The Foreign Church Chronicle and Review Volume 15 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 Excerpt: ...extent to the Anglo-Continental Society. Forty years ago, when the Society was founded, there was much Erastianism, but, beside that, there was much timidity. Eight years previously, Dr. Newman had betrayed the Church of England, and taken up his position in the camp of her enemies. A year or two before its foundation, Hope Scott and Manning had left us, and Robert Wilberforce was known to be going. Many had come to despair of the unity of the Church, many thought that if it existed it must be asked for from Rome. The Anglo-Continental Society in 1853 put out an idea of Church unity which was bolder and truer, maintaining that it was to be sought and found in calling back the fallen Churches to the primitive standing-ground. Some of the first members of the Society were Samuel Wilberforce, the greatest Bishop of Oxford; Christopher Wordsworth, the greatest Bishop of Lincoln; Mr. Gladstone, whom another generation will count as one of the greatest Prime Ministers of England; and Harold Browne, still the President of the Society, whom I regard as the most learned and pious of living English Churchmen. The first efforts of the Society were made in Italy during the ten years that preceded the Vatican Council. There there was a reforming Cardinal, Andrea; a reforming Bishop, Caputo; three hundred Priests that had renounced Papal authority, and Passaglia's phalanx of nine thousand to fall back on. But the cardinal was poisoned and the bishop died, and the three hundred priests were handed over by Ricasoli, the Italian Prime Minister, to the tender mercies of bishops appointed by the Pope, with a view to crushing them. The Italian reform movement was thus delayed. Then came the Vatican Council, and we found the Old Catholics carrying out in the face of the world w...