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Updated: June 4, 2025
If penance was still retained as a sacrament, baptism and the Lord's Supper were alone maintained to be sacraments with it; the doctrine of Transubstantiation which Henry stubbornly maintained differed so little from the doctrine maintained by Luther that the words of Lutheran formularies were borrowed to explain it; Confession was admitted by the Lutheran Churches as well as by the English.
Lutherans have tended to Rationalism; Calvinists have become Socinians; but what has it become? As far as its Formularies are concerned, it may be said all along to have grown towards a more perfect Catholicism than that with which it started at the time of its estrangement; every act, every crisis which marks its course, has been upward.
It was a stiff and formal letter, full of the set pious formularies of the age, scarcely revealing the deep heart-feeling within; but it was to the purpose, and Ebbo, after hearing it read, heartily approved, and consented to sign both it and those that Schleiermacher had brought.
One lack, however, seems to be of that definite formularies, a deficiency which leaves the teaching to depend over much on the individual impressions of the teacher. The chief remnants of cannibalism are to be found in the New Hebrides. The leader of the attack on John Williams is still alive at Erromango, and the savage defiant nature of this people has never been subdued.
But there are many others who recognise that knowledge grows and opinions change, while formularies for the most part remain unaltered; and who consider that, so long as their general position is understood by those among whom they work, it would be overscrupulous to refuse an inward call to the ministry because they know that they will be asked to give a formal assent to unsuitably worded tests drawn up three centuries ago.
This treatise, which will be ever new, and ever important, was peculiarly required in Bunyan's early days. Under the protectorate, the minds of men, which had been kept in slavery, became suddenly emancipated from human creeds and formularies of public worship.
Before the Gorham case, the Formularies in general were the standard and test, free to both sides, about baptismal regeneration. Both parties had the ground open to them, to make what they could of them by argument and reason.
It traced, briefly but very clearly, the history and development of the Universal Church, justified the Church of England in separating from Rome on account of Rome's moral corruptions, condemned the Nonconformists for separating on the mere ground of opinion, extolled the comprehensiveness and simplicity of Anglican formularies, and suggested to the Dissenters that, if they would only swallow their objections to Episcopacy and rejoin the Church of England, they might greatly strengthen the national organization for promoting Religion.
In itself this speech was a sad commentary on Henry's religious campaign, containing as it did a confession that despite all his violence and persecution, religious formularies imposed by royal authority were not sufficient to preserve religious unity.
She should take, as the fundamental tenet of her constitution, conformity to the Articles and Formularies of the Church of England, which the majority of the English hold, in their meaning and interpretation.
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