Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

308 APPENDIX.
in liis matrimonial arrangements had been thwarted in them,
the Church of England assented to abjure the supremacy of
the Pope in that reign ; to burn and destroy all its timehonoured
rituals for celebrating Divine Service in the next ;
and then, after a few years of feigned repentance^ under
Mary, reproduced, under Elizabeth, its new Service Book
without the smallest
and Articles of Beliglon : not only
reference to the opinions of the rest of Christendom, but in
open defiance of the General Council of the West, then
actually sitting, and to which its bishops among others had,
in conformity with ancient usage, received their summons
all which it justified on the ground that it had resolved,
for the future, to be quit of the Pope.
"
Now, even at this point, it might have halted, without
any further outrage upon the constitutional prerogatives of
every corporate society. It scorned the idea of any such
moderation. Transubstantiation, which for more than
three centuries it had held and taught, in conform^ with
the Fourth Lateran Council,
it now condemned as re
pugnant to the plain words of Scripture. (Art. xxviii.)
Purgatory, which it had maintained with the Council of
Florence against the Greek doctrine on the subject, it now
discarded as a vain invention. (Art. xxii.) Restric
tion of the cup to the celebrant priest, which it had received
from the Council of Constance, it now asserted to be con
trary to CHRIST S ordinance. (Art. xxx.) Celibacy of the
clergy, which in common with the rest of the West had
been its own discipline from time immemorial, it now
declared it lawful to depart from, though no other Western
Church had relaxed that rule. (Art. xxxii.) To teach that
there were seven sacraments, as all previous Archbishops
of York and Canterbury must have done more or less, it
now regarded as a product of the corrupt following of the
Apostles. (Art. xxv.) To ask for the prayers of the
Saints in Heaven, to venerate their relics and images on
earth, as the Church of Borne did, it affirmed to be repug
nant to the Word of GOD (Art. xxii.) ; though its old
office-books alone showed how identical had been its own