UNITED CHURCH

OF

ENGLAND AND IRELAND.

NAME. This church is that established by law in England and Ireland, where it makes part of the common law of the land, or constitution of the country.

RISE, PROGRESS, &c. When and by whom Christianity was first introduced into Britain, cannot be exactly ascertained at this distance of time. Eusebius, indeed, positively declares, that it was by the Apostles and their disciples; Bishops Jewell, and Stillingfleet, Dr. Cave, and others, insist that it was by St. Paul; and Baronius affirms, on the authority of an ancient MS. in the Vatican Library, that the Gospel was planted in Britain by Simon Zelotes the Apostle, and Joseph of Arimathea, and that the latter came over A. D. 35. i. e. about the 21st year of Tiberius, and died

here.* If this account be true, the Church of England received Christianity several years before St. Peter is said to have visited Rome, which, according to some, was not till the 2d year of Claudius, A. D. 42. "And, for the honour of my mother Church, I speak, that Christianity was first publicly professed by authority in this kingdom, about 130 years before it was in Rome; Lucius our king, being (as I read) the first Christian king in Europe, who reigned about the year of our Lord 170. And moreover, Constantine the Christian Emperor was born amongst us, who gave the first public liberty to the Roman Church."+

According to Archbishop Usher, the British Churches had a school of learning in the year 182, to provide them with proper teachers; and it would appear, that they flourished, without dependence upon any foreign church, till the arrival of Austin in the latter end of the 6th century.

Episcopacy was early established in this country; and it ought to be remembered, to the honour of the British Bishops and Clergy, that they withstood the encroachments of the see of Rome for several centuries; on which account, their piety hath been but meanly regarded by some zealous Roman Catholics.-Popery, however, was introduced into England, according to some, by Aus

*Bishop Jewell's Works, p. 11. Bishop Stillingfleet's Origines Britan. p. 35, 48, &c. MS. Vatican. Baron. ad ann. Christi 35.

+ Dr. Pagitt's Christianography, p. 147.

tin the Monk; and we find its errors every where prevalent for several ages preceding the Reformation, until Wickliff was raised up in the 14th century to refute them. The seed which he had sown took root downwards, and sprang upwards during his life, and ripened after his death, into a glorious harvest. But it was not until the reign of Henry the VIII. that the Reformation is usually said to have begun in England.-When Luther declared war against the Pope, then Leo X., this prince, proud of his theological might, rushed into the battle; and his treatise on the Seven Sacraments against Luther's book Of the Captivity of Babylon, was repaid by the enraptured pontiff

* Augustine or Austin the Monk, was sent from Rome about the year 596, to convert the Saxons, and was the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

↑ He was born at Wickliffe, near Richmond in Yorkshire, about 1324, and studied at Queen's, (afterwards at Merton) College, Oxford, where he was some time Divinity Professor. He maintained many Protestant tenets, wrote several tracts against the principal doctrines of Popery, and was the first who translated the whole Bible into English. Such was his courage and zeal, that he is said to have sent a confession of his faith to the Pope, and to have declared himself willing to defend it at Rome. He was many years minister at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where, notwithstanding the danger to which his zeal exposed him, he quietly ended his days, A. D. 1384, or, according to others, in 1387.

For some account of him and his doctrines, see Gilpin's Lives, or the 1st part of the 4th vol. of Mr. Milner's Hist of the Ch. of Christ.

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with praise little inferior to that of inspiration, and with the title of Defender of the Faith, which, in a sense diametrically opposite, and by a claim of higher desert, was regularly handed down together with his crown, and now belongs to his successor. But Henry was faithful in allegiance only to his passions. He soon felt scruples, increased by his growing attachment to Ann Boleyn, as to the lawfulness of his marriage with Catharine of Arragon, who had originally been contracted to his brother; and he solicited the Pope for a divorce. His Holiness procrastinated a decision for the space of six years, when Archbishop Cranmer dissolved the king's marriage, by a sentence pronounced in May 1533, without waiting for the sentence of the court of Rome. On this, Clement the VII. then Pope, threatened, and at last pronounced excommunication against Henry for not taking back his queen; which proved fatal to the interests of his Holiness, for the king now threw off all restraint, renounced the Papal Supremacy, and openly separated from the see of Rome. He was however no Protestant at heart, but firmly attached to the doctrines which he had formerly defended; and notwithstanding this, he took the government of Ecclesiastical affairs into his own hand, and plundered the monasteries. And with the assistance of Archbishop Cranmer, who, by his writings and influence contributed more perhaps than any other person towards the Reformation in England, having reformed several abuses, he was himself de

clared by parliament, Supreme Head of the Church.*

On the death of Henry, the Reformation began to advance in earnest during the short reign of his successor Edward the VI.-But when Mary ascended the throne, all was reversed. Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, and Ferrar, Dr. Taylor, Messrs. Rogers, Bradford, Philpot, and other eminent Protestants, with numbers of their followers, sealed their faith with their blood; while Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries, swarmed with English exiles, who fled for their lives.t

The death of Mary made way for the accession of Queen Elizabeth, who soon dispelled this storm, and established the Protestant religion throughout her dominions. She declared herself head of the Church, assumed the title of Supreme governor thereof within her kingdom, both in Spirituals and Temporals, and set the Church of England on the

*It is worthy of remark here, that the King's Ecclesiastical Supremacy was now only restored; for it seems to have been frequently asserted long before the Reformation, particularly by the famous Statute of Premunire, 16 Richard II.

↑ The whole number burnt in this reign was (as Bishop Burnet moderately reckons them) 284. But Archbishop Grindal, who lived at the same time, says, they were 800. Besides these, 60 died in prisons. Burnet's History of the Reformation, B. 3. A. D. 1558.