FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 9:  “Da chi dipendera il Pontefice nell’ esercizio del suo potere Spirituale?  Dai Re?  Eccovi il gallicanismo parlamentare!  Dalle masse dei fedeli?  Eccovi il richerianismo, e febronianismo!  Dai Vescovi?  Eccovi il gallicanismo teologico” (L. di Castelplanio, p. 104).]

[Footnote 10:  Take for instance, 37 Henry VIII.  Chap. 17, which recites that “the clergy have no Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, but by and under the King, who is the only Supreme Head of the Church of England, to whom all authority and power is wholly given to hear and determine all causes ecclesiastical.”]

PART II.

THE ANGLICAN THEORY OF CONTINUITY IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.  OR THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE IN ENGLAND IN PRE-REFORMATION TIMES.

As the First Part of this little treatise is devoted to a consideration of the position of the Pope and the authority which he exercises throughout the Universal Church; so the Second Part is concerned with the position occupied and the authority exercised by the same Sovereign Pontiff in our own country of England, before she was cut off from the Universal Church in the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

One of the greatest glories of the Catholic Church is that she and she alone possesses and is able to communicate to others the whole truth revealed by Jesus Christ.  The Church of England and other Churches that have gone out from her have, we are thankful to say, carried with them some fragments of Christianity, but the Catholic Church alone possesses the whole unadulterated revelation of Jesus Christ.  For over a thousand years, the Church in England formed a part of the great Universal Church, the centre of which is at Rome and the circumference of which is everywhere.  From the sixth to the sixteenth century the Church in England was a province of that Church, and received her power and jurisdiction from the Holy See.  It was not until the sixteenth century that she apostatised, and was cut off from the stem, out of which she had sprung, as a rotten branch is lopped off from a healthy tree.  It was not until then that she became a Church apart, distinct from the Church of God, no longer the Catholic Church in England, but henceforth the National Church of England and of England alone.  The pre-"Reformation” Church was, as we have said, not a separate Church, but a part of the one Catholic Church, whereas the post-"Reformation” Church stands alone, unrecognised by the rest of Christendom; hence the one is absolutely distinct from the other.  The grand old cathedrals and churches designed, built, and paid for by our Catholic ancestors have been forcibly taken possession of, but the Faith, the teaching,