Moving Romeward

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 29, 1908

The Lamp, a paper published in London, and speaking as the mouthpiece of the Church of England, has this to say with reference to the Romeward movement in that church:—

Nothing can stop the return of “the other sheep” to the fold of Peter; it is the will of an omnipotent God declared by Jesus Christ; but there are too many millions of them to return as individuals; their return must be a corporate one, and that return is bound to be largely, if not mainly, through the Anglican Church; therefore the Romeward movement in the Anglican body must go on, and nothing earthborn or hellborn can stop it.

The Northwestern Christian Advocate makes the following comment on this astonishing declaration:—

These are strange words for a Protestant paper to utter. Yet perhaps they are not so strange, after all; for the Lamp is evidently a Roman Catholic and not a Protestant paper, and is sailing under a false flag in order that it may enjoy the benefits of support from the public treasury which a state church enjoys. No stronger argument for disestablishment and disendowment than is presented by the Lamp could be afforded. The Anglican priests and lay communicants which it represents have ceased for conscientious reasons to be Protestants, yet against their conscientious convictions they profess still to be Protestants in order to receive support as a part of the state church, which is Protestant and must be, under the British law.

As the Anglican Church has never been Protestant in nature, and does not so designate itself in its liturgy, it should not surprise us to see it sweeping steadily and with increasing rapidity back into the fold of the Roman Church, and, by its influence, swinging into the same course other organizations built upon the same principle—a union of church and state.