with Catharine before the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of all England; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, having given opportunity to both sides to plead their cause, at last, on the 23rd of May, 1533, pronounced Henry's marriage with Catharine to have been from the beginning null and void.

The Pope was of course furious, when he heard of what had taken place in England, and in March 1534, he pronounced Henry's marriage with Catharine to be a good and valid marriage.1 In the course of the same year, 1534, first the Provincial Synod of York, and afterwards the Provincial Synod of Canterbury, put forth Synodical Declarations to the effect that "the Bishop of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction given him in Holy Scripture by God in this kingdom of England than any other foreign Bishop."2 Thus did the Church of England by the acts of her Synods formally repudiate the notion that the Pope had any divinely given authority

over her.

It is important to notice that the Church of England never withdrew her communion from the Church of Rome, though she did repudiate the Pope's baseless claims. The breach of communion was brought about by the act of Pope Paul III., the successor of Clement VII. He had the audacity to fulminate a bull, published in December, 1538, in which he professed to depose Henry VIII. from his position as King of England, and in

1 Sixtus V., probably the ablest of all the post-Tridentine Popes, 66 afterwards declared that Clement had deserved the calamities that befel him, because he had not dissolved so unholy a union." I quote these words from the great Romanist historian, Lord Acton (see his Lectures on Modern History, edit. 1906, p. 137).

2 Dixon's History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, vol. i. pp. 227, 238.

which he excommunicated all Englishmen who should continue to recognize Henry as their sovereign. The bull issued by Paul III. went indeed much further than that. It placed all Henry's dominions and all churches 1 within them under interdict. It deprived all Henry's loyal subjects of all their rights of property, which all comers were authorized to take from them. It absolved all the King's subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and commanded all his judges and other officers and servants to refuse him obedience on pain of excommunication: it prohibited every sort of commerce with him or his adherents, by buying, selling, marketing, carriage of provisions or other goods, or otherwise in any way of business it declared forfeited to the first takers the goods of those who might carry on such intercourse. In the event of the King still continuing obdurate, it required all the nobility and lay people of his realm to rise against him and expel him, by force of arms if necessary, from his dominions; and it forbade all other Kings and Emperors either to make treaties or compacts with him; the Pope taking upon himself to cancel and annul all such treaties or compacts, present and future; and the Rulers of all nations were enjoined to make war upon him, and so reduce him to the obedience of the Roman see.1 Of course Englishmen were not going to admit the right of an Italian ecclesiastic to depose their King and destroy their country. The bull, so far as its immediate purpose was concerned, was a mere brutum fulmen (a thunderbolt which failed to hit the mark); but

The bull is printed in the Magnum Bullarium Romanum (edit. Laertius Cherubinus, 1727, Luxemburg, tom. i. pp. 707-712). See also Burnet's History of the Reformation (edit. Pocock, 1865, Oxford, vol. iv. pp. 318-334).

B

it had the effect of putting an end to the intercommunion which had ever existed between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. It was the Church of Rome which separated herself from the Church of England. The Church of England has never by any formal act separated herself from the Church of Rome. From the time of Henry VIII. until the present day, except during the short reign of Mary, England and Rome have been out of communion with each other, but the responsibility for that state of things does not fall on our shoulders.

Over and over again the Bishops of the Church of England and also the King of England have protested that they have never had any intention of separating themselves from the Catholic Church. Thus, for example, in 1536 King Henry VIII. desired the venerable Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, to write to Cardinal Pole and to explain to him the sentiments of the King of England. Tunstall did so, and in the course of his letter he said:" You suppose the King's grace to be swerved from the unity of Christ's Church, and that . . . he intendeth to separate his Church of England from the unity of the whole body of Christendom wherein surely both you and all others so thinking of him do err. . . . . . . His full purpose and intent is ... not to separate himself or his realm any wise from the unity of Christ's Catholic Church, but inviolably, at all times, to keep and observe the same."1 Similarly Archbishop Cranmer of Canterbury in his noble appeal in 1556 from the sentence of the Pope "to a General Council called together in the Holy Ghost, and representing the Holy Catholic Church," says :-" As

1 Palmer's Treatise on the Church of Christ, edit. 1839, vol. i. p. 446.

touching my doctrine, it was never in my mind to teach contrary to the word of God and the Catholic Church of Christ according to the exposition of the most holy and learned fathers and martyrs. I only mean and judge as they have meant and judged. I may err, but heretic I cannot be, inasmuch as I am ready to follow the judgement of the word of God and of the Holy Catholic Church, using the words that they used, and none other, and keeping their interpretation.'

Pope Paul III.'s bull deposing King Henry, and excommunicating all Englishmen who should continue to recognize him as their sovereign, produced no effect in England. The Bishops and Clergy and the whole nation. continued to recognize Henry as their king; they took no notice of the Pope's interdict and excommunications. The Holy Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Lord continued to be offered in all our churches, the Sacraments continued to be administered, the people continued to come to church. There was no division among them, no schism; all continued to abide in the communion of the Church of England, although the Pope had withdrawn his communion from that Church.

1 Dixon's History of the Church of England, iv. 502.

CHAPTER II

THE LEGAL AND SPIRITUAL CONTINUITY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH BEFORE AND AFTER ITS REFORMATION (PART I)

SOME people have an idea that in the time of King Henry VIII. a new Church was set up in England, and that the King and the Parliament transferred the cathedrals and church-buildings, and tithes and other endowments from the old Church to this supposed new Church. Such an idea is absolutely false. If such a transfer had ever taken place, it would be easy to prove it. There would be Acts of Parliament ordering such a transfer to be made; and historians would have written accounts of how the old clergy were driven out and how the new clergy were put in. But there are no such Acts. of Parliament, and there are no such historical records. And the reason for this silence is the undoubted fact that there was no new Church made, and therefore no transfer of Church buildings and Church property from the old to the new. The old Church went on under its old name. It had always been called "the Church of England," even in the days when the Popes had exercised great authority in England. The great charter of English freedom, known as the Magna Charta, which was signed by King John in 1215, begins with the words,-"Libera sit Ecclesia Anglicana" (Let the Church of England be free). In 1307, at the parliament held in Carlisle, the lay Lords and the Commons presented a remonstrance to

20