Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/53

 purified the morals of his time. He gave to the Church the privileges that it had enjoyed from many of his predecessors. His work was very difficult, but it was a holy work.

I must now come to the chief subject of this evening's Lecture, and that is to show that the Church of England as a Church never, during the time now under review, and certainly never since, save at the time of the reign of Queen Mary, recognized that the Pope had the primacy over us. It never recognized, as a Church, I say, that the Pope was its head, and that, as a Church, we should obey or even follow him in his doctrinal innovations. Some men there were no doubt, members of the Church of England, who acknowledged Rome's demands. Some certainly did acknowledge the Pope's authority. But they were generally those men who had been educated and brought up under Rome and thrust into English Sees and livings through the diplomacy of the Popes. Many Englishmen had special regard for Rome, because it was the home of most of the culture and knowledge of those days, and they looked upon the Bishop of Rome as having more authority than Bishops of less important Sees, because his Church covered the bodies of S. Peter and S. Paul. But this is quite a different matter from thinking that our people considered that the Pope had a right to govern the Church in our land, or even had the right to demand our obedience.

We have to call to mind that, at the time of which we are now speaking, the papal pretentions were more fully developed than at the time when Gregory sent his missionaries to England. Several of the objectionable doctrines of Roman Catholicism were now coming into prominence. Such as