y 
 
782^1 -^^ „ ^L 
 
 THE 
 
 ENGLISH REFORMATION ; 
 
 Its Principles and Blessings. 
 
 -A. SEi^]Sd:o]sr 
 
 ^ PKKACHKI) BY THK 
 
 REV. ISAAC BROCK, M. A., 
 
 \-H 
 
 #. 
 
 "' (^Qm-eii' ' College. Oxford,') «, 
 
 i4^' ^'' I'KTKRS CHIKCH, SHEHBHr)<»]);«| 
 
 \ 
 
 On Sunday Evening, November 17th. i<S78. 
 
 JicimJ flu* ']20thJlnnivevsanj of the . Icrcssion 
 of Queen EUzaheth. 
 
 
 T. J. TUCK. .1. R. McBAIN. 
 8UBHBR00KB, p.g. 
 
 1878. 
 
 (Price Ten €euta.) 
 
 *-(i- 
 

 t 
 I 
 
 
TUB 
 
 ENGLISH REFORMATION; 
 
 Its Principles and Blessings. 
 
 ^ ■ PREACHED BY THE 
 
 REV. ISAAC BROOK, M. A., 
 
 ^ {Queen's College, Oxford,) 
 
 IN ST PETER'S CHURCH, SHERBROOKE, 
 
 m 
 
 On Sunday Evening, November 17th, 1878. 
 
 Being the S20thA}iniversa,ry of the Access ion 
 of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 T. ,T. TUCK. J. R. McBAIN. 
 
 8REBBROOKR, F.Q. 
 
 1878. 
 
 (Price Ten Centfi.) 
 
 .9 t/ J^tVbf .«•• 
 
 
 • » 
 
 a r ■ 
 • • • " • • • • 
 
 
 < • • > I- 
 
 • I t V 
 
\V. A. MDIIV.llDl'Si:, r.llDK .tNll.lOH I'lMNTKH, ) 
 silKUlimioKi:. S 
 
 Tin 
 
 p- 
 
 
 B. Q. R. 
 
 • • • • « 
 
 ■<»••• •• ■*. ..f«« ••• 
 
 • - . . • • • 
 
 * • • • •• ••<« ••«••• ." 
 
 ? •• ••• • <••>•••■ 
 
 ••••«• •• . , , , t , . 
 
Phalmh cxxvi-3- 
 wc rtie glad " 
 
 Tlio liOicl liatli (lone jxri'iit tilings for tis, wlicreof 
 
 Ihaiah Iviii-l'J^" Tiioii shalt riiiso up tlio frMiiulafioiis of many 
 gi!noiation>'. ; and tliou slialt lie callfd, The repairer of the breach. Tin; 
 restorer of paths to dwell in." 
 
 YcF ever there was a day on which we ought, as English 
 Churchmen, to take up the language of the P.salmist of 
 Israel, and say : " Jehovah hath done great things for us, 
 whereof we are glad," it is on this day, when we com- 
 memorate, through the great mercy of our God, the per- 
 manent establishment of the glorious Reformation in our 
 Motherland. 
 
 The 17th of November, A. D. 15 58, terminated the 
 reign of the Roman Mary, and commenced the reign of 
 Elizabeth, the great Protestant Queen. 
 
 The brief reign of Mary had been truly the Refor- 
 mation's baptism of blood. From John Rogers, the 
 first of the Marian Martyrs, who suffered on February 4th, 
 1555, to the last of the Marian Martyrs, the five who were 
 burned at Canterbury on Nov. 10, 1558 (just s -ven days 
 before Mary's death), in that interval of three and a half 
 years, 288 persons, according to the annals of Strype, 
 perished in the flames of martyrdom. How many more 
 
 i-^f-fcrkWO 
 
might have suffered, had Mary's reign been prolonged, it 
 is impossible to conjecture. The Lord, mercifully for our 
 Reformed Church, shortened those days of suffering. 
 For on this day 320 years ago, Mary's brief reign closed, 
 and closed as every student of history remembers, amid 
 universal national disaster and gloom. 
 
 Elizabeth — Protestant as she was known to be — was 
 nevertheless, advanced to the throne of England by accla- 
 mation. Immediately after Mary had breathed her last, 
 bonfires were lit in the streets of London ; tables were 
 spread there for merry-making in honor of Elizabeth ; 
 costly pageants prepared for her as she traversed the city ; 
 and the little children of London were heard crying : "God 
 Save Queen Elizabeth." The moderate revolted from a 
 religion which spake of peace, but which had shed blood 
 on the earth like water ; and all parties in the State were 
 weary of a reign of terror, under which every man's safety, 
 to whatever party he belonged, was only upon sufferance. 
 
 Such, continues the historian from whose pages I 
 have been quoting, was the great agony through which 
 the Reformation was doomed to pass. But that which 
 thou sowest is not quickened except it die ; and so it 
 proved in this instance. The reign of Mary was the 
 grave of the English Reformation for a short season. 
 The accession of Elizabeth was its triumphant resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 But while we gratefully, as English Churchmen, com- 
 memorate the day this accession of the illustrious Eliza- 
 beth, "The Queen of Protestantism among the Nations," 
 be It remembered we are not here to-day to pour forth 
 any unqualified eulogy upon Elizabeth the woman, or 
 
5 
 
 upon I'llizabcth the Queen, In the woman we see grave 
 and painful blemishes ; in the Queen, grave and painful 
 errors, both in spirit, in policy, and in action. We are 
 here neitiier to canonize I'^lizabeth, nor to exult proudly 
 in tile glories of her lengthened reign. For her 
 vanity and her caprice, her duplicity and her despotism. I 
 am no apologist. Chw business this evening is neither with 
 the faults nor the virtues of I*^li/.abeth ; nor with the stir- 
 ring story of the Armada ; nor tlie oft-told tale of the Scot- 
 tish Mary ; nor the sagacity of Cecil and Walsingham ; 
 nor the prowess of Effingham and Drake ; nor the genius 
 of Spenser, or Hooker, or Bacon, or Shakespeare. No, 
 our business this evening is with that great work which 
 Queen Elixabjrh was the chosen instrument in God's 
 hands for restoring, consolidating, and establi.^hing in our 
 
 Motherland, 
 
 Our Exolisii Rkkokmation'. 
 
 The text from the Psalter leads us to rise from the 
 instruments by which any great work is accomplished, to 
 Him who chooses these instruments, and works out by 
 them His Sovereign will. Heniy VHI (in all but one 
 point a Romanist), Edward VI, Queen Elizabeth, Arch- 
 bishops Cranmer and Parker, and the rest of the Re- 
 formers, were instruments in God's hands. "The Lord 
 hath done great things for us." It is fitting on sucli a da)' 
 as this, that wc should, as English Churchmen, ponder a 
 while over some of the "great things" which Jehovah 
 hath done for us by the Reformation of our beloved 
 Church. Hence, I invite your attention to-night, as far 
 as time will allow me, to 
 
 The Nature and the Bj.kssinc.s ok our English 
 
 Reformation. 
 T. And first, as to the nature of our ICnglish Reform- 
 
ation. Three things are ever to be remembered in 
 reference to it. 'Twas a work of time : 'Twas a work 
 of restoration : And 'twas not an act of schism. 
 
 (i). 'Twas a work of time. Our English Reforma- 
 tion was not the work of one mind, or one generation, or 
 even of one century. WickHfife and Wolsey, Cranmer 
 and Parker, Whitgift and Cosins, men of very different 
 minds, all had their share in this great work. 
 
 In the 1 3th and 14th centuries there appeared several 
 morning stars, as it were, of the Reformation, heralds of 
 the dawn. Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln, in the 13th 
 century, protested against the corruptions of Rome as 
 anti-Christian. Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh and 
 Chancellor of Oxford, in the 14th century, protested 
 against the erroneous teachings of the mendicant friars. 
 Wickliffe, Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and Rector of 
 Lutterworth, denounced many of the prominent errors of 
 Rome, and laid a foundation for the work of the Reforma- 
 tion 1 50 years after, by giving the whole Bible in the Eng- 
 lish tongue to the English people. 
 
 Very early in the i6th century an effective impulse 
 was given to the Reformation, as an orderly ecclesiastical 
 work, by the great Cardinal Wolsey, the promoter of 
 sound learning, the reformer of monasteries, the founder 
 of numerou,, schools and colleges. Scant justice has 
 been done to Wolsey. The State papers, however, which 
 have been published during the past thirty years, show 
 that it was that eminent statesman that broke up in Eng- 
 land the mediceval system, and laid the broad foundations 
 on which, in a later generation, was built up our national 
 independence. 
 
Later in that century came the work of Henry VIII 
 (carried out for his own ends, but none the less under 
 God's overruling providence), by which our Church and 
 Nation cast off by her Convocation, and by her Parliament, 
 the allegiance of a foreign Pontiff. 
 
 Then came the work of our Reformers, Cranmer and 
 others, who gave an authorized English version of the 
 Holy Scriptures to the English people ; and who gave, be- 
 sides, to England, the first English Book of Common 
 Prayer, compiled from existing and ancient Service Books 
 of the Church. 
 
 Then came the work of our later Reformers, Arch- 
 bishop Parker and others in the reign of Elizabeth, who 
 consolidated the work of Reformation which had been 
 
 somewhat too hastily carried out in the brief reign of 
 I'Mward VI. 
 
 And finally, in the 17th century', came the work of 
 our Revisors at the Hampton Court Conference, in the 
 reign of James I ; and at the Savoy Conference in the 
 reign of Charles II, to whose advice and labors we owe 
 our present authorized version of the Holy Scriptures, and 
 our Book of Common Prayer as we now have it. 
 
 From the consecration of Greathead Bishop of Lin- 
 coln, in the year 1235, to the work of his successor in the 
 See of Lincoln, Saunderson,\vho compiled in the year 1662, 
 the Preface to our present reformed and revised Prayer- 
 Book, is a space of 427 years ; and this represents the 
 time during which, first by the spasmodic efforts of indi- 
 viduals, and then by the continuous and united efforts of 
 a body of learned bishops and other divines of our 
 
8 
 
 Church, our KiiL^Ush Reformation was at last carried out. 
 
 (2). l^ut secondly, our Reformation in l{n<i^land, was 
 a work of restoration. This is a matter of the highest 
 importance for you clearly to understand as English 
 Churchmen. 'Twas restoration not destruction ; reforma- 
 tion not revolution, that our Reformers aimed at and 
 carried out.=^ They sought to " raise up the foundations 
 of many generations." They endeavored to earn for our 
 branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, the honorable 
 name in a day of deep corruption and decay, of being 
 " The repairer of the breach ; The restorer of paths to 
 dwell in." 
 
 For what was the declared design of the Reformers 
 of the Church of luigland ? It w as not to institute an) - 
 thing new, but to restore tl . which was mo>t ancient and 
 edifying in the form and order of the Church of Christ ; 
 that which was Apostolical, that which was Primitive, that 
 which was Catholic ; abolishing whatsoever w as merely 
 Roman and mediaeval, the offspring of the Papal system, 
 and,, therefore, comparatively modern ; and as being- 
 modern, unauthorized by the Word of God. 
 
 Hence, they retained in the Church, the Apo.^toHc 
 Ministry, in tho.-.e three orders, which had existed in 
 the Church from the first century. Hence they were 
 careful to preserve, as they did, the unbroken succession 
 of the Apostolical Episcopate, which historically identified 
 our Reformed Church with the Apostolic Church of the 
 
 * The Bi'v. T. K. H'ic'clii'r, Coiif^iv^iitionnliRt Minister iit Eliiiirii, N. Y , in nn 
 :i(liniiMl>lc li'ctiiiv of liis <m "Tin- Kiiiscopal Clmrcli," rci'iTS to tliis as oni' of tlic 
 nrirk (1 cxri'llinciis of tin lirfniiiiMtioii of llic Kiiiscop.-il Cliiirch, .•mil us 0110 of tlie 
 jiointx in whirli it Wiis (listiiiKiiixlu'd fioiii the Ilitonniitioii I'fTi'ctc'il in oilier I'roti'stiint 
 eiuurlics. Tile elirinj/es they Ifeeteil Mr. Heeclier eli:ir,'ieteri/es ;is Revolutions riflier 
 tlii'.n Rpforniutions. It is Kri'iitly to be regretted tliiit this leetiire of the IteV. T. K. 
 lie; L'lier is iit ipre:ient out of [iriiit. 
 
9 
 
 first century. Hence, they retained the ancient creeds of 
 the CathoHc Church, and imposed no new terms of admis- 
 sion beyond those contained in the primitive formula, 
 " The Apostles' Creed " ; and hence, in the compilation 
 of our Book of Common Prayer — while using, after the 
 elimination therefrom Roman errors, the existing ser- 
 vice books — they borrowed largely from the ancient Litur- 
 gies of the undivided Church. All the important features, 
 for example, of our Communion Office appear in one or 
 other of the four great Liturgies that were used in differ- 
 ent parts of the Catholic Church in the 4th and 5th 
 centuries. 
 
 For full and detailed proof of this, I must refer you 
 to a valuable work which I know many of you possess : 
 the fifth chapter of " The Double Witness of the Church," 
 by Bishop Rip, is on the history of our Liturgy, 
 
 All this shows that what our Reformers did in Eng- 
 land was not to found a new Church, but to restore and 
 purify the old one. They pulled not down the venerable 
 fabric, whose foundations had been laid in Britain in 
 Apostolic days, and whose noble walls and arches had been 
 reared in Saxon times ; but they tore off from column 
 and wall, and arch the daubing with untempered mor- 
 tar, wherewith Roman plasterers in medi.xval da}'s had 
 defaced and defiled the ancient structure. And when 
 this was done, was it a new building ? Na)*; was it not 
 
 the old fabric restored ? 
 
 ,) 
 
 Never, therefore, English Churchmen, concede to 
 others, or allow yourselves to think, that the Reformation 
 was the beginning of our beloved Church. 
 
lO 
 
 It was its Reformation — its restoration to a measure 
 at least, of its pristine purity. For its beginning we must 
 look back to the first or second Christian century, when 
 Apostles, or Apostolic men first visited the shores of 
 Pagan Britain. 
 
 (3). But once again : Our EngH-;h Reformation was 
 not an act of schism. In the year i 534, by the King, the 
 Parliament and the Convocation, the authority of the 
 IMshop of Rome, over the Church and Nation of England, 
 was formally renounced. This act was not an act of 
 schism, for this reason : The Bishop of Rome had no 
 legitimate authority, whatever, over our Church and Na- 
 tion — such authority as he did possess was an usurped 
 authority — an authority often resisted, and sometimes suc- 
 cessfully resisted by the ablest of our Plantagenet Kings. 
 
 To put this very important matter before you in 
 more forcible words than my own, *' it is essential for every 
 Churchman to remember that the Church of England 
 never separated from the Church of Rome. It was origi- 
 nally an independent Church, founded, not by emissaries 
 from Rome, but at a period not far removed from Apos- 
 tolic times, and perhaps even by an Apostle himself. It 
 was not till the period of the Norman conquest, in the 
 middle of the i ith century, that Rome assumed anything 
 like an asccndenc\- over our Church, and then it was not 
 without a long and arduous struggle that she established 
 it. pSo that the real fact of the case is this, that out of 
 eig^htccn centuries, during which the Church of England 
 has existed, somewhat less than four centuries and a 
 half were passed under the usurped domination of the 
 See of Rome. So great is the absurdity, and palpable 
 
II 
 
 the ignorance of historical facts, evinced by those who 
 represent the Church of England, as a separated branch 
 of the Romish Communion." 
 
 I have dwelt so long on the English Reformation, as 
 a work of time — as a work of restoration — and as not being 
 an act of schism, that I have left myself but little time 
 to speak of the Blessings of our Reformation. These, 
 however, are so apparent that I need do little more than 
 mention them, or rather some of them, for — 
 
 II. The Blessings of our Reformation are manifold. 
 They are bound up with all that we do and enjoy. They 
 meet us at every turn almost of our individual, family, 
 social, political, and church life. 
 
 (i). First — The Reformation we have already seen, 
 delivered our Church and Nation from the usurped author- 
 ity and tyranny of the Bishop of Rome. 
 
 This deliverance brought with it a multitude of 
 blessings, the magnitude of which it is most difficult for 
 us to appreciate at a distance of three and a half centu- 
 ries, and under the entirely altered circumstances of our 
 modern society. The Bishop of Rome's power — a 
 shadow now — was a reality then, backed not only by the 
 spiritual artillery of Rome, but also by the fleets and 
 armies of Romish Sovereigns. 
 
 Every Canadian should be familiar with the history 
 of his Motherland. That history will show him that the 
 usurped authority of the Roman pontiff, had frequently 
 imperilled our Sovereign on his throne ; had kept our 
 Church in bondage ; had impoverished our national 
 
12 
 
 exchequer ; and had from time to time thrown our whole 
 countr>' into confusion and anarchy. 
 
 (2). Secondly — The Reformation rescued our home> 
 from the intrusion of the Romish confessional — an intru- 
 sion which destroyed their sacred freedom, and blighted 
 their moral purit}-. How could there be freedom, when 
 there was one outside the family to whom all the secret 
 thoughts of the heart must be disclosed, and that one 
 not Our Father in heaven ? Or, purity, \\ hen men were 
 taught through the confessional that it was with man 
 rather than with God we had to do in the matter of sin ; 
 and when the heart was rendered insensible to shame b)' 
 - the continued laying bare of its secret recesses to a fellow- 
 creature ; and when a minute and perhaps incautious 
 examination of conscience by a trained casuist suggested 
 sins unthought of before ? 
 
 (3). Thirdly— The Reformation emancipated our 
 • people from mental thraldom. Apostles said, and our 
 Church echoes their admonitions ; " Prove all things, hold 
 fast that which is good." " I speak as unto wise men, judge 
 ye what I say." Not thus says Rome, her teaching as ex- 
 pressed by one of her foremost living divines is this : 
 " Let a man cease to examine, or cease to be a child of 
 the Church." And the response of every faithful son of 
 the Roman Church to all her announced dogmas, no mat- 
 ter how irrational, how unscriptural, how uncatholic those 
 dogmas are, is "The Church teaches, and I believe." 
 Where, in such a case, is mental freedom ? Where that 
 " reasonable service," which Our heavenly Father seeks 
 from us His intelligent children ? 
 
 Connected with the Blessing of mental freedom, is 
 
13 
 
 that three-fold Liberty which has been a far later fruit of 
 the Reformation — The Liberty of the Press — The Lib- 
 erty of Worship — and The Liberty of Education. I 
 have not time to dwell on these. 
 
 (4). Fourthly — Our English Reformation purified our 
 worship. Our Reformers retaining what was ancient, 
 Catholic, and Scriptural, rejected only what was Roman 
 and mediaeval. For example : rejecting the practice of 
 the Invocation of the saints and angels, as a fond thing 
 vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Holy 
 Scripture ; they still retained the doctrines of the Com- 
 munion of saints, and the Ministration of angels : again, 
 rejecting the dogma of Transubstantiation, of which the 
 Church knew nothing till after the lOth century, which 
 subverts the nature of the Holy Communion, and has given 
 occasion to many superstitions ; they retained the precious 
 truth of the real spiritual presence of Christ in the Holy 
 Communion, and taught that " the Body and Blood of 
 Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the 
 faithful in the Lord's Supper." And so in reference to 
 many other parts of our worship. 
 
 (5). Fifthly— Our English Reformation restored to 
 us the full, free, and pure Gospel of the Grace of God ; it 
 rescued it from the accretions beneath which Rome had 
 hidden it. It swept away the hosts of mediators which 
 Rome had placed between us and Our Lord ; it brought 
 the sinner and the Saviour into direct and personal con- 
 tact. It bid us all go direct to Him who says, "Come 
 unto Me, all ve that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest." 
 
 Omitting many other Blessings, I touch upon one 
 
H 
 
 other "great thing ; " which Jehovah hath done for us by 
 the establishn\ent of our Reformation. I have more than 
 once already alluded to it. 
 
 (6). Sixthly — Our English Reformation gave us our 
 present English Bible — dear to the hearts of millions of 
 English-speaking people throughout the world. More than 
 this : it established the Supremacy of the Holy Scriptures 
 in the Church ; it gave it as one only Divine Rule of Faith, 
 the position it possessed in the primitive Catholic Church. 
 Our Reformers placed in our Prayer Book those golden 
 words whith constitute the fundamental protest of our 
 Church against Rome, and her corruptions, and her un- 
 catholic dogmas : 
 
 " Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to 
 salvation ; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may 
 be proved thereb}% is not to be required of any man, that 
 it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be 
 thought requisite or necessary to salvation." 
 
 I pause: not because the theme is exliausted, but 
 because I ought not to trespass longer on your patient 
 attention. 
 
 Eno i,h Churchmen, study the Principles of the 
 Church to which it i. your privilege to belong— that you 
 nviy be manly, intelligent, steadfast Churchmen— and be 
 true, I beseech you, to her Principles. Remember she 
 bears, as a Catholic yet Protesting Church, a double 
 witness for God and for His Truth. 
 
 She is Catholic for every truth of God : She is Pro- 
 testant against every error of man. 
 
Supplementary Note. — Some persons, who heard 
 tlic above Sermon, expressed surprise that in a Sermon 
 on the Reformation, no mention was made of the great 
 German Reformer, Martin Luther. The reason, however, 
 of such an omission is obvious ; the subject considered 
 was the English Reformation, which was conducted on 
 essentially different principles from the German and 
 Swiss Reformations, and was only indirectly affected by 
 the great Revolutions, rather than Reformations, which 
 took place in the i6th century in Germany and Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 t *■ 
 
 « • •