Excerpt from The Doctrine of Confession in the Church of England No question affecting the Church of England can be fairly considered, except by connecting together its earlier and its later history, as presenting different phases of one living body, holding in substance the same truth. It was not the purpose of the English Reformation to ignore the traditions of the past, the changes which then took place being avowedly grounded on an appeal to an earlier standard. Its object, as the oft-repeated declarations of its leaders abundantly testify, was to correct abuses, and remove novelties of doctrine or practice, which had grown up during the middle ages at variance with primitive revelation. It is but one instance of this fundamental principle, that our existing formularies are framed upon the ancient service books of the Catholic Church. They profess to be, and are, at least in their essential features, a reconstruction of its traditionary system; and only on this ground they claim our allegiance. 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.