Act for “The Restraint of Appeals” of 1533, which is the act embodying the legal principle of the English Reformation, it is the “English Church” which acts.  The statement in the “Act Forbidding Papal Dispensations and the Payment of Peter’s Pence” of 1534 is entirely explicit as to the intention of the English authorities.  It declares that nothing in this Act “shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your grace, your nobles and subjects intend, by the same, to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ’s Church in any things concerning the very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom[2].”

[Footnote 2:  Gee & Hardy.]

These documents date from the reign of Henry VIII.  In the same reign another series of authoritative documents was put forth which contains the same teaching as to the Church.  “The Institution of a Christian Man” set forth in 1536, in the article on the Church has this:  “I believe assuredly—­that there is and hath been from the beginning of the world, and so shall endure and continue forever, one certain number, society, communion, or company of the elect and faithful people of God....  And I believe assuredly that this congregation ... is, in very deed the city of heavenly Jerusalem ... the holy catholic church, the temple or habitacle of God, the pure and undefiled espouse of Christ, the very mystical body of Christ,” “The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man” of 1543 in treating of the faith declares that “all those things which were taught by the apostles, and have been by an whole universal consent of the church of Christ ever sith that time taught continually, ought to be received, accepted, and kept, as a perfect doctrine apostolic.”  It is further taught in the same document in the eighth article, that on “The Holy Catholic Church,” that the Church is “catholic, that is to say, not limited to any one place or region of the world, but is in every place universally through the world where it pleaseth God to call people to him in the profession of Christ’s name and faith, be it in Europe, Africa, or Asia.  And all these churches in divers countries severally called, although for the knowledge of the one from the other among them they have divers additions of names, and for their most necessary government, as they be distinct in places, so they have distinct ministers and divers heads in earth, governors and rulers, yet be all these holy churches but one holy church catholic, invited and called by one God the Father to enjoy the benefit of redemption wrought by our Lord and Saviour Jesu Christ, and governed by one Holy Spirit, which teacheth this foresaid one truth of God’s holy word in one faith and baptism[3].”

[Footnote 3:  Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII.]