Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OUR CATHOLIC INHERITANCE I. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND ' I have a goodly heritage.'—Psalm xvi. 6. Have I ? That is the question which many English Churchmen ask themselves. What is the worth of our so-called Catholic heritage in the English Church ? That is the topic which we shall consider together these five Sundays. Many people just now are inclined to doubt either the reality, or else the value of this heritage. Such doubts are natural, but I think that they are not well founded. Nor must we over-rate their importance. The English branch of the Church of God is one of our most characteristic institutions, and we know that it is always an Englishman's privilege to grumble. That privilege has been exercised to the full by English Church people, lay and clerical, male and female. From the days of John Henry Newman onwards many have been found to echo the scorn of the Apologia at the comfortable Church ; some, too, will feel the justice of those pathetic words in the last sermon at Littlemore : ' O my mother, whence is this unto thee, that them hast good things poured upon thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children yet darest not own them ? Why hast thou not the skill to use their services, nor the heart to rejoice in their love ? How is it that whatever is generous in purpose, and tender or deep in devotion, thy flower and thy promise, falls from thy bosom and finds no home within thine arms ? Who hath put this note upon thee to have a " miscarrying womb and dry breasts," to be strange to thine own flesh and thine eye cruel towards thy little ones ? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, who love thee and would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear as though a portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence ;—at best thou dost but endure, as if the...