Currently reading: The Caroline Divines and the Church of Rome by Mark Langham 📚
it was in the hands of the Caroline Divines that this ‘Appeal to Antiquity’ became the principal method of doing apologetics, to combat the Roman claim that Protestants had rejected the traditions of hundreds of years and introduced unwarranted innovations. Moreover, the witness of the apostolic and patristic eras might claim for the Church of England its own priority in antiquity, exposing the novelties proposed by the Roman Catholics. It was an argument that needed to be wielded with some caution; the witness of antiquity to (for example) historic succession might appear to favour the arguments of Rome.