on the part of the Church of England, to the territorial and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. Occasional assertions of insular ecclesiastical independence were not necessarily inconsistent with doctrinal identity. The haughty spirit of defiance to the Italian despot which stirred in prelates like Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, and Stephen Langton, of Magna Charta fame, and led protesting sovereigns like Edward I. and Edward III. and their protesting parliaments to pass anti-papal statutes and breathe defiance to the Pope, was not Protestantism in the modern sense of the term, nor had it the slightest doctrinal significance. Strictly speaking, these protests were not protests of the Church at all, but of individuals or of the legislative bodies; but even if they can for the sake of convenience-inasmuch as they were to an extent national— be called protests of the Church against the Pope, there was not the remotest idea of their involving any protest against Popery. And, therefore, again I say, to all practical intents and purposes, the Church of England was doctrinally one with the Church of Rome, tainted with her taints, corrupt with her corruptions, sinking with her just as deeply as she sank.*

When, therefore, in the good providence of God, John

* If any of my readers imagine that I am stating this point too strongly, let them read the fifteenth chapter of Bishop Ryle's Principles for Churchmen, "The Lessons of English Church History." In this he says: "It is no exaggeration to say that, for three centuries before the Reformation, Christianity in England seems to have been buried under a mass of superstition, priestcraft, and immorality." "There was an utter famine of vital Christianity in the land." "Practically, the religion of most Englishmen was Mary worship, saint worship, and slavery to priests." (pp. 358-360.) Of course it is a fact. No one can deny this but those who will persist in blinding their eyes to the plain facts of history.

Wycliffe, the first real Protestant in the Church of England, emerged from the darkness with the torch of Truth, and lighted that lamp which blazed forth with full radiance some two centuries later, it may easily be imagined how deep was the abhorrence with which he and his spiritual successors regarded the detestable enormities of Rome. As step by step the eyes of England's Reformers were enlightened, and the Spirit of God drew froin off their eyes the veil that obscured the falsities of their mighty foe, the hatred with which they regarded her was conscientious and deadly. At first, separation from the Catholic body was a thing which was never contemplated by Henry VIII. and the nation. Their only desire was emancipation from the abominated thraldom of the Pope. It was not the desire of either the clergy or the nation, as a whole, to sever themselves from the unity of the Holy Catholic Church visible, nor, at first, to alter even to the length of one jot or tittle one article of the Catholic religion, as represented by Rome. They wished only to demonstrate the ability of England to administer her own affairs, without the interference of any foreign prince.

Henry VIII. never was a Protestant in the modern or evangelical sense of the word, nor did he to his dying day intend any serious doctrinal reformation. In doctrine, he was an ardent Romanist. The highest idea of reformation that he ever conceived was of reformation in the Church, not reformation of the Church. Even with regard to reformations in the Church, that is, reformation in the way of abuses and morals, they were conducted only in so far as they made no interference with Popery. Henry VIII. never intended a reformation of the Church in doctrine; he simply, through caprice, severed himself and the Church from the temporal headship of the Pope.

Now, the chief feature of the reformation of the Church of England was reformation in doctrine. The affair of

renouncing the allegiance of the Pope, though in God's providence a step of great importance, was not the greatest matter, for the English Church was never very strong in that at any time. The imputation, therefore, that the reformation of the Church of England was the work of King Henry VIII. is an ignorant caiumny. The assertion of certain Romanists* that Henry VIII. was founder of the Church of England, or that Henry VIII. brought about the reformation of the Church of England, is utterly false. It is ludicrous; it is absurd. "Our King has destroyed the Pope, but not Popery."† He did everything in his power almost to hinder it, thwart it, stop it, and nothing was further from his thoughts. He was a thorough Romanist, a most bigoted Papist, and violently opposed to the doctrines of Protestantism. If Henry VIII. had had his way, the Church of England would never have been the reformed and Protestant Church that she is to-day, for, as Bishop Hooper sagaciously remarked, "The king cast out the l'ope, not Popery." Neither the king, nor Wolsey, nor Warham, ever dreamed that the defiance of the Papal decree would involve separation from the doctrines of and unity with the visible Catholic Church.

Gradually, however, by the good hand of the God of all grace, the work of reformation proceeded, until by the dissemination of the Truth, through the reading of God's pure Word and the enlightenment of the eyes of the Reformers by the Spirit of Truth, that abhorrence of Popish tyranny was succeeded by an abhorrence of Popish doctrine equally deep-seated and deadly. Marvellous it is to witness how this work advanced in the teeth of what was apparently irresistible opposition. Marvellous, too, is it to notice how

* The AmericanCardinal Gibbons, e.g. in his "Faith of our Fathers." † Park. Soc., Orig. Lett., p. 36. Cranmer on Lord's Supper, p. 6. "The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, the invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious

an illumination almost preternatural directed and upheld the leaders in this great cause. Theirs was no blind hatred, or unreasoning malice. Not at all. It was the strong, deep-seated conviction of men who were taught by the Word of God, upheld by His power, and led onward by paths opened in His providence; and when the time was fully come, when the day appointed by God from eternity arrived, that stately fabric of falsehood, so long an incubus on our loved fatherland, fell, and fell, we believe, for ever; and great was the fall of it. "Cecidit Babylon! cecidit Babylon! civitas illa magna! cecidit Babylon!"

Now let the reader carefully remember this.

It was from the contest of these days that the Prayer Book issued forth. It was in the furnace of opposition to Romish doctrine and by the fires of Romish persecution that it was tried and purged and refined. It was by the men who

abstinence from meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in greater esteem than at the present moment."Orig. Lett., p. 36.

"The public celebration of the Lord's Supper is very far from the order and institution of our Lord. Although it is administered in both kinds, yet in some places the supper is celebrated three times a day. Where they used heretofore to celebrate in the morning the mass of the Apostles, they have now the communion of the Apostles; where they had the mass of the Blessed Virgin, they now have the communion which they call the communion of the Virgin; where they had the principal, or high mass, they now have, as they call it, the high communion. They still retain their vestments and the candles before the altars; in the churches they always chant the hours and other hymns relating to the Lord's Supper, but in our own language. And that Popery may not be lost, the mass-priests, although they are compelled to discontinue the use of the Latin language, yet most carefully observe the same tone and manner of . chanting to which they were heretofore accustomed in the Papacy. God knows to what perils and anxieties we are exposed by reason of men of this kind."-Bp. Hooper in Orig. Lett., Park. Soc., p. 72.

afterwards laid down their lives rather "than consent to the wicked Popery of the Bishop of Rome" that it was compiled, and, in many parts, composed. It was in an age when the hatred of Popery, rather than the Papacy, was undying, conscientious, and disinterested, that it was begun, continued, and brought to a consummation. Never, perhaps, did hatred of the abominations of the Papacy and the doctrines of Popery run so high in England as it did in the days of the Reformers, and never, perhaps, did hatred of the Papacy, and clear, conscientious detestation of Rome's soul-destroying teachings, run so high in individual men as it did in the minds of the men who compiled the Book of Common Prayer.

Cranmer: He accounted the Pope as very Antichrist, and the foe of the cause of God. His opposition extended not merely to the Pope as a usurping prelate, but to the Papacy, as a system which falsified the Word of God, and overwhelmed men in the darkness of Christless ignorance. "As for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine." "It is not the person of the Bishop of Rome, which usurpeth the name of Pope, that is so much to be detested, but the very Papacy and the See of Rome, which hath by their laws suppressed Christ . . . and this is the chief thing to be detested in that See, that it hath brought the professors of Christ into such ignorance of Christ."-Cranmer's Works, Park. Soc., I., p. 28,and II.,p. 322.

Ridley: He, too, accounted and boldly declared the Pope to be Antichrist, the beast of Babylon, the whore of Babylon, which hath bewitched almost the whole world. "I perceive," said he, "the greatest part of Christianity to be infected with the poison of the See of Rome.” "For the godly articles of unity in religion, these thieves place in the stead of them the Pope's laws and decrees, lying legends, feigned fables and miracles, to delude and abuse. Thus the