The Anglican confession represents a mixture of Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. Opposition to Rome’s clerical despotism arose in England even several centuries before the Reformation. The opposition was fed by national, economic and religious considerations. Englishmen were indignant at the Roman bishop’s constant interference in the country’s internal life, his excessive claims of a worldly and political nature, the great income Rome received from England, the clergy’s dissolute way of life, etc.

The official cause for the break with Rome in 1532 was the Pope’s refusal to grant the English King Henry VIII a church divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon. No church reforms occurred in the beginning, but Henry proclaimed himself head of the church, closed down many monasteries, cancelled the paying of tithes to Rome. Subsequently, under the influence of the Protestants who flooded England, the king commissioned the entire church teaching inherited from Rome to be re-examined. In 1536 Parliament issued the “Ten articles of faith,” which were a mixture of Protestantism and Catholicism. In 1552 a new 42-article creed was published, followed by the “Little Catechism.” In it many religious customs like the blessing of water and the use of bells were called superstitions and were annulled.

In 1551, under Edward VII, these articles were again re-examined and a revised version of the 42 articles of the English creed was published. That, too, was a mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism. Thus arose the English Episcopal Church.

A war of religious parties began among the faithful, and in 1559 the Queen issued a new creed made up of 39 articles that were obligatory for the clergy and the laity. These principles contain some dogmas that are in agreement with Orthodoxy: the belief in one God in three Persons, in the Son of God, etc., the rejection of purgatory, indulgences and the primacy of the Pope. Services are held in the native tongue. However, the Latin fallacy concerning the provenance of the Holy Spirit “and from the Son” has been kept. From Lutheranism was borrowed the fallacy concerning justification by faith alone, the refusal to acknowledge the Ecumenical Council, the refusal to worship icons and holy relics. The Anglican confession stresses the church primacy of the king. The 25th article of this creed refuses to acknowledge penitence, anointment with myrrh, marriage, anointment with oil, and priesthood as sacraments. The Orthodox Church cannot agree with this, but there is no hope for any change in the position of the Anglican Church, since it is dependent on Parliament, among whose members there are Freemasons, people of Jewish origin and even atheists. The English Parliament has the decisive word in matters of faith. The king – head of the Anglican Church – takes the following oath during his coronation: “I proclaim and sincerely vow before God that I believe that in the sacrament of communion the bread and wine are not transformed into the true Body and Blood of Christ, neither before nor after the blessing of the Holy Gifts, no matter who performs it. And I further believe that the worship of the Holy Virgin Mary and the saints, and also the sacrificial meaning of the Liturgy are contrary to the Protestant faith.” In 1927 and 1928 Parliament twice rejected a new theological book that had been approved by an assembly of clergy and in the House of the Lords, because in it the Holy Spirit was called upon in the Liturgy, and it proposed keeping the Holy Gifts for giving communion to the sick.

Thus, in the first part of our treatise we have shown that there can only be one Church. It must go back in uninterrupted succession to the Apostolic Church, preserving the purity of its faith and the apostolic grace of priesthood; the faithful receive sanctification in Church sacraments, especially in communion, which is the actual Body and Blood of Christ. The Orthodox Church meets all these conditions. We have briefly described the history and the teaching of the Orthodox Church.

Subsequently we acquainted the reader with the history of the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church, which originally was the Western branch of the one Church of Christ. The ever-growing hunger for power on the part of the Roman bishops in the 11th century led to the Roman Catholic Church’s separation from Orthodoxy. Confident of their infallibiity, the Roman bishops gradually allowed a series of modernisms to creep into Christian teaching and the method of performing sacraments. The Roman Catholic Church’s regression from the purity of the apostolic faith engendered in turn the Protestant movement, out of which emerged the sects that exist nowadays. We briefly described the major sects: Lutheranism, the Reformation, Calvinism, and the Anglican confession.

In this next part we will talk about the different sects of our times that regress further and further from the truth, about the contemporary “gift of tongues,” about pseudo-religious societies and cults, about heresies and sects in Russia, and about non-Christian religions. In conclusion we will sum up this treatise on churches.