on implied a great many more points of
agreement than were found in those very Articles which were
fundamental. If the two Churches were thus the same in fundamentals,
they were also one and the same in such plain consequences as are
contained in those fundamentals or as outwardly represented them.
It was an Anglican principle that "the abuse of a thing doth not
take away the lawful use of it;" and an Anglican Canon in 1603 had
declared that the English Church had no purpose to forsake all that
was held in the Churches of Italy, France, and Spain, and reverenced
those ceremonies and particular points which were apostolic.
Excepting then such exceptional matters, as are implied in this
avowal, whether they were many or few, all these Churches were
evidently to be considered as one with the Anglican. The Catholic
Church in all lands had been one from the first for many centuries;
then, various portions had followed their own way to the injury, but
not to the destruction, whether of truth or of charity. These
portions or branches were mainly three:--the Greek, Latin, and
Anglican. Each of these inherited the early undivided Church _in
solido_ as its own possession. Each branch was identical with that
early undivided Church, and in the unity of that Church it had unity
with the other branches. The three branches agreed together in _all
but_ their later accidental errors. Some branches had retained in
detail portions of apostolical truth and usage, which the others had
not; and these portions might be and should be appropriated again by
the others which had let them slip. Thus, the middle age belonged to
the Anglican Church, and much more did the middle age of England.
The Church of the twelfth century was the Church of the nineteenth.
Dr. Howley sat in the seat of St. Thomas the Martyr; Oxford was
a medieval University. Saving our engagements to Prayer Book and
Articles, we might breathe and live and act and speak, in the
atmosphere and climate of Henry III.'s day, or the Confessor's, or of
Alfred's. And we ought to be indulgent of all that Rome taught now,
as of what Rome taught then, saving our protest. We might boldly
welcome, even what we did not ourselves think right to adopt. And,
when we were obliged on the contrary boldly to denounce, we should do
so with pain, not with exultation. By very reason of our protest,
which we had made, and made _ex animo_, we could agree to differ.
What the members of the Bible Society d