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النشر الإلكتروني

CHURCH PROBLEMS

A VIEW OF

MODERN ANGLICANISM

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PREFACE

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NE result of the unhappy controversies which have recently distracted the Church of England may be salutary. Many persons have been led to inquire into the history, obligations, working, and prospects of that historic society, which is not only a living branch of the "one, holy, Catholic Church," but also the oldest, most famous, and most widely beneficent of the National Institutions. There is some danger that the strife of ecclesiastical partisans shall delude and disgust them. The Church is greater than the conduct of some Churchmen suggests. The wider interests of her life are not concerned with the strivings of eager partisans.

This volume owes its origin to a deep desire to bring under the public view a worthier version of Anglicanism than that which is provided by the controversies of the hour. In asking my friends to combine with me in this undertaking, I suggested that it might be serviceable to recall the attention of Churchmen from the comparatively trivial issues of current conflict to the broader aspects of the question in debate; that it might be worth while to show how large an area of human life is affected by the fortunes of the Church of England and in what vital particulars; that it could not be other than calamitous that general interest should be concentrated on matters which, however exciting, are, on any broad view of the subject, scarcely vital. I proposed that we should attempt to set forward a view of the Church of England as a

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