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Page 25
"I, Simon Langham, Archbishop of Canterbury, will be from this hour
henceforth faithful and obedient to St. Peter, and to the Holy
Apostolic Roman Church, and to my Lord the Pope, Urban V., and to his
canonical successors."
Surely, some of us would open our eyes pretty wide if we saw the
present Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury with his hands on the
Gospels taking that oath. Yet we are assured, _ad nauseam_, that the
Church to which Simon Cardinal Langham belonged is the same as the
present Church of England, which repudiates the authority of the Pope
altogether. The same? Well, yes; if light and darkness, and sweetness
and bitterness, are the same. But let us read the whole of the oath:
"I, Simon Langham, will be from this hour henceforth faithful and
obedient to St. Peter, and to the Holy Apostolic Roman Church, and to
my Lord the Pope, Urban V., and to his canonical successors. Neither
in counsel or consent or in deed, will I take part in aught by which
they might suffer loss of life, or limb, or liberty. Their counsel
which they may confide to me, whether by their envoys or their letter,
I will, to their injury, wittingly disclose to no man. The Roman
Papacy and the royalty of St. Peter, I will be their helper to defend
and to maintain, saving my order, against all men. When summoned to a
Synod I will come, unless hindered by a canonical impediment. The
Legate of the Apostolic See I will treat honourably in his coming and
going, and will help him in his needs. Every third year I will visit
the threshold of the Apostles, either personally or by proxy, unless I
am dispensed by Apostolic licence. The possessions which pertain to
the support of my Archbishopric, I will not sell, nor give away, nor
pledge, nor re-enfeoff, nor alienate in any way, without first
consulting the Roman Pontiff. So help me, God, and these God's Holy
Gospels."
If you, who read these lines, had stood by, and listened to this oath,
would it leave any doubt in your minds as to the religion of the
Archbishop? Could you possibly mistake it for the religion of the
present Church of England?
Was the present Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury chosen and appointed
by the Pope? Did he take a vow of celibacy? Does the present
Archbishop acknowledge publicly and officially that he receives his
jurisdiction from the Pope? Did he receive the Pallium from Rome, sent
by special Papal messengers? Did he stand up and swear on the Gospels
that he would be faithful and obedient to his Lord the Pope? Did he
promise to visit Rome every three years, to give his Lord the Pope an
account of his diocese? Nothing of the kind. Yet we are gravely told
that there is no break between the Church of St. Anselm, and Simon
Langham, and of Cardinal Fisher, on the one hand, and the Church of
the present Archbishop of Canterbury on the other!
Why are these good men so exceedingly anxious to prove that black is
white? Why will they assert and re-assert, in every mood and tense,
that things most opposite are identical, and things most unlike are
exactly the same?
We will deal with that question in the next chapter. All we now affirm
is that the reason is abundantly clear and evident, though little
creditable to these perverters of history.
CHAPTER III.
THE AWKWARD DILEMMA.
In the whole catalogue of sin, there is hardly one so detestable in
itself, or so withering in its effects, as the sin of heresy.
Consequently, though we feel a great love as well as a great interest
in the Church in England during the thousand years in which she formed
a part of the Church of God, we can have little love for the present
Church of England, as by law established, cut off, as she is, from the
only true Church, which Christ, the Incarnate God, was pleased in His
infinite wisdom to build upon St. Peter, and upon those who should
succeed him in his sublime office, and who have received the Divine
Commission to rule over the entire flock, to hold the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, and to confirm their brethren to the end of time.
Besides, a careful study of the origin and genesis of the present
Anglican Establishment is scarcely calculated to predispose any one
particularly in its favour. It is not Catholics only who might be
thought biased upon such a point, but others also who feel this. In
fact, it is precisely impartial men, unaffected by any interest either
way, who most fully realise from what a very shady beginning the new
state of things arose. As Sir Osborne Morgan puts it, "Every student
of English history knows that, if a very bad king had not fallen in
love with a very pretty woman, and desired to get divorced from his
plain and elderly wife, and if he had not compelled a servile
Parliament to carry out his wishes, there would, in all human
probability, never have been an Established Church at all."
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