TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
ments of the Lord's Supper were more distinctly offered up to God, and more formally consecrated than in the second edition, or at present. Had Queen Mary not succeeded, perhaps the men who effected this would have gone further.
C. I believe they would; nay indeed they did at a subsequent period. They took away the Liturgy altogether, and substituted a Directory.
L. They? the same men?
C. Yes, the foreign party: who afterwards went by the name of Puritans. Bucer, who altered in King Edward's time, and the Puritans, who destroyed in King Charles's, both came from the same religious quarter.
L. Ought you so to speak of the foreign Reformers? to them we owe the Protestant doctrine altogether.
C. I like foreign interference, as little from Geneva, as from Rome. Geneva at least never converted a part of England from heathenism, nor could lay claim to patriarchal authority over it. Why could we not be let alone, and suffered to reform ourselves?
L. You separate then your creed and cause from that of the Reformed Churches of the Continent?
C. Not altogether; but I protest against being brought into that close alliance with them which the world now a-days would force upon us. The glory of the English Church is, that it has taken the via media, as it has been called. It lies between the (so called) Reformers and the Romanists; whereas there are religious circles, and influential too, where it is thought enough to prove an English Clergyman unfaithful to his Church, if he preaches any thing at variance with the opinions of the Diet of Augsburg, or the Confessions of the Waldenses. However, since we have been led to speak of the foreign Reformers, I will, if you will still listen to me, strengthen my argument by an appeal to them.
L. That argument being, that what is now considered Protestant doctrine, is not what was considered such by the Reformers.
C. Yes; and I am going to offer reasons for thinking that the present age has lapsed, not only from the opinions of the English Reformers, but from those of the foreign also. This is too
