Thus, the Reformation both affirmed and denied. It affirmed the constitutional rights of the Church as against the unconstitutional claims of the Pope, and it denied the unconstitutional claims of the State as against the constitutional rights of the Church.
Much more, very much more, "for weal or for woe," it did. It had to buy its experience. The Reformation was not born grown up. It made its mistakes, as every growing movement will do. It is still growing, still making mistakes, still purging and pruning itself as it grows; and it is still asserting its right to reform itself where it { 17} has gone wrong, and to return to the old ideal where it has departed from it. And this old ideal is wrapped up in the sixth name:--
Re-formation must be based upon its original formation if it would aim at real reform. It is not necessarily a mechanical imitation of the past, but a genuine portrait of the permanent. It is, then, to the Primitive Church that we must look for the principles of reformation. If the meaning of a will is contested years after the testator's death, reference will be made, as far as possible, to the testator's contemporaries, or to writings which might best interpret his intentions. This is what the English Reformers of the sixteenth century tell us that they did. They refer perpetually to the past; over and over again they send us to the "ancient fathers,"[13] as to those living and writing nearest to the days when the Church was established, and as most likely to know her mind. They go back to what the "Commination Service" calls "The Primitive Church". This "Primitive Church" is the Reformed Church now established in England. { 18} The Reformers themselves never meant it to be anything else, and would have been the first to protest against the unhistoric, low, and modern use of the word "established". In this sense, they would have been the sturdiest of sturdy "Protestants".
And this word Protestant reminds us that there is one more name frequently given to the Church of England, but not included in our scheme, because found nowhere in the Prayer Book.
The term is a foreign one--not English. It comes from Germany and was given to the Lutherans in 1529, because they protested against an edict[14] forbidding them to regulate their own local ecclesiastical affairs, pending the decision of a General Council.