But, being national (being, for example, in England), it is, obviously, subject to the dangers, as well as the privileges, of national character, national temperament--and, in our case, national insularity. The national presentment of the Catholic Church may err, and may err without losing its Catholicity. The Church of England, "as also the Church of Rome, hath erred";[11] it has needed, it needs, it will need, reforming. Hence we come to our fifth name:--
The name is very suggestive. It suggests two things--life and continuity.
First, _life_. A reforming Church is a living Church. Reformation is a sign of animation, for a dead organism cannot reform itself. Then, _continuity_. The reformed man, must be the same man, or he would not be a reformed man but somebody else. So with the Church of England. It would have been quite possible, however ludicrous, to have established a new Church in the sixteenth century, but that would not have been a reformed Church, it would have been { 15} another Church--the very last thing the Reformers contemplated.
A Reformed Church, then, is not the formation of a new Church, but the re-formation of the old Church.
How did the old Church of England reform itself? Roughly speaking, the English Reformation did two things. It affirmed something, and it denied something.
First, it affirmed something. For instance, the Church of England affirmed that the Church in this country in the sixteenth century was one with the Church of the sixth century. It affirmed that it was the very same Church that had been established in Palestine on the Day of Pentecost, and in this realm by Augustine in 597. It reaffirmed its old national independence in things local just as it had affirmed it in the days of Pope Gregory, It re-affirmed its adherence to every doctrine[12] held by the undivided Church, without adding thereto, or taking therefrom.
Then, it denied something. It denied the right of foreigners to interfere in purely English affairs; it denied the right of the Bishop of one National Church to exercise his power in another National Church; it denied the claim of the Bishop of Rome to exercise jurisdiction over the Archbishop of Canterbury; it denied the power of any one part of the Church to impose local decisions, or local dogmas, upon any other part of the Church.