Universal Church in the sixteenth century.




CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION.


One of the greatest glories of the Catholic Church is that she and she
alone possesses and is able to communicate to others the whole truth
revealed by Jesus Christ. The Church of England and other Churches
that have gone out from her have, we are thankful to say, carried with
them some fragments of Christianity, but the Catholic Church alone
possesses the whole unadulterated revelation of Jesus Christ. For over
a thousand years, the Church in England formed a part of the great
Universal Church, the centre of which is at Rome and the circumference
of which is everywhere. From the sixth to the sixteenth century the
Church in England was a province of that Church, and received her
power and jurisdiction from the Holy See. It was not until the
sixteenth century that she apostatised, and was cut off from the stem,
out of which she had sprung, as a rotten branch is lopped off from a
healthy tree. It was not until then that she became a Church apart,
distinct from the Church of God, no longer the _Catholic_ Church _in_
England, but henceforth the _National_ Church _of_ England and of
England alone. The pre-"Reformation" Church was, as we have said, not
a separate Church, but a part of the one Catholic Church, whereas the
post-"Reformation" Church stands alone, unrecognised by the rest of
Christendom; hence the one is absolutely distinct from the other. The