this sense and this only, that Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Elizabeth took to themselves the title of Head of the Church. And in this sense they did no more than exercise the powers vested in them by the law and custom of England, against which no foreign law or custom, whatever its. spiritual authority and sanctity, was allowed to prevail. In this sense it was that the clergy in Convocation styled Henry VIII. "The sole protector and supreme ruler, and as far as the law of Christ permitted, supreme head of the Anglican Church." And in so doing they added nothing unto him but a title, for neither he nor his successors ever exercised any authority in ecclesiastical government not warranted by constitutional precedent and immemorial custom. As supreme heads and governors of the Church under Christ, the Divine Head, they rightfully claimed to "visit, reform, and redress all errors, heresies, schisms and abuses." They nominated ecclesiastical commissioners to examine the canons, and to report upon them, with a view to their correction by the proper ecclesiastical authorities, and executed all those functions of external government for which during several preceding centuries they had to contend for with the Bishop of Rome.

*

The rejection of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope rested upon totally different grounds. That was strictly a national movement, a religious revolution, which, when accomplished, drew after it

* See 25 Henry VIII. c. 1. 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 15. 35 Hen. VIII. c. 16. 3 & 4 Ed. VI. c. 11. 1 Eliz. c. 1.

the natural legal consequences. Those consequences were already determined, and the Reformation was no other than the application of existing law to the exigencies of the case. The question whether the Pope is or is not the Vicar of Christ and the supreme head of His Church on earth does not even come into question. The people of England with their prince at their head, had (right or wrong) determined it against the Pope. They disowned and rejected him upon clear theological grounds; and having satisfied themselves that the Papal system was unsupported by Scripture, that it was an invasion of the rights of conscience, and that it was in practice utterly corrupt and incapable of correction, they confirmed their sovereign in the position assigned to him by the law and custom of England, leaving all matters of faith, doctrine and discipline to the ecclesiastical powers, and investing him with the general rights of superintendence, visitation and control in respect of titles, sees, jurisdictions and exemptions, without which there could have been neither unity nor consistency in the cooperation of Church and State.

In all this great care was taken not to alter the essential constitution of the Church. The persons only underwent a change; bishops and clergy were selected from among those who rejected the corruptions of Popery. It was the same body corporate under the same officers, after removing those deemed unfit for their duties. It was the same household, but swept and garnished, and provided with servants who were found willing to open the

doors to the rightful occupants, the religious people of this country, and to admit them to all the privileges of the sacred edifice, from which the former occupants had excluded them. When our Roman Catholic adversaries deny the identity of the Church of England, subsequently to the Reformation, they can do so only upon the ground that the supremacy of the Pope is an article of the Catholic faith. But upon this ground, we do not desire to meet them. The Church of England has settled that question in the negative as positively and as unalterably as the Church of Rome has settled it in the affirmative. As an intellectual amusement, or as a means of producing conviction, our Church does not repudiate the discussion, but as an expedient for unsettling the foundations of her faith, she heeds such controversies as little as her adversary. What she really fears is an invasion of the laws upon which she grounds her rights. She apprehends injury from the gradual sapping and mining process she is sensible her opponents have brought to very great perfection. In her external organization she takes her stand upon the Law and Custom of England; as to her internal welfare she commits it devoutly to Him whom, when she rejected the Roman deceiver, she replaced upon the throne of His rightful empire, the hearts, the consciences, and the congregations of the faithful.

We affirm, therefore, that the same legitimate authority, which in times past, interfered to check the Papal ambition, interposed at the Reformation, by the same right and upon the same principles of

law, to put an end to it, and to liberate the national Church from the illegal dominations of a chief, who had broken every condition and set at nought every duty of a Christian pastor.

The persevering efforts of the Roman advocates to sustain their proposition that our separation from the so-called "Centre of Unity" has unchurched us required these observations. Our only answer must be, that we have decided that the Bishop of Rome is not in any sense a centre of Unity-though he may, perhaps, with a better grace maintain his place as the centre of uniformity. But when we have said that uniformity is not unity, we have said all that is requisite. We know that our scheme is at least as favourable to the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace' as that of Rome. We believe and hold that our spiritual identity is far more perfectly sustained than that of Rome; nay, we maintain that it was restored and confirmed by that very act to which our adversaries ascribe our fall from Church membership. In every respect, therefore, of unity, stability, and identity, the body corporate of the Church of England claims to be one and the same after its restoration to the liberty of the Gospel, as it was when it lay grovelling at the feet of the Bishop of Rome. Her spiritual sameness is, we say, as little liable to doubt as her legal identity. As to the former, we believe she would remain the same were she tomorrow to be separated from State connexion; for we hold that the essential qualities of a Christian Church, do not consist in its outward form, but in its inward and spiritual graces. Bishops, priests,

and deacons, we think, have come down to us recommended by Apostolical example and authority, as well as by the practice of the Church, in all ages prior to the Reformation, and we hold fast by them as the most approved means for effecting all the essential ends of Christian association. But instead of denying to other associations, who do not adopt those forms, the character of true Christian churches, we simply predicate of them that they are not members of that specific body, which under the name of the Church of England, has maintained an identity of national existence from the first introduction of Christianity into these islands. We may lament this secession-once we persecuted its advocates, an act we lament far more deeply, for it was a leaf taken out of our adversary's book-but acknowledging humbly that as no human being is infallible so there can be no infallible aggregate, we have renounced on behalf of our Church, all pretension to be the sole judge and arbiters of catholicity; and have cordially committed the differences between ourselves and our dissenting brother Protestants, to the arbitrament of Him, who, without dispute among us all, is the Supreme Head of the Christian Church on earth and in heaven.

§. 9. The State of the Law.

Having brought the sketch of the struggle between canonism and prerogative down to the period of the Reformation, and taken my stand upon the law of the land as the test of legality in the contro