Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

216 Spirit in which Re-union should be sought.
divergence from the grand central line of the
original visible unity. In this isolated condi
tion, the unchecked tendency of each com
munion has hardened into Decrees, Articles of
Religion, Canons, Usages, Customs, and Con
stitutions, bearing the stamp of its own local
peculiarities
the main part of which possibly
is contradicted, condemned, or rejected by the
two others. And yet each portion requires of
all its clergy, and in some instances, of its laity
also, a declared adherence to these local and
national standards standards in which, on a
broad Catholic basis no one believes, and which
bind no man s conscience.
Still further in each of the three independent
and separated communions either popular or
theological schools of interpretation exist, which
running in the groove of national or local
divergence from the simple creed of undivided
Christendom, diverge still more materially in
their own respective peculiar lines. For
example, ever since the time of Bishop Burnet,
the Scotch Erastian, a school of respectable
Anglicans has existed which fondly imagined
that the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Synod
held in London in 1562 were Articles of Faith
an idea, the formal statement of which is suffi
cient to carry its own refutation. So amongst
Latins and Orientals, the Council of Trent
and the Synod of Bethlehem respectively