Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/109

 lost her old Monasteries, it is true, and cast off many errors that the foreign clergy had introduced; but the Bishops and parochial clergy retained their respective positions, performed their duties in the same Churches, to the same congregations, and retained such endowments as the monastic system had allowed them to keep. Corruptions were cut away, sometimes at the expense and loss of much that was good; the usurped power of the Popes was successfully overthrown, but no new Church was founded."

Let no one assert, then, now that the Church of England was born at the Reformation. The very phrase "Church of England" was used in Magna Charta. Let no one assert that the Church of England is only a thing boasting of three centuries' creation, and that its creation came through an immoral king. The movement which we have considered to-night only purged our Church of its mediæval corruptions, gave us a new and valued liturgy, and it told finally and effectually the Pope of Rome to consider this fact, that he was not wanted in our country.