affirmed it in the days of Pope Gregory, It re-affirmed its adherence to every doctrine[12] held by the undivided Church, without adding thereto, or taking therefrom.

Then, it denied something. It denied the right of foreigners to interfere in purely English affairs; it denied the right of the Bishop of one National Church to exercise his power in another National Church; it denied the claim of the Bishop of Rome to exercise jurisdiction over the Archbishop of Canterbury; it denied the power of any one part of the Church to impose local decisions, or local dogmas, upon any other part of the Church.

Thus, the Reformation both affirmed and denied. It affirmed the constitutional rights of the Church as against the unconstitutional claims of the Pope, and it denied the unconstitutional claims of the State as against the constitutional rights of the Church.

Much more, very much more, "for weal or for woe," it did. It had to buy its experience. The Reformation was not born grown up. It made its mistakes, as every growing movement will do. It is still growing, still making mistakes, still purging and pruning itself as it grows; and it is still asserting its right to reform itself where it has gone wrong, and to return to the old ideal where it has departed from it. And this old ideal is wrapped up in the sixth name:—

(VI) THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

Re-formation must be based upon its original formation if it would aim at real reform. It is not necessarily a mechanical imitation of the past, but a genuine portrait of the permanent. It is, then, to the Primitive Church that we must look for the principles of reformation. If the meaning of a will is contested years after the testator's death, reference will be made, as far as possible, to the testator's contemporaries, or to writings which might best interpret his intentions. This is what the English Reformers of the sixteenth century tell us that they did. They refer perpetually to the past; over and over again they send us to the "ancient fathers,"[13] as to those living and writing nearest to the days when the Church was established, and as most likely to know her mind. They go back to what the "Commination Service" calls "The Primitive Church". This "Primitive Church" is the Reformed Church now established in England. The Reformers themselves never meant it to be anything else, and would have been the first to protest against the unhistoric, low, and modern use of the word "established". In this sense, they would have been the sturdiest of sturdy "Protestants".

And this word Protestant reminds us that there is one more name frequently given to the Church of England, but not included in our scheme, because found nowhere in the Prayer Book.

THE PROTESTANT CHURCH.

The term is a foreign one—not English. It comes from Germany and was given to the Lutherans in 1529, because they protested against an edict[14] forbidding them to regulate their own local ecclesiastical affairs, pending the decision of a General Council.

It had nothing whatever to do with "protesting" against ceremonial. The ceremonial of the Church in Lutheran Germany is at least as carefully elaborated as that seen in the majority of English churches.

Later on, the term was borrowed from the Germans by the English, and applied to Churchmen who protested (1) against doctrines held exclusively by Rome on the one hand, and by Lutherans and Calvinists on the other; and (2) against claims made by the King over the rights and properties of the Church. Later still, it has been applied to those who protest against the ancient interpretation of Prayer-Book teaching on the Sacraments and Ceremonial.

There is, it is true, a sense in which the name is fairly used to represent the views of all loyal English Churchmen. Every English Churchman protests against anything unhistoric or uncatholic. The Church of England does protest against anything imposed by one part of the Church on any other part of the Church, apart from the consent of the whole Church. It does protest against the claims of Italy or of any other nation to rule England, or to impose upon us, as de fide, anything exclusively Roman. In this sense, Laud declared upon the scaffold that he died "a true Protestant"; in this sense, Nicholas Ferrar, founder of a Religious House in Huntingdonshire, called himself a Protestant; in this sense, we are all Protestants, and in this sense we are not ashamed of our unhistoric name.

In these Prayer-Book names, then, we see (1) that the Church on earth is a society, established in the Upper Chamber on the Day of Pentecost; (2) that it was established to be the ordained and ordinary channel through which God saves and sanctifies fallen man; (3) that, in order to accomplish this, and for business and administrative purposes, the Church Catholic establishes itself in national centres; (4) that one such national centre is England; and (5) that this Pentecostal Church established in England is the Church which "Christ loved," the Sponsa Christi, the "Bride of Christ":—

Elect from every nation,
Yet one all o'er the Earth.

[1] Eph. v. 25.

[2] The primary meaning of the word Catholic seems to refer to world-wide extension. St. Augustine teaches that it means "Universal" as opposed to particular, and says that "The Church is called Catholic because it is spread throughout the whole world". St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: "The Church is called Catholic because it extends throughout the whole world, from one end of the Earth to the other," and he adds, "because it teaches universally all the doctrines which men ought to know" ("Catechetical Lectures," xviii. 23).

[3] "Foul fall the day," writes Mr. Gladstone, "when the persons of this world shall, on whatever pretext, take into their uncommissioned hands the manipulation of the religion of our Lord and Saviour."

[4] Service for "The Ordering of Priests".

[5] There was, of course, an ancient British Church long before the sixth century, and there is evidence that it existed in the middle of the second century. It sent bishops to the Council of Arles in