Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/61

II] formularies. But he is the truest son of all who, in the spirit of this union, feels himself free to sympathize with the several elements and principles of good which the Church of England has thus combined—who knows that the strength of a national Church, especially of the Church of a nation like ours, lies in the fact that it has never been surrendered exclusively to any one theological influence, and that the Christian faith which it has inherited from all is greater than the differences which it has inherited from each.

The Prayer-book, as it stands, is a long gallery of Ecclesiastical History, which, to be understood and enjoyed thoroughly, absolutely compels a knowledge of the greatest events and names of all periods of the Christian Church. To Ambrose we owe our Te Deum; Charlemagne breaks the silence of our ordination-prayers by the Veni Creator Spiritus. The Persecutions have given us one creed, and the Empire another. The name of the first great patriarch of the Byzantine Church closes our daily service; the Litany is the bequest of the first great patriarch of the Latin Church, amidst the terrors of the Roman pestilence. The Fathers and Popes wrote our collects for Sundays; the Reformers wrote our collects for saints' days. Our highest act of worship is stamped by the footsteps of every age, from the first Apostolical liturgy to the rapid fluctuations of the counsellors of Edward, and the conciliating policy of Elizabeth, and the reactionary zeal of the