We must also rid our minds of the idea that the State took endowments from the Roman Catholics and gave them to the Church of England. The ecclesiastical endowments in England grew up in successive ages, and always belonged to the particular bishopric or abbey or parish to which they were given. The Church was often robbed during the Reformation period, but the legal tenure of the property of the parishes was continued throughout the whole time without any moment of abrupt transition.

The doctrinal changes were, of course, great, and yet even in these the links with the past were maintained. The Book of Common Prayer was the successor to the various diocesan liturgical uses.1 The object of the Reformation was to reform, and the standard by which

it can be said, here the old Church ends, here the new begins. Are you inclined to take the Act of Supremacy as such a point? I have already shown that Henry's assumption of headship was but the last decisive act of a struggle which had been going on for almost five centuries. The retention of the Episcopate by the English Reformers at once helped to preserve this continuity and marked it in the distinctest way. I speak here as an historian, not as a theologian, and I have nothing to do with that doctrine of apostolical succession which many Churchmen hold, though the Articles do not teach and the Prayer Book only implies it. But it is an obvious historical fact that Parker was the successor of Augustine, just as clearly as Lanfranc and Becket. Warham, Cranmer, Pole, Parker-there is no break in the line, though the first and third are claimed as Catholic, the second and fourth as Protestant. That succession, from the spiritual point of view, was most carefully provided for when Parker was consecrated: not even the most ignorant controversialist now believes in the Nag's Head fable. The canons of the pre-Reformation Church, the statutes of the Plantagenets, are binding upon the Church of England to-day, except where they have been formally repealed. There has been no break, unless by what we may call private circumstances, in the devolution of Church property."-Hibbert Lectures, 1883, by C. Beard, p. 311.

1 "And whereas heretofore there hath been great diversity in saying and singing in Churches within this Realm; some following Salisbury use, some Hereford use, and some the use of Bangor, some of York, some of Lincoln; now from henceforth all the whole Realm shall have but one use."-Book of Common Prayer.

doctrine and worship were judged was that of the early Christian ages. The chief reformers throughout the whole period were deeply versed in the Scriptures and the writings of the early Fathers, and the doctrines rejected were those not contained in the former nor sanctioned by the teachings of the latter.1 There are just as good reasons for saying that the Church-Catholic of the West became a new Church when it introduced doctrines and customs unknown to the primitive ages, as for saying that the Church of England lost its identity with the past and began as a new Church when it purged itself from the accumulated abuses and the false doctrine of the Middle Ages.

The Roman controversialist fixes upon the consecration of Matthew Parker in 1558 as a chief event of the foundation of the new Church. Cranmer took the oath of obedience to the Pope, though he qualified it by the reservation of the right to work for the reformation of the Church. The story of Parker's consecration, with all due solemnity and rites, according to the ordinal adopted by the Church of England in 1549,2 is established beyond doubt. The Nag's Head fable, that fruitful source of insult to the English Church, has at last been relegated to oblivion, and no respectable Roman Catholic writer now refers to it.3

1 "First and foremost to take heed, that they do not teach anything in their sermons as though they would have it scrupulously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and what the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have gathered from that doctrine."-Instructions to "Preachers," in the Canons of 1571.

2 See Ordinum Sacrorum in Ecclesia Anglicana Defensio, by T. P. Bailey, 1870.

3 "A word needs to be said about the legend of the Nag's Head. The fact of the consecration of Archbishop Parker in the chapel of Lambeth Palace seems to be as reliably attested as any one other fact in English history. Hence the Nag's Head story is mentioned only for the sake of repudiating it. At one time grave doubts were cast on the reliability of the record in Parker's Register, and, indeed, on the allegation that any function whatsoever had taken place at Lambeth. A fable gained currency, and did duty in controversy for many long years, to the effect

Leo XIII's Bull of September 1896 wisely makes no reference to this fable, and passes by the history of Parker's consecration in complete silence, basing its objection to Anglican orders upon the fact that their intention is different from the intention of Rome in bestowing orders.1

The argument is a familiar one in all controversy with Rome, and can be summed up in these words, You do not do what we do, nor accept all our doctrines, and therefore you stand outside the Catholic Church of Christ. The answer of the English Church is, We have carefully preserved our continuity with the orders conferred upon our Church from early times, and the very object of the Reformation changes was to confer these orders and to maintain both worship and doctrine according to the customs and beliefs of the Apostolic Age and the immediately succeeding times.

This answer never satisfies Rome, but if the English

that the individuals who were deputed to carry out Parker's consecration met him at a tavern in Cheapside, called the Nag's Head, and there went through a travesty of the sacred rite. Low as may be our opinion, on legitimate grounds, of Barlow or Scory, little as Coverdale may have believed in the efficacy of Orders as a sacrament, we have nevertheless the known piety, soberness, moderation, and integrity and the general uprightness of Matthew Parker himself to fall back upon, and these alone should shield him from the imputation of having lent himself, or that he could possibly lend himself in any way, to the perpetration of such a meaningless and impious act. The Nag's Head fable, the source of so much bitter feeling in the past between Catholics and Protestants in their controversies and differences, has been long ago exploded. As a serious cause of dispute it should never again waste time and space."-The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 1907, by H. N. Birt, O.S.B., p. 249.

1 See Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curae, 1896, and the English Archbishops' Reply in 1897. "The defective intention of those who drew up the Ordinal is inferred from the alleged fact that in the whole Ordinal not only is there no clear mention of the sacrifice; of consecration, of the sacerdotium, of the power of consecrating and offering sacrifice, but, as we have just stated, every trace of these things, which had been in such prayers of the Catholic rite as they had not entirely rejected, was deliberately removed and struck out."

Church had been satisfied with the days of its allegiance to Rome, there would never have been any Reformation brought about.

Sooner or later every controversy upon this subject resolves itself into the question whether or not there is by Christ's command or the Holy Spirit's sanction one visible Head and Universal Bishop of the Church militant here on earth to be out of communion with whom is to be guilty of sin and schism. We go back to the distant days and ask if this headship was proclaimed in New Testament times or insisted upon as an article of faith, and we find no evidence of this. Nor do we find it for six hundred years after. Polycarp knew nothing of such supremacy in Pope Anicetus, nor Cyprian and the African Bishops in Pope Stephanus, and the Bishops of Rome themselves were so far from knowing anything of such supremacy in themselves or any one else that Gregory the Great, a name deservedly held in honour by the English Church, denounced the title of Universal Bishop as proud, wicked, insane, schismatical, blasphemous and anti-Christian.1

1 Nullus unquam decessorum meorum hoc tam profano vocabulo uti consensit-Si enim hoc dici licenter permittitur honor Patriarcharum omnium negetur. Quis est iste qui contra statuta evangelica contra canorum decreta novum sibi usurpare nomen præsumit?

Utinam sive aliorum imminutioni unus sit qui vocari appetit Universalis ! Sed absit a cordibus Christianis nomen illud blasphemia in quo omnium sacerdotum honor adimitur dum ab uno sibi dementer arrogatur. Ego fidenter dico, quia quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat vel vocari desideret in elatione suâ ante Christum præcurrit quia superviendo se cæteris, præponit.— (Gregorie Magni, Pontificis Romani, Epistolæ.)

There are many passages similar to the above in his letters. This was the Bishop of Rome who sent Augustine on his mission to Canterbury in 597, and who wrote the immortal treatise upon the Pastoral Charge, a book which King Alfred the Great turned into English, because, as he says, Augustine brought with him this storehouse of his master's spiritual gifts over the salt sea into our island.

Other Controversies.

The English Church, however, during the Reformation period, had other controversies than the one with Rome.

Wolsey, if he had remained in power, would have reformed the Church educationally, but would never have separated from the Pope. Henry VIII, having wrung from Parliament his national independence and from an unwilling clergy his title of "Supreme Head of the Church," left doctrine largely alone, though as Cranmer and Latimer became bishops in his reign he must have known that changes of doctrine were coming. The appearance of the first Book of Common Prayer two years after his death showed a marvellous development in changes of worship as well as of doctrine. Cardinal Pole's success under Queen Mary, though proclaimed in extravagant language in the Acts of Parliament,1 was more in seeming than in reality. England tried once more the yoke of Rome, and repented of its penitence after five years' experience.

Upon Queen Elizabeth and Matthew Parker fell the full brunt of maintaining the true Catholic heritage of the English Church. The former contributed an unbend

1 See 1 and 2 Phil. and Mary, cap. 8.-"An Act repealing all articles and provisions made against the See Apostolic of Rome since the twentieth year of King Henry VIII and for the establishment of all spiritual and ecclesiastical possessions and hereditaments conveyed to the laity."

The laity, however, were too powerful, and resisted both Queen and Cardinal. The Act passed decreeing by the dispensation of the Cardinal and the will and determination of the Queen that: "Our Sovereign Lady, your heirs and successors, as also all and every other person and persons, bodies political and corporate their heirs successors and assigns now having or that hereafter shall have hold or enjoy any of the sites of the said late monasteries &c. . . . shall have hold possess retain keep and enjoy all and every the said sites &c. which now be or were standing

in force before the first day of this present Parliament."

All acts and writings concerning conveyances of Church lands were to remain in full force.

C