DIVINITY AND DIVINES. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. IT is frequently asked with a triumphant sneer, by the popish enemies of the Church of England, where was your religion before the time of Luther, and where was your Church before Henry the Eighth. As if the religion of the reformed Church were totally new, and the Church of England were indebted for its rights, and independence of the see of Rome, solely to the will of king Henry the Eighth. But from the time that the papal hierarchy first became conspicuous, not for its zealous emulation of the Apostolic virtues, but for its neglect of them, from the time that it was first attempted to set aside the Gospel, to make way for the precepts of men, from the period at which the Christian church was first profaned with idols of the various saints, and rites were introduced not less absurd than those of paganism-there never was an age in which some pious men did not oppose the tyranny of superstition, and complain of the factitious spiritual darkness, which their utmost efforts were unable to enlighten-it was not till the commencement of the sixteenth century, that the concurrent force of various causes rendered the supporters of Christianity successful against the domineering encroachments of the see of Rome, and enabled them to illumine the world with the light of true religion. Consequently that any opposition to popery was first made in the sixteenth century is totally destitute of truth, although it was assuredly at that time, that an attempt at reformation was first enabled to prosper. We shall enter into a few details, to show that the religion of the reformers was the religion of the primitive Christians, and that the church of England which has always been distinguished for her fearless intrepidity, having produced some of the earliest and most able defenders of Christianity, approaches at the present time more nearly to the state in which the congregations of Christians were left by the apostles, than does any other church whatsoever. From the highly valuable writings of Dr. Buchanan, it appears |