"This great work of Reformation": Laud, Reformation, and National Synods

From A relation of the conference between William Laud, late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite, in which Laud rejects the suggestion from Roman apologists that reform required the authority of a General Council, and should not have been undertaken by national synods:

... we should have no Reformation: For it would be long enough, before the Church should be cured, if that Sea alone should be her Physitian, which in truth is her Disease.

Now if for all this you will say still, that a Provincial Councel will not suffice, but we should have born with Things, till the time of a General Councel. First, 'tis true, a General Councel, free and entire, would have been the best Remedy, and most able for a Gangrene that had spread so far, and eaten so deep into Christianity. But what? Should we have suffered this Gangrene to endanger life and all, rather than be cured in time by a Physitian of a weaker knowledge, and a less able Hand?

Secondly, We live to see since, if we had stayed and expected a General Councel, what manner of one we should have had, if any. For that at Trent was neither general, nor free. And for the Errors which Rome had contracted, it confirmed them, it cured them not. And yet I much doubt, whether ever that Councel (such as it was) would have been cal∣led, if some Provincial and National Synods under Supreme and Regal Power, had not first set upon this great work of Reformation; Which I heartily wish had in all places been as Orderly and Happily pursued, as the Work was right Christian and good in itself.

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laudable Practice

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