Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/225

Rh doctrinal side of Christianity. Very few of the modern Independents believe in the doctrines held by their forefathers. It is the custom of some of them to preach about the non-importance of doctrines. There can be no brotherly unity, no close unity, between Dissenters and the Church until they acknowledge the doctrines of the so-called Apostles' Creed as a pledge of Holy Baptism, and of the Nicene Creed as a pledge of Christian faith and practice.

Then again, very few Dissenters will acknowledge that the Church of England is Catholic as distinct from Roman Catholic. They say it is Protestant. They say, in fact, what it has been the object of these Lectures to disprove, that it was made Protestant at the Reformation. But they can nowhere find it so described in its laws and formularies. The word Protestant is nowhere found in our Prayer Book, nowhere in the Articles. But quite the opposite. The Creeds tell us to believe in the Catholic Church. The Article of Belief is, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," this is in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds; and in the prayer for all sorts and conditions of men we are asked to pray for "the good estate of the Catholic Church." Although the English Church protests against the errors of Rome, it was never Protestant in the sense that this word is often used to-day.

I never could understand why there was such a desire to make out that the English Church should be called a Protestant Church. It cannot be because there is anything very lovable or attractive in the term. For Protestants have been as bitter in their persecution as the Roman Catholics, though they have not been guilty as frequently