Produced by Steven Giacomelli, Keith Edkins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CLEARED FROM THE CHARGE OF SCHISM, UPON TESTIMONIES OF COUNCILS AND FATHERS OF THE FIRST SIX CENTURIES. BY THOMAS WILLIAM ALLIES, M. A. RECTOR OF LAUNTON, OXON. LONDON: JAMES BURNS, 17, PORTMAN STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE. 1846. * * * * * LONDON: R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. * * * * * ADVERTISEMENT. * * * * * The writer of the following pages is more and more convinced that the whole question between the Roman Church and ourselves, as well as the Eastern Church, turns upon the Papal Supremacy, as at present claimed, being of divine right or not. _If it be_, then have we nothing else to do, on peril of salvation, but submit ourselves to the authority of Rome: and better it were to do so before we meet the attack, which is close at hand, of an enemy who bears equal hatred to ourselves and to Rome; the predicted Lawless One, the Logos, reason, or private judgment of apostate humanity rising up against the Divine Logos, incarnate in His Church. _If it be not_, then may we take courage; for the position of the Church of England being tenable, all the evils within her pale, which we are now so deeply feeling, will, by God's blessing, be gradually overcome. As to practical abuses in her, who will venture to say they are so great as in the Roman Church of the tenth century, when the First See was filled successively by the lovers of abandoned women, who made and deposed Popes at their will? Our cause being good, all that we have to deplore of actual evil should lead to more earnest intercession, more continued striving after that love which breathes itself forth in unity, but should not shake the confidence of any obedient heart in our mother's title. When the Donatists made the crimes of individuals an excuse for breaking unity, St. Augustin reminded them, that the crimes of the chaff do not prejudice the wheat, but that both must grow together till the Lord of the harvest send forth his angels to make the separation.