The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments

the sixteenth century, but that would not have been a reformed Church, it would have been {15} another Church--the very last thing the Reformers contemplated.

A Reformed Church, then, is not the formation of a new Church, but the re-formation of the old Church.

How did the old Church of England reform itself? Roughly speaking, the English Reformation did two things. It affirmed something, and it denied something.

First, it affirmed something. For instance, the Church of England affirmed that the Church in this country in the sixteenth century was one with the Church of the sixth century. It affirmed that it was the very same Church that had been established in Palestine on the Day of Pentecost, and in this realm by Augustine in 597. It reaffirmed its old national independence in things local just as it had affirmed it in the days of Pope Gregory, It re-affirmed its adherence to every doctrine[12] held by the undivided Church, without adding thereto, or taking therefrom.

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