For the full 9-page pdf-article, it is at the URL.Is there Popery in the Prayer Book, historically considered? http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/documents/CAT016_Boultbee-Popery.pdf
[Church Society] 14 Sep 2009
The very asking the question now proposed for our consideration would have utterly astonished our forefathers of the last century. I am old enough to remember when plain Church people used commonly to speak of their religion simply as Protestantism. Often, in the early days of my ministry, when making my first acquaintance with parishioners, and therefore feeling it necessary to know what they were, I have asked whether they went to church or chapel, and have received the reply, “Oh, I am a Protestant”—meaning thereby a Churchman. Of course they would have admitted that their Wesleyan and Baptist neighbours professed the Protestant faith too. But the old English idea was distinctly that the Church of England was the Protestant Church, and Churchmen were Protestants. How it has come to pass that such a firm English notion should ever have been partially loosened, is a strange story, the telling of which in years to come will be a singular page inhistory.However, that it is loosened is but too clear. The proposed question for our Lecture implies that some think that somehow, and somewhere, there is Popery in our Prayer Book. If there is, it will concern us to find out where it is, and who put it there, and why; and whether they did it consciously or unconsciously? If unconsciously, those who did it were either themselves in a muddle, or were not entirely free from the old system. If consciously, they were either dishonest men, or they yielded to influences they could not resist.
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