Page:Vindicationoflaw00hath.djvu/55

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ON SCRIPTURAL PRINCIPLES.
47

der, I will quote from the Doctor's letter to myself the following passage (page 49):—"Moreover this translation, which is in truth an interpretation, has become the public teaching of the whole Church of England and Ireland in all parts of the world. It is the translation read in churches, and by the translators intended to be read, and not the marginal version. It has remained undisturbed in its place of honour for two centuries and a half, acquiesced in by sovereign, clergy, and people, and therefore appears to me to express more certainly the mind of the whole English Church than the 99th Canon, which was never confirmed by Parliament. And this is one reason why I cannot receive your statement that the Church of England always held, and still holds, that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is unlawful. No doubt the Anglo-Saxon Church received the law as laid down by Gregory the Great. When the English Church lay prostrate at the feet of Rome it received Roman Canon Law and all her prohibited degrees. But the Eighth Henry's Acts of Parliament no more represent the decision of the Church of England than the counter Act of Philip and Mary or the modern Act of 1835. Archbishop Parker's Table of Prohibited Degrees was the act of one individual, no more involving the judgment of the English Church than Whitgift's sanction of the Lambeth Articles. The only authentic declaration of the English Reformed Clergy is the 99th Canon of the