Bramhall: "We refuse no communion with any Catholic Christians at this day"

From Bramhall's Discourse III: A Reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon (1656), a response to a work by the Roman titular Bishop of Chalcedon, in which it was claimed that the Church of England had forsaken sacramental communion with "all the ancient Christian Churches":

But for all ancient Churches, Grecian, Armenian, Ethiopian, & c. - none excluded, not the Roman itself, - we are so far from forsaking them, that we make the Scriptures, interpreted by their joint belief and practice, to be the rule of our reformation. And wherein their successors have not swerved from the examples of their predecessors, we maintain a strict communion with them. Only in rites and ceremonies, and such indifferent things, we use the liberty of a free Church, to choose out such as are most proper for ourselves, and most conducible to those ends for which they were first instituted, that is, to be advancements of order, modesty, decency, gravity, in the service of God, to be adjuments to attention and devotion, furtherances of edification, helps of memory, exercises of faith, the leaves that preserve the fruit, the shell that preserves the kernel of religion from contempt ...

Lastly, for communion in Sacraments, we have forsaken no Sacraments either instituted by Christ or received by the primitive Christians. We refuse no communion with any Catholic Christians at this day, and particularly with those ancient Churches which he mentions, though we may be, and have been, misrepresented one unto another (yea, though the Sacraments may be administered in some of them not with out manifest imperfection), whilst sinful duties are not obtruded upon us as conditions of communion. Under this caution we still retain communion in Sacraments with Roman Catholics. If any person be baptized or admitted into Holy Orders in their Church, we baptize them not, we ordain them not again ...

And yet we do not censure them [i.e. the Roman Communion] for these innovations in the use of the Sacraments or the like, nor thrust them out of the communion of the Catholic Church, but provide for ourselves, advise them as brethren, and so leave them to stand or fall to their own Master. So on our parts there is a reformation, but no separation.

From The Works of The Most Reverend Father in God, John Bramhall, Volume II.

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