Anglican Church

“ Even to the conscientious Anglican himself, though he regards the members of other bodies as in schism, Christian fellowship with individuals in those other bodies is still possible; and certainly those who reject the Anglican view of the ministry can regard the Anglican Church as a genuine and very noble member in the body of Christ. ”

“ A love of order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a middle path between what a seventeenth-century divine called 'the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.' A keen sense of honour and respect for personal uprightness, a hatred of cruelty and treachery, created and long maintained in the English Church an intense repugnance against the priestcraft of the Roman hierarchy, feelings which have only died down because the bitter memories of the sixteenth century have at last become dim. ”

“ I can say, with a personal and perfect knowledge, that no other feeling has ever arisen in His Eminence's mind, in contemplating the troubles of the Anglican Church, than a sincere desire that God may use these things to open the eyes of men to see the untenableness of their positions; coupled with a very sincere sorrow at the havoc which the advance of unbelief is making among the truths which yet linger in the Church of England. ”

“ For the protestants are not of the Anglican Church because it is the true church from which there can be no appeal; but because the discipline of this church is conformable to their present imaginations. And as soon as it shall run counter or swerve from it, they will embrace almost the first congregation of those whose discipline and religion accord at that time with their opinions. Thus, accepting this doctrine, there is no other church nor any other interpretation of Scripture than that which each extravagant individual shall hit upon in his brain. ”

“ An Anglican church,—nationally independent, without giving up its connexion with the reformed churches of the continent, and reformed, without however letting fall the ancient forms of episcopacy,—in accordance with the ideal, as it was originally understood, was at length, after a hard schooling of trials, struggles, and disasters, really set on foot. ”

“ It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon many of its higher intellects. ”

“ The Anglican Church, a fabric of policy compounded of Catholicism without a Pope and Biblical Protestantism, was in the throes of a struggle between those two elements, largely antiquarian and of little importance compared with the vital question as to the evidences of revelation and the divinity of Christ. ”

“ This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman communion, but has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may be doubted without sin by members of the Greek or Anglican Churches. What we need to avoid, as the Lambeth Conference has reminded us, is a purely insular and provincial attitude in relation to doctrines which have not been formally set forth by Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried its best to impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic Church. ”

“ The Anglican theory of an inspired but occasionally corrupt and lying church is just as well supported as the Anglican's faith in the Trinity. What right have the members of the Alliance to decide that this dogma is a matter of faith, and that other is only a matter of opinion? All the contradictory doctrines, they tell us, are found in the Bible. Who has the right to decide which are binding upon the conscience, and which are open to individual choice ”

“ That the Roman Church occupies in England to-day a position more favourable than in almost any nation on the Continent, and better than it occupied in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is due in large measure to the general influence of the movement with which we have been dealing. The Anglican Church was at the beginning of the nineteenth century preponderantly evangelical, low-church and conscious of itself as Protestant. ”

“ The Anglican Church retains only the Biblical symbolism of “the blessing of the hand.” Presbyterians and other Protestant churches have abandoned the use, except the Lutherans. We need not here trace the history of Christian worship, in daily services (Acts ii. 46) , or on the Lord’s Day (Acts xx. 7) , meeting for the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. xi. 17-34) , or for mutual edification in prayer, praise and prophecy (1 Cor. xiv.) . These things represent the ideal of Christendom. In the words of an eminent Roman Catholic scholar, Monsignor Duchesne, “Faith unites, theology often separates.” ”

“ Of these the Anglican Church held most closely to the tradition of Catholic organization; but she has never made any higher claim than to be one of “the three branches of the Catholic Church,” a claim repudiated by Rome and never formally admitted by the Church of the East. The Protestant churches established on the continent, even where—as in the case of the Lutherans—they approximate more closely than the official Anglican Church to Roman doctrine and practice, make no such claim. The Bible is for them the real source of authority in doctrine ”

“ This idea the Anglican Church has deliberately renounced, while the Nonconformists have upheld it. The constitution of the Establishment is distinctly not by the Spirit, but by the letter of legal documents; and those in whom the Spirit stirs new energies, and moves to new agencies, have no choice but to pass outside her pale. ”

“ In fact, no one acquainted with the state of this kingdom and the disposition of the people could entertain a different opinion; but, in spite of all, he hoped that, with your majesty's assistance, the great enterprise would be successful. The Presbyterians and other dissenters are still more averse to the Anglican Church than to the Catholic. All that these sectaries want is the free exercise of their own form of worship; and provided they get that—and his majesty purposes to give it them—they will not oppose his change of religion. ”

“ The Anglican Church is content with the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, but in recent times the bishops have appointed lay-readers, licensed to read prayers and preach in buildings which are not consecrated. ”

“ We shall next consider the Anglican Church, whose complete independence from the papacy, it will be remembered, was established by Henry VIII of England, and whose doctrinal position had been defined in the Thirty-nine Articles of Elizabeth's reign. It was the state Church of England, Ireland, and Wales, and had scattering adherents in Scotland and in the British colonies. Like the Roman Catholic Church in France, the Anglican Church enjoyed in the British Isles, excepting Scotland, special privileges, great wealth, and the collection of tithes from Anglicans and non-Anglicans alike. ”

“ The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms, by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it preaches, is, `By taste are ye saved.' It keeps the old structures in repair, spends a world of money in music and building ”

“ And next I cannot deny, what must be ever a very sore point with Anglicans, that, if any Anglican comes to me after careful thought and prayer, and with deliberate purpose, and says, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and that your Church and yours alone is it, and I demand admittance into it," it would be the greatest of sins in me to reject such a man, as being a distinct contravention of our Lord's maxim, "Freely ye have received, freely give." ”

“ The effect of his policy was to narrow the bounds of the church, but within the limits that he assigned it he made the Anglican establishment a stubbornly powerful and homogeneous organisation which proved capable a few years later of maintaining its existence against what seemed to be overwhelming odds. ”

“ A man had to choose whether he would adhere to the old, or adopt the new form of faith—whether he would remain staunch to the reformed Anglican Church, or cast in his lot with the Puritans, or with one or other of the rising sects,—whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism most conformed to his ideas of Church government. ”

“ Now, for three hundred years the Anglican clergy have been trained, ordained, and bound by subscriptions to deny not only many Christian truths, but the divine authority of the the living Church of every age. The barrier against infidelity is the divine voice which generates faith. ”

“ This is the land of sects. An Englishman is a free man, and goes to Heaven by any road he pleases.
But although anybody may serve God after his own fashion, their true religion, the one in which fortunes are made, is the Episcopal sect, called the Anglican Church, or, simply and pre-eminently, the Church. No office can be held in England or Ireland except by faithful Anglicans; a circumstance which has led to the conversion of many Noncomformists.
The Anglican clergy have retained many Catholic ceremonies, 278 above all that of receiving tithes with a most scrupulous attention. ”

“ There remain to be considered the Anglican Establishment—this being the church to which belongs the writer who accuses the Catholic Church of having changed in faith, and deprived her children of their moral and mental freedom—and the newest sect of all, namely, the so-called Old Catholics, owing to the same writer’s admiration of those who figure in its ranks. ”

“ There may be those, and I do not question there are many such good persons, who do not feel the deep demands of the spiritual nature as profoundly as others do, and that the Anglican Church fully satisfes all their needs. ”

“ Naturally, the distinguished authoress turned her attention first to the Anglican Church, the most cultured and liberal of the Christian communities. Evangelical dissent cannot at present be said to be interesting, at any rate from the point of view we are considering to-day. It is destitute of the historic associations of Anglicanism, and has been, until very recently, identified with ideals little suggestive of the intellectual or the beautiful. It can scarcely be said to lend itself to effective dramatic or artistic treatment. ”

“ The head of the Anglican Church, when in England she worshipped with Anglicans only; but when in Scotland she no less regularly repaired to the Presbyterian Kirk, and only a few months ago gave expression to her warm appreciation of the work done for God and man by "The people called Methodists." She would tolerate no intolerance (p. 275) in things pertaining to godliness, and on her Jubilee Day insisted that all creeds should be invited to join in one common act of worship. ”

“ It was founded in 1844 in opposition to the Tractarian movement, and embodies the distinctively evangelical elements of the Reformation. It preserves and maintains to the letter all that is Protestant and evangelical in the liturgy and services of the Anglican church, while its free constitution and revised formularies meet the needs of members of that communion who resent sacerdotal and ritualistic tendencies. ”

“ From those various causes a High Church spirit is showing itself far beyond both sections of the clergy who have identified themselves with Anglican movements, and, in fact, is more or less affecting all parties. ”

“ With regard to the Anglican clergy, it may be observed that the state church of England is almost entirely for the benefit of the aristocracy, which sees its younger sons enter her “orders” all the more gladly because their subsistence is thus provided for without the patrimony of the head of the family being much diminished—the children of the aristocracy thus aiding to maintain an institution to which in a great measure its influence is owing. As to the German Protestant clergy, they are neither so influential nor so respected as the Anglican. ”

“ There is in the Church of England an hereditary antipathy to the Catholic Church, which is evinced in its Articles, more fully developed in its Homilies, and sustained in the writings not only of the first reformers, but of all the succession of Anglican divines, with scarcely an exception, no matter how much they may have differed among themselves in their several schools of religious opinion. ”