And next, as to the _issue_,
to which the controversy between them was to be brought, it was
this:--the Anglican disputant took his stand upon Antiquity or
apostolicity, the Roman upon Catholicity. The Anglican said to the
Roman: "There is but One Faith, the Ancient, and you have not kept to
it;" the Roman retorted: "There is but One Church, the Catholic, and
you are out of it." The Anglican urged: "Your special beliefs,
practices, modes of action, are nowhere in Antiquity;" the Roman
objected: "You do not communicate with any one Church besides your
own and its offshoots, and you have discarded principles, doctrines,
sacraments, and usages, which are and ever have been received in the
East and the West." The true Church, as defined in the Creeds, was
both Catholic and Apostolic; now, as I viewed the controversy in
which I was engaged, England and Rome had divided these notes or
prerogatives between them: the cause lay thus, Apostolicity _versus_
Catholicity.

However, in thus stating the matter, of course I do not wish it
supposed, that I considered the note of Catholicity really to belong
to Rome, to the disparagement of the Anglican Church; but that the
special point or plea of Rome in the controversy was Catholicity, as
the Anglican plea was Antiquity. Of course I contended that the Roman
idea of Catholicity was not ancient and apostolic. It was in my
judgment at the utmost only natural, becoming, expedient, that the
whole of Christendom should be united in one visible body; while such
a unity might be, on the other hand, a mere heartless and political
combination. For myself, I held with the Anglican divines, that, in
the Primitive Church, there was a very real mutual independence
between its separate parts, though, from a dictate of charity, there
was in fact a close union between them. I considered that each see
and diocese might be compared to a crystal, and that each was similar
to the rest, and that the sum total of them all was only a collection
of crystals. The unity of the Church lay, not in its being a polity,
but in its being a family, a race, coming down by apostolical descent
from its first founders and bishops. And I considered this truth
brought out, beyond the possibility of dispute, in the Epistles of
St. Ignatius, in which the bishop is represented as the one supreme
authority in the Church, that is, in his own place, with no one above
him, except as, for the sake of ecclesiastical order and exped