Page:Elizabeth Elstob - An English-Saxon homily on the birth-day of St. Gregory.djvu/31

, under which they are held by the Prince of Darkness; to which I wish the remembrance of our own Conversion to Christianity, may prove an early incitement; the adding but of twenty Subjects to the Kingdom of Christ, being a greater Acquisition than the Possession of the most populous Nations by the Continuation of Pagan Ignorance, and Idolatry.

''It is one of the great Blessings of our Conversion, and one of the great Comforts that attended it, that it was effected at a time, and by such Persons, as made it with respect to Faith, and Discipline, both Orthodox, and Regular. It is true, we received the Christian Faith from the Roman Church, but when that Church was a sound and uncorrupt Branch of the Catholick Church: when it taught no other Doctrine, and imposed no other Articles of Faith, than had been delivered down from the first Ages by the Catholick Church. That Faith and Discipline which was first sent hither by St. Gregory, which was first preached to the English Saxons by St. Augustine; the same continued in its Primitive Purity for some Ages, the same, after a long Night of Ignorance and Superstition, was revived and reflored by the Reformation.''

And is it not one of the greatest Advantages that we can boast of, that we of the Reformed Church of England, as to Faith, and Worship, and Discipline, and all that can make a rightly constituted Church, are the same with the Primitive English Saxon'' Church? that the Primitive Church of England was, as to Substance, the same with the''