The roots of Anglicanism go back to the time of the Roman Empire when the Christian church came into existence in what was then the Roman province of Britain. The early Christian writers Tertullian and Origen tell of a British church in the Third Century AD, and in the Fourth Century British bishops attended councils of the Church such as the Council of Arles in 314 and the Council of Rimini in 359.
The British church was a missionary church with men like St Ninian and St Patrick evangelising in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In 597 a mission led by St. Augustine of Canterbury landed in Kent. What eventually became known as the Anglican Church (the Ecclesia Anglicana - or the English Church) was the result of a combination of three streams of Christianity, the Roman tradition of St Augustine and his successors, the remnants of the old Romano-British church and the Celtic tradition coming down from Scotland and associated with people like St Aidan and St Cuthbert.
These three streams came together as a result of increasing mutual contact and a number of local synods, of which the Synod of Whitby in 664 has traditionally been seen as the most important. The result was an English Church, led by the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, that was fully assimilated into the mainstream of the Christian Church of the west. This meant that it was influenced by the wider development of the Western Christian tradition in matters such as theology, liturgy, church architecture, and the development of monasticism.
At the Reformation the Church of England was among the churches that broke with Rome. The religious settlement that eventually emerged in the reign of Elizabeth gave the Anglican Church the distinctive identity that it has retained to this day. It resulted in a Church that consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Church of the Patristic period in terms of its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, and aspects of its liturgy, but which also embodied reformed insights in its theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice.
The Rev’d. Dr. Francis J. Hall in his "Theological Outlines" points out that the Church's teaching is correctly embodied in the Book of Common Prayer. He observes that “competent theologians may and ought to test the provincial and current doctrines which they have received, in order to ascertain if such doctrines really have Catholic authority. And such testing, repeated in every generation and in various lands, is one of the chief means under God by which the Faith is preserved in the Church in its original purity and integrity. The method to be employed is implied in the rule of St. Vincent of Lerins: "In the Catholic Church we must take care to hold what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all," - "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est." In short, the marks of universality, antiquity and consent are to be looked for; and this, not to discover the Catholic Faith, but to verify the Catholicity of existing doctrines.
The test of universality is applied first, or the concurrent voice of the living Church, heard in all its various particular portions. If the doctrines considered stand this test, adequately and correctly applied, they will stand the other two tests; for the Church universal ever teaches the same Faith, and the consent meant by St. Vincent is never wanting to universal doctrine.
The test of antiquity is next applied by tracing the doctrine through the ages to primitive days, in order to ascertain if it agrees with what has been taught by the Church from the beginning. This test is of especial importance when dispute exists as to the mark of universality. Legitimate developments in doctrinal language must, of course, be carefully allowed for.
Finally the test of consent is made use of. This does not require us to discover that the doctrine has been explicitly accepted by every Catholic believer, or even by every theologian. A mere counting of heads is futile. What is to be ascertained is, whether the generality of representative Catholic theologians can be seen to agree, when their respective places in theological development, and diverse points of view and modes of expression, are taken duly into account.
