Search -
Where the Protestant Episcopal Church stands
Where the Protestant Episcopal Church stands Author:Edward McCrady Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill OTHER DECLARATIONS, OFFICIAL AND NON-OFFICIAL chapter{Section 4Ill' OTHER DECLARATIONS, OFFICIAL AND NON-OFFICIAL IT will be observed that the f... more »oregoing evidence has all been gathered from official declarations of the Church of England herself or from acts and utterances officially endorsed by her. We have purposely refrained from quoting any passages of a private nature, even from the works of the very highest authorities in the Church which have not been formally endorsed by the Church herself, acting in her official capacity. If now we should go further and attempt to supplement these with all the private opinions expressed by individual churchmen who lived contemporaneously with these official declarations, we should swell this essay to an inordinate length. Numberless quotations of this kind might be adduced. Practically all the Reformers and nearly all the divines of prominence in the English Church from the days of Cranmer down to within very recent times, who have touched upon the matter at all, have recognized the non-episcopal bodies as true parts of the Catholic Church, and their non-episcopally ordained ministers as havingbeen validly, even if irregularly, ordained. The list of those who have in one way or another expressed these opinions includes such names as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Jewel, Bradford, Whitgift, Philpot, Pilkington, Whittaker, Fulke, Willet, Bilson, Sutcliffe, Calfhill, Hooker, Saravia, Mason, Babington, Bridges, Field, Davenant, Francis White, Thomas White, Bancroft, Cosin, Burnet, Andrews, Rainolds, Bramhall, Usher, Hall, Downham, Stilling- fleet, Seeker, Wake, Tomline, and numbers of others.x It is not until the days of the Restoration that there is any apparent change of sentiment on the subject, but even then, it is only ...« less