Excerpt from The Church Under Queen Elizabeth: An Historical Sketch When, in 1833, the Tractarian movement first arose at Oxford, it is remarkable that its leaders, in their important work of restoration and reparation, commenced with explaining and maintaining the doctrine of the Sacraments, and not that of the true nature and character of the Universal Church. This was like carving the pinnacle before securing the foundation. They assumed, but never once attempted to prove, that the established communion in England was identical, in all essential particulars, with the Old Church of the country, and in communion with the Church throughout the world. They started with the assump tion that none of the changes at the Reformation had altered its organic life, though the then disorganised religious state of England stared them in the face. Of course this easier method saved them a world of investigation and trouble. Having a solid foundation, as they so obviously believed themselves to possess, they could proceed to build up a superstructure. This, as we know, they did both with system and spirit. In so doing they took for granted that the ordinary historical theories concerning the changes under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth were, in the main, true and to be depended on. But these theories have turned out to be only theories; and, though bolstered up for some years under Burnet's tuition, in the face of historical documents which have been brought to light of late, they now no longer hold their ground. They are exploded; for they were founded only on fraud, fiction, and romance. It is hard to entertain the conviction that, during Queen Elizabeth's reign, the persecutors of the Catholics, men like Grindal, Sandys, Cecil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.