As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is becoming accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and disloyalty in practice to that which is undoubtedly and historically Anglican, I have been compelled to ask myself, “What is loyalty to the Anglican Church?  Is there, in fact, some peculiar and limited form of Christianity to which I owe allegiance?” I had got accustomed to think of myself as a Catholic Christian whose lot was cast in a certain province of the Catholic Church which was administratively separated from other parts of that Church.  This I felt—­this separation—­to be unfortunate; but I was not responsible for it, and would be glad to do anything that I could to end it.  I had not thought that this administrative separation from other provinces of the Catholic Church meant that I was pledged to a different religion; I had not thought of there being an Anglican Religion.  I have all my life, in intention and as far as I know, accepted the whole Catholic Faith of which it is said in a Creed accepted by the Anglican Church that “except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.”  I do not intend to believe any other Faith than that, and I intend to believe all of that; and I have not thought of myself as other than a loyal Anglican in so doing.

But criticism has led me to go back over the whole question and ask whether there is any indication anywhere in the approved documents of the Anglican Communion of an intention at all to depart from the Faith of Christendom as it was held by the whole Catholic Church, East and West, at the time when an administrative separation from Rome was effected.  Was a new faith at any time introduced?  Has there at any time been any official action of the Anglican Church to limit my acceptance of the historic Faith?  That many Anglican writers have denied many articles of the Catholic Faith I of course knew to be true.  That some Anglican writer could be found who had denied every article of the Catholic Faith I thought quite possible.  But I was not interested in the beliefs or practices of individuals.  I am not at all interested in what opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages of his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings of Bale by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in the official utterances of the Anglican Communion.

In following out this line of investigation I have spent many weeks in the reading of many dreary documents:  but fortunately documents are not important in proportion to the element of excitement they contain.  I have read the documents contained in the collection of Gee and Hardy entitled “Documents Illustrative of English Church History.”  I have read the “Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII.”  I have read Cardwell’s “Synodalia.”  And I have also read “Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be read in Churches at the time of Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory.”  I doubt whether any other extant human being has read them.