The Protestantism of the Prayer Book

"The title of this work explains its object. It is to demonstrate the essential Protestantism of the Book of Common Prayer, and to give to loyal Churchmen a series of reasons for their honest attachment to the Church of England. The word Protestant is a term of which no Churchman should be ashamed ; and he who sneers at her Protestantism, may well he suspected of disloyalty to the Church. No one can read the history of the Reformation without recognizing the fact that the Church of England is nothing if not Protestant. Not only her Articles, but all the services of the Prayer Book were drawn up by Protestants in the true sense, and intended for the establishment of Protestantism. While we rejoice in the catholicity of the Church of England, and recognize with gladness the fact that she is a true branch of the one holy catholic Church, which she herself has defined to be the blessed company of all faithful people, we also know that her very being is essentially and continuously a living protest against the falsities of Rome, and not only that, but against all forms of error, practical and doctrinal, Unitarian, Socinian, Pelagian, Arian.

The Church is Protestant, not merely in that she presents a powerful disclaimer both in her Articles and liturgy against the perversions of Popery, but Protestant equally in her standing protest against other forms of error which, by negation or subtraction, have perverted the truth. It is, however, in the sense of protest against Romanism, or Popery, Roman corruptions in doctrine, and Romish trivialties in ritual, that that word Protestant is mainly employed in this work."

With these words the Rev. A. Dyson Hague begins the Introduction to his classic work on the Book of Common Prayer, The Protestantism of the Prayer Book, first published in 1890. The enlarged, revised edition of The Protestantism of the Prayer Book, with a Preface by the Rt. Rev. J. C. Ryle, the first Bishop of Liverpool and a leading nineteenth century Anglican Evangelical, is available on the Internet in a variety of formats at Internet Archive. The third edition is available for download in PDF format at McMaster University's MacSphere website.