King Henry VIII and Anglicanism

Henry VIII

King of England, born 28 June, 1491; died 28 January, 1547.

He was the second son and third child of his father, Henry VII. His elder brother Arthur died in April, 1502, and consequently Henry became heir to the throne when he was not yet quite eleven years old. It has been asserted that Henry's interest in theological questions was due to the bias of his early education, since he had at first been destined by his father for the Church. But a child of eleven can hardly have formed lifelong intellectual tastes, and it is certain that secular titles, such as those of Earl Marshal and Viceroy of Ireland, were heaped upon him when he was five. On the other hand there can be no question as to the boy's great precocity and as to the liberal scope of the studies which he was made to pursue from his earliest years.
After Arthur's death a project was at once formed of marrying him to his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon, who, being born in December, 1485, was more than five years his senior. The negotiations for a papal dispensation took some little time, and the Spanish Queen Isabella, the mother of Catherine, then nearing her end, grew very impatient. Hence a hastily drafted Brief containing the required dispensation was privately sent to Spain in 1504, to be followed some months later by a Bull to the same effect which was of a more public character. The existence of these two instruments afterwards caused complications. Owing, however, to some political scheming of Henry VII — who was trying to outwit his rival Ferdinand — Prince Henry, on attaining the age of fourteen, was made to record a formal protest against the proposed marriage with Catherine, as a matter arranged without his consent. Still, when his father died in 1509, Henry carried out the marriage nine weeks after his accession, he being then eighteen, and showing from the first a thorough determination to be his own master. Great popularity was won for the new reign by the attainder and execution of Empson and Dudley, the instruments of the late king's extortion. Besides this, it is unanimously attested by contemporaries that the young sovereign possessed every gift of mind and person which could arouse the enthusiasm of his people. His skill in manly sports was almost equalled by his intelligence and his devotion to letters. Of the complicated foreign policy which marked the beginning of his reign no detail can be given here. Thanks partly to Henry's personality, but still more to the ability of Wolsey, who soon took the first place in the council chamber, England for the first time became a European power. In 1512 Henry joined Pope Julius II, Ferdinand of Spain, and the Venetians in forming the "Holy League" against the King of France. Julius was feverishly bent on chasing the "barbarians" (i.e. the French and other foreigners) out of Italy, and Henry cooperated by collecting ships and soldiers to attack the French king in his own dominions. No very conspicuous success attended his arms, but there was a victory at Guinegate outside Therouanne, and the Scotch, who, as the allies of France, had threatened invasion, were disastrously defeated at Flodden in 1513. During all this time Henry remained on excellent terms with the Holy See. In April, 1510, Julius sent him the golden rose, and in 1514 Leo X bestowed the honorific cap and sword, which were presented with much solemnity at St. Paul's.
The League having been broken up by the selfish policy of Ferdinand, Henry VIII now made peace with France and for some years held the balance of power on the Continent, though not without parting with a good deal of money. Wolsey was made a cardinal in 1515 and exercised more influence than ever, but it was somewhat against his advice that Henry, in 1519, secretly became a candidate for the succession to the empire, though pretending at the same time to support the candidature of Francis, his ally. When, however, Charles V was successful, the French king could not afford to quarrel with Henry, and a somewhat hollow and insincere renewal of their friendship took place in June, 1520, at the famous "Field of the Cloth of Gold", when the most elaborate courtesies were exchanged between the two monarchs. The prospect of this rapprochement had so alarmed the Emperor Charles that, a month before it took place, he visited Henry in England. In point of fact a continuous game of intrigue was being played by all three monarchs, which lasted until the period when Henry's final breach with Rome led him to turn his principal attention to domestic concerns. Meanwhile the strength of Henry's position at home had been much developed by Wolsey's judicious diplomacy, and, despite the costliness of some of England's demonstrations against France, before the French king became the emperor's prisoner at Pavia, the odium of the demand for money fell upon the minister, while Henry retained all his popularity. Indeed, whatever disaffection might be felt, the people had no leader to make rebellion possible. The old nobility, partly as a result of the Wars of the Roses, and partly owing to the repressive policy dictated by the dynastic fears of Henry VII, had been reduced to impotence. In 1521 the most prominent noble in England, the Duke of Buckingham, was condemned to death for high treason by a subservient House of Peers, simply because the king suspected him of aiming at the succession and had determined that he must die. At the same period Henry's prestige in the eyes of the clergy, and not the clergy only, was strengthened by his famous book, the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum. This book was written against Luther and in vindication of the Church's dogmatic teaching regarding the sacraments and the Sacrifice of the Mass, while the supremacy of the papacy is also insisted upon in unequivocal terms. There is no reason to doubt that the substance of the book was really Henry's. Pope Leo X was highly pleased with it and conferred upon the king the title of Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith), which is maintained to this day as part of the royal style of the English Crown. All this success and adulation were calculated to develop the natural masterfulness of Henry's character. He had long shown to discerning eyes, like those of Sir Thomas More, that he would brook contradiction in nothing. Without being guilty of notable profligacy in comparison with the other monarchs of his time, it is doubtful if Henry's married life had ever been pure, even from the first, and we know that in 1519 he had, by Elizabeth Blount, a son whom, at the age of six, he made the Duke of Richmond. He had also carried on an intrigue with Mary Boleyn which led to some complications at a later date.
Such was Henry when, probably about the beginning of the year 1527, he formed a violent passion for Mary's younger sister, Anne. It is possible that the idea of the divorce had suggested itself to the king much earlier than this (see Brown, "Venetian Calendars", II, 479), and it is highly probable that it was motivated by the desire of male issue, of which he had been disappointed by the death in infancy of all Catherine's children save Mary. Anne Boleyn was restrained by no moral scruples, but she saw her opportunity in Henry's infatuation and determined that she would only yield as his acknowledged queen. Anyway, it soon became the one absorbing object of the king's desires to secure a divorce from Catherine, and in the pursuit of this he condescended to the most unworthy means. He had it put about that the Bishop of Tarbes, when negotiating an alliance in behalf of the French king, had raised a doubt as to the Princess Mary's legitimacy. He also prompted Wolsey, as legate, to hold with Archbishop Warham a private and collusive inquiry, summoning Henry to prove before them that his marriage was valid. The only result was to give Catherine an inkling of what was in the king's mind, and to elicit from her a solemn declaration that the marriage had never been consummated. From this it followed that there had never been any impediment of "affinity" to bar her union with Henry, but only the much more easily dispensed impediment known as publicae honestatis. The best canonists of the time also held that a papal dispensation which formally removed the impediment of affinity also involved by implication that of publicae honestatis, or "public decency." The collective suit was thereupon dropped, and Henry now set his hopes upon a direct appeal to the Holy See, acting in this independently of Wolsey, to whom he at first communicated nothing of his design so far as it related to Anne. William Knight, the king's secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the declaration of nullity of his union with Catherine, on the ground that the dispensing Bull of Julius II was obreptitious — i.e. obtained by false pretences. Henry also petitioned, in the event of his becoming free, a dispensation to contract a new marriage with any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connexion. This clearly had reference to Anne Boleyn, and the fictitious nature of Henry's conscientious scruples about his marriage is betrayed by the fact that he himself was now applying for a dispensation of precisely the same nature as that which he scrupled about, a dispensation which he later on maintained the pope had no power to grant.
As the pope was at that time the prisoner of Charles V, Knight had some difficulty in obtaining access to him. In the end the king's envoy had to return without accomplishing much, though the (conditional) dispensation for a new marriage was readily accorded. Henry had now no choice but to put his great matter into the hands of Wolsey, and Wolsey, although the whole divorce policy ran counter to his better judgment, strained every nerve to secure a decision in his master's favour. An account of the mission of Gardiner and Foxe and of the failure of the divorce proceedings before the papal commissioners, Wolsey and Campeggio, mainly on account of the production of the Brief, has been given in some detail in the article CLEMENT VII, to which the reader is referred. The revocation of the cause to Rome in July, 1529, owing, no doubt, in part to Queen Catherine's most reasonable protests against her helplessness in England and the compulsion to which she was subjected, had many important results. First among these we must count the disgrace and fall of Wolsey, hitherto the only real check upon Henry's wilfulness. The incredible meanness of the praemunire, and consequent confiscation, which the cardinal was pronounced to have incurred for obtaining the cardinalate and legateship from Rome — though of course this had been done with the king's full knowledge and consent — would alone suffice to stamp Henry as one of the basest of mankind. But, secondly, we may trace to this same crisis the rise of both Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, the two great architects of Henry's new policy. It was Cranmer who, in the autumn of 1529, made the momentous suggestion that the king should consult the universities of Europe upon the question of the nullity of his marriage, a suggestion which at once brought its author into favour.
The project was carried out as soon as possible with a lavish expenditure of bribes, and the use of other means of pressure. The result was naturally highly favourable to the king's wishes, though the universities which lay within the dominions of Charles V were not consulted. The answers were submitted to Parliament, where the king still kept the pretense of having no personal interest in the matter. He professed to be suffering from scruples of conscience, now rendered more acute by such a weight of learned opinion. With the same astuteness he persuaded the leading nobility of the kingdom to write to the pope praying him to give sentence in Henry's favour for fear that worse might follow. All this drew the king into closer relations with Cranmer, who was made ambassador to the emperor, and who, a year or two afterwards, despite the fact that he had just married Osiander's niece (his second wife), was summoned home to become Archbishop of Canterbury. The necessary Bulls and the pallium were obtained from Rome under threat that the law (referred to again below) for the abolition of annates and first-fruits would be made permanent. The vacillating Clement — who probably hoped that by making every other kind of concession he might be able to maintain the position he had assumed upon the more vital question of the divorce — conceded Bulls and pallium. But to benefit by them it was necessary that Cranmer should take certain prescribed oaths of obedience to the Holy See. He took the oaths, but committed to writing a solemn protest that he considered the oaths in no way binding in conscience, a procedure which even so prejudiced a historian as Mr. H.A. Fisher cannot refrain from describing as a "signal dishonesty." "If", asks Dr. Lingard, "it be simony to purchase spiritual office by money, what is it to purchase the same by perjury?" The father of the new Church of England, and future compiler of its liturgy, was not entering upon his functions under very propitious auspices.
But the Church which was soon to be brought into being probably owes even more to Thomas Cromwell than to its first archbishop. It is Cromwell who seems to have suggested to Henry as a deliberate policy that he should abolish the imperium in imperio, throw off the papal supremacy, and make himself the supreme head of his own religion. This was in fact the course which from the latter part of 1529 Henry undeviatingly followed, though he did not at first go to lengths from which there was no retreat. The first blow was struck at the clergy by involving them in Wolsey's praemunire. Some anti-clerical disaffection there had always been, partly, no doubt, the remnants of Lollardy, as was instanced in the case of Richard Hunne, 1515. This, of late years, had been a good deal aggravated by the importation into England of Tyndale's annotated New Testament and other books of heretical tendency, which, though prohibited and burnt by authority, still made their way among the people. Henry and his ministers had, therefore, some popular support upon which they could fall back, if necessary, in their campaign to reduce the clergy to abject submission. At the beginning of 1531 the Convocation of Canterbury were informed that they could purchase a pardon for the praemunire they had incurred by presenting the king with the enormous sum of 100,000 pounds. Further, they were bidden to recognize the king as "Protector and Supreme Head of the Church of England." Convocation struggled desperately against the demand, and in the end succeeded in inserting the qualification "so far as is allowed by the law of Christ." But this was only a brief respite. A year later Parliament under pressure passed an edict forbidding the payment to the Holy See of Annates or first-fruits, but the operation of it was for the present suspended at the sovereign's pleasure, and the king was meanwhile solicited to come to an amicable understanding with "His Holiness" on the subject of the divorce. The measure amounted to a decently veiled threat to withdraw this source of income from the Holy See altogether if the divorce was refused. Still the pope held out, and so did the queen. Only a little time before, a deputation of lords and bishops — of course by the king's order — had visited Catherine and had rudely urged her to withdraw the appeal in virtue of which the king, contrary to his dignity, had been cited to appear personally at Rome; but though deprived of all counsel, she stood firm. In the May of 1532 further pressure was brought to bear upon Convocation, and resulted in the so-called "Submission of the Clergy", by which they practically renounced all right of legislation except in dependence upon the king.

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An honest man like Sir Thomas More could no longer pretend to work with the Government, and he resigned the chancellorship, which he had held since the fall of Wolsey. The situation was too strained to last, and the end came through the death of Archbishop Warham in August, 1532. In the appointment of Cranmer as his successor, the king knew that he had secured a subservient tool who desired nothing better than to see the papal authority overthrown. Anne Boleyn was then enceinte, and the king, relying, no doubt, on what Cranmer when consecrated would be ready to do for him, went through a form of marriage with her on 25 January, 1533. On 15 April Cranmer received consecration. On 23 May, Parliament having meanwhile forbidden all appeals to Rome, Cranmer pronounced Henry's former marriage invalid. On 28 May he declared the marriage with Anne valid. On 1 June Anne was crowned, and on 7 September she gave birth to a daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth. Clement, who had previously sent to Henry more than one monition upon his desertion of Catherine, issued a Bull of excommunication on 11 July, declaring, also, his divorce and remarriage null. In England Catherine was deprived of her title of Queen, and Mary her daughter was treated as a bastard. Much sympathy was aroused among the populace, to meet which severe measures were taken against the more conspicuous of the disaffected, particularly the "Nun of Kent", who claimed to have had revelations of God's displeasure at the recent course of events.
In the course of the next year the breach with Rome was completed. Parliament did all that was required of it. Annates, Peter's Pence, and other payments to Rome were finally abolished. An Act of Succession entailed the crown on the children of Anne Boleyn, and an oath was drawn up to be exacted of every person of lawful age. It was the refusal to take this oath, the preamble of which declared Henry's marriage with Catherine null from the beginning, which sent More and Fisher to the Tower, and eventually to the block. A certain number of Carthusian monks, Brigittines, and Observant Franciscans imitated their firmness and shared their fate. All these have been beatified in modern times by Pope Leo XIII. There were, however, but a handful who were thus true to their convictions. Declarations were obtained from the clergy in both provinces "that the Bishop of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred upon him by God in this kingdom of England than any other foreign bishop", while Parliament, in November, declared the king "Supreme Head of the Church of England", and shortly afterwards Cromwell, a layman, was appointed vicar-general to rule the English Church in the king's name. Though the people were cowed, these measures were not carried out without much disaffection, and, to stamp out any overt expression of this, Cromwell and his master now embarked upon a veritable reign of terror. The martyrs already referred to were most of them brought to the scaffold in the course of 1535, but fourteen Dutch Anabaptists also suffered death by burning in the same year. There followed a visitation of the monasteries, unscrupulous instruments like Layton, Legh, and Price being appointed for the purpose. They played, of course, into the king's hand and compiled comperta abounding in charges of disgraceful immorality, which have been shown to be at least grossly exaggerated. In pursuance of the same policy Parliament, in February, 1536, acting under great pressure, voted to the king the property of all religious houses with less than 200 pounds a year of annual income, recommending that the inmates should be transferred to the larger houses where "religion happily was right well observed." The dissolution, when carried out, produced much popular resentment, especially in Lincolnshire and the northern counties. Eventually, in the autumn of 1536, the people banded together in a very formidable insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The insurgents rallied under the device of the Five Wounds, and they were only induced to disperse by the deceitful promises of Henry's representative, the Duke of Norfolk. The suppression of the larger monasteries rapidly followed, and with these were swept away numberless shrines, statues, and objects of pious veneration, on the pretext that these were purely superstitious. It is easy to see that the lust of plunder was the motive which prompted this wholesale confiscation. (See SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES.)

Meanwhile, Henry, though taking advantage of the spirit of religious innovation now rife among the people whenever it suited his purpose, remained still attached to the sacramental system in which he had been brought up. In 1539 the Statute of the Six Articles enforced, under the severest penalties, such doctrines as transubstantiation, Communion under one kind, auricular confession, and the celibacy of the clergy. Under this act offenders were sent to the stake for their Protestantism just as ruthlessly as the aged Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was attainted by Parliament and eventually beheaded, simply because Henry was irritated by the denunciations of her son Cardinal Pole. Neither was the king less cruel towards those who were nearest to him. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, his second and fifth wives, perished on the scaffold, but their whilom lord only paraded his indifference regarding the fate to which he had condemned them. On 30 July, 1540, of six victims who were dragged to Smithfield, three were Reformers burnt for heretical doctrine, and the other three Catholics, hanged and quartered for denying the king's supremacy. Of all the numerous miserable beings whom Henry sent to execution, Cromwell, perhaps, is the only one who fully deserved his fate. Looking at the last fifteen years of Henry's life, it is hard to find one single feature which does not evoke repulsion, and the attempts made by some writers to whitewash his misdeeds only give proof of the extraordinary prejudice with which they approach the subject. Henry's cruelties continued to the last, and so likewise did his inconsistencies. One of the last measures of confiscation of his reign was an act of suppression of chantries, but Henry by his last will and testament established what were practically chantries to have Masses said for his own soul.

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Anglicanism

A term used to denote the religious belief and position of members of the established Church of England, and of the communicating churches in the British possessions, the United States (see EPISCOPAL CHURCH), and elsewhere. It includes those who have accepted the work of the English Reformation as embodied in the Church of England or in the offshoot Churches which in other countries have adhered, at least substantially, to its doctrines, its organization, and its liturgy. Apart from minor or missionary settlements, the area in which Anglicanism is to be found corresponds roughly with those portions of the globe which are, or were formally, under the British flag.

Beliefs

To form a general idea of Anglicanism as a religious system, it will be convenient to sketch it in rough outline as it exists in the Established Church of England, bearing in mind that there are differences in detail, mainly in liturgy and church-government, to be found in other portions of the Anglican communion.
The members of the Church of England are professed Christians, and claim to be baptized members of the Church of Christ.
They accept the Scriptures as contained in the Authorized Version, as the Word of God.
They hold the Scriptures to be the sole and supreme rule of faith, in the sense that the Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation and that nothing can be required of anyone as an article of faith which is not contained therein, and cannot be proved thereby.
They accept the Book of Common Prayer as the practical rule of their belief and worship, and in it they use as standards of doctrine the three Creeds — the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian.
They believe in two sacraments of the Gospel — Baptism and the Lord's Supper —as generally necessary to salvation.
They claim to have Apostolic succession and a validly ordained ministry, and only persons whom they believe to be thus ordained are allowed to minister in their churches.
They believe that the Church of England is a true and reformed part, or branch, or pair of provinces of the Catholic Church of Christ.
They maintain that the Church of England is free from all foreign jurisdiction.
They recognize the King as Supreme Governor of the Church and acknowledge that to him "appertains the government of all estates whether civil or ecclesiastical, in all causes."
The clergy, before being appointed to a benefice or licensed to preach, subscribe and declare that they "assent to the Thirty-nine Articles, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordering of Bishops, priests, and deacons, and believe the doctrine of the Church of England as therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of God".
One of the Articles (XXV) thus subscribed approves the First and Second Book of Homilies as containing "a godly and wholesome doctrine necessary for these times", and adjudges them to be read in churches "diligently and distinctly".
To these general characteristics we may add by way of corrective that while the Bible is accepted much latitude is allowed as to the nature and extent of its inspiration; that the Eucharistic teaching of the Prayer Book is subject to various and opposed interpretations; that Apostolic succession is claimed by many to be beneficial, but not essential, to the nature of the Church; that the Apostles' Creed is the only one to which assent can be required from the laity, and that Articles of Religion are held to be binding only on the licensed and beneficed clergy.

Chief government

Inside these outlines, which are necessarily vague, the constitution of the Church of England has been largely determined by the events which attended its settlement under the Tudors.

Original loyalty to Rome

Before the breach with Rome under Henry VIII there was absolutely no doctrinal difference between the faith of Englishmen and the rest of Catholic Christendom, and "Anglicanism", as connoting a separate or independent religious system, was unknown.

The name Ecclesia Anglicana, or English Church, was of course employed, but always in the Catholic and Papal use of the term as signifying that part or region of the one Catholic Church under the jurisdiction of the Pope which was situated in England, and precisely in the same way as the Church in Scotland was called the Ecclesia Scotticana, the Church in France, the Ecclesia Gallicana, and the Church in Spain the Ecclesia Hispanica. That such national or regional appellations were a part of the style in the Roman Curia itself, and that they in no sense could have implied any indication of independence from Rome, is sufficiently well known to all who are familiar with pre-Reformation records.

Pope Honorius III, in 1218, in his Bull to King Alexander speaks of the Scottish Church (Ecclesia Scotticana) as "being immediately subject to the Apostolic See" (Papal Letters I, 60).
The abbots and priors of England in their letter to Innocent IV, in 1246, declared that the English Church (Ecclesia Anglicana) is "a special member of the Most Holy Church of Rome" [Matthew Paris (Rolls Series), IV, 531].
In 1413 Archbishop Arundel, with the assent of Convocation, affirmed against the Lollards the faith of the English Church in a number of test articles, including the Divine institution of the Papacy and the duty of all Christians to render obedience to it (Wilkins, Concilia, III, 355).
In 1521, only thirteen years before the breach, John Clerk, the English Ambassador at Rome, was able to assure the Pope in full consistory that England was second to no country in Christendom, "not even to Rome itself", in the "service of God: and of the Christian Faith, and in the obedience due to the Most Holy Roman Church" (Clerks' oration, ed. Jerome Emser).

After the Act of Royal Supremacy (1534)

The first point of severance was clearly one of Erastianism. When news of the papal decision against the divorce reached England, Henry VIII gave his assent to four anti-papal statutes passed in Parliament in the spring of 1534, and in November the statute of the Royal Supremacy declared the King to be Supreme Head of the English Church (without the limiting clause of 1532), and an oath was prescribed, affirming the Pope to have no jurisdiction in the realm of England. The actual ministry of preaching and of the sacraments was left to the clergy, but all the powers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction were claimed by the sovereign.
The Act of Supremacy required that the King, as Supreme Head of the Church, "shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempt, enormities whatsoever they be which by any manner, spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may be lawfully reformed" (26 Henry VIII, i).
The bishops were made to sue out their faculties from the King, and, that the meaning of this humiliation should be unmistakable, the very form of the license granted them affirmed the plain Erastian principle that the Crown was the source of their jurisdiction, "seeing that all authority of jurisdiction, and indeed jurisdiction of all kinds, both that which is called ecclesiastical and that which is secular, is originally derived from the royal power, as from the Supreme Head and foundation, and source of magistracy within our Kingdom" (Wilkins, Concilia, III, 799),
The bishops and clergy in convocation were forbidden to make canons except when the King, by his "Letters of Business", gave them permission to do so, and even then the canons so made were to have effect only when approved by the King.
Another statute secured to the Crown the absolute control in the appointment of bishops. The chapters were bound under penalties of Proemunire to elect the person named by the King and no other, and the Archbishop was bound under the same shameful penalties to consecrate the person so named within twenty days after receipt of the King's writ (Significavit) commanding him to do so. This enactment, which an Anglican bishop in recent times has aptly described as "the Magna Charta of tyranny" remains in force to the present day. Within the last few years the Law Courts have ruled that no opposition to the episcopal confirmation of a person nominated by the Crown can be allowed.
Thus the chief note of Henrician settlement is the fact that Anglicanism was founded in the acceptance of the Royal, and the rejection of the Papal Supremacy, and was placed upon a decidedly Erastian basis.

When the Act of Royal Supremacy, which had been repealed by Queen Mary, was revived by Elizabeth, it suffered a modification in the sense that the Sovereign was styled "Supreme Governor" instead of "Supreme Head". In a subsequent "Admonition", Elizabeth issued an interpretation of the Royal Supremacy, to the effect that she laid claim "to no power of ministry of divine offices in the Church". At the same time she reasserted in the full the claim made by Henry VIII as to the Authority of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical, and the great religious changes made after her accession were carried out and enforced in a royal visitation commissioned by the royal authority.

In 1628, Charles I, in a Royal Declaration prefixed to the Articles, stated that it belonged to the kingly office "to conserve and maintain the Church committed to our charge, in unity of religion and the bond of peace", and decreed that differences arising as to the external policy of the Church were to be settled in Convocation, but its ordinances were to be submitted to the Crown for approval, which would be given to them if they were not contrary to the laws of the land.

Archbishop Laud, in 1640, had a series of canons drawn up in Convocation and duly published, but this attempt at spiritual independence was speedily suppressed. The indignation of Parliament was so great that he himself begged leave to withdraw them, and the House of Commons passed a resolution unanimously declaring that "the Clergy in Convocation assembled has no power to make any canons or constitutions whatsoever in matters of doctrine, discipline or otherwise to bind the Clergy and laity of the land without the common consent in Parliament" (Resolution, 16 December, 1640).

The effect of Royal Supremacy

The effect of the legislation under Henry VIII, revived by Elizabeth, and confirmed in subsequent reigns, has been, as Lord Campbell pointed out in his famous Gorham judgment, in April, 1850, to locate in the Crown all that decisive jurisdiction which before the Reformation had been exercised by the Pope.

Until the year 1833, the Crown exercised this supreme jurisdiction through a special body called the Court of Delegates. Its members were appointed under the great Seal, and consisted of lay judges, with whom might be associated a number of bishops or clergymen. In 1833 this Court was abolished, and its powers were transferred to the King in Council. Hence matters which come under its purview are now decided by the King upon the advice of that part of the Privy Council which is known as the Judicial Committee. The statute (2 and 3 William IV, xcii) expressly states that its decisions are final, and are not subject to any commission of review.

It must be observed that this tribunal does not profess theoretically to decide articles of faith, or to pronounce upon the abstract orthodoxy or heterodoxy of opinions. "Its duty extends only to the consideration of that which is by law established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the due and legal construction of there Articles and formularies" (Gorham decision, March 1850). But upon this ground the Crown decided that the views of Mr. Gorham, whose notorious rejection of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration had shocked his bishop and scandalized the Tractarians, were "not contrary or repugnant to the declared doctrine of the Church of England as by law established". Numerous protests and appeals were made by high Churchmen, but all attempts to reverse the decision were unavailing, and Mr. Gorham duly received institution to the benefice which his bishop had refused him. In like manner in 1849, when vehement opposition was made to the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the See of Hereford, the Prime Minister of the day insisted on the right of the Crown, and the Vicar-General of the Archbishop ruled that no exception could be suffered against one whom the Crown had duly nominated, and the Court of Queen's Bench sustained his ruling.

Thus, whatever views or aspirations have been held theoretically by Anglican divines on the spiritual authority of the Anglican Church, the Royal Supremacy remains an effective reality, and the Crown, supported by Parliament and the Law Courts, both as to the doctrines which may be taught, and the persons who shall be put in office to teach them, has possession of the practical and substantial control. It is characteristic of the Anglican Reformation that the supreme and far reaching regulative jurisdiction which was exercised by the Holy See was, after the severance from Rome, taken over, to all intents and purposes, by the Crown, and was never effectively entrusted to the Anglican Spirituality, either to the Primate, or to the Episcopate, or even to Convocation. As a result, there is to this day the lack of a living Church Spiritual Authority which has been to the Anglican Church a constant source of weakness, humiliation, and disorder.

In 1904 a royal commission was appointed to investigate the complaints against ecclesiastical discipline, and in July 1906, it issued its report, in which it points out that at no time in the past have the laws of public worship been uniformly observed, and recommends the formation of a Court which while exercising the Royal Jurisdiction, would be bound to accept the episcopate on questions of doctrine or ritual. This, if granted, would be the first step towards the partial emancipation of the Spirituality from the thraldom of the civil power, in which it has been held for more than three centuries.

It will be observed that Anglicanism as a religious system is separable from the doctrine of Royal Supremacy, which is an outcome of its union with the State, and of the circumstances of the English Reformation. In countries outside of England the Wales Anglican Churches exist, and, it is said, all the more prosperously from being untrammelled by the State connection. But even in those countries the decisive voice in the government of the Anglican Church is not entrusted to the Episcopate alone, and in some of them the lay power in the synods has made itself felt, and has shown that it can be as really a master as any Tudor sovereign invested with royal supremacy. The supremacy of the Spirituality in the domain of doctrine, as the sole guarantee of true religious liberty, is still lacking in the Anglican system, and the problem of supplying it remains unsolved, if not insoluble.

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Doctrinal and liturgical formularies

The doctrinal position of the Anglican Church, in like manner, can only be adequately studied in its history, which divides itself into a number of stages or periods. The first, or Henrician, period (1534-47) includes the breach with Rome, the setting up of an independent national church, and the transfer of the supreme Church authority from the Papacy to the Crown. The Edwardian (1547-53) and the Elizabethan (1558-1603) periods carried the work of separation much further. Both accepted the Henrician basis of rejection of the Papacy and erection of the Royal Supremacy, but built upon it the admission of the doctrinal and liturgical changes which make up mainly the Anglican Reformation, and brought the nation within the great Protestant movement of the sixteenth century.

First period: Henry VIII (1534-1547)

Although the policy of Henry VIII, after the breach with Rome, was ostensibly conservative, and his ideal seemed to be the maintenance of a Catholic Church in England, minus the Pope, it is incontestable that in other ways his action was in fatal contradiction to his professions.

Influence of English Protestant Sympathizers. — By raising to power, and by maintaining in positions of unique influence, his three great agents, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, and Edward Seymour, all of whom were always, and as openly as they dared, in sympathy with the Reformation, Henry VIII, whether by intention or the by the indifference of his latter days, undoubtedly prepared the way and opened the gates to the Protestantism which came in under Edward and Elizabeth.

Influence of German Protestants. — In 1535 Henry sent agents to negotiate an agreement with the Reformers in Germany, and in 1537 he was led by Cromwell, in connivance with Cranmer, into further negotiations with the Protestant princes assembled at Smalkald. He wrote to Melanchthon to congratulate him on the work which he had done for religion, and invited him to England. Melanchthon was unable to come, but in 1538 three German divines, Burkhardt, Boyneburg, and Myconius, were sent to London, where they remained some months, and held conferences with the Anglican bishops and clergy. The Germans presented as a basis of agreement a number of Articles based on the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg. On the doctrinal part of these Articles, the first thirteen, both parties came to an agreement (Letter of Myconius to Cromwell, 8 September, 1538). On the second part, the "Abuses" (viz., private Masses, celibacy of the Clergy, invocation of Saints) the King would not give way, and finally dissolved the conference. Although the negotiations thus formally came to an end, the Thirteen Articles on which agreement with the Germans had been made were kept by Archbishop Cranmer, and afterwards by Archbishop Parker, and were used as test articles to which the preachers whom they licensed were required to subscribe. Eventually they became the nucleus of the Articles of Religion which were authorized under Edward VI and Elizabeth. Hence the almost verbal correspondence between these Articles and the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg, from which they were originally taken.

Second period: Edward VI (1547-1553)

By the death of Henry VIII (27 January, 1547) the main obstacle to the reforming influence was removed. With the accession of Edward VI, who had been brought up in the reformed faith, with Seymour, also a Protestant, omnipotent in the Council, and Cranmer, now able to show his hand and work his will, the party of the Reformation became possessed of all the resources of national power, and during the five years of the reign (1547-53) remained triumphantly in the ascendant. This period witnessed the introduction of the great doctrinal and liturgical changes.
Denial of the Sacrifice of the Mass. — One of the cardinal principles of the Reformation which the German delegates had brought over in 1538 was that "the Mass is nothing but a Communion or synaxis" (Tunstall's Summary, M.S. Cleop. E. V., 209). Cranmer vehemently upheld this conception of the Eucharist. One of the first Acts under Edward VI was the introduction of a new English Communion Service, which was to be inserted at the end of the Mass, and which required Communion to be given under both kinds. This was soon after followed by a Book of Common Prayer, with a Communion Service entirely taking the place of the Latin Mass. Cranmer was the chief author of this book. Whether it ever received the assent of Convocation has been questioned, but it was approved by Parliament in 1549. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in opposing Cranmer's denial of the Real Presence and of the Sacrifice of the mass, argued that even certain passages in the new Prayer Book implied the acceptance of these doctrines; whereupon Cranmer and his fellow-reformers drew up a new Prayer Book, still more Protestant in tone and character. In it the order of the parts of the Communion Service was considerably altered, and the passages used by Gardiner as apparently favouring the Catholic doctrine were studiously eliminated, or so changed as to preclude in future any such interpretation, and all allusion to Altar or Sacrifice was carefully omitted (Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, 289). In 1552, this, the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, was authorized by Parliament. A new Ordinal or Order for making bishops, priests, and deacons was compiled, from which in like manner all mention of the sacrificial office of the priesthood was rigorously excluded. It was approved by Parliament in 1552. In 1551, quite in harmony with this liturgical reform, an Order in Council issued to Bishop Ridley required the altars to be torn down, and movable tables substituted, while a statement of reasons was to be made to the people explanatory of the change, namely, "that the form of a table may more move and turn the simple from the old superstition of the Mass and to the right use of the Lord's Supper".

Suppression of Catholic practices. — By Royal Proclamations and episcopal visitations, a multitude of Catholic practices and sacramentals, such as lights, incense, holy water, and palms, were suppressed. These reforms, proceeding tentatively but rapidly, were initiated and carried out mainly by Cranmer and his set, and the reflected his beliefs and that of this fellow-reformers.

The 42 Articles. — In 1553, a royal decree was issued requiring the bishops and clergy to subscribe forty-two Articles of Religion which embodied in great part what had been contained in the Thirteen Articles agreed upon with the Germans. The article on the Eucharist had been significantly changed to agree, as Hooper attests, with the teachings of the Swiss reformer, Bullinger.

Third period: Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

In November, 1558, Queen Elizabeth succeeded Queen Mary, and immediately proceeded to restore the work of Henry VIII and Edward VI.

Based on Prayer Book of 1552. — The new settlement of religion was based, not on the First Prayer Book of 1549, but on the more Protestant one of 1552. The latter was adopted with a few slight modifications, and it remains for the most part substantially unchanged to the present day. The statement that Pius IV offered to approve the Prayer Book is devoid of all historical foundation. It has not a vestige of contemporary evidence to support it. Camden, the earliest Anglican historian who mentions it, says: "I never could find it in any writing, and I do not believe any writing of it to exist. To gossip with the mop is unworthy of any historian" (History, 59). Fuller, another Anglican historian, describes it as the mere conjecture "of those who love to feign what they cannot find".

The 39 Articles. — In 1563 the Edwardian Articles were revised in Convocation under Archbishop Parker. Some were added, others altered or dropped, and the number was reduced to Thirty-eight. In 1571, the XXIXth Article, despite the opposition of Bishop Guest, was inserted, to the effect that the wicked do not eat the Body of Christ. The Articles, thus increased to Thirty-nine, were ratified by the Queen, and the bishops and clergy were required to assent and subscribe thereto.

Calvinistic Influence. — During the whole of Elizabeth's long reign, the prevailing tone of Anglican teaching and literature was decidedly Genevan and Calvinistic (Dr. Prothero, English Hist. Rev., October, 1886). In 1662 a reaction set in against Puritanism, and the Prayer Book, which had been suppressed during the Commonwealth, was brought back and subjected to revision in Convocation and Parliament. The amendments made were numerous, but those of doctrinal significance were comparatively few, and of a kind to emphasize the Episcopal character of Anglicanism as against Presbyterianism. The most notable were the reinsertion, with altered wording, of the Black Rubric (omitted by Elizabeth) and the introduction in the form of the words, "for the office of a Bishop" and "for the office of a Priest", in the Service of Ordination.

Anglican Formularies. —

The historic meaning and doctrinal significance of the Anglican formularies can only be determined by the candid and competent examination of the evidence as a whole,

first, by the study of the plain meaning of the text;
secondly, by the study of the historical setting and the circumstances in which they were framed and authorized;
thirdly, by the known beliefs of their chief authors and of those by whom they were accepted;
fourthly, by comparison with the Catholic pre-Reformation formularies which they supplanted;
fifthly, by the study of their sources and the exact value of their doctrinal terminology as found in the controversies of the time;
sixthly—if the examination is not to be hopelessly narrow—by the study of general Reformation in Europe, of which the English Reformation, albeit with local and national characteristics, was both a part and a result.
Here it is only possible to state the conclusions arising from such an inquiry in briefest outline.
Connection with the parent movement of Reformation

There can be no doubt that the English Reformation is substantially a part of the great Protestant Reformation upheaval of the sixteenth century, and that its doctrine, liturgy, and chief promoters were to a very considerable extent derived from, and influenced by, the Lutheran and Calvinistic movements on the Continent.

First bond: personal

There was first of all the living or personal connection. The great English Reformers who took the leading part in the work of Reformation in England — Cranmer, Barlow, Hooper, Parker, Grindal, Scory, May, Cox, Coverdale, and many others—were men who lived and laboured amongst the Protestants of the Continent, and remained in constant and cordial touch and communication with them. (See Original Letters of the Reformation.) Reciprocally, continental reformers, like Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer, were welcomed to England and made professors of Divinity at the universities. Others, like John a Lasco, and Paul Fagius, become the friends and guests of Cranmer.

Second bond: doctrinal

A second bond was the adoption of the same essential doctrines. The great principles and tenets set forth in the works of Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin, or Zwingli, are reproduced with or without modifications, but substantially, and often almost verbatim in the literature of the English Reformation. The chief doctrines which are essentially and specifically characteristic of the Protestant Reformation as a whole are the following nine:

- rejection of the Papacy,
- denial of the Church Infallibility;
- Justification by Faith only;
- supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture as Rule of Faith;
- the triple Eucharistic tenet [viz. (a) that the Eucharist is a Communion or Sacrament, and -not a Mass or Sacrifice, save in the sense of praise or commemoration; (b) the denial of Transubstantiation and worship of the Host; (c) the denial of the sacrificial office of the priesthood and the propitiatory character of the Mass];
- the non-necessity of auricular Confession;
- the rejection of the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints;
- the rejection of Purgatory and omission of prayers for the dead;
- the rejection of the doctrine of Indulgences.

To these may be added three disciplinary characteristics which are founded on doctrine:

- the giving of Communion in both kinds;
- the substitution of tables for altars; and
- the abolition of monastic vows and the celibacy of the clergy.

These twelve doctrines and practices of the continental Reformation have undoubtedly, though not always in the same measure, entered into the fibre of the English Reformation, and have all found expression, more or less emphatic, in the Anglican formularies. Hence, while the name "Protestant" is not found in the Prayer Book, it is used in the Coronation Service when the King promises to maintain "the Protestant religion as by law established". It was from the beginning popularly applied to the Anglican beliefs and services. In the Act of Union the Churches of England and Ireland are styled "the Protestant Episcopal Church", a name still retained by the Anglican Church in America.
Third bond: liturgical

A third bond between the Reformation on the continent and that which took place in England is to be found in the actual composition of the formularies. The Anglican Articles owe much, through the Thirteen Articles, to the Confession of Augsburg, and also to the Confession of Wurtemberg. Notable portions of the baptismal, marriage, and confirmation services are derived from the "Simplex et Pia Deliberatio" which was compiled by the Lutheran Hermann von Wied, with the aid of Bucer and Melanchthon. That a considerable part of the Anglican ordinal (without the distinctive form for each Order) is found in Bucer's "Scripta Anglica", has been pointed out by the late Canon Travers Smith.

Conclusion

In this triple bond—personal, doctrinal, and liturgical — the continental and Anglican Reformations are, amid many and notable differences, substantially and inseparably interwoven as parts of one and the same great religious movement.

Use of liturgical reform to deny the Sacrifice

The comparison of the Anglican Prayer Book and Ordinal with the Pre-Reformation formularies which they replaced leads to a second conclusion which in harmony with the above. On making an analysis of what has been removed, and what has been retained, and what has been altered, it becomes unmistakably apparent that the main motive which determined and guided the construction of the new liturgy was the same as that which inspired the whole Reformation movement, namely: the determination to have the Lord's Supper regarded only as a Sacrament or Communion, and not as a Sacrifice, and to remove whatever indicated the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, or the Real, Objective Presence, in the Catholic sense, in which Christ is worshipped in the Host.

The Catholic liturgical forms, missal, breviary, pontifical, were in possession and had been in actual use for centuries. In making a liturgical reform, it was by the necessity of the case impossible that the changes made should not have reference to them, standing as they did, in the relation of terminus a quo to a terminus ad quem of reformation. If the Sarum Missal, Breviary, and Pontifical are placed side by side with the Anglican Prayer Book and Ordinal, and a comparison made of the corresponding parts, the motive, drift, and intention of the framers are clearly revealed.

In the Catholic Pontifical, in the Ordination services there are twenty-four passages which express with clearness the Catholic Sacerdotium, or sacrificial character of the office and work of the priesthood. Of these not one was allowed to remain in the Anglican Ordinal.
In the Ordinary of the Mass alone there are some twenty-five points in which the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist and the Real Presence of Christ as a Victim are expressed or implied. All these have been suppressed and eliminated in the Anglican Communion Service, and passages of a Reformational or non-committal character substituted.
Thus, with regard to no less than forty-nine places, the new formularies bear the mark of deliberate exclusion and of anti-sacrificial and anti-sacerdotal significance. (See The Tablet, London, 12 June, 1897.)
Development and parties

Although the Anglican Articles and liturgy have been practically unchanged since 1662, it was inevitable that the life and thought of a religious body like the Church of England should present the note of development, and that such development should eventually out grow, or at least strain, the historic interpretation of the formularies, and the more so because there has been no living authority to adapt or readjust them to the newer needs or aspirations. The development may be said to have been guided by three main influences.

There has been the deep-seated attachment to the principles of the Reformation in which the Anglican settlement was founded, and the determination to preserve the standards of belief and worship then established. This loyalty to the Protestant character of the Anglican Church has produced the Low Church, or Evangelical, school of Anglicanism.
A second influence is that of rationalism, which, both in England and in Germany, has acted as a solvent of Protestantism, especially in the form of destructive biblical criticism, and which, often in the effort to sublimate religion, has induced an aversion to all that is dogmatic, supernatural, or miraculous. Its exponents, who are numerous, learned, and influential, are generally classed as the Broad Church, or the Latitudinarian, school of Anglican religious thought.
A third influence which made itself felt upon Anglicanism, and one more vital and more penetrating and progressive than the other two, has been that of Catholicism, whether as reflected in Catholic antiquity or as beheld in the actual Catholic and Roman Church. The effect of this influence may be traced in what has been called the historic High Church party. A number of Anglican bishops and divines in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while bitterly opposed to Rome, and loyally Protestant, stood above the prevailing low level of churchmanship, and put forward higher and philocatholic views, in the matters of Church authority, belief, and worship. Although comparatively few in number, and vehemently assailed by their fellow churchmen, they were destined to serve as a point d'appui for a subsequent development. Such writers as Bishop Andrews (d. 1626), Bishop Overall (d. 1644), Bishop Montague (d. 1641), Archbishop Laud (d. 1644), Archbishop Bramhall (d. 1663), Dr. Thorndike (d. 1672), Bishop Ken (d. 1711), Dr Waterland (d. 1740), may be regarded as representative of this section.
Oxford Movement

(See also OXFORD MOVEMENT.)

In 1833 a strong current of popular opinion directed against the Anglican Church aroused in its defense the zeal of a small band of Oxford students and writers, who gradually gathered under the informal leadership of John Henry Newman. Among these were John Keble, C. Marriott, Hurrell Froude, Isaac Williams, Dr. Pusey, and W.G. Ward. Their object was to make good for the Anglican Church its claim to the note of Catholicity. Their task led them to look both behind and outside the sphere of the Reformation.

By forming a catena of Anglican High Church divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on one side, and a catena of certain Fathers on the other, it was hoped that a quasi-continuous chain of Catholic tradition could be made to connect the Anglican Church of their day with Catholic antiquity. Translations of the Fathers, works on liturgy, the festivals of the "Christian Year", and above all a memorable series of "Tracts for the Times", conveyed with telling force the newer and broader conceptions of churchmanship which entered into the spirit of the defenders.

In "Tract 90" an attempt was made, somewhat on the lines of Sancta Clara, to show that the Anglican Articles might in certain aspects be reconciled to the teaching of the Council of Trent. The result was a doctrinal and devotional crisis such as England had not witnessed since the Reformation, and the Oxford or Tractarian movement, during the twelve years from Keble's sermon on "National Apostasy", in 1833, to Newman's conversion in 1845, formed a historic epoch in the annals of Anglicanism. The fact that the work of the movement was informally a study de Ecclesiâ brought both the writers and their readers more directly face to face with the claims of the Church of Rome.

A large number of those who took part in the movement, and notably its great leader, became Catholics, while others, in remaining Anglicans, gave a new and pro-Catholic direction and impulse to Anglican thought and worship. It may be said that in the case of Newman, Oakley, Wilberforce, Ward, and a host of others, the research of the nature of Catholicity and the rule of faith brought them to realize the need of the living voice of a Divine magisterium (the regula proxima fidei), and failing to find it in the Anglican episcopate, they sought it where alone it could be found.

Others, like Pusey, Marriott, Keble, sought what they called the voice of the "Church" in the inanimate formularies (or regula remota) which, after all, was merely adding the Fathers, the liturgies, and conciliar definitions to the Scripture as the area over which they still used, after the manner of true Protestants, their private judgement. The same principle is always more or less at work and goes as far now as then to sift those who come from those who stay. [If we bear in mind that by "Church" was thus meant the silent self-interpreted formularies (or regula remota), and by "Bishops" the living magisterium (or regula proxima) sought in Anglicanism, we shall feel that there is a great truth contained in Pusey's well-known saying, three years after the secession of Newman: "I am not disturbed, because I never attached any weight to bishops. It was perhaps the difference between Newman and me. He threw himself upon the bishops and they failed him. I threw myself on the English Church and the Fathers, as under God, her support" (Letter to C. Marriott, 2 January, 1848)].

Anglican revival

Although the Oxford movement is regarded as having come to a close at the conversion of Dr. Newman in 1845, a large section of the Anglican public had been much too profoundly stirred by its ideals ever to return to the narrowness of the religious horizons which were bounded by the Reformation. Its influence has survived in the unceasing flow of converts to the Catholic Faith, and is shown in the Anglican Church itself by the notable change of belief, temperament, and practice which is known as the Anglican Revival.

The last fifty years (1860-1910) have witnessed the development of an influential and growing school of religious thought which, amid the inconsistencies of its position, has steadily laboured to Catholicize the Church of England. It has set up the claim, hopelessly untenable in the face of historical evidence, that the Anglican Church is one and continuous with the Ancient Catholic Church of the country, and is an integral portion of the Catholic Church of today. It professes to be able to give to Anglicans all that the Catholic Church gives to her members, save communion with the Holy See. Through possessing neither the learning nor the logic of the Tractarians, it exercises a wider and more practical influence, and has won the favour of a large body of the Anglican public by importing into the Anglican services something of the beauty and power which it has borrowed from Catholic teaching and ritual. At the same time it has in many centers earned the respect and attachment of the masses by the example of zeal and self-sacrifice given by its clergy.

It was natural that this advance section of the Anglican Church should seek to ratify its position, and to escape from its fatal isolation, by desiring some scheme of corporate reunion and especially by endeavouring to obtain some recognition of the validity of its orders. With the truest charity, which consists in the candour of truth, Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical on Unity, pointed out that there can be no reunion expect on the solid basis of dogmatic unity and submission to the divinely instituted authority of the Apostolic See. In September, 1896, after a full and exhaustive inquiry, he issued a Bull declaring Anglican Orders to be "utterly null and void", and in a subsequent Brief addressed to the Archbishop of Paris, he required all Catholics to accept this judgment as "fixed, settled, and irrevocable" (firmum, ratum et irrevocabile).

The Anglican Revival continues to reiterate its claim and to appropriate to itself, where practical, whatever in Catholic doctrine, liturgy, and practice, church vestments or church furniture, it finds helpful to its purpose. By the Lambeth judgment of 1891 it acquired a public sanction for many of its innovations. Since then it has gone further, and holds that no authority in the Church of England can override things which are authorized by "Catholic consent". It stands thus in the illogical and unhistorical position of a system which is philocatholic in its views and aspirations, but hopelessly committed to heresy and to heretical communication, and built upon an essentially Protestant foundation. Although to Catholics its very claim is an impious usurpation of what belongs of right to the Catholic Church alone, it fulfils an informal mission of influencing English public opinion, and of familiarizing the English people with Catholic doctrines and ideals.

Like the Oxford movement, it educates more pupils than it can retain, and works upon premises which cannot but carry it in the long run farther than it is willing to go. A branch theory which is repudiated by the principal branches, or a province theory which is unknown to the rest of the provinces, and a continuity theory of which more than twelve thousand documents in the Record Office and the Vatican Library are the overwhelming refutation, cannot form a standing ground which is other than temporary and transitional. In the meantime, its work amongst the masses is often a species of catechumenate for Catholicism, and in all cases it is an active solvent and a steady undoing of the English Reformation.

Statistics

The number of Catholics in the world (1910) is said to exceed 230,000,000 (estimates by M. Fournier de Flaix, see The American Statistical Association Quarterly for March 1892). The number belonging to the Greek and Eastern Churches is about 100,000,000. The number of Anglicans in all countries is something less than 25,000,000. Thus the relative proportion of those three Christian bodies which are sometimes grouped as being Episcopalian in constitution may be fairly stated by the three figures 23, 10, 2.5. The growth of Anglicanism has followed mainly upon the expansion of the Anglo-Saxon race. Its area may be said to include, besides the three nucleal countries (England, Ireland, Scotland), six others, namely: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India. But the bulk of its membership, in fact more than two-thirds, is to be found in England. In all the other countries of its areas it is in a minority of the Christian population. In five of them—Ireland, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and India — its numbers are considerably exceeded by those of the Catholic Church. Its foreign missions are very generously supported, and have extended their activity far into the heathen countries. The following table is compiled from comparatively recent statistics. The numbers given are of members, except when it is stated to be of communicants. The ratio of communicants to members may be anything between 1 in 3 and 1 in 8.

COUNTRY TOTAL CHRISTIAN POPULATION NUMBER OF ANGLICANS
England 32,526,075 Between 13 and 17 millions or 2,223,207 communicants
Ireland 4,458,775 81,089
Scotland 4,472,103 134,155 (Epis. Ch of Scotland — Year Book, 1906)
United States 76,303,387 823,066 communicants
Canada 5,371,051 680,346
Australia 3,774,282 1,256,673
New Zealand 772,719 315,263
South Africa 1,135,735 Under 300,000 or 48,487 communicants
India 2,923,241 453,462

The foregoing statistics concerning the Christian population of England and her dependencies are, with the exception of Australia and New Zealand, taken from the Census, 1901 (British Empire Official Year Book, which is also to be consulted for the Anglican population of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, and India). The figures for the Christian populations of Australia, in 1901, and New Zealand are given respectively in "Whitaker's Almanac", 1906, which includes 6,851 aborigines, and the "New Zealand year Book", 1904, which excludes the Maoris. The Christian population of the United States is based on the Abstract of the twelfth Census, and that of South Africa on the European population, 1904, as contained in "Whitaker's Almanac", 1906. For several decades there has been no return of religious denominations in the British Government Census. The Church of England is popularly estimated to include about 17,000,000. Its official "Year Book" (1906), which is also the authority for the number of communicants in the United States and South Africa, gives the number of communicants in England, as 2,223,207. This multiplied by 6 would give a membership of 13,339,242. The same authority give the number of baptisms as 615,621. This, upon the usual multiple of 22.5, would give a membership of 13,860,000. The number belonging to the Church of England would thus seem to be between thirteen and seventeen millions. For the number of Anglicans in Australia in 1901, refer again to "Whitaker's Almanac", 1906.

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