ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY;

No. 8,

PROTESTANTISM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

(THE HOMILIES AND LITURGY.)

LONDON-JACKSON AND WALFORD.

The Church of England-along with the Fathers, asserts the Sole Autho

rity of the Canonical Scriptures

423

The Church of England rejects Ancient, as well as Romish Corruptions 469 The Liturgy-Protestant.

489

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY,

&c. &c.

ROMANISM, and nothing else, has become the subject of the great argument which the Oxford Tract writers have originated. Candour now scarcely demands that the alleged distinction between the Anglo-catholic Church System, and the Faith and Worship of the Tridentine council, should any longer be much regarded. This difference, be it what it may, affects no fundamental principle; and whatever it might once amount to, it is at this moment vanishing like a mist, at sunrise.

By an inevitable process of absorption, operating on the one side, or on the other, the very persons, notable as they may be, who have hitherto stood so boldly forward as the harbingers of a new era, are threatened with annihilation, as leaders; and, whether they retain their places in the Church by a compromise of principle; or preserve consistency in retreating, they can no longer guide the movement of the times; but must follow it.

The position occupied by these divines, and their adherents, within the pale of the REFORMED CHURCH OF ENGLAND, has become, and is becoming intolerable :-intolerable, we may presume, to themselves ;-and most distressing to those who contemplate it. A painful emotion is excited, even by witnessing from a distance, the self-inflicted martyrdom of men who, deserving high respect, as they do, on many grounds, are seen clinging to a Protestant Church, as if on the floor of a furnace, around which, and beneath and above, the fire is raging.