Church of England

“ It is not a particular sect or opinion that we contend for, but the very being of a Church and of religion. Whether there shall be any faith that shall oblige to our own hindrance? Whether religion, which ought to add to its sacredness, shall be made a pretence for violating it? Whether our Holy Mother, the Church of England, which hath been famous for her loyalty, shall now be as infamous for her apostacy? Whether there be any understanding men who, in this incredulous age, can find in their hearts to venture the greatest worldly interest for their religion ”

“ We have not yet lost our right in the nineteenth century to think of the Church of England as a continuous, historic, religious society, bound by ties which, however strained, are still unbroken with that vast Christendom from which as a matter of fact it sprung, and still, in spite of all differences, external and internal, and by force of its traditions and institutions, as truly one body as anything can be on earth. ”

“ The Church of Rome sends her children neither to the Bible alone, nor to tradition alone; nor yet to the Bible and tradition conjointly, but to an infallible living expositor: which expositor sometimes limits, and sometimes extends, and sometimes contradicts, both the written word and the language of Christian antiquity. The Church of England steers a middle course. She reveres the Scripture: she respects tradition. She encourages investigation: but she checks presumption. She bows to the authority of ages: but she owns no living master upon earth. ”

“ Farewell, dear England; farewell the Church of God in England. We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, but we go to practise the positive part of Church reformation and to propagate the Gospel in America. ”

“ As to my principles in religion, to be as brief as I can, I declare myself to be a member of Christ’s church, which I take to be a universal society of all Christian people, distributed under lawful governors and pastors into particular churches, holding communion with each other in all the essentials of the Christian faith, worship, and discipline; and among these I look upon the Church of England to be the chief and best constituted. ”

“ That is to say, that men bitterly opposed to the Church of England should legislate for the Church, and order its rites and ceremonies and teaching, without Churchmen having a chance of explaining the meaning of their customs. ”

“ The old Church of England enjoys advantages which may not be at first sight evident, but which are most real and powerful, in the manner in which its formularies, its ancient Catholic prayers and canticles, its forcible versions, its baptismal, marriage, and burial services, have sunk into the hearts of the general people, and moulded their tone of thought, even at second hand with those who voluntarily hold off from public communion with the Church. In the long run, its appeal to popular instincts against popular passions would, we believe, be successful ”

“ The so-called High Church people emphatically insist that there is no break in the continuity of the Church of England, and that the modern Anglicanism is a direct descendant of the old British Church. ”

“ After a century of effort, the expenditure of many noble lives, as well as of some millions of money, the Church of England, extraordinary to say, has signally failed to establish one solitary or single native church in any part of the world—that is to say, a church self-governed, self-supporting and expanding, or exhibiting any true signs of vitality as a church. ”

“ It is time indeed, that the Church of England should awake to a sense of her responsibilities towards the East, from which she first received a knowledge of Christ, and to emulate the zeal of the Independents, whose large band of missionaries, extensive scholastic establishments, and sumptuous residences, betoken an earnestness and liberality worthy of our imitation. ”

“ Then thirdly, there is a yet vaster multitude, baptised, married, and buried, perhaps by the Church, and therefore counting themselves Church of England, but who come but rarely within the orbit of Church life and teaching; and who, not to mince words, are semi-pagan. Only semi-pagan because the ethics, morals and traditions of England are Christian; and these people, knowing little of Jesus Christ, and understanding less, and not consciously moved by Him, yet not infrequently rise to heights of love and sacrifice which would adorn the life of a saint. ”

“ Was it wonderful when men were told that the Church of England was no place for them, that they were breaking their vows and violating solemn engagements by acting as its ministers, and that in order to preserve the respect of honest men they should leave it—that the question of change, far off as it had once seemed, came within "measurable distance"? ”

“ In the Church of England, with which I was first connected—inducted into it when a boy, or rather a child—they have not only ministers to read their prayers, but clerks to say amen for them, so that the people have literally nothing to do but go to meeting. ”

“ Nevertheless, though every one is permitted to serve God in whatever mode or fashion he thinks proper, yet their true religion, that in which a man makes his fortune, is the sect of Episcopalians or Churchmen, called the Church of England, or simply the Church, by way of eminence. ”

“ We know that in these early days the British or the Celtic Church had erected many Churches, and held Councils for considering ecclesiastical affairs. Although we see that the Gospel has a good footing in Britain now, we cannot hold out the hope that it continued to spread and flourish. The Christian movement was very often hidden behind black clouds. ”

“ I cannot, indeed, see how any member of the Church of England can consistently maintain either from Holy Scripture, ancient ecclesiastical history, or the history of his own Church, that laymen are quite shut out from councils debating questions touching Christian faith, and that their consideration must be limited to bishops, or at least clergymen alone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Church of England, mainly from its deficiency of oriental knowledge, and from a misconception of the priestly character which has been the consequence of that want, has fallen of late years into great straits; nor has there ever been a season when it has more needed for its guides men possessing the higher qualities both of intellect and disposition. ”

“ Not High Churchmen only, but all who desired to see the existing character of the Church of England maintained, had cause to fear lest under a monarch to whom all forms of Protestantism were alike, and who regarded all from a political and somewhat sceptical point of view, ideas very alien to those which had given the National Church its shape and colour might now become predominant. ”