Anglo-Catholicism a Short Treatise on the Theory of the English Church

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IT. SHEWING THE IDENTITY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH PEOM THE BEGINNING.?POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ANSWERED. In order to give consistency and clearness to the argument proposed, it will be necessary to advert occasionally to topics which have been recently so much discussed that...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IT. SHEWING THE IDENTITY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH PEOM THE BEGINNING.?POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ANSWERED. In order to give consistency and clearness to the argument proposed, it will be necessary to advert occasionally to topics which have been recently so much discussed that few can be ignorant of them. Such topics will need to be spoken of only in a summary manner. Of this nature is the fact of the identity of the English Church from the beginning down to the present time. We have undoubted historical evidence of the existence of a pure branch of the Church universal, governed by Bishops, and possessing all the marks of a true Church from the earliesttimes. If not founded by one of the Apostles, still no doubt was ever entertained that the Bishops of the ancient British Church derived their orders from them in a regular manner. At the time of the Saxon invasion, the British Church was much oppressed; but when the Saxons themselves had been converted by the mission of St. Augustine, the two Churches, that is to say, the ancient British and the Saxon gradually coalesced1 into one, and whether we trace the succession of our ministry through St. Augustine, who received his orders from the Gallican Church, or through the ancient British line, the fact of their being duly ordained and descended from the Apostles, and so from Christ himself is undeniable. And so the Church of England has continued down to the presentage. There was no period of time when the continuity of the Church, or the line of Bishops ceased. Bishop has succeeded Bishop in lineal succession, from the first founder down to the present Bishops and Archbishops. The only period when any doubt was thrown on the succession, was at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but ...