors of their respective churches. As abuses were discovered they protested against them, they called for reform, yet had no wish or intention to separate. But in most of the foreign churches, the Bishops, instead of correcting, defended the corruptions, and in process of time the anti-reformation party succeeded in driving from their communion the friends of a Reformation. Thus the Protestants were obliged, by circumstances, to form for themselves separate and independent religious communions. But in doing so they devised no regular system, for they seem to have regarded the measure to which they were compelled, as one of only a temporary nature, and having solemnly appealed to a general council, they hoped that the time would come when the Western Church would reform itself and receive once again into its bosom those whom it had unjustly expelled for advocating its true principles.* But it was not long before, among the less enlightened friends of the Reformation, a spirit of fanaticism was excited; and acting, like the man who continued to whet and whet his knife until at last there was no steel left in it, they wished to abscind every ordinance, phraseology, and doctrine which might seem to connect them even indirectly with Rome, and desired new ceremonies, a new system of theology, a new theological vocabulary, a new Church. And they were not long without a leader in a man of vast mental powers and of ardent piety, but of an austere temper and strong personal ambition, John Calvin. Instead of comparing, like our own Reformers and the early Protestants of Germany, the existing system of theology with Holy Writ and the traditional doctrine of the early Church, he invented an entirely new system of his own, to which, with more than papal intolerance, he called for a prostration of the judgment, and he proceeded to the length of shedding human blood to support it. Instead of seeking to reform the Church, he was ambitious to build up a sect which might serve as a model to all other religious communions, and over which he seemed willing to usurp such authority as to render it doubtful whether he did not intend to divert to Geneva the appeals which had been formerly made to Rome. *Note C. |