INTRODUCTORY.

THE title of this work explains its object.

It is to demonstrate the essential Protestantism of the Book of Common Prayer, and to give to loyal Churchmen a series of reasons for their honest attachment to the Church of England. The word Protestant is a term of which no Churchman should be ashamed; and he who sneers at her Protestantism, may well be suspected of disloyalty to the Church. No one can read the history of the Reformation without recognizing the fact that the Church of England is nothing if not Protestant. Not only her Articles, but all the services of the Prayer Book were drawn up by Protestants in the true sense, and intended for the establishment of Protestantism. While we rejoice in the Catholicity of the Church of England, and recognize with gladness the fact that she is a true branch of the one holy Catholic Church, which she herself has defined to be "the blessed company of all faithful people," we also know that her very being is essentially and continuously a living protest against the falsities of Rome, and not only that, but against all forms of error, practical and doctrinal, Unitarian, Socinian, Pelagian, Arian.

The Church of England is Protestant, not merely in that she presents a powerful disclaimer both in her Articles and Liturgy against the perversions of Popery, but Protestant equally in her standing protest against other forms of error, which, by negation or subtraction, have perverted the truth. It is, however, in the former sense, which is the common understanding of the term Popery or Romanism, that is, in the sense of protest against Roman corruptions in doctrine, and

Romish trivialities in ritual, that the word Protestant is mainly employed in this work.

No one can question the Protestantism of the Church in the days of the Reformation, and for the next one hundred and thirty years. To abhor all Popery as sin; to detest the Pope as the incarnation of falsity; to regard with distrust the priests of the Roman Church; to dread, like poison, the name of the Jesuit, were unfailing characteristics of all sound Churchmen.

At certain periods this spirit waxed stronger, and the Church of England was not only Protestant, it was ultraProtestant.

In the days of the Reformation, and those immediately succeeding, the language of Reformers and representative divines, the statements of authoritative documents, and the common employment of expressive terms, set forth this ultra-Protestantism with the strongest proofs; and Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and Jewel, all speak of Rome as the seat of Satan, Babylon, or the whore of Babylon, and the Pope as the Antichrist, or the man of sin. The Homilies on the Peril of Idolatry, on Repentance, and for Whitsunday, exhibit the same detestation of Rome; and as to the use of expressive terms, it is a matter of notoriety that no Churchman scrupled to employ the words Romish, Papal, Popery, and Papist. In fact, the words Popery and Papist were almost uniformly used in reference to Romanists and the Church of Rome.

In the days of William and Mary, and for many years subsequently, the attitude of English Churchmen was unchanged. The revolution of 1688, which put them on the throne, was essentially a Protestant revolution. William of Orange sailed to England because a Popish king had attempted to subjugate the kingdom to the thraldom of Popery. He was acknowledged sovereign by the Estates

because England's Church was a Protestant Church, and England was a Protestant kingdom. This it was also that produced the strong denunciation of that doctrine and position that princes deprived by the Pope, or on authority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, as impious, heretical, and damnable; that no foreign prince, person, or prelate, hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, supremacy, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm; and that every person who is or shall be reconciled to the Church of Rome, or shall hold communion with the See or Church of Rome, shall be for ever incapable to inherit, possess, or enjoy the crown,-statutes which, it is almost needless to remind English Churchmen, have never been repealed. In those days pride in the Church of England, as a Protestant Church, was almost universal. It was confined to no one party or school of thought.

Coming down to a later period, we find that, even at the beginning of this century, the staunch old High Churchmen abhorred the Pope as the man of sin, and regarded Popery as the nation's irreconcilable foe. The late Professor J. A. Froude, in a recent interesting article on the Oxford movement, tells how his father, a rector of the old-fashioned High Church type, trained his boys up in the idea that the Pope was Antichrist, and the Reformers worthy of all honour. The Church was Protestant through and through, and the use of the word Protestant in popular connection with the Church of England was as common as the word Catholic in connection with the Church of Rome.

And naturally.

For the very name given to the Church of England in the statutes of the realm is that of the Protestant Episcopal Church; Protestant is the proper adjective by which her Archbishops and Bishops are described; and the religion held and taught by her is the Protestant religion. In the great constitutional

enactment of Queen Anne's reign, 1706, by which England and Scotland were united, it was stipulated that there should be no "alteration of the worship, discipline, and government of the Church of this Kingdom (the Church of England) as now by law established." And that there might be no mistake as to the true nature of the religion of the Church of England it is declared to be "the true Protestant religion,” and Her Majesty with the advice and consent of Parliament "doth hereby establish and confirm the said true Protestant Religion, and the Worship, Government, and Discipline of this Church to continue without any alteration to the people of this land in all succeeding generations. (See Miller's "Guide to Ecclesiastical Law." Shaw, 5th Edit., p. 78.) In the legislative enactment which secured the union of England and Ireland in 1800, the fifth article declares "that the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united in one Protestant Episcopal Church," and in the twenty-fourth section of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the Church of England is called the "Protestant Episcopal Church."

And, to give an equally conclusive instance, the act for the establishment of the coronation oath provides that the Sovereign of the Realm shall be solemnly asked by the Archbishop or Bishop at the time of the coronation : "Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?" and shall answer All this I promise to do."

We see then that Protestantism was so universally and so unquestionably the foremost characteristic of the Church of England that not only in popular language, but in the careful and stereotyped phraseology of the laws of the Realm, the Church of England is known as the Protestant Church, and the religion of the Established Church as the Protestant

religion. Just as the Church of Rome is described both in popular and technical language by the two most descriptive adjectives Roman and Catholic, so the Church of England is described by those two adjectives which express her distinguishing and essential features, Protestant and Episcopal. As a further illustration of this it may be also pointed out that a great branch of the Church of England, once a daughter, now a sister, a Church identical with her, in all but a few minor details, in doctrine, orders, and discipline, and always considered as a branch of the Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church in the United States, bears as a Church the title of Protestant. The Church which is, to all intents and purposes, the Church of England in the United States, has been and to-day is the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States. Surely these facts are sufficient to account for the universal connection of the adjective Protestant with the Church of England.

About fifty years ago, more or less, a change, however, began to creep over the spirit of the English Church. Very quietly, very gradually, but very surely, the bitterness of the anti-Roman feeling, the "Protestant prejudice," as Newman termed it, began to wear away. The word catholic, which was formerly, and, we confess, in an entirely unwarranted manner, exclusively arrogated by the Romanists, began to be applied to certain Churchmen. The doctrines of the

Church of Rome, which were formerly held in such honest abhorrence, began to be respected, admired, and even publicly proclaimed, in the Church of England. The words Popery, Papist, and Papacy, began to be gently laid aside as oppressive, abusive, and unreasonable. The practices of the Church of Rome, which were formerly abhorred, and by the Church at the Reformation completely cast aside, began to be stealthily advocated, and soon openly performed. A retrograde movement was taking place, and doctrines,