Further Steps Towards Reunion

Extract

We have always felt and expressed the opinion that the de facto separation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome came about by process of law; not, indeed, primarily ecclesiastical, but civil. In this it did but follow the character of our people, over whom the majesty of law has always had such sway that for a time the country accepted with almost Oriental fanaticism the Divine Right of Kings.

This fixed opinion of ours on the legal and civil origin of the breach with Rome led us to expect that the formal, official and collective separation would be ended by the same process which had been its cause. It became part of our service of Jesus Christ, the Truth, to look for any signs, however slender and struggling, of an official will or wish to have speech, if not yet inter-communion, with the Holy See. Perhaps our hopes gave sight to our eyes when we discerned in the official acts of the ‘Conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion,’ held at Lambeth in 1920, some beginning of that official action by the Church of England which three centuries had awaited in vain.