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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
It is IN the course of the debate in Parliament on the Revised Prayer-Book many startling things were said, but few things can have been more startling than Sir Henry Slesser’s speech.
‘The question of Rome and the question of doctrine are two separate and distinct matters. I need hardly remind the House that when the jurisdiction of Rome was repudiated in England, so little change was made in the sacramental doctrine of the Church of England that the much vexed question of transubstantiation remained the doctrine throughout the reign of Henry VIII. Therefore when we talk about Reformation, we must ask whether we mean the cessation of the Papal jurisdiction in the reign of Henry or the introduction of the German doctrine in the time of Edward VI, because they are not one and the same thing. When we come to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the present settlement was really achieved—though, I remind the House, achieved by Act of Parliament without the consent of Convocation—the Book which was then the Book of Common Prayer was so designed, I believe, that it was capable of both the interpretations for which the parties are contending to-day.’
In other words there were two reformations, one a repudiation of the Papacy under Henry, another a reformation of doctrine under Edward and Elizabeth; these were not, as one has always supposed, two aspects or successive steps in the one reform; ‘they are not one and the same thing’ because the doctrine of transubstantiation survived the former but not the latter.