MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, landed Henry declared Supreme Head of the Church of Thomas Cranmer created Archbishop of Canterbury 597 1534 1533 CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II The Church of Rome in England-Augustine-England the "Pope's farm"--The Church of England-Theory of ContinuityThe right of separation implied in Reformation-Note on Schism— Notes on Continuity of the Church. CHAPTER II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND THE Church of England was such a prime constitutive factor in the making of Puritanism, that it is impossible to understand the genesis and character of the latter without some acquaintance with the position and attitude of the former. Now we shall go wrong at the outset in pursuing this branch of inquiry unless we bear in mind a distinction. which is often forgotten, but which is of the first importance--the distinction between the Church of England and the Church in England. There was no Church of England till the reign of Henry VIII. The Church in England existed from the time that Augustine, with his band of monks, landed, in 597, on the shore of Kent, and planted the Christian faith in the southern part of the kingdom. The northern part of the kingdom was converted by Scoto-Irish missionaries. Thus paganism was (( conquered by Christianity as represented by the Roman Catholic Church. But neither then, nor at any other period up to the time of the Reformation, could the Church thus constituted be called the Church of England. The only term that could justly describe it was the Church of Rome in England; for though both portions united and became one Church, they united by submitting to the Roman primacy, thus becoming an organic portion of the one great Western Church. The papal character of the pre-Reformation Church has been grudgingly admitted by Church historians, by some it has been called in question, but the evidence by which it is substantiated is irresistible. The Augustine, the first Primate of Canterbury, was a missionary sent from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. Wilfrid, the leader of the Scoto-Irish converts in the north, obtained his episcopal authority from Rome. same is true of Theodore, the next Primate of Canterbury, who may be regarded as the organiser of the parish system, the first to unify the sees that were already created, and group them round the common centre of Canterbury. Notwithstanding assertions often made to the contrary, it is easily demonstrable that England was not less papal,. but more papal, than any other part of Europe. According to Milman, it was a common saying in the reign of Henry III. that "England was the Pope's farm." And according to Bishop Stubbs, "liberal tribute" began to be paid to Rome from the end of the eighth century; and Peter's pence, of which this was probably the origin, continued to be paid to Rome to the time of Henry VIII.1 The Church of England, as distinguished from the Church of Rome, did not come into existence until the reign of Henry VIII. It originated in the quarrel of Henry with the Pope, who refused to sanction his divorce 1 Stubbs' Constitutional History of England, vol. i. pp. 250, 251. from Katherine of Arragon. This led to the final rupture with Rome, and the casting off of the Pope's authority. There seems no reason to doubt that if, instead of thwarting the King in his design, he had been favourable and accessory to it, there would have been no breach with Rome, or such breach would have been postponed till fresh provocation had made her yoke no longer able to be endured. Theory of continuity.-Church historians are greatly enamoured of the theory of a national Church, which has existed in unbroken continuity from the time that Augustine, with his monks, landed upon the isle of Thanet. The theory has been broached again and again. As stated by a popular clergyman-the Rev. W. Page Roberts-in a volume of sermons, entitled, Reasonable Service, p. 151, it has at least the merit of clearness. "Historically," he says, "the Church of England is the very first Church which was set up in this country. . . . There have been changes in it, corruptions in it, reformations in it, but still it is the Church which was founded by Christian Missionaries twelve hundred years. ago." This fallacy of unbroken continuity is so demonstrably transparent, that the wonder is it should impose upon any student of history; yet it is continually cropping up, not only in histories written from an Episcopalian point of view, but in statements where one might reasonably suppose it would be jealously extruded. It crops up even in the sober annals of Presbyterianism. It would seem as if no "common denominator" could be discovered between the "Romanist priesthood" and the "Protestant ministry" as construed by the spirit of Presbyterianism. The anxiety of the latter to free itself from "the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities," would seem to be an effectual restraint on any disposition to identify them even in the initial period of their history. Yet in his excellent sketch of the Church of Scotland Dr. M'Adam Muir says: "Despite the convulsions with which it was accompanied, the continuity of the Church was not broken by the Reformation." The Reformers did not dream of setting up a new Church." The "purification of the Temple" was their sole object.1 It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect reductio ad absurdum of the theory of continuity. It reminds us of the fabled ship of antiquity which, in the course of its voyage, was so often repaired, that at length no part of the original material remained. On this theory the boy who refused to part with his knife because it had been handed down to him by his great-grandfather, though the haft and the blades had been all of them renewed, had good reason for clinging to it. By this method of reasoning the Parsee, the Hindoo, and the Mohammedan, who has embraced Christianity, might try and persude himself that he had not broken with the faith of his fathers-that, in fact, he has only taken the step that he has taken 1 "The new Church which he (Henry VIII.) had created could as little pretend to be the continuation of, and identical with, the old English Church, as might a statue of Socrates, whereon a head of Alcibiades had been set, do duty as the statue of the philosopher." -Addresses on Historical and Literary Subjects, by J. Ignatius von Döllinger, D.D., p. 65, |
