errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities, shall for ever, by the authority of the present parliament, be united and annexed to the imperial crown of the realm."

By a clause in the act of uniformity, it was enacted, "That the Queen's Majesty, by advice of her ecclesiastical commissioners, may ordain and publish such ceremonies or rites as may be most for the advancement of God's glory, and the edifying of the church." So highly did Elizabeth esteem the authority thus conferred upon her, that she told Parker she would never have consented to establish the Protestant religion at all, but for the power with which she was thus invested to change it according to her own will. Nor let it be forgotten that the present sovereign Victoria has, at this moment, the very same extent of power which the act of supremacy conferred upon Elizabeth.

In order to enable Elizabeth, and all her successors, to exercise this most exorbitant power, by a clause in the act of supremacy she was empowered to delegate her authority to any persons, being natural born subjects, whether lay or clerical, who, as commissioners from, and for the crown, were empowered to "visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts and enormities whatsoever, which, by any manner of spiritual or ecclesiastical power, authority or jurisdiction, can or may lawfully be reformed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained or amended."

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Nothing," as a High-Church historian has well observed, "can be more comprehensive than the terms of this clause. The whole compass of Church discipline seems (and not only seems, but in reality was) transferred upon the crown. While all parties, except the most decided Erastians, low-churchmen, and some also of the Evangelical body, have united in condemning, in the strongest terms, the spiritual powers thus conferred upon the crown, their indignation has been specially directed against that clause by which the whole ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church of England may be exercised by lay commissioners, acting by a warrant under the crown. Had the crown been restricted to employ only ecclesiastics in ecclesiastical causes, the evil would be practically redressed. But as the crown not only possessed, but exercised the power to place this jurisdiction in the hands of laymen, who, in vir

* Collier's Ecclesiastical History, Barham's edition, vi. 224.

tue of their commission, were empowered to examine, censure, suspend, and even depose, not only the inferior clergy, but even the prelates and the primates, and did too, in manifold instances, execute their commission, it were strange, indeed, if any man who can distinguish the Church from the world, and things spiritual from things civil, could but deplore and condemn this foul invasion of the privileges of Christ's kingdom.

Such was the foundation of the high commission court, and of the star chamber, which in a subsequent age proved so disastrous, not only to the liberties and the lives of the subject, but also to the stability of the altar and the throne. The authority of these courts was so undefined, their powers so despotic, that they could be perpetuated only by the destruction of all liberty, both civil and religious.

"Whoever," says a Romanist historian of high name, "will compare the powers given to this tribunal, (the high commission court,) with those of the inquisition which Philip the Second endeavoured to establish in the Low Countries, Iwill find that the chief difference between the two courts consisted in their names.

And all that a learned and zealous advocate of the Church of England can say in her defence is, that “Dr. Lingard ought to have added, that though such commissions were not unknown in the time of Edward VI., the person who first brought into England the model attempted in the Low Countries was Queen Mary; .. and that the same system was continued in the reign of Elizabeth, not because it was congenial with the spirit of Protestantism, but because the temper of the times had been trained and hardened in the school of Popery." As if it were not admitted, even by this apologist himself, that the Church of England had the precedency of Philip in the institution. of a court of inquisition under Edward, as if any man but an out-and-out apologist of the Church of England would identify the actions of Elizabeth with the genuine manifestations of "the spirit of Protestantism," and as if, besides, the high commission court and the star chamber, as Dr. Cardwell's words would insinuate, had terminated with the reign of Elizabeth, or had been abolished by the Church of England, when he very well knows the horrors these courts

* Lingard's History of England, v. 316.

† Dr. Cardwell's Documentary Annals of the Church of England, i. 223.

perpetrated in subsequent reigns, and knows, too, that it was the rising power of the Puritans that demolished these infernal courts, which an increasing party in the Church of England, who fairly represent her genius, will ere long restore, if the old Puritan spirit do not prevent such a national calamity.

Ample as the spiritual and ecclesiastical powers thus conferred upon Elizabeth were, she was not satisfied, until, by a clause in the act of supremacy, all persons holding public office, civil, juridical, municipal, military or ecclesiastical, were required to take an oath in recognition of the supremacy royal, binding themselves to defend the same, under pain of being deprived of their offices, and of being declared incapable of further employment. This oath, by the 36th canon, continues to be taken by all ecclesiastics down to this day.

Thus, by one disastrous stroke, the liberties of the Church of England were cloven down, and laid prostrate in the dust. All ecclesiastical jurisdiction, all spiritual power, were lodged in the crown, without respect to the sex, creed, or character of the party, who, for the time, might happen to wear it. The prelates and pastors of that Church thus became, even in the discharge of their most sacred functions, the mere vicars and delegates of the supreme civil magistrate. Not one rite, even the most trivial, can they alter, not one canon, however necessary, can they pass, not one error, however gross, can they reform, not one omission, even the most important, can they supply. The civil magistrate enacts the creed they are bound to profess and inculcate, frames the prayers which they must offer at the throne of God, prescribes in number and form the sacraments they must administer, arranges the rites and vestments they must use, down to the colour, shape, and stuff of a cap or a tunicle, and takes discipline altogether out of their hand. The parish priest has no authority to exclude the most profligate sinner from communion; the lordliest prelate and primate cannot excommunicate the most apandoned sinner, or suspend the most immoral ecclesiastic from his functions; and should either the priest or the prelate attempt to exercise the discipline prescribed by the Lord Jesus in his house, he will speedily be made to understand, by the terrors of a pramunire, or the experience of a prison, that he is not appointed in the Church of England to administer the laws of Christ, but the statutes of the im

perial parliament, or the injunctions of the crown.* Never was there so autocratical a despotism placed in the hands of a human being, as, by the Constitution of the Church of England, is reposed in the sovereign-never, on earth, was there so fettered and enthralled a community as the southern establishment. The muftis and other ecclesiastical functionaries (so to term them) have an indefinite authority by the constitution of Turkey to resist the jurisdiction of the Sultan-A general council, it is the prevalent opinion among Romanists, can control the authority of the pope, and in both cases the supreme functionaries are considered spiritual officers; but in the Church of England, priests, prelates, and primates, have no authority whatever, ecclesiastics though they be, to control, or even to modify, the spiritual supremacy of a lay and civil magistrate.

So anomalous a society was never witnessed, if society it can be called, which has not one single element of an organized community,-which consists of a mere congeries of individual atoms without laws enacted by themselves, without officers appointed by themselves, or powers lodged in themselves, which has no self-existing attributes, no selfregulating agency, which, in one word, has not one single element, even the most essential of a corporate body. Were we disposed to push our arguments, as far as we are warranted, we might deny that the Church of England is a Church at all. For let it be observed that, as from the nature of the case, spiritual power cannot be lodged in lay or civil hands, any more than authority to administer the

* It is only one or two years ago that a country clergyman wrote the editor of the Christian Observer for advice under the following circumstances. A married gentleman in his parish lived in a state of open adultery with the wife of another man. A child was the fruit of this unhallowed union. The guilty, but shameless mother, actuated by feelings which we are glad we cannot analyze, came to the minister, insisting upon being "churched;" that is, that a particular office, appointed for the purpose, should be offered up next Sabbath, returning thanks to the God of all holiness for the safe delivery of this infant, born in double adultery. We know not what was the issue of the case, but our brethren of the Synod of Ulster, in one of their late admirable works in favour of presbytery (Presbyterianism Defended, pp. 183-4. 203-4,) mention an instance of a minister who was kept for years in prison for having refused the strumpet of a gentleman resident in his parish admission to the Lord's Supper. The late case of the dean of York shows the jurisdiction, or rather total want of jurisdiction, which the prelate possesses over the clergy.

sacraments, the Lord's Supper, as well as baptism, and to confer orders, can be possessed by a layman or a woman; and as all priestly powers, by the constitution of the Church of England, are placed in the sovereign-the prelates being his mere delegates, (and that, whether as in the reign of Henry VIII., and of Edward VI., they are obliged to take out a commission to empower them to perform their functions, or submit, as they all must now do, to the 36th canon;) and as, moreover, every society must possess some species of organization, suited to its peculiar character, which the Church of England, as a Church, does not possess, it raises a serious question, whether that can be accounted a Church, if we are to take our ideas of a Church from the word of God. We certainly have no intention whatsoever to maintain, as so many of them do regarding us, that the individuals who compose that Church are cast out to the "uncovenanted mercies of God;" for we rejoice to know that the grace of God is not restrained by any external impediments; and we rejoice further to know, that there are many of God's chosen ones in communion with that Church, as we doubt not was also the case even in the Church of Rome, during the middle ages; but as a Church, or scripturally constituted society, we dare not but have considerable difficulty in recognizing it.*

* When Henry VIII. was about to appoint a commission to examine the state of the religious houses, he, with one stroke of his pen, suspended all the prelates in England from the exercise of their jurisdiction. He afterwards, at the humble petition of each prelate separately presented, was graciously pleased to restore him to his functions by a commission, in which it was distinctly specified that he was to regard himself as the mere vicar of the crown. The terms of these commissions are sufficiently startling to any man who has not sounded the lowest depths of Erastianism. We may give a condensed summary of one clause of these singular instruments: "Since all authority, civil and ecclesiastical, flows from the crown, and since Cromwell," (a mere layman, but made vicar-general in spiritualibus over all the clergy) "to whom (and not to the prelates) the ecclesiastical part has been committed," (vices nostras as the vicar of the crown) "is so occupied, that he cannot fully exercise it, we commit to you (each individual prelate) the license of ordaining, granting institution and collation; and, in short, of performing all other ecclesiastical acts; and we allow you to hold this authority during our pleasure, as you must answer to God and to us!" Similar commissions were granted by Edward VI. to his prelates. See the originals in Collier (fol.) ii. rec. Nos. 31, 41; or Barham's ed. ix. pp. 123, 157; Burnet, i. rec. b. iii. No. 14; and ii. No. 2; or London 8vo. ed. 1839; iv. pp. 104, 249.