WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1671, 11 February 1913, Page 3

WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT.

Sir,—The thanks of all churchmen are due to you for the leading article on the ahovo subject in'jour issue of February 8.. It was strange, however, to read (in a paper usually so very well informed on matters ecclesiastical) * the repeating, without comment or correction, of two popular errors— ' .

~l.'The misuse of tho word "Catholic," 'confounding it with llonian Catholic. The writer of the nrticlo ignores the fact that this titlo is made use of also, by tho Orthodoz Eastern Church (numbering over one hundred million Christians), the Old Catholic Churches of' Switzerland, Holland, and Poland, end the Church of England (witness, the language of- her Prayer Book).

2. The assumption that the post-Refor-mation Church was a different being from the pre-Itefornmtion Church.- . ReformAtion of a Church.no more necessarily implies change of identity than.reformation of character in ail individual implies change of identity. . The entire absence of any Act of Parliament of, tlxo period ordering the establishment of a new State Church is the best refutation of the assumption. Judge Sir Hotert Phillimore says: "It is not only a religions, but a legal, error to suppose that a new Church'was introduced into the realm at the time of tho Reformation. It is not less the language of our law than .of our divinity that the old Church was restored, not that a new ■ one was substituted." See also tho Nonconformist Professor Beard (in his Ilibhert Lecturcs), the historian Freeman, Lord Chancellor Selborne, AY. H. Gladstone, ctc. Roman Catholics admit that'the Roman Catholic Church in England is "not descended lineally from \ the pre-Hcformatioir Church" (see Father Humphrey, "The Divine' Teacher," Burns, and Oates, 1885, pp. 53, and following). Thus to give any portion of tho endowments of tho Welsh Church to thq Roman Church iii England would be to give it to a body which has no claim to it.—l am, etc., IIISTOEICUS. [AAo print our correspondent's letter, but we cannot undertake to open our columns to a controversy" oil the "continuity" question.] '