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The National Church thirty-three years after he had refused to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, he said, with emphasis,
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Truthfulness of the _individual_ man is essential to moral worth; but for this very reason the _system_ of the Church must be lax in order to allow truthfulness to individuals. This is curious reasoning, and subversive of the idea of Unity. Still, as no one can deny that as Life implies Progression, so as regards the Churches, the inspired words that they should be
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surely allow for progression also into higher regions of knowledge and methods of teaching. To allow for this spirit of progression Newman held that a State Church should not be tied down to fixed conditions.
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No general Church system will go so far as the foremost minds.... All the moderate and wisest historians of the Anglican Church have extolled its foundations. They have judged that, take it as a whole, the Reformation went as far as the collective nation was then able to go. That it
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All this has a certain truth, but when all is said, the fact forces itself upon one that after all it is a matter for debate whether the Reformation was a
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movement at all: whether it did not in reality delay progression. For it is well known to-day that it was really managed by the machinations of one of the most selfish and unprincipled of kings [Footnote: Whose conduct at this time largely hinged on the refusal of the Pope to grant him his wished-for divorce from Katherine.]--who was only progressive in the matter of wives--and by his ministers, who were, many of them, men of vile characters and greed. As to motive, it is very patent to-day what _that_ was. It was that of the man who covets his neighbour's goods, i.e. the lands and moneys of the monasteries and churches, and who whitewashes his sin when his desire is satisfied. There is besides sufficient proof to-day that the great bulk of the unrepresented nation did _not_ regard this act of wholesale robbery as
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nor that it
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the Church
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. As was said of Stanley,
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His