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 ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 A71 Article reprinted from the '' Christian Remembrancer' 
 
 April, 1850. 
 
 R. W. CHURCH, M.A., 
 
 FELLOW OF OErKL 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 WALTER SMITH, 
 
 (LATE MOZLEY & SMITH,) 6, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 188L
 
 LOKlJOK : 
 
 R. Clav, Sons, and Tayu)k, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 The following article was contributed by me to the Christian 
 Eememhrancer of April, 1850. It was written wlien the 
 attention of Churchmen had been called, by the recent decision 
 on the Gorham case, to the important constitutional questions 
 which seemed to be raised by that case and the judgment pro- 
 nounced upon it by the Court of Appeal. It is reprinted as a 
 contribution, such as it is, to the discussion of these questions, 
 which, after thirty years, have come back upon us in perhaps 
 even a more perplexing and formidable shape. But they are 
 not new ones, and the difficulties attending them are very 
 deeply rooted in the very nature of the relations between 
 Church and State, between authorities spiritual and civil, both 
 of them claiming from us the highest respect as Churchmen 
 and as citizens. It may be useful to read how these questions 
 were looked at, and with what feelings the actual condition of 
 things was regarded, when the subject first seemed to become 
 pressing in our time. Since then, one great change has come to 
 pass ; the Convocations of the Church have been called into 
 activity. But the problems arising out of our actual conditions 
 in reference to this subject are still intricate, and not easy of 
 solution, and mistakes in dealing with them, whether from ex- 
 aggeration or from want of firmness and decision, may readily 
 become dangerous. 
 
 The paper was called forth by the occasion of events which 
 happened in 1850. But there was no novelty in the general
 
 iv Notice. 
 
 view taken in it. This had been much more powerfully stated 
 in a work written long before such perplexities as those caused 
 by the Gorham judgment had arisen or had been thought of — 
 the Letters of an Episcopalian, published in 1826, and supposed 
 at the time, at Oxford, with what truth I cannot say, to be the 
 composition of Whately. The work is now forgotten, and 
 Archbishop Whately wrote afterwards in a very different way. 
 But the work made a deep impression at Oxford at the time, 
 when mischief connected with the schemes of Church Reform, 
 as it was tlien conceived, seemed impending on the Church. 
 
 R. W. CHURCH. 
 
 Deanery, St. Paul' 
 January, \^^\. 

 
 THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE, 
 
 Akt. VII.— 1. Church Matters in MDCCCL. No. 1.— 
 Trial of Doctrine. By the Rev. John Keble, M.A. 
 London : J. H. Parker. 
 
 2. A First Letter on the present Position of the High 
 
 Church Party in the Church of England. By the Eev. 
 W. Maskell. London : Pickering. 
 
 3. The ijresent Crisis in the Church of England : illus- 
 
 trated by a brief Inquiry as to the Royal Supremacy. 
 
 By the Rev W. J. Irons, B.D. London : Masters. 
 
 4. A Letter to the Rev. W. Maskell. By the Rev. Mayow 
 
 Wynell Mayow, A.M. London : Pickering. 
 
 5. The Church, the Croivn, and the State. Tivo Sermons. 
 By the Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, M.A. London : Cleaver. 
 
 6. A feiv Words of Hope on the present Crisis of the 
 English Church. By the Rev. J. M. Neale, M.A. London : 
 Masters. 
 
 The pamphlets, the titles of which we have here quoted, are 
 sufficient evidence that matters of no ordinary interest and 
 anxiety are occupying the thoughts of Churchmen. It would 
 be superfluous to draw attention to them ; they are sure to be 
 read. ^Ye trust that we shall not be thought wanting in respect 
 due to their writers, if, instead of commenting directly upon 
 them, we make use, in our own way, of the facts and thoughts 
 for which we are indebted to them. 
 
 The present are days of reform, and claiming of rights. The 
 principle is universally acknowledged, that every real interest 
 and substantial power in England may justly ask, in its due 
 
 B
 
 2 Church and State. 
 
 place, and according to its importance, for whatever is neces- 
 sary to enable it to do its own proper work. If it is allowed to 
 exist, it ought to be allowed to perform its functions ; it is 
 a contradiction in a well-ordered State, that a body, or a class, 
 or a religion should be recognised, and yet hindered from real- 
 ising the objects of its existence. The State may ignore or 
 disallow it, but not impede what it owns. Further, interests 
 clash and powers conflict ; and, in reconciling these, the general 
 power of the State is not bound to accept in their full extent 
 the claims of either party ; but though both may over-state their 
 claims, none can judge as well as themselves what they require 
 for their own efficiency. And accordingly, one after another, 
 various interests have submitted their claims to the arbitrement 
 of the general power of the State, have gained a hearing, and 
 further have gained, if not all they wished for, yet much that 
 was necessary or important to them. Eoman Catholics, Dis- 
 senters, the great towns, the manufacturing interests, have asked 
 and obtained, not privileges, but release from disabilities and 
 impediments ; such a fair field as was due to them as important 
 elements and real powers in England. 
 
 There is no reason why the Church of England should not 
 have her reforms, and claim her rights, as well as the dissenting, 
 or the manufacturing, or the colonial interests. Church reform, 
 indeed, has been long talked about ; and some specimens of it 
 we have already seen. We are not now going to complain of 
 the way in which Parliament has dealt with Church property or 
 Church privileges. It may have had reason for thinking the 
 one ill administered or ill applied, and the other out of date and 
 inconsistent with the present state of things ; and may have 
 wished in each case to apply a just remedy, and at the same 
 time to deal fairly and honourably with the Church. But 
 though it be very proper to prevent the Church from wasting 
 her money, or bearing hard on the social and political position 
 of other Englishmen, this is not the same thing as removing the 
 possible hindrances to her efficiency, much less is it restoring or 
 strengthening her powers according to her own constitutional 
 system. She has objects and wants, she has also difficulties and 
 embarrassments, to her of the most real and serious kind, which 
 are impalpable and intangible to the most benevolent Parlia- 
 ment. There are innumerable things which she may wish to
 
 Church and State. . 3 
 
 do and put right, for which no one is competent but herself. 
 There is no reason why she should be considered tied to an 
 obsolete state of things, more than the nation at large, or sepa- 
 rate interests of it. There is no reason why Parliament should 
 consider itself capable of discharging all necessary functions of 
 Church administration or legislation, any more than adminis- 
 tering or legislating for the internal affairs of the Great AVestern 
 Eailway Company or the Baptist body. There is no reason 
 why the Church should find more difficulty in gaining Parlia- 
 mentary sanction to the exercise in a restored form of her own 
 intrinsic and constitutional powers, or even of new and hitherto 
 unknown ones, than other religious or secular bodies. There is 
 no reason why she should not be allowed, under Parliamentary 
 sanction and guarantee, to carry on reforms of her own, to 
 adjust her position to altered circumstances, to administer her 
 own laws, to take counsel for her own interests. There is no 
 reason why in her case all these important matters should be 
 kept out of her own hands, and left in those which are not her 
 own. There is no reason why Parliament should be strict — 
 justly and rightly strict — with her in the use of her revenues, 
 and look with jealousy, not merely on her exemptions, but on 
 her influence on general legislation ; and should insist, on the 
 other hand, on keeping up a formal system of which the reality 
 has passed away, and which shackles without protecting her. 
 The State, which has granted the Eeform Bill and Free Trade, 
 has no ground to deny the Church a more free and consistent 
 position. 
 
 There never has been a reason why the Church alone should 
 not be listened to in the universal cry for rights. But the event 
 which has happened during the past month has changed the 
 state of the question, and made it imperative on her to claim 
 at once, and labour without remission for, that which it would 
 have been prudent and wise in her to have claimed long ago. 
 If it was right always that she should have a distinct voice in 
 her own concerns, it is indispensable now, at whatever cost, and 
 whatever inconvenience ; and the cost may be great, the incon- 
 veniences certainly will be many. 
 
 It cannot be dissembled that Churchmen must now take a 
 new and a very important position ; a very important one, both 
 to themselves personally, to their own consciences and their 
 
 B 2
 
 4 Church and State, 
 
 peace, to the Church, and to the English State and nation. 
 Eeform has long been going on within the Church, in such ways 
 as individuals and private efforts could carry it on ; changes for 
 the better, spontaneous and self-originated, in matters of private 
 competence, though of the highest public interest. But Church- 
 men must become reformers in another and far less agreeable 
 and safe way. They must take up the position of reformers 
 towards the State. There is no help for it that w^e can see, 
 except by allowing the insensible but most important political 
 alterations of the last half-century to alter the hitherto recog- 
 nised basis of the Church, and to control and extinguish the 
 ideas wdiich the majority of her members have hitherto held of 
 her constitution and organic laws. The English Church of 
 George III., Charles II., Charles I., James, Elizabeth, and even 
 of Henry VII I. , however closely connected with the State, — or 
 rather with the Crown, — however far it admitted its control, never 
 for a moment lost sight of the principle, that if it held one set 
 of powers from the Crown, it held another set of powers which 
 no Crown or State on earth could, or pretended to, confer ; 
 powers which it held as a Church, powers which it inherited 
 through a line distinct from that of a royal or a national suc- 
 cession. It never, we say, for a moment forgot that, however 
 connected with the State, it was still a self-subsistent, even if not 
 independent body, which would exist to-morrow if the State 
 broke up into anarchy, or cast off the Church. Unless this 
 basis is changed, and the Church, once co- extensive with the 
 nation, but now no longer so, is nevertheless, in consequence of 
 her union with the Crown, to share, so to speak, the neutrality 
 of the Crown, and to lose all her distinctive characters of tradi- 
 tion, of doctrine, of maxims, and practice, in order to fit her 
 once more, if that were possible, for comprehending the nation, 
 — unless she has passed from being a Church with ah origin and 
 powers of her own, into a great organ of the national government, 
 to be disposed of at the discretion of the national government, 
 — she may rightfully claim, not as an institution issuing out of 
 the State, but as a contracting party with the State, to be secured 
 from whatever endangers her organic basis and threatens to fuse 
 her with the State. And such a case has distinctly arisen. 
 Much as she has trusted the Crown, and indisposed as she has 
 been to be jealous of Governments, they never asked of her, and
 
 Church and State. o 
 
 she never gave them, the sole and final interpretation of her 
 articles of faith. And to allow them to have it, to consent that 
 officers of State, and judgment, simply as such, may by a side 
 wind settle a fundamental question of theology, which the 
 Church herself has not yet interfered in, and that without her 
 having an opportunity of authoritatively expressing her dissent 
 or concurrence, would certainly be to abdicate the distinct 
 existence which she has hitherto claimed and been supposed to 
 possess. 
 
 She has a good and reasonable case; she has power more 
 than she knows of — more, probably, than her opponents, who 
 know more of her power than she does herself, suspect ; and 
 she must be determined, steady, and unflinching. It is thus 
 that victories are gained in England. ISTor is there any reason 
 why her position should be one of hostility, because it is one of 
 determination. The Dissenters did not affront the State, but 
 they pressed their grievances resolutely, and made themselves 
 heard. The Roman Catholics did not quarrel with it, though 
 they had to meet strong opposition from it, and to push their 
 claims in spite of it. The reformers of representation, and of 
 commercial and colonial policy, have taken the offensive in the 
 most unremitting and uncompromising manner, yet without 
 showing themselves hostile to the State. No cause, however 
 clear and reasonable, will succeed in England without steadiness 
 and without temper ; and few causes, even if wanting in reason, 
 will fail with them. 
 
 On the eve of a great struggle, to which we stand committed, 
 and from which we see no escape, it behoves us to recollect our- 
 selves. The issues are not in our hands ; yet we shall be deeply 
 responsible for them, for in part they depend upon us. We 
 shall be responsible for indecision, for carelessness, for igno- 
 rance, for mismanagement, for all that sows the seeds of future 
 difficulty and endangers future perseverance and steadiness, as 
 well as for indiiference and want of zeal. We are called to 
 battle, to battle in a name not our own ; but to battle, not merely 
 as brave men, but as wise. We have to do with an age of cool 
 heads, of large knowledge, of practised dexterity, of resolution 
 and firmness — with an age of strong and deeply rooted law, an 
 age incredulous of what is extreme, shocked by what is violent, 
 jealous of what is one-sided, impatient of what is unfair, — an
 
 6 Church and State. 
 
 age hard to persuade, yet hard from its wish to be reasonable, — 
 an age in which boldness and courage are more than ever indis- 
 pensable, and perhaps more than ever respected ; yet in which 
 they are too ordinarily found in different parties, and too equally 
 opposed, to be of avail by themselves. We must not look to 
 succeed, humanly speaking, by other means than success is 
 ordinarily gained by, in our own time. The daring and main 
 strength of wdll and arm which won Crecy and Agincourt 
 were but elements, in that concourse of power and wisdom, 
 which triumphed in the Peninsula. 
 
 We must know our ground, and our difficulties ; and if we 
 are wise, we shall take account, not merely of the peculiar dif- 
 ficulties of our own case, but of those which surround and seem 
 inherent in the general question of the relations between the 
 Church and the Civil Government. For if we may speak our 
 minds freely, we cannot look back with much satisfaction, either 
 to the conduct or the issue of most Church contests. It is hard 
 to find one in which the Church was ultimately and really success- 
 ful ; harder still, in which the ground taken by her advocates was 
 altogether unexceptionable and clear. They show off individual 
 virtues, rather than command our full sympathy for a cause, or 
 our admiration of the wisdom with which it was maintained. 
 We have to make the same reserves that we make in political 
 history ; reserves where we least wish to make them, yet 
 reserves from which nothing but a deliberate ignoring of facts 
 will dispense us. And so with the results. What is represented 
 as a triumph, is often but a varnishing over of concession ; the 
 maintenance of a principle ends in the guarantee of a salvo ; what 
 can no longer be retained in reality, is surrendered under the 
 form of a grant of privilege ; compromise is content to save 
 what it can ; what is called policy is at best but management ; 
 a struggle for important rights expires in a Concordat. We are 
 not speaking now of the intrinsic power and action of the 
 Church on her members and mankind; for these set contests 
 are no measure or trustworthy criterion of her true efficiency 
 and strength. But in these set contests, unless we read history 
 entirely wrong, she has not been fortunate, except in the occa- 
 sional example she has thereby gained of saintly or heroic forti- 
 tude ; and with the great lesson have ordinarily come warnings 
 equally great.
 
 Church and State. 7 
 
 But our fathers' failures, as they are no excuse for our inac- 
 tion and despair, furnish no argument against our better success. 
 We shall, doubtless, leave behind us abundant materials for the 
 criticism of our posterity, who in their turn must not look in 
 this respect to be more fortunate than ourselves. But we may 
 hope — at any rate we must try — to turn to full account what is 
 for the better in our training, what is more complete in our 
 knowledge and experience. We should be miserable as men 
 and faithless as Christians, unworthy of the place and time and 
 country in which God's providence has called us to work, if we 
 could not look forward, in cases of difficulty, to acting a part 
 fully proportionable to our age of the world — of availing our- 
 selves to the full of everything in which we see that society has 
 really made improvement ; of whatever good thing is rendered 
 more easy, more natural, more influential among our contempo- 
 raries. That we possess, as we trust, the faith of the fourth or 
 the fourteenth centuries is no reason why we should make no 
 use of our education of the nineteenth, — why we should import 
 into it without discrimination their ideas and methods, and 
 limit ourselves to their precedents. 
 
 We trust that these remarks will not be thought unmeaning, 
 because necessarily general. Something like them must, we 
 think, have come more or less strongly across the mind of any 
 one, who in our day, and with our ordinary habits of judging, 
 rises from the study of any of the controversies or conflicts 
 which have tried the Church, and looks forward to the approach 
 of a similar struggle. We doubt whether the highest admira- 
 tion and heartiest sympathy have not been somewhat abated or 
 tempered by regrets ; and whether with the full recognition of 
 earnestness to be copied, there went not along with it also a sense, 
 perhaps unacknowledged or repressed, of mistakes to be avoided. 
 And in the hasty remarks which we are about to make on one 
 special point bearing on our present and our impending diffi- 
 culties, we hope that we shall not be taken to doubt of the rights 
 of the English Church, or to despair of her cause or that of the 
 Church universal, if we attempt to look fairly in the face what 
 appears to be the state of the facts which relate to the subject. 
 That point is, the position of the Crown and the civil power 
 towards the ecclesiastical power, viewed as a matter of history 
 and practice.
 
 8 Church and State. 
 
 We are not thinking at this moment of any complete or syste- 
 matic account of the question, historically or theoretically. We 
 write in haste, under the pressure of an emergency which we 
 feel to be serious, and with a present and temporary object in 
 view. A great question has been opened, and has to be settled ; 
 we shall all of us contribute more or less to settle it. It is of 
 the highest importance tha,t, in taking their ground, Churchmen 
 should, as accurately and comprehensively as they can, take in 
 and review, not merely their own principles, but, along with 
 them, the real state of things with which these principles have 
 been connected and have worked, whether in conflict or har- 
 mony. It is also of high importance that they should not act 
 under any untrue or unfair impression as to the actual realizing 
 of Church independence in our own, as compared with other 
 Christian nations. To master fully the nature of the gi'ound 
 open to them, to choose their position carefully, and make it as 
 unexceptionable as possible, is the first business now of Church- 
 men ; and, if even they have to narrow it, they need not be afraid 
 of weakening it. And then, since danger undoubtedly exists, 
 let them see to it that their sense of the danger be such as 
 becomes men ; without blindness to it, and without exaggeration. 
 With these points in view, we shall proceed to suggest a few 
 considerations. 
 
 The English Church in the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 suddenly, and certainly to her own surprise, finds herself caught 
 as it were, and brought to a standstill, by an effect — the unin- 
 tended, apparently, and unexpected effect — of what is called the 
 Royal Supremacy. It can hardly be called a stretch of that supre- 
 macy, for the act in question is a perfectly legal and, as far as 
 the officials and ministers concerned in it, involuntary result 
 and exercise of it ; but, in Parliament and the Council itself, it 
 was felt to be an unnatural and undesirable, indeed a hazar- 
 dous, exercise. And it raises the question, What is the nature 
 of that power, which has led, in such a perfectly legal way, to 
 results so anomalous and perplexing ; and how ought Churchmen 
 to view it ? 
 
 How is this question to be met and answered fairly and 
 truly ? Easy ways of answering it there are many. It may be 
 answered by theory, or by law-texts, or by historical argument 
 or induction. * The supremacy is absolute and right ; it is abso-
 
 Church and State. 9 
 
 ' lute and wrong : — it has practically no limits ; it is practically 
 'as well as theoretically limited by Church law and Church 
 ' power : — historically, the Church has been subservient to the 
 ' Crown ; historically, the Church has kept her own line and had 
 ' her own way very much : — good, sufficient at least to reconcile 
 
 * us to such an arrangement has resulted from it ; evil has 
 
 * followed from it, and worse is at hand. ' And none of these 
 contradictory answers are made without strong grounds of one 
 sort or another ; if we will but choose on what grounds to put the 
 question, we shall have no difficulty in getting an answer. 
 
 We cannot, however, but hope, for our own part, that Church- 
 men will prefer feeling and facing the difficulty of giving an 
 answer, to giving it, on arbitrary and limited grounds. It may 
 be very troublesome to collect and take in the aggregate of con- 
 siderations bearing on it — legal, historical, constitutional, moral, 
 social, theological — to balance and compare them with one 
 another. But the difficulties, great as they may be, are not out 
 of proportion with the greatness of the question, the variety 
 and complication of the interests it involves, the length of time 
 it has agitated men's minds. Fifteen hundred years have not 
 been enough to settle it, in the Church universal. And those 
 who have been trained in the school of Bishop Butler, and who 
 have seen how his method is but the reflection and application of 
 what is the natural procedure of thoughtful men in the matters 
 of ordinary life, will not be surprised to be told that, on a matter 
 of ecclesiastical polity, their convictions ought to be the result 
 of that same sort of combination of various evidences, and of 
 that careful and, it may be, laborious bringing in of many dis- 
 tinct particulars, which they have been taught to be the legiti- 
 mate way of bringing home to sound and practical reason the 
 .verity of the faith itself. 
 
 And this is the more necessary, if the system of things under 
 which we live is not simple, but complica.ted ; governed not by 
 one, but a great variety of distinct powers: and has further, 
 while going through great alterations, tenaciously kept, as much 
 as possible, to unchanged forms. And such is the case with us 
 in England. Our whole social frame is kept in work by a 
 number of powers, of which it is much more easy to say what 
 limits them, than on what they depend, and from whence they 
 derive their rights. That favourite foreign idea of one central
 
 10 Church and State. 
 
 and final power, from which all others hold in delegation, and 
 which animates and controls them all as its organs, though not 
 unknown to our legal language, is not in practice and reality an 
 English one. We say, generally, a foreign one, for it is not con- 
 fined to one class of writers ; the necessity of one, sole, all-power- 
 ful authority is as much a postulate of Louis Blanc as of De 
 Maistre or Bellarmine, for the solution of all problems, and as 
 the only real condition of the effective working of a society. 
 But, in England, it has been practically contradicted. Men 
 have learned to live together, held in one by many powers, none 
 of which are really supreme, though they are of various degrees, 
 and though one or other of them may be for the xnom.Qnt final. 
 But it is only for the moment. There may be no legal mode of 
 appeal, and the power may continue; but the tendency to 
 resist the absorption of one power by another is irresistible. 
 And the way in which this tendency has usually acted, has been 
 not by dethroning or destroying the dangerous power, but by 
 strengthening or addiug on another. Nor do powers cease to 
 be really effective ones, because not only under the necessity of 
 working with others, but liable to be interfered with and con- 
 trolled, not less by the higher authority, than by the mere con- 
 current actions of others. Whether theoretically right or wrong, 
 it is on this law that English society has gone on, not in modern 
 days only, but, as all historical inquiries show, more and more 
 clearly, even in what appear, at first sight, the despotic days of 
 the Tudors and Piantagenets ; — a law of composition of forces, 
 partly independent in origin, and all separate in function, and 
 with no supremacy among them but in their result and 
 direction. 
 
 In judging, therefore, of the present or past Supremacy of 
 the Crown, it will be well to keep in mind, that in reality no 
 power is supreme in England ; and also, in laying down a line 
 of action for the future, that nothing which is a real power in 
 England can expect to be uncontrolled. The more considerable 
 it is — the more it makes itself felt — the more does it naturally, 
 in the progress of things, find itself obliged to admit restric- 
 tion and limits. It will be well to keep this principle in 
 view, when examining and comparing, whether to reconcile 
 them, or to make one refute the other, the very conflicting 
 documents and precedents of our history ; — on one side a set
 
 Church and State. il 
 
 of statutes, on the other a set of articles and canons ; the 
 statutes, without noticing the articles, setting forth without 
 qualification the king's power — the articles, themselves of equal 
 authority, without noticing the statutes, limiting it ; disclaimers 
 contradicted by acts, pretensions given up in effect; a long 
 series of connected proceedings, intelligible only on the theory 
 of the absolute domination of the Crown, confronted and accom- 
 panied by another, equally long and equally connected, involving 
 necessarily the distinct existence and independent powers of the 
 Church ; and along with each of these, a corresponding line of 
 traditions, ideas, maxims, customs, doctrines, a school, and a 
 party. With such authorities, so heedless of uniformity, there 
 is always the temptation to construct a case. The text of Acts 
 of Parliament, illustrated by admissions and concessions of 
 Church authorities, would supply ample materials for a clear 
 and consistent proof of the unlimited plenitude of royal power 
 in the Church. But it is obvious to remark, that it would not 
 be more difficult to produce authentic and irrefragable evidence 
 from the language of Law and the usages of Parliament, in 
 behalf of a theory which should represent the various powers 
 of the English constitution as expressly recognising in the crown 
 of Queen Victoria a prerogative not less ample and magnificent 
 than that claimed by the Stuarts and exercised by the Tudors ; 
 and as acknowledging no origin and no right to continue but 
 her good pleasure. 
 
 But without professing to answer fully or finally the question, 
 What is the nature of the Eoyal Supremacy ? we shall venture 
 to offer a few remarks on it to our readers. The primary idea 
 of the power of the Crown in the Church — the idea which first 
 came in, and is clearly discernible, though not the only one, in 
 the acts of the Eeformation — seems to be what may be called 
 a visitatorial power. It was a power which loresitpi^osed other 
 powers, and laws to which they were bound — powers derived 
 from a divine source, and laws having a divine sanction ; and its 
 peculiar function was to keep those powers to their duty accord- 
 ing to their own laws. It was a power of supervising and 
 inspecting ; not of creating, but of keeping up. It did not pro- 
 fess to supersede other powers by its own, but it watched that 
 those powers were duly and lawfully used. Its interference 
 might be very wide and very strict, but, in form at least, it
 
 12 Church and State. 
 
 regulateci itself by already existing laws — laws, whose inde- 
 pendent origin and sanction it respectfully owned, while confer- 
 ring on them its own sanction besides. But this visitatorial 
 power was itself also claimed by divine right, and as of divine 
 origin ; not as a delegated but an independent authority, in- 
 herent in the royal function and office. 
 
 The real extent of such a power, in terms so undefined and 
 unlimited, must necessarily vary indefinitely. A College Visitor 
 and the Court of Queen's Bench are, in idea, the same sort of 
 powers, though the one is the most dormant, and the other the 
 most sleepless authority in England ; and unquestionably this 
 visitatorial power of kings has been very various in extent, and 
 very variously used. But to the admission of the power itself, 
 and the admission of it in exceedingly large and unstinted 
 measure, the Church has committed herself over and over again ; 
 not in England alone, but elsewhere, from Constantine's ' ap- 
 pointment by God to be Bishop {iirlaKO'iTo^, overseer) over the 
 external things of the Church,' to the appcls comme d'aius, 
 and the corresponding maxims and usages of the Church of 
 Louis XIV., by which lawyers in France assert that the modern 
 French Church is still bound, in spite of the protests of her 
 Bishops. 
 
 We are speaking at present simply of the general and leading 
 idea on which, as it seems to us, all exercise of regal power in the 
 Church, however usurping and extravagant in its actual claims 
 and interference, has ever gone : the right claimed by the Crown, 
 as a divine power, to see that the Church, also a divine power 
 and institution, does the work appointed her by God ; and to 
 interfere if she does not. Of course it is clear that this idea is 
 perfectly compatible with the separate origin of Church powers, 
 and may be compatible with their real freedom. It is also 
 equally clear, what inordinate pretensions may be founded on it, 
 and to what very difficult complications it may lead. And, as we 
 all know, these possibilities have been realized, here and else- 
 where. But what we wish to remark here is, that the Church, 
 while admitting the principle of such a visitatorial power in 
 kings, as she cannot fairly be denied to have done, did so, when 
 from the character of the period, as well as from the explicit 
 language of both parties, it is clear that two important con- 
 ditions were understood. One was, that the king, who claimed
 
 Church and State. 13 
 
 to rule, was also able and willing to befriend and protect her. 
 She contemplated a person, not a mere State or Government — 
 a person having a conscience, owning personal responsibility, 
 and one with her in faith, in practice, in sentiment, in purpose, 
 acknowledging her laws, sympathising with her objects; and 
 further, as the real depositary of power, really able to aid as 
 well as to govern. No one probably would deny, that as a 
 matter of fact, when the Church admitted the Crown to a share 
 in her concerns, whether it was in Constantine's day, or Charle- 
 magne's, or at the Eeformation, or under Louis XIV., it was to 
 a real king, understood to be both a Christian and Church- 
 man, that she consented to yield this power. The other con- 
 dition was, that her own laws and canons were to be the rule of 
 her government, the rule which the king was to see observed. The 
 existence both of Church powers and Ciiurch laws, — sanctioned, 
 authorized, enforced, it may be, by the king, and on his re- 
 sponsibility, but yet separately and distinctly subsisting — is 
 everywhere taken for granted. None of the Western nations 
 acknowledged, in form at least, any royal power, except exercised 
 according to their own laws, and protecting them. Much less 
 would the Church of those nations admit a king to be paramount 
 in her concerns, without his recognising her spiritual claims and 
 original constitution. Even the violence of Henry VIII. did 
 not ask this. 
 
 These two conditions accompany all interference of the Crown 
 with Church matters in former times. They were very vari- 
 oush^ interpreted, and very strangely stretched ; but they were 
 uncontested by any one, and their acknowledgment really influ- 
 enced the working of things. A real king, really acknowledging 
 and exclusively maintaining the spiritual power as of divine 
 origin and authority, is what tlie Church has always understood 
 by ' the Crown,' whenever she has acknowledged its place among 
 her powers of government. If proof of this were wanting, it 
 might be found, in the way in which the idea of the personal 
 power of the Crown, so faint and extenuated in all matters poli- 
 tical, survives with anomalous and inconsistent force in matters 
 ecclesiastical ; and we see zealous radicals, v/ho have all their 
 life been sneering at kings, and scoffing at Churches, gravely 
 rise up in their place in Parliament to interrogate the Prime 
 Minister, whether he has done his duty in upholding the
 
 14 Church ayid State. 
 
 endangered prerogative of her gracious Majesty, as the ' Supreme 
 Head of the Church.' 
 
 It may be useful to cite, in detail, some illustrations of this 
 early view of the royal power. ^ 
 
 JSTo legislation of any single nation can compare for import- 
 ance and authority with the Code of Justinian. It has been 
 the authentic and universally acknowledged text of the civil 
 law of Christendom ; and it represents the law of the empire, 
 as it stood when first the Church was recognised by the State. 
 It was acquiesced in then by the Church — it has ever since been 
 received by all Christian nations, by some as their practical rule, 
 by all as a great legislative document. And never, that we 
 know of, has the Church protested against it, though, at times, 
 both popes and kings have discouraged its study. It favours 
 the Church and her authority in the largest and most generous 
 manner ; and it bears very important witness to the pre-eminence, 
 in Justinian's day, of the Eoman See. 
 
 In this earliest and most august monument of civil legislation 
 in a State acknowledging the Church, we find precisely such a 
 power as we have spoken of ascribed to the Emperor — a power 
 of universal visitation ; — and under the same limitations, that 
 is, it pre-supposes in the Church powers and laws which the 
 Emperor is to watch over. But the amplitude and peremptori- 
 ness of the authority which he professes to claim have never, 
 probably, in terms, been exceeded. 
 
 To quote all that might be quoted in proof of this would be to 
 transcribe law after law, out of the huge collection of the Pan- 
 dects. We can only cite a few passages, and refer our readers 
 to the collection itself, if they would have a full impression of 
 the actual state of the case. 
 
 The of&ce of a Christian emperor is thus stated : — 
 
 ' The greatest things among men are those gifts of God, bestowed by 
 heavenly goodness, the Priesthood and the Imperial power (" sacerdotium et 
 imperium ") ; the former ministering in things divine, the latter presiding 
 and giving diligence in things human ; but both proceeding from one and 
 the same origin {principio), and adorning human life. And therefore nothing 
 will be of such concern to the emperors, as the honest behaviour of the 
 priests; since the priests ever offer up prayers to God for the emperors 
 
 ^ The view is that of Bramhall, who also appeals for confirmation of it to the 
 early specimens of Christian legislation, the Pandects and the Capitularies.
 
 Church and State, 15 
 
 We therefore feel the greatest care concerning God's true doctrines, and 
 concerning the honest carriage of the priests ; which if they maintain, we 
 
 believe that through it the greatest good will be given us of God But 
 
 things are in every case done well and duly, if the beginning of the matter 
 be proper and pleasing to God. And this we believe will be the case, if the 
 observance of the holy rules be kept up which the apostles handed down, 
 and the holy fathers kept and explained.'— iV^oi-eZZ. 6. ^ Quomodo ojjorteat 
 Episcopos et reliquos clericos ad ordinationeni addiici.^ Prcefat. 
 
 Still more distinctly is the following : — 
 
 ' De ord'inatione Episcojporum et clericorum. 
 
 ' The Emperor Justinian Aug. to Peter, Master of the Offices. 
 
 ' If in regard to civil laws, the power whereof God, of His goodness to- 
 wards men, has entrusted to us, we are careful that they shall be firmly 
 kept, for the security of the obedient ; how much more care ought we to 
 exercise, touching the observance of the sacred canons and the divine laws 
 which have been laid down for the salvation of our souls ? For they who 
 keep the sacred canons are worthy of the help of the Lord God ; but they 
 who transgress them make themselves liable to judgment. The greater 
 therefore is the condemnation under which the most holy bishops lie, to 
 whom it is committed both to search out and to maintain the canons, if they 
 leave the transgression of them uncondemned and unpunished. In truth, 
 since up to this time the canons have not been rightly observed, we have 
 in consequence received various appeals against clerics and monks and 
 some bishops, as not living according to the divine canons ; and others 
 have been found who did not so much as know the prayers of the holy 
 oblation or of holy baptism.' — Novell. 137. Prcef. 
 
 Accordingly, he proceeds to give directions to the ' Master of 
 the Offices,' a great civil officer, for the restoration of discipline, 
 according to the canons. The qualifications for the episcopal 
 office required by the canons and the imperial laws are to he 
 strictly required — ' But if any one be ordained Bishop contrary 
 * to the above-mentioned rule, we order that both he by all 
 'means be deprived of the Episcopate (episcopatu dejici), and 
 ' he also, who has dared to ordain him contrary to such rule.' 
 Synods are to be held at the times appointed ; discipline is to 
 be exercised in them; special rules are enjoined for the due 
 performance of divine service; and the olservance of these 
 injunctions is thus to be secured : — 
 
 ' And we command also the presidents of the provinces, if they find 
 anything neglected of the things which we have decreed, that first they 
 compel the metropolitan and other bishops to assemble the said synods,
 
 16 Church and State. 
 
 and to fulfil all that we have commanded by the present law about synods. 
 But if they find them backward and remiss, then they inform us ; that we 
 may forthwith proceed to due correction against those who decline to cele- 
 brate synods. And let the presidents and their officers know that, if they 
 observe not this, they shall be subjected to extreme punishment. But we 
 also confer by the present law all things enjoined by us in various laws 
 concerning bishops, and presbyters, and other clergy, and besides concern- 
 ing hospitals and orphan asylums, and all who are set over sacred places.' 
 —Novell 12,1. fin. 
 
 He lays down laws about the authority of the four councils, 
 the order of the principal sees, &c. ; addressing a civil officer : — 
 
 ' De ecclesiasticis tituUs. 
 
 * Imp. Justin. Aug. Petro glorios'iss. prcefecto sacr. prcetor. 
 
 ' Concerning ecclesiastical rules and privileges, and other heads relating 
 to the holy churches, &c., we promulgate the present law. 
 
 'c. 1. De quatuor Sanctis Ecclesiis. 
 
 ' We therefore order that the sacred ecclesiastical rules, which have been 
 set forth or confirmed by the sacred four councils, Nice, Constantinople, 
 Ephesus, and Chalcedon, shall have the place of law. And the doctrines 
 of the aforesaid four synods we receive as Holy Scriptures, and observe 
 their rules as laws. 
 
 ' c. 2. De ordine sedendi Patriarcharum. 
 
 ' Therefore we order according to their decision that the most holy Pope 
 of old Rome be the first of all priests ; but the most blessed Arch- 
 bishop of Constantinople, which is new Rome, have the second place after 
 the holy apostolic see of old Rome. 
 
 ' c. 3. De episcopo primcB Justiniance. 
 ' c. 4. De episcop)o Carthaginensi,' &c. — Novell. 131. 
 
 With respect to bishops, the form and mode of their election, 
 their qualifications, their canonical age and condition, their 
 property, their disabilities — no purely ecclesiastical laws could 
 speak more authoritatively or peremptorily, or more in detail. 
 The ordinances on the subject are numerous. The following, 
 addressed, as usual, to a civil officer, may serve as a specimen of 
 his style : — 
 
 The Emperor to John Prcetor. Prcef. 
 
 ' We decree, that no one be ordained to the episcopate, unless useful and 
 excellent otherwise : one who lives not with a wife, and who is not the father 
 of a family ; but who for a wife will cleave to the most holy Church, and 
 has in the place of children the whole Christian and orthodox people, know-
 
 Church and State. 17 
 
 ing that from the beginning we have thus disposed concerning the succes- 
 sion of bishops, and that with this intent our law has proceeded ; and that 
 those who have done or do contrary to it are altogether unworthy of the 
 Episcopate. For they, who after this our constitution shall dare either to 
 make or to be made bishops, against its purport, shall neither be numbered 
 among bishops, nor continue in the sacred ministry, but being expelled from 
 it, shall give room for an ordination which shall be regular and altogether 
 pleasing to God.' — Cod. lib. i. tit. iii. 48. 
 
 But this is no fair specimen of the minuteness with which he 
 regulates everything relating to the election and qualifications 
 of the bishops. It may be seen fully in the Novelise vi. and 
 cxxiii., which are complete bodies of law relating to the ministers 
 of the Church. He thus concludes the former : — 
 
 'The things therefore which have been decreed by us, and which main- 
 tain the sacred order and state according to the observance and form of the 
 sacred rules, let the most holy Patriarchs of each diocese for the future 
 keep perpetually inviolate, and the Metropolitans, and the rest of the most 
 reverend bishops and clergy ; everywhere maintaining undisturbed the 
 worship of God and sacred discipline : since this penalty awaits the offender, 
 — to be alienated from God and the office of the priesthood ; for he shall be 
 expelled from it as unworthy. And we give licence to all, of whatsoever 
 office or conversation they be, who observe any transgression in this behalf, 
 to inform us and the Imperial power for the time being ; that we, who have 
 established these things according to the explanation of the sacred rules 
 and the tradition of the Apostles, may visit the offender with our due 
 indignation,' &c. 
 
 ' But let the most holy Patriarchs of each diocese set forth these things 
 in the churches which are under them, and make known what has been 
 established by us to the Metropolitans ; and they in their turn let them set 
 forth these things in the most holy metropolitan church, and make them 
 known to the Bishops under them. And let each one of them set them 
 forth in his own church ; that no member of our State may be ignorant 
 of what we have ordained for the honour and magnifying of the great 
 
 God and our Saviour Jesus Christ Copies of this were written 
 
 to the most holy Archbishop of Alexandria, to Ephrcm, Archbishop of 
 Theopolis, to Peter, Bishop of Jerusalem, John, the Prsetorian Prsefect, 
 &c.' ^ — Novell. 6. Ej)Uog. 
 
 He lays down, with the same authority and detail, the order 
 of proceeding, and the order of appeal, in ecclesiastical trials. 
 His lansfuaoe is that of an absolute legislator ; but it is used to / 
 maintain the strict observance of the canons. It would be end- I 
 
 ^ Cod. lib. 1. tit. iy. 29. ' Deforo derici et episcnpi a:cusaii.' 
 
 C
 
 13 Church and State. 
 
 less and superfluous to quote all liis ordinances on matters of 
 purely spiritual interest ; as, for instance, the regulation of the 
 monastic life. We find him decreeing at once ecclesiastical and 
 civil punishments against perjured clerks ; fixing the age of 
 deaconesses, of priests, deacons, and bishops ; forbidding bishops 
 to excommunicate except for a just and proven cause, and 
 ordering them, if offending, to be themselves excommunicated 
 (Cod. lib. i. tit. iii. 30) ; 'providing for the due attention of the 
 Clergy to the offices of the Church ; forbidding bishops to leave 
 their Sees. The appointment of the penalty in this last case 
 is curious : — 
 
 'If any one knowingly transgress, and break this regulation, piously 
 and rightly introduced by us for the honour of the most holy Churches, he 
 shall feel our no small indignation ; and moreover he shall be placed under 
 excommunication — if he be a Metropolitan, by your Blessedness; [he is 
 addressing the Patriarch of Constantinople ;] but if he be a Bishop of a city 
 subject to a Metropolitan, by the Metropolitan. For we have not thought 
 it necessary to fix a pecuniary penalty against the despisers of our divine 
 ordinance, lest the loss should fall on the most holy Churches, whose 
 property we wish to remain free from all diminution.' — Cod. lib. i. tit. iii. 
 43, § 2. 
 
 We will quote another ordinance on a point of Church dis- 
 cipline. It vv'ill be noticed on what grounds, and with what 
 authority the emperor speaks, and the punishment which he 
 decrees. It is an ordinance addressed to the Patriarch of 
 Constantinople against gambling, play-going, horse-racing, and 
 betting clergymen. After stating in the preamble the import- 
 ance, both for the honour of God and the good of the State, 
 of piety in the clergy, and the grievous scandals which have 
 come to his knowledge, he proceeds : — 
 
 ' We have often exhorted them to observe these [rules] ; but seeing that 
 this information has reached us about such offences, we are under the 
 necessity of having recourse to the present law, as well on account of our 
 zeal for religion, as also for the benefit both of the priesthood itself and 
 of the State. 
 
 ' And we decree that no deacon, priest, bishop/ or other cleric, play at 
 dice, &c. 
 
 'But if any one in future be detected doing any of these things, and be 
 informed against, either in this happy city to your Holiness, or in the 
 provinces to the Metropolitans or Bishops,' a fair and strict trial by
 
 ^ 
 
 Church and State. 19 
 
 evidence is to be instituted by the Patriarch or Bishops, as the case 
 may be ; if the clerk be convicted, Mie is to be separated from the sacred 
 Liturgy, and a canonical penance imposed upon him, and a time is to be 
 fixed, during which it may be convenient that, using fastings and prayer, 
 he implore the great God's mercy for such a transgression. And if he 
 continue for the time appointed in tears and penance, and beseeching the 
 Lord God in prayer for the remission of his fault, then he, who is his 
 superior, having diligently ascertained this, and made careful inquiry, shall 
 cause common prayer to be made for him, and shall with all diligence impress 
 upon him that for the future he abstain from such dishonour to the priest- 
 hood ; and if he deems him sufficiently penitent, then let him deign to 
 extend to him the priestly clemency. But if after excommunication he be 
 found neither to have exercised true penance, nor otherwise to have con- 
 temned it, and to be manifestly ensnared by the devil, then let the Priest 
 under whom he lives remove him from the sacred rolls, deposing him for 
 good ; and let not the offender ever again have licence, under any circum- 
 stances, of coming to the priestly degree.' (And then follow provisions 
 for his maintenance and civil condition ; and threats if any Bishop or 
 magistrate, from weakness or corruption, fail in his duty.) 
 
 ' And these things we have done in the way of legislation But 
 
 as these things have been decreed by us for no other reason than for God' s 
 service, we add this further, that inquiries be made with the utmost dili- 
 gence, and that no one arise to accuse any falsely, or bear false witness. 
 For, like as for the priests who have committed such things we have ap- 
 pointed civil punishment, so on those who venture to accuse them, we will 
 that punishment abide them, both from heaven and from our laws, if, the 
 charge once made, they refuse to follow it up, or cannot go on with it.' — 
 Cod. lib. i. tit. iv. 34. 
 
 The religion of the empire is thus fixed by tlie emperors 
 before Justinian : — 
 
 ' De Summd Trinitate et Fide Catholicd et ut nemo de ed publice contendere 
 
 and eat. 
 
 ' We will that all people, whom the power of our clemency rules, should 
 live in that religion which was given by S. Peter the Apostle to the Romans ; 
 as the religion, by him introduced, witnesses to this day ; and which it is 
 clear that Pope Damasus follows, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man 
 of apostolical sanctity ; that is, that according to apostolic discipline and 
 evangelic doctrine, we believe one Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, in an Equal Majesty, and in a merciful Trinity. We command that, 
 following this law, they take the name of Catholic Christians ; adjudging 
 the rest, senseless and mad, to bear the infamy of heretical doctrine, and 
 to be punished.' — Cod. lib. i. tit. i. 1, Laiv of Gratian and Theodos. a. 380. 
 
 The Nicene Creed is made the test of orthodox belief, and 
 heresy and heretics are proscribed; as, for instance, in the 
 
 c 2
 
 20 Church and State. 
 
 following injunction, addressed for execution to the Praetorian 
 Pra3fect : — 
 
 ' Further we decree, that those, who abet the impious opinion of 
 Nestorius, or follow his abominable doctrine, if they are bishops or clerks, 
 be cast forth from the Churches ; if laymen, be anathematized, according to 
 what has been already established by our Divinity.' 
 
 ****** 
 
 ' But whereas it has come to our pious ears, that certain have composed 
 certain doctrines, and have published such, being ambiguous, and not in all 
 things and exactly agreeing with the orthodox faith propounded by the 
 holy synod of those holy Fathers who assembled at Niceea and Ephesus, 
 and b}'- Cyril of pious memory, who was bishop of the great city of 
 Alexandria, we order that all such writings, whether composed before or 
 
 now, be burnt and utterly destroyed,' &c * And henceforth no one 
 
 is at liberty either to say or to teach anything beyond the faith set forth 
 as well at Niceea as at Ephesus ; and the transgressors of this our divine pre- 
 cept shall be subject to the same penalty decreed against the impious faith 
 of Nestorius. But that all may learn in very deed, how much our Divinity 
 abhors those who follow the impious faith of Nestorius, we command,'that 
 Irengeus, formerly under our displeasure for this cause, and afterwards, after 
 second marriage, (as we have learnt), contrary to the apostolic canons made 
 bishop of Tyre, be deprived (dejici) of the Church of Tyre, and do abide in 
 his own country in quiet, divested of the character and name of a priest. 
 
 'Your Magnificence, therefore, following the object of our religion, will 
 take care to observe this, and give it effect.' — Cod. lib. i. tit, i. iii. Theodos. 
 and Valentin, to the Prcetorian Prafectj 449. 
 
 Public disputation about the faith is forbidden ; the edict is 
 also addressed to the Praetorian Praefect : — 
 
 ^ Imp. Marcian. Palladio prcEfcct. lyroit.'' 
 * No one, cleric or military, or of any other "condition, is henceforth to 
 venture, before crowds publicly assembled and listening, to treat of the 
 Christian faith, seeking occasion for tumult and disloyalty. For, besides, 
 he does injury to the judgment of the most reverend synod who attempts 
 to re-open and discuss publicly things decided once for all, and set in 
 right order ; since those things, which have been now decreed concerning 
 the Christian faith by the priests who came together by our order at Chal- 
 cedon^ are known to have been defined according to the apostolic expo- 
 sitions, and the laws of the 318 holy fathers at Nicfea and the 150 in this 
 royal city. Against the despisers of this law punishment shall not be 
 
 wanting If therefore it be a cleric who has dared pubhcly to treat 
 
 of religion, he shall be removed from the fellowship of the clergy; if 
 military, shall be deprived of his belt.'— Cor/, lib. i. tit. i. iv. 
 
 ^ ' Ea qxicB . . . a sace)\iotil)ii.H qui Chakedo lie conveiierunt per nostra prceccpta 
 statuta runt.'
 
 Church and State. 21 
 
 Nor was Justinian's interference confined to discipline. There 
 are various -edicts in which he lays down and declares, on the 
 authority of the Church and the four Councils, what is the true 
 Faith. And he thus communicates his measures to the Patriarch 
 of Constantinople : — 
 
 ' We wish your Hohness to know everything which relates to the state 
 of the Church. We have, therefore, thought it necessary to address these 
 Divine words to your Hohness, and thereby explain to you the measures 
 which have been set on foot, though we are persuaded that you are ac- 
 quainted with tliem. Finding, therefore, some who were aliens from the 
 Holy and Apostolic Church following the deception of the impious Nestoriua 
 and Eutyches, we before promulgated a Divine edict, as your Holiness 
 knows, by which we restrained the madness of the heretics ; yet without 
 having changed, or changing anything whatsoever, or having gone beyond 
 the constitution of the Church, which has been, by God's help, hitherto pre- 
 served ; but having kept in all things the state of unity of the most holy 
 Churches, with the most holy Pope and Patriarch of old Rome, to whom 
 we have written to the same effect. For we suffer not' that anything that 
 pertains to the state of the Church should fail to be referred to his Blessed- 
 ness, seeing that he is the head of all the most holy priests of God ; and 
 the more so, because whenever heretics have sprung up in these parts, 
 they have been restrained by the sentence and right judgment of that 
 venerable throne ' . . . . 
 
 He then proceeds to explain further the meaning of his edict 
 concernincr the faith :— 
 
 ' These, then, are the points, in which, by our Divine edict, we convicted 
 the heretics ; to which Divine edict all the most holy Bishops who were here, 
 and the most reverend Archimandrites, together with your Holiness, 
 subscribed' .... 
 
 He then proceeds to declare his adherence to the Four Coun- 
 cils, and speaks of the necessity of making them the test of 
 orthodoxy, and he thus concludes : — 
 
 *Let no one, therefore, vainly trouble us, relying on a vain hope, as if 
 we ever had done anything contrary to the Four Councils, or should do, or 
 should allow to be done by any, or should suffer the holy memory of the 
 same holy Four Councils to be removed from the aforesaid diptyclxs of the 
 Church. For all who by them have been condemned and anathematized, 
 and the doctrine of those condemned, and those who have thought, or think 
 with them, we anathematize.' — Cod. lib. i. tit. i. 7. 
 
 We quote these passages simply as facts ; they show very large 
 claims of interference. Yet the spirit of Justinian's legislation
 
 22 ' Church and State. 
 
 was supposed to be iu the highest degree favourable to the 
 Church. ' His Code, and more especially his Novels,' says Gib- 
 son, ' confirm and enlarge the privileges of the clergy.' And 
 there is nothing to show that the clergy of his day, or even the 
 Pope, looked upon this interference as anything strange or dan- 
 gerous ; while the precedents then created were incorporated 
 into the code which has been erected into the text-book of civil 
 legislation. But, while they show interference, they carry on 
 their face its conditions. 
 
 After the legislation of Justinian comes that of Charlemagne. 
 The Capitularies of the Frank kings are the next example we 
 meet with of legislation for a Christian state. They are to the 
 empire of Charlemagne what the Pandects were to that of 
 Justinian — a very miscellaneous collection of laws, edicts, 
 canons, injunctions, from very various sources, and on all sub- 
 jects, from the highest matters of religion and government, 
 down to the herbs to be cultivated in the emperor's gardens. 
 The emperor speaks always in his own person ; but many of the 
 Capitularies are stated to have had the consent of the clergy and 
 nobility, and probably all of them were worded and put into 
 form by the emperor's ecclesiastical advisers. And they breathe 
 throughout an ecclesiastical spirit, and prove a deep interest 
 in the welfare of the Church. 
 
 In the Carlovingian legislation, the same authority and office 
 is attributed to the emperor as was ascribed to him in that 
 of Justinian, and with the same understanding and limita- 
 tions. He is viewed as God's minister, not only to guard, but 
 also generally to oversee the Church ; to take care, in conjunc- 
 tion with her pastors, that she observes her own laws. 
 
 ' Ever since the renovation of the French Church under Carloman and 
 Pepin, it has continued to flourish under the Carlovingian kings, and to be 
 the most important Church of the West. In the new Church the Metro- 
 politans had been reinstated in their ancient rights ; the kings retaining, 
 however, the general superintendence of the Church, the right of arbitration in 
 Church matters, as also thedirection and confirmation of all ecclesiastical decrees. 
 Though Charlemagne wished to introduce again the election of Bishops by 
 the Clergy, they still continued for the most part to be appointed by the 
 king. The Carlovingians continued also to dispose as they pleased of the 
 Church lands. . , . The ecclesiastical supremacy of the Pope was acknow- 
 ledged, the kings often applying to him for advice in ecclesiastical matters, 
 and allowing the right of appeal to him, as fixed at the Council of Sardica.
 
 Church and State. 
 
 23 
 
 In the affairs of their own Church, however, they allowed no interference 
 but by argument and persuasion.' 
 
 Such is Gieseler's account, in which no one who has looked 
 into the Capitularies will think that he overstates the extent of 
 the king's interference. And this interference was not confined 
 to external matters, or even to Church discipline or judicature. 
 It extended to doctrine ; and Charlemagne, in his own name, 
 disputed the decision of a professedly cecumenical Coimcil, 
 sanctioned, confirmed, and defended by a Pope ; and caused its 
 condemnation in a Council of his own. 
 
 ' In the year 790, a formal refutation of the decrees of the second Coun- 
 cil of Nice [on image worship] was drawn up under the direction of 
 Charlemagne, the "Libri Carolini." ... In these books Charlemagne alone 
 is the speaker, e.g. '' Ecclesise in sinu regni gubernacula suscepimus — nobis, 
 quibus Ecclesia ad regendum commissa est," It is not probable that the 
 emperor prepared these books without assistance, but there seems to be 
 no good reason for thinking that Alcuin assisted him. . . . Though Pope 
 Hadrian attempted to answer this exposition, the worship of pictures was 
 formally condemned at a Synod held in Frankfort, a.d. 794.' — (Gieseler.)i 
 
 We will quote a few passages from the Capitularies, to show 
 the terms in which this authority was exj^ressed, and the kind 
 of subjects of which it took cognizance.- These Capitularies, or 
 
 1 Of. Lorenz"s Life of Alcuin (Eng. Trans.), pp. 109—127. Yet these books 
 are said to recognise in very ample terms the authority of the Eoraan See. 
 Charlemagne sent the acts of the Council of Frankfort to the Pope, requiring 
 him to confirm them. The Pope argued for the decrees of Nice, but without per- 
 suading Charles. The acts of Frankfort were confirmed in a Synod at Paris, 825. 
 (Lorenz.) 
 
 2 AVe insert, from Guizot's ''Hist, de la Civil, en France,'^ an analysis of the 
 subjects of the Capitularies. He distributes the subjects under eight heads. 
 The proportion of the religious and canonical legislation to the political, under 
 Charlemagne, is observable. 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 < 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 "3 
 n 
 
 s 
 
 
 > 
 
 
 .1 
 1 
 
 *3 
 
 
 1 
 
 CO 
 
 A 
 
 6 
 
 
 65 
 26 
 51 
 3 
 3 
 1 
 3 
 
 1,151 
 
 362 
 
 529 
 
 22 
 
 19 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 87 
 
 16 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 293 
 
 136 
 
 259 
 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 130 
 
 36 
 
 17 
 
 1 
 
 7 
 
 110 
 24 
 4 
 
 85 
 1 
 2 
 
 305 
 
 129 
 
 51 
 
 4 
 
 73 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 20 
 
 193 
 
 11 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 Louis le Debonn 
 
 Charles le Chauve 
 
 Carlonian 
 
 Eudes 
 
 
 
 152 
 
 2,094 105 
 
 706 
 
 191 
 
 138 
 
 88 
 
 489 
 
 74 
 
 249
 
 24 Ckurch and State. 
 
 collectioDS of laws, are, many of them, preserved in the original, 
 form in which they were drawn up in the Emperor's Council. 
 There is also an arrangement of their enactments, distributed 
 according to their subjects. The first four books of this arrange- 
 ment were compiled by Ansegisus, Abbot of Tontenelle, one of 
 Charlemagne's counsellors; three more were added by the 
 deacon Benedict, at the request of the Archbishop of Mayence, 
 in the middle of the ninth century ; and there are four sup- 
 plements by unknown authors. — (Guizot.) 
 
 The compiler, Ansegisus, thus speaks of the contents of his 
 collection : — 
 
 ' The " Capitula," which have been from time to time pubhshed by the 
 said princes, I have arranged in four books. I have collected, in the first 
 book, those which the Lord Emperor Charles made, relating to the ecclesi- 
 astical order ; and in the second, the ecclesiastical ordinances published by 
 the most religious Lord Emperor Louis. I have united in the third those 
 which Lord Charles made from time to time, pertaining to the secular law ; 
 and I have collected, in the fourth, those which Lord Louis, the noble 
 emperor, made, relating to the improvement of w^orldly law.' 
 
 Charlemagne's view of the kingly office is expressed in the 
 following circular to ' all orders of Ecclesiastical piety, and dig- 
 nities of Secular power,' which Ansegisus prefixes as a preface 
 to the ecclesiasticah laws. • After exhorting the pastors to keep 
 their flocks within the bounds of ' the canonical sanctions and 
 the paternal traditions of the universal councils,' the Emperor 
 proceeds : — 
 
 ' In this work, let your Holiness know assuredly, that our diligence 
 works with you. Therefore we have sent to you our Commissioners (J/issos), 
 who, by the authority of our name, might with you correct what wanted 
 correction. And further, we have subjoined some ^'' capitula,''^ out of the 
 canonical ordinances, which seemed most necessary for you. Nor let any 
 one, I pray, think this admonition of piety presumptuous, whereby we 
 study to amend what is faulty, to cut off what is superfluous, to keep what 
 is right within bounds ; but rather let him receive it with the well-disposed 
 mind of charity. For we read in the books of Kings, how holy Josias, by 
 visiting, by correcting, by admonishing, endeavoured to bring back the king- 
 dom committed to him by God to the worship of the true God. Not that 
 I count myself comparable to his holiness, but because the example of the 
 saints ought ever to be followed by us ; and whomsoever we can, we are 
 bound to bring to the desire of a good life, to the praise and glory of our 
 Ijord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, as we have said, we have caused to be
 
 Church and State. 25 
 
 noted down certain laws, that you may endeavour to recommend both 
 them and whatsoever else you judge to be necessary,' &c. {Prcef. D. 
 Karoli R. ad Capit. Aquisgranense ( Aix-la-Chapelle), a. 789). 
 
 The Capitulary of Aix-la-Chapelle contains eighty articles, 
 addressed variously according to their suhjects, 'To all;' 'To 
 the Priests ; ' ' To the Bishojjs.' They are such as these : — 
 
 1. De his qui ab Episcopo proprio excommunicantur. 
 
 2. De his qui ad ordinandum veniunt. 
 
 3. De clericis f ugitivis et peregrinis. 
 
 4. De Presbyteris, Diaconis, vel his qui in clero sunt. 
 
 5. De usuris. 
 
 6. De Presbyteris Missas cantantibus et non communicantibus. 
 
 7. De his qui a Synodo vel a suo Episcopo damnati sunt. 
 
 8. De Suffraganeis Episcopis. 
 
 9. De Chorepiscopis. 
 
 10. De Episcopis vel quibuslibet ex clero. 
 
 11. De ordinationibus vel quibuslibet negotiis, 
 
 12. De cura Episcoporum. 
 
 16. De ignotis angelorum nominibus. 
 
 19. De Episcopis ubi non oporteat eos constitui. 
 
 20. De libris canonicis. 
 
 24. De Presbyteris non absolute ordinandis. 
 
 31. De fide S. Trinitatis prjedicanda. 
 
 35. De his qui excommunicato communicaverint. 
 
 80. De prgedicatione Episcoporum et Presbyterorum. 
 
 The collection of Ansegisus contains 162 ecclesiastical laws of 
 Charlemagne and 48 of Louis. They are, like those already 
 noticed, on every subject of Church interest, — many of them 
 taken from the older Church canons, others original enact- 
 ments. 
 
 The objects, sanction, and authority of the kingly office is 
 thus stated by the emperor Louis le Debonnaire. After saying 
 that it ' had pleased Divine providence to appoint him to take 
 care of holy Church and this kingdom,' and mentioning the 
 great objects for which he was bound to labour, — ' the defence 
 ' and exaltation or honour of the holy Church of God, and of 
 ' His servants, and the preservation of peace and justice in the 
 * people at large,' he goes on to describe his relation to the 
 various orders of his kingdom: — 
 
 ' But though the sum of this ministry apjjears to reside in oar person^ yet 
 we know that by divine authority andhuman order it is so divided into parts,
 
 26 Church and State. 
 
 that each one of you in his place and order may he hnown to possess part of our 
 ministry. Whence it appears tliat I am bound to be the admonisher of you 
 all, and all you are bound to be our helpers. For neither are we ignorant 
 of what is suitable for each one of you, in that portion committed to him. 
 And therefore we cannot omit to admonish each one according to his 
 order.' — Capit. Lud. Pit, a. 823, § 3. Coll. Anseg. 1. ii. c. 3. 
 
 Accordingly, lie proceeds to use tliis authority : the followiug 
 are the headings of the succeeding chapters : — 
 
 ' Of the sacred ministry of the Bishops, and of the admonition of our 
 Lord Emperor to the Bishops. 
 
 ' Of the admonition of our Lord Emperor to the Bishops, concerning the 
 priests appertaining to their care ; and concerning schools. 
 
 ' Of the admonition to the Counts, for the utility of God's holy Church, 
 
 *0f the admonition to the laity, for maintaining the honour of the 
 Church. 
 
 'Of the admonition to the Abbots and laymen, on behalf of monasteries, 
 of royal bounty committed to them. 
 
 ' Of the admonition to Bishops, Abbots, and all the faithful, for their 
 assistance to the Counts. 
 
 ' Of the admonition to the Bishops, or even to all, touching concord 
 between themselves and with the rest of the faithful. 
 
 'Of the admonition to all in general, touching mutual peace and charity. 
 
 ' Of this, namely ; that each Bishop or Count has part of the royal office 
 {partem minister u regalis habeat), and of their testimony of one another : 
 {i.e., to know from the witness of the Bishops whether the Counts love and 
 do justice, and from the witness of the Counts, whether the Bishops behave 
 and preach religiously.') 
 
 What is expressed here in general terms is, as we have said^ 
 exemplified in most minute and ample detail in the mass of 
 heterogeneous acts which are collected together in the ' Capi- 
 tularies of the Frank Kings.' The king, by Divine Providence 
 constituted, holding of God only, and entrusted in the largest 
 term.s with the charge of the Cliurch, is the one source and 
 fountain of law and justice to Church and State. As a Christian 
 king, he acknowledges the ancient laws of the Church ; he takes 
 counsel of his Bishops, and places them in honour before his 
 Counts. But for everything he is finally responsible to God, and 
 therefore everything belongs to his charge, and is to be ordered 
 according to his discretion — all authority and power in Church 
 and State is from him, is ' part of his ministry.' 
 
 We will add but one extract more. It is from a Synod under 
 Carloman, 742, at which S. Boniface was present.
 
 Church and State. 27 
 
 ' In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I, Carloman, Duke and Prince 
 of the Franks, in the year from the incarnation of Christ 742, the 11th day 
 before the Calends of May, with the counsel of the servants of God and 
 my nobles, have, for the fear of Christ, assembled the Bishops who are in 
 my kingdom, with the Priests, to a council and synod ; that is, Boniface the 
 Archbishop, and Burchard, and Kegemfrid, and Wiztan, and Willibald, and 
 Dadan, and Eddan, and the rest of the Bishops, with their priestb, that 
 they might give me counsel, how the law of God and ecclesiastical religion 
 may be restored, which in the days of former princes has been overthruwn, 
 and how the Christian people may attain to the salvation of their souls, 
 and may not perish by the deceit of false priests. And by the counsel of my 
 Priests and nobles we have appointed Bishops to the cities^ and have set over 
 them {const ituimus siqjer eos) the Archbishop Boniface,ivho is the legate (Missus) 
 of S. Peter. And we have ordered that a synod should be assembled 
 every year, that in our presence the decrees of the canons and the rights 
 of the Church may be restored, and Christian religion amended,' &c. — 
 Capitular. Karlom. a. 742. Bened. Lev'it. 1. v. c. 2. 
 
 The following remarks of Guizot may show that our extracts 
 give no unfair representation of the spirit of the Carlovingian 
 policy and system. Our readers will not, we think, complain of 
 us for declining to weaken the writer's language by translation. 
 
 * Puerile ou grave, monastique ou seculiere, toute cette reforme de 
 I'eglise Gallo-franque s'accomplissait sous I'impulsicn et avec le concours 
 du pouvoir temporel. A vrai dire, de Pepin le Bref a Louis le Debonnaire, 
 c'est le pouvoir temporel, roi ou empereur, qui gouverne I'eglisej et fait 
 tout ce que je viens de mettre sous vos yeux. Les preuves en sont 
 ^videntes. 
 
 *1°. Tous les canons, toutes les mesures relatives a I'eglise, a cette 
 ^poque, sont publics au nom du pouvoir temporel ; c'est lui qui parle, qui 
 ordonne, qui agit. II suflQt d'ouvrir les actes des conciles pour s'en 
 convaincre. 
 
 ' 2°. Ces actes, et beaucoup d'autres monuments, proclament meme 
 f ormellement que c' est au pouvoir civil qu'il appartient d' ordonner de telles 
 choses, et que I'eglise vit et agit sous son autorite. Les canons du Concile 
 d' Aries, tenu sous Charlemagne en 813, se terminent ainsi : — 
 
 * Nous avons brievement enumere les choses qui nous semblent avoir besoin de 
 reforme, et nous avons decide que nous les presenterions au Seigneur Empereur, 
 en invoquant sa clemence, afin que, si quelque chose manque a ce travail, sa pru- 
 dence y supplee ; si quelque chose est autrcment que ne veut la raison, son juge- 
 ment le corrige ; si quelque chose est sagement ordonne, son appui, avec I'aide de 
 la bonte divine, le fasse executer.' ^ 
 
 1 Cone. Labbe, t. vii. col. 1238.
 
 28 Church and State. 
 
 ' On lit ^galement dans le preface des actes du Concile de Mayence, tenu 
 aussi en 813 : — 
 
 ' Sur toutes ces choses, nous avons besoin de votre appui et de votre saine 
 doctrine, afin qu'elle nous avertisse et nous instruisse avec bienveillance ; et si ce 
 que nous avons redige ci-dessous, en quelques articles, vous en parait digne, que 
 votre autorite le confirme ; si quelque chose vous y semble a corriger, que votre 
 grandeur imj)eriale en ordonne la correction.' ^ 
 
 ' Quels textes pourraient etre plus f ormels ? 
 
 ' 3°. Les Capitulaires de Charlemagne prouvent egalement a chaque pas 
 que le gouvernment de I'eglise etait une de ses principales affaires : 
 quelques articles pris au hasard vous montreront avec quelle attention il 
 s'en occupait : — 
 
 * Nos missi doivent recherclier s'il s'eleve quelque plainte centre un eveque, un 
 atbe, une abbesse, un comte, ou tout autre magistrat, quel qu'il soit, et nous en 
 instruire.2 
 
 ' Qu'ils examinent si les eveques et les autres pretres vivent selon I'institution 
 canonique, et s'ils connaissent et observent bien les canons ; si les abbes vivent 
 selon la regie et canoniquement, et s'ils connaissent bien les canons ; si dans les 
 nionasteres d'hommes, les moines vivent selon la regie ; si dans les monasteres de 
 filles, elles vivent selon la regie, et quelle en est la cloture.^ 
 
 ' Qu'ils examinent dans chaque cite les monasteres d'hommes et de filles ; qu'ils 
 voient comment les eglises sont entretenues ou reparees, soit quand aux edifices, 
 soit quant aux ornements ; qu'ils s'informent soigneusement des moeurs de chacun, 
 et de ce qui a ete fait quant a ce que nous avons ordonne sur les lectures, le chant, 
 et tout ce qui coucerne la discipline ecclesiastique.'* 
 
 *Si quelqu'un des abbes, pretres, diacres, &c., n'obeit pas h. son eveque, qu'ils 
 aillent devant le metropolitain, et que celui-ci juge I'affaire avec ses suff"ragants, 
 Et, s'il y a quelque chose que I'eveque metropolitan ne puisse reformer ou apaiser, 
 que les accusateurs avec I'accuse viennent a nous, avec des lettres du metropolitain, 
 pour que nous sachions la verite de la chose. ^ 
 
 ' Que les eveques, les abbes, les comtes, et tons les puissants, s'ils ont entre eux 
 quelque debat et ne se peuvent concilier, viennent en notre presence.'^ 
 
 'C'est la a coup sur, une intervention bien directe et active. Charle- 
 magne ne gouvernait pas les affaires civiles du plus pres. 
 
 4°. * II exergait d'ailleurs une influence tres-e£Bcace, bien qu'indirecte ; 
 il nommait les eveques. On lit, a la v6rit6, dans les Capitulaires, le reta- 
 blissement de I'election des eveques par le clerge et le peuple, selon I'usage 
 
 primitif et le droit legal de I'eglise Mais le fait continua d'etre 
 
 pen en accord avec le droit : apres comme avant ce Capitulaire (1^"^ Cap. 
 a. 803, § 2, t. i. col. 372,) Charlemagne nomma presque tou jours les 
 eveques ; qt meme apres sa mort, sous ses plus faibles successeurs, 
 
 1 Cone. Labbe. t. vii. col. 1241. ^ 3e Cap. a. 789, § 11 ; Bal. t. i. coL 244. 
 
 3 2e Cap. a. 802, § 2—5 ; t. i. coL 375. 
 
 4 5e Cap. a. 806, §-:4 ; t. 1. col. 453. 
 
 ^ Cap. a. 794, § 4 ; t. i. col. 264. ^ 3e Cap. a. 812, § 2.
 
 ( 
 
 Church and State. 29 
 
 Pintervention de la royaut^ en pareille matiere fat avou^e par ses plus 
 jaloiix rivanx. En 853, le pape Leon IV. 6crit a Lothaire, Empereur : — 
 
 ' Nous supplions votre mansiietude de donner cette eglise a gonvemer a Colonne, 
 humble diacre, afiu qu'en ayant recu permission de vous, nous puissons, avec I'aide 
 de Dieu, le consacrer eveque. Si vous ne voulez pas qu'il soit eveque dans la dite 
 eglise, que votre Serenite daigne lui conferer celle de Tusculum, veuve aussi de 
 son pasteur. ' 
 
 ****** 
 
 6^ ' Ce n'etait pas seulement de radministration et de la discipline eccle- 
 siastique que s'occupait a cette epoque le pouvoir temporel ; il intervenait 
 meme dans les matieres de dogme, et celles-la aussi etaient gouvernees en 
 son nom. Trois questions de ce genre se sont elevees sous le regne de 
 Charlemagne; je ne ferai que les indiquer, 1. La question du culte des 
 images .... L'eglise Gallo-f ranque repoussa ce culte et tout ce qui parais- 
 sait y tendre ... La favenr qu'accordaient les papes a cette doctrine 
 n'ebranla point les eveques francs, ni leur maitre, et, en 794, le Concile de 
 Francfort le condamna formellement. 2. L'heresie des Adoptiens .... 
 que Charlemagne fit condamner dans trois conciles successifs. 3. La ques- 
 tion d'lme addition au symbole sur la procession du Saint-Esprit. C'etaient 
 la a coup sur des matieres bien etrangeres au gouvernement exterieur de 
 l'eglise, bien purement dogmatiques. Elles n'en furent pas moins reglees, 
 sinon par le pouvoir civil lui-meme, du moins sous son autorite, et avec 
 son intervention. 
 
 'On pent done, sans traiter la question de droit, sans examiner s'il est 
 bon ou mauvais qu'il en soit ainsi, afiiin:er en fait qu'a cette Epoque, ;* 
 directement ou indirectement, le pouvoir temporel gouvernait l'eglise. La/ 
 situation de Charlemagne a cet egard etait, a pen de chose pres, la meme 
 que celle du roi d'Angieterre dans l'eglise Anglicane. En Angleterre, aussi, 
 I'assemblee civile, ou parlement, et I'assemblee ecclesiastique, ou convocation, 
 ont ete long-temps distinctes ; et ni I'un ni I'autre ne decidait rien, ne pou- 
 vait rien, sans la sanction de la royaute. Qu'il e'agit d'un concile ou d'un 
 champ de mai, ou d'un dogme ou d'une gnerre a proclamer, Charlemagne y 
 pr^sidait egalement : ni dans I'un, ni dans I'autre cas, on ne songeait a se 
 passer de lui.' ^ 
 
 But he goes on to observe that the ' early Carlovingians, while 
 * thus governing absolutely, conferred on the Church immense 
 ' advantages, and laid the most solid foundations of its future 
 ' power.' He specifies, 1. The final establishment of the pay- 
 ment of tithes : 2. The extension by Charlemagne of the juris- 
 diction of the Clergy : 3. The increase of tlie power of the Clergy 
 in civil matters, particularly in questions of marriages and wills : 
 4. The appropriation to each Church of a glebe, mansus ecclesias- 
 
 Civilisation en France, Le^on 26.
 
 30 Chicrch and State. 
 
 ticus. He continues — ' Malgre sa servitude momentanee, I'eglise 
 ' avait la, a coup sur, de nombreux et feconds principes d'ind^- 
 ' pendance et de puissance. lis ne tarderent pas a se developper/ 
 
 Now this theory is the foundation of European royalty ; after 
 all our revolutions we have not yet finally abandoned it. We 
 are not speaking of the effect of it, which of course must vary 
 according to the state of things in which it w^orks, and with 
 which it is linked. Doubtless, if Charlemagne or Louis speak 
 to Bishops, and upon spiritual matters, in terms as authoritative 
 and peremptory as those of a Pope's brief, we know that they 
 are fully agreed wdth their Bishops, and are probably using the 
 w^ords which their Bishops have drawn up for theni. ISTeverthe- 
 less, with the terms and language of this supremacy the Church 
 is not offended. The supremacy thus c] aimed and used is not 
 looked on as a profanation ; not even as a grievance. ISTot a 
 protest, not a warning, is heard ; not an expostulation, not a 
 suspicion, not a misgiving, even from Eome. It is accepted and 
 embraced as perfectly natural and right. It breaks no canon, 
 it trenches on no jurisdiction, it invalidates no power, it wounds 
 no feeling. It appeared as legitimate a consequence of Charle. 
 magne's power as the authority exercised by the Jewish kings 
 did to the Jews, and does still to the reader of the Old Testa- 
 ment. And yet the Church at this time, however different from 
 that of later times, w^as very far from being insensible to its 
 own claims and powers, or, as an impartial observer attests, to 
 its duties.^ 
 
 It does not, of course, in the least follow, that because this 
 supremacy suited the days when it arose, it should be satisfactory 
 now, or under Henry VIII. When it led to bad consequences, 
 the Church opposed it; if she could not get rid of it she 
 checked and balanced it ; as she ought to do, wdien necessary^ 
 and may do still. But, as a fact in her history, it cannot be 
 overlooked. She was not forced or surprised into it ; she did not 
 view it as a tyranny submitted to under protest. It grew up 
 
 ^ V. Guizot, Hist, de la Civilis. en France, Legon 26. He notices especially 
 the number of councils. ' Twenty councils only had been held in the seventh cen- 
 tury, and seven only in the first half of the eighth,' From Pepin to the accession 
 of Hugh Capet (752—987), in 235 years, 201 councils were held, of which 33 in 
 the 46 years of Charlemagne, 29 in the 26 years of Louis le Debonuaire, and 69 in 
 the 37 years of Charles le Chauve.
 
 Church and State. 31 
 
 while she was on the best terms with the powers of this world, 
 when she was their instructress and guide, under her auspices 
 and sanction, in the councils of her bishops, whose knowledge 
 and learning determined its form, whose literary superiority 
 furnished its language, who were its spokesmen, scribes, law- 
 makers, codifiers, interpreters, ministers, judges. They certainly 
 cannot be accused of being insensible to tlie prerogatives of the 
 spiritual order ; yet they fell into the system of Charlemagne or 
 of Justinian, naturally and as a matter of course, wdthout mis- 
 giving or reluctance. Doubtless, it ivas natural for the Church 
 to be liberal and unsuspicious to her friends : and she is not 
 bound to continue to a hostile or indifferent government powers 
 of interference which were judged safe in the hands of a friendly 
 king. But the supremacy of the Carlovingian and Eastern 
 emperors shows that the Church was willing to go very far in 
 consolidating the ecclesiastical and civil powers, in order to 
 secure real efficiency and strength. It shows that at that period 
 she was not very nice in settling accurately their relations and 
 subordination ; that she trusted to their broad and essential 
 distinctions for preventing any fatal confusion of authority or 
 function ; that in her view then, her intrinsic powers were not 
 brought into abeyance or suspension, much less extinguished, by 
 being associated with those of a temporal crown. And further, 
 she is committed, not to the permanence, but to the lawfulness 
 in itself of such an arrangement ; for she fully acquiesced in it 
 under Justinian ; and in the case of Charlemagne, it was of her 
 own authorship. The material force was the king's ; but to her 
 he ow^ed the idea, w^hich gave it the character of a legitimate 
 authority and a reasonable power; it was her learning and 
 cultivation which supplied its maxims, and devised its formulae. 
 She grew and strengthened by it ; and the theory, which she 
 had developed and fostered, gained force and currency among 
 the nations which looked up to her, as much in consequence of 
 her authority as from the interest and influence of kings and 
 emperors, wdio found their account also in it. This must not be 
 forgotten. With such a precedent, it would be at least un- 
 persuasive for her to argue in defence of her independence or 
 freedom, on the broad ground of the unlawfulness of such a 
 supremacy as she herself shaped out for Charlemagne. If she is 
 wise, she will fight her battle on the more troublesome but more
 
 32 Church and State. 
 
 real question of special circumstances. And in judging of the 
 acts of the later Church, it must be remembered, not merely that 
 precedents are of force in argument, but that the policy of one 
 age really abridges the liberty of action of another ; and that the 
 later Church found itself shackled and embarrassed by an idea 
 and tradition left behind by the earlier Church which the earlier 
 Church had not merely submitted to, but originated, when per- 
 fectly free to choose, holding the highest position of command, 
 fully impressed with the sacredness and divine origin of her own 
 mission and powers. 
 
 To come to England. The visitatorial power of the Crown, of 
 which Henry VIII, made such violent and bad use, is yet, in 
 itself, one of the very earliest facts which meet us in English 
 history. It was not his invention, nor the invention of his 
 counsellors and bishops ; the idea of it was familiar both to the 
 jurisprudence and to the common opinion of England. It had 
 come into Anglo-Saxon England as a matter of course, with the 
 beginnings of royalty and the Church, as inherent in the first 
 and obvious idea of a religious king, the idea suggested by the 
 examples of the Old Test iment, realized in the instance of 
 Charlemagne, and by his legislation and his renoAvn stamped on 
 the mind of Christian Europe. This power had been used 
 broadly and unsuspiciously, with the full concurrence and co- 
 operation of the Clergy, used legislatively, administratively, 
 judicially, within no definite limits, yet without being supposed 
 to usurp, invalidate, or supersede the joint and parallel action of 
 the Church. In the more energetic times, indeed, which followed 
 the Saxon kingdom, it was no longer the undisputed prerogative 
 which had dealt, in its rude and simple fashion, with a rude and 
 simple time. Kings found new secrets in it ; the Church had 
 to be jealously on its guard against its early ally. But though, 
 as all know, fierce contests followed, and as circumstances or 
 individual character varied, limitations were fixed by compro- 
 mise, carried forward by victory, pushed back by defeat, silently 
 altered by custom, the idea of monarchy derived from the Saxon 
 times continued from William the Conqueror to Henry VIII. 
 as it continues to this day, the invariable tradition of England, 
 respected and acknowledged, however interpreted by the 
 Church, as it was acknowledged, and also interpreted, by the 
 law.
 
 Church and State. 33 
 
 How completely this Anglo-Saxon notion of the royal power 
 coincided with that which is shown in the legislation of Justi- 
 nian and Charlemagne, may be seen in the following passages 
 from the collections of Anglo-Saxon laws. The royal power is 
 thus stated, vaguely enough, yet broadly, in the 'Laws of 
 Edward the Confessor : ' — 
 
 ^ De mult'qA'ic'i Potestate Regia. 
 '' But the king, who is the Vicar of the most high King, (Vicarius summi 
 Regis,) is set for this, that he may rule and defend from wrong-doers the 
 kingdom and the people of the Lord, and, above all, holy Church ; (ut 
 regmim etpopulum Domini^ et super omnia, sanctam Ecdesiam, regat etdefendat 
 ah injuriosis ;) but that the wicked he may overthrow and root out. Other- 
 wise he loses the name of king, as Pope John witnesses, to whom Pepin 
 and Charles his son, when not yet kings but princes, under the foolish king 
 of the Franks, wrote, asking, "Whether the kings of the Franks ought to 
 continue thus content with the bare name of king?" By whom it was 
 answered, " That it is fitting that tJiei/ be called kings, who watchfully 
 defend and rule the Church of God and His people, following the royal 
 Psalmist, who says, 'He who doeth pride shall not dwell in the midst of 
 my house,' " &c.' — Thorjje, vol. i. p. 449. 
 
 The state of things shown in these laws is that of a union of 
 powers for practical effects The directive and coercive powers 
 of the whole body are joined and centralised, that they may 
 speak and act with force. The king is the overseer, the chief 
 minister, and the spokesman of the body ; he orders justice to 
 be done, whether in Church or State, and sees that it is done. 
 But he is not the only power. His bishops and his thanes have 
 their own functions and powers ; and both have their part in his 
 councils. Thus Wihtrsed, with the Archbishop and other great 
 men of Kent, issues a variety of injunctions, partly civil, partly 
 ecclesiastical, and threatening ecclesiastical as well as civil 
 punishments — injunctions of so mixed a character, that they 
 are placed both among the laws of England and the collections 
 of English canons.^ They command excommunication of evil 
 livers, and suspension of priests for ecclesiastical offences till the 
 judgment of the Bishop, forbid Sunday labour, enjoin fasting. 
 The same miscellaneous character belongs to the laws in 
 general. In one collection of ordinances we have an order, 
 ' that fifty psalms shall be sung every Friday, at every monastery, 
 
 ^ Thorpe, i. 36. Bruns, Canones select!, Berol, 1839. Concil. BerghaTnsted. ii. 311. 
 
 D
 
 34 Church and State. 
 
 for the king, and all who will what he wills/ interposed between 
 a law about tracking cattle and another about compensation for 
 theft. {Thorpe,!. 222, 223.) 
 
 The collection of the laws of King Edmund begins thus : — 
 
 ' King- Edmund assembled a great synod at London, during the holy 
 Easter tide, as well of ecclesiastical as of secular degree. There was Oda 
 Archbishop, and Wulf stan Archbishop, and many other Bishops, meditating 
 concerning the condition of their souls, and of those who were subject to 
 them.' 
 
 Then follow the laws, in two divisions, one ecclesiastical, the 
 other secular. The same authority enacts both.^ 
 
 The laws of Ethelred are numerous and varied, and extending 
 to ecclesiastical as well as civil mattei's. ' A Christian king,' he 
 says, ' is accounted Christ's Vicegerent among Christian people, 
 and it is his duty to avenge offence to Christ very severely.' 
 Again, the religious character of his legislation is expressed in 
 the following : — 
 
 'It is very justly incumbent on Christian men that they very diligently 
 avenge any offence against God. And wise were those secular "ivitan,"' 
 who to the Divine laws of right added secular laws for the people's 
 government ; and directed the " hot" (" amends ") to Christ and the king, 
 that many should thus of necessity be compelled to right. 
 
 * But in those assemblies, though deliberately held in places of note, 
 after Edgar's lifetime, the laws of Christ waned, and the king's laws were 
 impaired. 
 
 * And then was separated what was before in common to Christ and the 
 king in secular government ; and it has ever been the worse before God 
 and the world ; let it now come to an amendment, if God will it.' — 
 Thorpe, i. 348, 349. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 ' And he who holds an outlaw of God in his power over the term that 
 the king may have appointed, he acts at peril of himself and all his 
 property, against Christ's Vicegerent, who preserves and sways over 
 Christianity and kingdom [" Cristendom & Cynedom "] as long as God grants 
 it:— Thorpe, i. 350, 351. 
 
 The guardianship of religion, and the rights which this gave 
 him, in conjunction with his ' witan,' to watch over and take 
 cognisance of ecclesiastical discipline, are expressed in the 
 following : — 
 
 1 Thorpe, i. 340, 341.
 
 Cliurch and State. 35 
 
 ' This is the ordinance which the King of the English, and buth the 
 ecclesiastical and lay counsellers, have chosen and advised. 
 
 * 1. This then is first : that we all love and worship one God, and 
 zealously hold one Christianity .... and this we all have, both with 
 word and promise, confirmed, that, under one Kingship we will observe 
 one Christianity 
 
 ' 4. And the ordinance of our Lord and his " witan " is, that men of 
 every order readily submit, before God and before the world, each to that 
 law which is appropriate to him ; and above all, let all the servants of 
 God, bishops and abbots, monks and mynchens, priests and nuns, submit 
 to the law- and live according to their rule, and fervently intercede for all 
 Christian people. 
 
 * 5. And the ordinance of our Lord and of his " witan " is that every 
 monk who is out of minster, and heeds no rule, do as it behoves him ; 
 let him wilhngly retire into a minster, with all humility, and abstain from 
 misdeeds, and make amends ("6o^") very strictly for that which he may 
 have broken ; let him be mindful of the word and promise which he gave 
 to God. 
 
 * 6. And let the monk who has no minster come to the bishop of the 
 diocese, and engage himself to God and to men, that he therefore will 
 specially observe three things ; that is, his chastity, and monastic habit, 
 and to serve his Lord, as well as he best can ; and if he perform that , 
 then he is worthy of being the better respected, let him dwell where 
 he may. 
 
 ' 7. And let canons, where their benefice is, so that they may have a 
 refectory, and a dormitory, keep their minster rightly and with purity, as 
 their rule may teach ; or it is right that he forfeit the benefice who will 
 not do so. 
 
 ' 8. And we pray and instruct all mass-priests, that they secure themselves 
 against the wrath of God. 
 
 ^ 9. . . . And let him that will preserve his chastity, have God's mercy 
 .... and he who will not do that which is befitting his order, let his 
 honour wane before God and before the world. 
 
 'If a monk or a mass-priest become altogether an apostate, let him be 
 for ever excommunicated, unless he the more readily submit to his duty.' — 
 Thorpe, Laws of King Ethelred, i. 304—307, 348, 349. 
 
 The same laws regulate ecclesiastical payments and the 
 observance of festivals and fasts : — 
 
 ' 13. Let Sunday's festival be rightly kept, as is thereto becoming. 
 
 '14. And let all S.Mary's feast-tides be strictly honoured; first with 
 fasting, and afterwards with feasting. And at the celebration of every 
 Apostle, let there be fasting and feasting ; except that on the festival of 
 SS. Philip and James we enjoin no fast, on account of the Easter festival. 
 
 '16. And the 'Uvitun'' have chosen, that S. Edward's mass-day shall be, 
 celebrated all over England on xv. Kal. April. 
 
 ' And to fast every Friday, unless it be a festival. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 Church and State. 
 
 * 18. And ordeals and oaths are forbidden on festival days, and on the 
 regular Ember-days, and from Adventum Domini till the octaves of the 
 Epiphany ; and from Septuagesima till xv. days after Easter.'— TJiorpe, 
 i. 306—309. 
 
 And so with the laws of King Canute.^ He makes laws for 
 the general direction of his subjects both in Church and State, 
 
 * with the counsel of his ivitan, and to the praise of God and 
 the honour and behoof of himself.' And he goes even to 
 matters of private conscience. He speaks by his own authority, 
 though with the concurrence of his ecclesiastical as well as 
 temporal counsellers. He prescribes duties, in their own sphere, 
 to his Bishops. He regulates ecclesiastical ordinances, such as 
 fasts and holidays. He enjoins Christian w^orship ; he pre- 
 scribes the form of trial and purgation of ecclesiastics, regular 
 and secular, and orders great offenders to be excommunicated ; 
 he orders Churchmen to live each according to his proper rule : 
 
 * We will that men of every order readily submit, each to that 
 ' law which is becoming to him ; and above all, let the servants 
 
 * of God, bishops and abbots, monks and mynchens, canons and 
 
 * nuns, submit to law, and live according to rule, and by day 
 ' and night, oft and frequently, call to Christ, and fervently 
 ' intercede for all Christian people.' He speaks as one bound 
 to preserve the faith, and to make his people obedient to the 
 law of the Church ; he bids them go to Confession, communi- 
 cate at least thrice a year, study and hold fast Christian doc- 
 trine, learn at least to say the Lord's Prayer and Creed, and 
 keep from evil works. The vagueness which pervades all the 
 Anglo-Saxon laws, (except in the matter of lines,) and the 
 mixture of moi-al exhortation with legal command, give the 
 Anglo-Saxon royalty a sort of domestic character, at least in 
 outward appearance. But the claim to interfere in all matters 
 relating to Christianity, and to correct all abuses, is not less 
 clear. And in England, as abroad, it went side by side with 
 a strong spirit of ecclesiastical independence. 
 
 The history of the English Church, from the Conquest to the 
 Reformation, w^ould illustrate this with as much force as its history 
 afterwards. It would show how difficult it was for the Church, 
 
 ^ Thorpe, Laws of King Cnut ; Ecclesiastical, (i. 358 — 375 ;) Secular, i. 376 
 —425.)
 
 Church and State. 37 
 
 even after such contests as those of Anselm and Becket, we say not 
 to shake off, for that was never done, but to restrain the supremacy 
 traditionally belonging to the English Crown, and practically 
 exercised by powerful kings. The sort of supremacy claimed 
 by William the Conqueror, and in his case not disputed, in the 
 face of the great contest which Gregory VII. was carrying on 
 upon the Continent, is, considering the period, one of the most 
 startling instances of royal prerogative. And though this was 
 checked in his successors, by what we must consider the saintly 
 heroism of two individual Archbishops, unaided and almost 
 alone in their struggle, the principles for which both had suf- 
 fered, and one had died, — principles, then the plain admitted 
 foundations of ecclesiastical law, and deemed essential to the 
 welfare of the Church, — were in every reign, sometimes more 
 and sometimes less, contradicted, ignored, put aside, overruled 
 by the King's authority. The Pope was then the acknowledged 
 chief depositary of Church jurisdiction, the organ of Church 
 authority, and representative of the public rights of the Church 
 — whether rightly or wrongly makes no difference ; but being so 
 accounted, both by Church and King, his action was continually 
 and arbitrarily limited or overridden ; or he was forced to con- 
 descend to compromise matters of the highest importance to 
 the influence and interests of the Church. The idea of a 
 supreme visitatorial power, a power of determining finally, on 
 his own responsibility and at his discretion, the ecclesiastical 
 relations of his subjects, was never parted with by the King, 
 was often acted on, and but seldom and faintly protested against 
 by the body of the national Clergy. The Church was even 
 reminded that it was of the King's grace and goodness that she 
 held her liberties, and w^as allowed to use those powers which 
 she could not but consider her unalienable rio'ht.^ 
 
 o 
 
 To take one instance. It is difficult to imagine, in a polity 
 like that of the Church before the Eeformation, a clearer and 
 more intelligible right than that of free intercourse between the 
 Head of the Church and its members. Where the Pope was 
 viewed as by Divine right the Chief Shepherd of the Universal 
 Church, its governor, watchman and refuge, and the living and 
 
 1 For instance, the ArticuH Cleri, 1316. Collier, iii. 42™46; cf. pp. 100- 
 103. (8vo.)
 
 38 Church and State. 
 
 final interpreter of its law, it seems in theory a tyranny the 
 most intolerable, to fetter or impede, by human regulations and 
 for political objects, the appeal to such a judge, or the commu- 
 nication of his decisions or his counsels. Yet the right to 
 control this intercourse was systematically claimed by the 
 English kings ; and, when claimed by a strong king, submitted 
 to. William the Conqueror assumed it without scruple. In 
 later times, it became the subject of a chain of statutes of 
 famous import and name — the statutes of Provisors and Prsemu- 
 nire. And these statutes, sometimes with a faint saving clause 
 on the Pope's behalf, were not thought anything strange by the 
 English Bishops. We will quote Collier's account of the statute 
 of Praemunire of 16 Eich. II. 1392— 
 
 • " To our dread sovereign lord the king in this present parliament, his 
 humble chaplain, William, archbishop of Canterbury, gives in his answer 
 to the petition brought into the parliament by the commons of the realm, 
 in which petition are contained certain articles. 
 
 * "That is to say, first. Whereas our sovereign lord the king and all his 
 liege subjects ought of right to be, and had been always accustomed to sue 
 in the king's court, to recover their presentations to churches, to maintain 
 their titles to prebends and other benefices of holy Church, to which they 
 have a right to present — the cognizance of which plea belongs solely to 
 the court of our sovereign lord the king by virtue of his ancient prerogative, 
 maintained and practised in the reigns of all his predecessors, kings of 
 England : — and when judgment is given in his highness's said court upon 
 any such plea, the archbishops, bishops, and other spiritual persons, who 
 have the right of giving institution to such benefices within their juris- 
 diction, are bound to execute such judgments, and used always to make 
 execution of them at the king's command, (since no lay person can make 
 any such execution,) and are also bound to make execution of many other 
 commands of our lord the king : of which right the crown of England has 
 been all along peaceably possessed : but now of late, divers processes have 
 been made by the holy father the pope, and excommunications published 
 against several English bishops for making such executions, and acting in 
 pursuance to the king's commands in the cases above-mentioned, and that 
 such censures of his holiness are inflicted in open disherison of the crown 
 and subversive of the prerogative royal, of the king's laws, and his whole 
 realm, unless prevented by proper remedies." 
 
 'To this article the archbishop promising his protestation, "that it was 
 none of his intention to affirm our holy father the pope has no authority to 
 excommunicate a bishop, pursuant to the laws of holy Church, declares 
 and answers, that if any executions of processes are made or shall be 
 made by any person ; if any censures of excommunication shall be pub- 
 lished, and served upon any English bishops, or any other of the king's 
 subjects, for their having made execution of any such commands, he
 
 Church and State. 39 
 
 maintains such censures to be prejudicial to the king's prerogative, as it is 
 set forth in the commons' petition : and that so far forth he is resolved 
 to stand with our lord the king, and support his crown in the matters 
 above-mentioned, to his power. 
 
 '"And likewise, whereas it is said in the petition, that complaint has 
 been made that the said holy father the pope had designed to translate 
 some English prelates to sees out of the realm, and some from one bishopric 
 to another, without the knowledge and consent of our lord the king, 
 and without the assent of the prelates so translated, (prelates who are 
 very serviceable and necessary to our lord the king, and his whole realm,) 
 which translations, if they should be suffered, the statutes of the realm 
 would be defeated, and made in a great measure insignificant, and the said 
 lieges of his highness's council would be removed out of his kingdom with- 
 out their assent and against their inclination, and the treasure of the said 
 realm would be exported : by which means, the country would become 
 destitute both of wealth and council, to the utter destruction of the said 
 realm : and thus, the crown of England, which has always been so free and inde- 
 pendent, as not to have any earthly sovereign, hut to he immediately suhject to 
 God in all things touching the prerogatives of royalty of the said crown, should 
 he made suhject to thepiope, and the laws and statutes of the realm defeated and 
 set aside hy him at p)leasure, to the utter destruction of the sovereignty of our 
 lord the king, his crown and roycdty, and his whole kingdom, ichich God forbid — 
 ' " The said archbishop, first protesting that it is not his intention to 
 affirm that our holy father aforesaid cannot make translations of prelates 
 according to the laws of holy Church, answers and declares, that if any 
 English prelates, who by their capacity and qualifications were very ser- 
 viceable and necessary to our lord the king and his realm, if any such 
 prelates were translated to any sees in foreign dominions or the sage lieges 
 of his council were forced out of the kingdom against their will, and that, 
 by this means, the wealth and treasure of the kingdom should be exported ; 
 in this case, the archbishop declares that such translations would be preju- 
 dicial to the king and his crown : for which reason, if anything of this 
 should happen, he resolves to adhere loyally to the king, and endeavour, as 
 he is bound by his allegiance, to support his highness in this and all other 
 instances, in which the rights of his crown are concerned ; and, lastly, he 
 prayed the king this schedule might be made a record, and entered upon 
 the parliament-roll : which the king granted." .... 
 
 'We may observe farther, that this schedule of the archbishop's seems 
 to have led the way to the statute of ''praemunire," passed in this parlia- 
 ment : for the preamble and introductive part of the act is but a copy, as 
 it were, of this declaration. The bill, it is true, was brought in by the 
 commons by way of petition, who prayed the king to examine the opinions 
 of the lords spiritual and temporal upon the contents. The question being 
 put, the lords temporal promised to stand by the king against the pope's 
 encroachments : neither were the engagements of the lords spiritual less 
 loyal and satisfactory ; for they concurred in all points with the common 
 petition, and renounced the pope in all his attempts upon the crown.' — 
 Collier, vol. iii. pp. 208—210.
 
 40 Church and State. 
 
 And now let us hear how these statutes, acquiesced in so 
 easily by English Bishops, were viewed by the Pope. Martin V. 
 thus characterises one of the statutes of Praemunire, in a strong 
 letter of rebuke to Archbishop Chicheley (1426) : — 
 
 '"Now, what abominable violence has been let loose upon your pro- 
 vince I leave it to yourself to consider. Pray peruse that ' royal law,' if 
 there is anything that is either ' law ' or * royal ' belongs to it : for how can 
 that be called a statute which repeals the laws of God and the Church ? 
 How can it deserve the name of ' royal ' when it destroys the ancient usages 
 of the kingdom ? when it is so counter to that sentence in Holy Scripture, 
 * The king's honour loveth judgment ' ? I desire therefore to know, reve- 
 rend brother, whether you, who are a Catholic bishop, can think it reason- 
 able such an act as this should be in force in a Christian country ? 
 
 * " For, in the first place, under colour of this execrable statute, the king 
 of England reaches into the spiritual jurisdiction, and governs as fully in 
 ecclesiastical matters as if our Saviour had constituted him His vicar. He 
 makes laws for the Church, and order of the clergy ; draws the cognizance 
 of ecclesiastical causes to his temporal courts ; and, in short, makes so 
 many provisions about clerks, benefices, and the concerns of the hierarchy, 
 as if the keys of the kingdom of heaven were put into his hands, and the 
 superintendency of these affairs had been entrusted with his highness and 
 not with S. Peter. 
 
 ' " Besides this hideous encroachment, he has enacted several terrible 
 penalties against the clergy. So unaccountable a rigour this, that the 
 English constitution does not treat Jews nor Turks with this severe usage. 
 People of all persuasions and countries have the liberty of coming into 
 England : and only those who have cures bestowed upon them by the 
 supreme bishop, by the vicar of Christ Jesus,— only those, I say,— are 
 banished, seized, imprisoned, and stripped of their fortunes. And if any 
 proctors, notaries, or others, charged with the execution of the mandates 
 and censures of the apostolic see,— if any of these happen to set foot upon 
 English ground, and proceed in the business of their commission, they are 
 treated like enemies, thrown out of the king's protection, and exposed to 
 extremities of hardship. 
 
 ' " Can that be styled a Catholic kingdom where such profane laws are 
 made and practised, where application to the vicar of Christ is prohibited, 
 where the successor of S. Peter is not allowed to execute our Saviour's 
 commission 1 Christ said to Peter, and, in him, to his successors, * Feed 
 my sheep ;' but this statute will not suffer him to feed them, but transfers 
 this oflfice to the king, and pretends to give him apostolical authority in 
 several cases. Christ built his Church upon S. Peter ; but this act of 
 parliament hinders the effect of this disposition : for it will not allow 
 S. Peter's see to proceed in the functions of government, nor make pro- 
 visions suitable to the necessities of the Church. Our Saviour has ordered, 
 that whatever his high priest ' shall bind or loose upon earth, shall be bound 
 or loosed in heaven;' but this statute ventures to overrule the divine
 
 Church and State. 41 
 
 pleasure : for if the immediate representative of our Saviour thinks fit to 
 delegate any priest to execute the power of the ' keys ' against the in- 
 tendment of the statute, this act not only refuses to admit them, but forces 
 them out of the kingdom, seizes their effects, and makes them liable to 
 further penalties : and, if any discipline and apostolic censure appears 
 against this usage, it is punished as a capital offence." ' — Collier, vol. iii. 
 pp. 311, 342. 
 
 He goes on to require the Archbishop, under pain of excom- 
 munication, to use all his efforts to get it repealed ; and makes 
 excommunication the penalty of obedience to it. He proceeds 
 to steps of greater vigour ; he makes void the statutes of Pro- 
 visors, and of Prsemunire, of Edward III. and Ptichard IL, and 
 excom^municates all who obey them ; he orders his monitory 
 letter to be published to the whole nation ; he writes to the King, 
 to the Duke of Bedford, to the Parliament, telling them ' that 
 * they cannot be saved without giving their votes to repeal this 
 ' statute.' Yet the Archbishop ignores the Pope's censure, and 
 excuses himself to the Pope, ' that he could not be farther in- 
 ' formed ' on the censure, ' because he w^as commanded by the 
 ' King to bring those instruments with the seals whole, and 
 ' lodge them in the paper office till the Parliament sate : ' and 
 the Parliament, after hearing the Pope's letter, and an exhor- 
 tation of the Archbishop to attend to it, simply does nothing, 
 and leaves the statute as it stands. 
 
 We cannot, then, in spite of the abuses of Henry YIII. , deny 
 that the Church had, long before his time, admitted the King's 
 visitatorial power. Henry may have used it to her hurt, others 
 for her benefit. He may have asserted it in extreme cases, and 
 worded his claim in the most extravagant terms — terms w^hich 
 his successors shrank from and gave up. But, unless terms and 
 phrases are all that is to guide us in judging of a case, he can 
 only be said to have misused a power, which the Church had 
 allowed, w^hen used in her favour. The principle which was 
 finally laid down and agreed to by the English Church and the 
 Crown in the 37th Article cannot be said to be a new or 
 unknown or peculiarly English principle. The principle of 
 visitatorial power in the Crown, of keeping all things in their 
 place, and ail persons to their duty, of seeing to the due 
 execution of all law, — with all that such a principle involves 
 of final responsibility and final discretion, governs, as we have
 
 42 Church and State. 
 
 seen, some of the most important and largest developments of 
 , Church influence. It governs the earliest specimens and the 
 
 y most august models of European legislation — that of the 
 Christian Eoman empire, and that of the Christian Frank 
 emj)ire. It is equally shown in the homely and common sense 
 
 I arrangements of the Anglo-Saxons ; and it is not more distinctly 
 asserted in the uncontradicted and tranquil prerogative of Jus- 
 tinian or Edward the Confessor than in the contested and 
 balanced royalty of Henry II. or Richard II. Even in the 
 presence of an antagonist power to which, in the imposing form 
 which it at last assumed, Justinian was a stranger, the royal 
 authority maintained its claims obstinately and tenaciously. 
 
 The words of the 37th Article are almost the very words of 
 Edward the Confessor's law, based on a pope's rescript. But 
 Justinian and Charlemagne went beyond what would be a fair 
 though large interpretation of those somewhat vague terms. 
 We do not see how it can fairly be denied that they were 
 
 * Supreme Heads in Earth ' of the Church within their realms, 
 in whatever sense the title was claimed by Henry VIII. Not 
 to speak of two very important points, which rested with 
 them, whenever they pleased to interpose — the appointment 
 of Bishops and the calling of Synods, — the eastern and the 
 Carlovingian emj^erors interfered, without scruple and without 
 remonstrance, in any ecclesiastical matter which they judged to 
 require either their sanction or their correction. * For the in- 
 
 * crease of virtue in Christ's religion within their realms, and 
 ' to repress and extirpate all errors, heresies, and other enor- 
 ' mities and abuses heretofore used in the same,' they of their 
 own authority decreed the acceptance of the faith, interfered 
 with and confirmed councils, repressed errors, condemned here- 
 sies, ordered the degradation or excommunication of heretics. 
 Henry VIII. claimed ' full power and authority from time to 
 ' time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, 
 ' and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, 
 ' and enormities, whatsoever they may be, which by any manner 
 
 * spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be 
 ' reformed, repressed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained, 
 ' or amended, most to the pleasure of Almighty God, the in- 
 ' crease of virtue in Christ's religion, and for the conservation of 
 ' the peace, unity, and tranquillity of the realm.' The early 
 
 4
 
 Church and State. 43 
 
 emperors, as we have seen, took on them to sanction and give 
 authority to Church canons, not merely in the State, but in 
 the Church ; they watched over the due observance of these 
 canons ; they issued injunctions of their own, having in view 
 the same objects as the canons, but framed by themselves and 
 resting on their authority, to regulate the mode of election of 
 Bishops, their qualifications, duties, liabilities, manner of life ; 
 the forms of ecclesiastical proceedings; the interior economy of 
 the monastic system : they addressed these injunctions to Patri- 
 archs, Metropolitans, and Bishops ; they threatened them with 
 ecclesiastical penalties for negligence or disobedience ; they 
 empowered civil commissioners to visit for the maintenance 
 of ecclesiastical discipline, to restore its decay, ' redress ' its 
 ' abuses/ and ' correct ' its ' enormities.' Surely, between the 
 claim of Henry VIII. and that of sovereigns who professed to 
 judge between what was right and what was wrong in doctrine, 
 and to see that right doctrine was alone taught — whose ordi- 
 nances embraced indifferently both purely ecclesiastical and 
 civil matters, who directed spiritual punishments, who enforced 
 ecclesiastical discipline by civil officers, who asserted the right 
 to stop the ordinary course of ecclesiastical proceedings, for 
 reasons of which they were judges — it is not very easy, in 
 principle, to draw a line. 
 
 The real difference is in the understanding on which such 
 interference was accepted. It was accepted when the sovereign 
 was not only on good terms with the Church, but sympathised 
 heartily with her faith, her system, her discipline, and her ob- 
 jects. Neither party stood on forms of etiquette; they trusted 
 and understood one another. The Clergy knew that their 
 spiritual powers were as fully believed in and recognised by the 
 King as by themselves ; they had no need to seek even the 
 disclaimers asked for and given in more suspicious days ; and 
 at a time when, if ever, they were alive to the greatness, incom- 
 municable by human power, of their function, they freely 
 admitted the association of that power with their own, even in 
 their own peculiar province. 
 
 Things had altered greatly at the time of the Eeformation, 
 But, as has been often said, the idea of a Christian and respon- 
 sible king, embarked in the cause of the Church, and identified 
 with her interests, still existed even under Henry YIII. — to
 
 44 Cliurch and State. 
 
 revive with greater force at subsequent periods. And further^ 
 it is plain tiiat the idea of the essential distinctness of the 
 spirituality, drawing its peculiar power from more than earthly- 
 sources, was still a clear and strong one ; and as plain, that the 
 spirituality was a real and acknowledged complement and co- 
 efficient of the Crown in the governmcDt of the Church. 
 Whether synods were in theory said to be dependent on the 
 Crown, as a matter of fact they sate; whether articles and 
 formularies required the consent of the Crown, the Clergy 
 made them. The proof of this depends, not on the formal 
 disclaimers of spiritual functions contained in injunctions and 
 articles, but in the records of the time, and the books it has left 
 behind it.^ But what is the case now ? 
 
 We have not disguised or understated the strength of the 
 case for the Supremacy. We have not, as we are aware, even 
 stated its full strength. We have left out, for instance, the 
 whole history of the French Church, from the time of the great 
 Western schism to Napoleon: a history whose characteristic 
 features the modern French Church, so differently situated, 
 seems disposed partly to lament, partly to extenuate, on special 
 grounds and fine distinctions ; but which exhibits, as a fact, 
 a practical and energetic supremacy on the part of the Crown, 
 resisted by the Pope as irreconcilable with Catholic truth 
 and law, yet accepted and defended in principle, and sub- 
 mitted to in practice, by the great body of the French Church, 
 when it was the most illustrious branch of Christendom. We 
 do not disguise, we say, the amount of precedent which may 
 be alleged for the Supremacy, whatever be the true way of 
 dealing with precedents, as bearing on right in ecclesiastical 
 polity. On the contrary, we wish it to be distinctly ascertained 
 
 1 The distiuction of the 37th Article was used iu the discussions in France, 
 during the great schism, on the king's right to withdraw his kingdom from the 
 Pope's obedience while the schism lasted. In the council held at Paris, in 1406, 
 Pierre Plaoul, speaking in the name of the University of Paris, says : ' Je ne dis 
 pas que la puissance temporelle administre les sacremens, ni qu'elle s'entremette 
 de conferer les ordres. Mais quand elle voit tel schisme, de quoy il luy con- 
 viendra une fois rendre compte, pourquoy ne se conseilleroit-elle pour savoir quel 
 remede est convenahle ? C'est tres grand .merite et vertu au prince temporel, 
 quand 11 fait ce que doit faire le prince espirituel ; et fait tres grand plaisir a la 
 puissance espirituelle, pose qu'il deplaise a celuy qui preside en telle puissance, ' — 
 Crevier, Hist, de VVniv. de Pay-is, iii. 350.
 
 Church and State. 45 
 
 and understood how the facts stand, that time and other precious 
 things may not be thrown away in maintaining untenable 
 ground. But we say this, — that the facts which prove the 
 Supremacy, prove also, and with exactly the same force, that it 
 existed on an understanding ; and that understanding was one 
 which not only recognised the independent existence of the 
 Church, of her powers and laws, but recognised them as the 
 rule, and as the first and highest care, of civil government. 
 
 But now this understanding no longer exists. The conditions 
 on which the Church accepted and, it may be, courted the 
 Supremacy are evidently changed. We are not speaking of 
 rights of control generally, which the nation and its Parlia- 
 ment may claim over the Church, as over other bodies, as the 
 correlative to advantages conceded. We are speaking of the 
 ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown. 
 
 Legally, the position of the Crown in the civil government is 
 not much changed from the days of Edward the Confessor; 
 politically and constitutionally, it is altogether changed. As 
 a power, it is a ministry or a government, constitutionally limited 
 by and dependent on Parliament ; as a person, the Crown stands 
 at the head of a nation, like all other free nations broken up into 
 recognised and tolerated parties — and is bound to neutrality. 
 Such is the position of the Crown in temporal matters, though 
 acts of Parliament, as well as articles of religion, attribute to it 
 the supreme government of its imperial realm in temporal 
 matters as well as in spiritual, and in terms as absolute and un- 
 restricted in one province as in the other. But in temporal 
 matters this position, fixed by many conflicts and compromises, 
 and ascertained by usage, is unambiguous and understood by all 
 — the Crown is still a powder, but it acts only concurrently with 
 other powers, who are interested in the same great objects with 
 itself, — whose rights to influence government have been proved 
 and established, and whose sense is clearly and constitutionally 
 ascertainable. But as to ecclesiastical matters, the minds even 
 of keen statesmen are, or seem to be, under a singular confusion. 
 They cling, with inconsistent tenacity, to a notion of eccle- 
 siastical supremacy entirely different from that which they 
 entertain of temporal; and are taken aback at the idea of 
 limitations on the one, which they have all their lives assumed 
 as flrst principles in the case of the other.
 
 46 Church and State. 
 
 It is natural that the nation should have outstripped the 
 Church — that the Crown should still, at this day, be holding 
 towards the Church the same sort of position which it held 
 towards the nation under James I. — acting concurrently with 
 free legislation in one case, without it in the other. But though 
 natural that this should have happened, it is not reasonable that 
 it should continue ; not more reasonable in one case than in the 
 other, on grounds common to both cases ; still more unreasonable 
 under the special circumstances of the Church. 
 
 Whether the Crown be regarded personally or constitutionally, 
 the grievance of the Church, arising out of the anomalies of the 
 present received view of the royal prerogative, is the same. 
 Personally, the Crown is the defender of the faith and protector 
 of the Church; personally it is supposed to be, as it was in 
 other times, in intimate relation and in full sympathy with the 
 Church ; but things are altered from the original understanding, 
 if, what the Church asks, the Crown cannot grant, except its 
 ministers advise it. But if the Supremacy is no longer to be 
 viewed in this personal light, then there is no reason why it 
 should not be subject to the same constitutional system which it 
 acknowledges in civil government. The Church is, of itself, a 
 substantive and organized body, and has hitherto been always 
 supposed to be so — supposed not only in the theories of divines, 
 but by the law of England. But if, when a question of doctrine 
 deeply interesting to the Church is decided in such a way as to 
 change her position as to that doctrine, she have no oppor- 
 tunity—the opportunity be denied her — of expressing her sense 
 on this change in her position, this is not acknowledging her 
 substantive existence and laws ; it is a valid and just proceeding 
 only on the assumption that she has been transformed, or has 
 melted away, from a Church, which she once was, into a phase, 
 a peculiar aspect or side, of the nation of England, for which the 
 Parliament and Courts of England are the only rightful autho- 
 rities, as they fully and fairly represent its mind, in the making 
 and execution of laws. And those, to whom such an assump- 
 tion comes as a contradiction of those principles on which they 
 have hitherto held the Christian faith, have but one course left 
 them. They must get it overthrown. They must not rest till 
 an assumption so insidious and so fatal be negatived in fact, as 
 it is contradicted by all previous theory, by all existing law, and
 
 Church and State. 47 
 
 by the doctrine of the Supremacy itself; negatived by the un- 
 equivocal and unambiguous exhibition of her distinct functions 
 by the Church herself. 
 
 To invoke the doctrine of the Supremacy, as a reason for 
 letting things remain as they are, is as irrelevant in argument 
 as it is insulting to the Church in policy. The Supremacy in its 
 palmiest days implied joint powers ; the effect of it, as urged 
 now, is to extinguish one of these powers altogether. The 
 Supremacy was, and is still, in its formal terms, granted to the 
 Crown ; not to whomsoever the Crown might transfer its 
 responsibility and assign its authority. The understanding 
 never was that the ecclesiastical power should be transferred to 
 a body of men, neither representing the Church nor identified 
 witli her in feeling, in purpose, in belief, into whose hands, by 
 the effect of political changes, had passed in reality the old 
 civil and temporal functions of the Crown. No mass of pre- 
 cedents for the Supremacy touches this point ; much more do 
 they cease to be of force, as soon as it is understood that, by 
 transferring the ecclesiastical authority of the Crown to the 
 Parliament, the Ministers, and the Civil Courts, she thereby 
 surrenders for good all claim and right to a separate and distinct 
 authority of her own. She never did this to ' godly emperors,' 
 and certainly cannot be expected to do it to a liberal Parliament. 
 
 There is no ground in reason to be alleged against the distinct 
 action of the Church by her Bishops and Synods, except the 
 most general conservative ones — very respectable ones, yet not 
 conclusive. Yet, it cannot be dissembled that in practice 
 they are likely to be far from inoperative ; especially when that 
 which is sought to be maintained intact, has a remote and 
 possible importance beyond itself. Among the strange spec- 
 tacles which may be reserved for us in time to come, is that, 
 possibly, of a liberal Minister, maintaining with a grave face in 
 a modern House of Commons the doctrines of Thomas Crom- 
 well and Lord Burleigh on the rights of the Crown, and recom- 
 mending to the consciences of the Clergy an interpretation of 
 the Oath of Supremacy even more rigid than that of Queen 
 Elizabeth ; and then interpreting an absolute submission to the 
 Crown to mean, a recognition of the sole and supreme authority 
 of Parliament in the legislation of the Church, and of himself, 
 the minister, in its administration. But the opposition of a
 
 48 Church and State. 
 
 Cabinet is a difficulty which men in these clays have ceased to 
 regard as insuperable, though for the moment formidable. 
 Eeason reaches even ministers in time ; and they, too, as well as 
 others, maintain at their peril, even though with temporary 
 success, a hollow theory or a masked falsehood. There are more 
 important points to occupy the attention of Churchmen than the 
 repugnance of ministers to disturb a status quo, — matters which, 
 whatever be their moral, must not be overlooked by those Vv^ho 
 may be called upon to think and act in behalf of the English 
 Church in times of difficulty and change. A clear understanding 
 of our whole position is as necessary as a keen and true sense of 
 the grievance of which we complain. 
 
 The battle which we seem called upon to fight is not confined 
 to one time or one branch of the Church. We misjudge it 
 when we isolate it. We are tempted to exaggerate, — not its 
 importance to ourselves, — but its singularity and its conclu- 
 siveness. Important as it is to us, it is but a repetition of what 
 has happened to our fathers. Every age thinks that questions 
 raised in former times are at last to be settled for good in its 
 own ; that doubts are to be cleared up, limits fixed, the great 
 crisis to be decided once for all, so that posterity shall be able 
 to see its way and choose its side. And every age has hitherto 
 proved to be mistaken. A contest is but a step in a deeper, 
 wider, more enduring strife ; its settlement one way or the 
 other ends nothing necessarily but the particular dispute. It 
 neither establishes securely, nor finally overthrows, the prin- 
 ciples which seemed to be at stake in it. They may survive it : 
 whether they do or not, whether the war may still be hopefully 
 carried on, is seen in history to have depended very little indeed 
 on the issue of solemn arbitrements and apparently conclusive 
 terminations. In our own case we say that the struggle between 
 the political and ecclesiastical powers has been going on since 
 the Eeformation, and seems now at last likely to be decided. 
 Let us take a wider view. Let us consider whether it has not 
 been going on since the Conquest, since the conversion of Eng- 
 land, since the conversion of the empire. Let us think whether 
 it is not sure to go on, whatever may happen now, for ages to 
 come ; as long as Christian belief and Christian principles work 
 in men's minds. Doubtless we may, by our cowardice, our 
 concessions, or our rashness, indefinitely prejudice the cause of
 
 Church and State. 'i^ 
 
 those who come alter us. But it may give steadiuess and calm- 
 ness to our minds to recollect, that matters, probably, will not 
 end with our settlements ; and that if we act in faith and earn- 
 estness, even our mistakes may not be more fatal than our 
 fathers' have been to us. 
 
 Again, seeing the struggle from so near, we come insensibly 
 to look on it as a peculiarly English struggle ; that the graduaL 
 loss of Church power, and narrowing of Church influence, is 
 a pecuhar note against the English Cliurch. It may not be 
 consolatory, but it is at least wise and fair, to see how matters 
 stand with the Church in general. Is this circumscription 
 of sphere, and loss of rights, and surrender of principles 
 confined to England, or confined to the English Church since 
 the Reformation ? What was the prominence and extent of 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction in France, Italy, or Germany, in the 
 5th, the 10th, the 15th centuries, compared with what it is now ? 
 What has become, in countries of the Roman obedience, of the 
 Church claim to draw to its own tribunals matters where 
 religious duty and conscience were involved — marriage, oaths, 
 wills, the care of the poor, of widows and orphans, the crimes 
 of ecclesiastical persons ? What has become of those exemp- 
 tions claimed once, not as privilege, but as rights given by 
 the Christian law, guarded so jealously, protected by excommu- 
 nication ? Where are all those causes decided now, which gave 
 occasion to that vast and imposing mass of canonical law, once 
 the living rule of Christendom, which attracted to its study, not 
 less the ambition than the subtlety and learning of many 
 centuries ? What were the penances which the Church appointed 
 and enforced in the 3rd century — what were they in the Frank 
 and Anglo-Saxon penitential canons — and what are the penances 
 which the Roman Church now thinks her people able to bear ? 
 AVhat is now, we do not say the spiritual effect of excommuni- 
 cation, or the increased discretion in using so awful an instru- 
 ment, but the practical feeling of society about it, which gave it 
 its force as a weapon of the Church in former ages ? How was 
 a pope's interdict felt under King John, in England ? How was 
 it received in Catholic and devout Venice in the 17th century, 
 where after a total disregard of it for a whole year, by the whole 
 body of the clergy, except three of the orders, the Pope was 
 obliged to content himself with a diplomatic compromise ; and 
 
 E
 
 50 Church and State. 
 
 his legate's tact was tried in imposing on the rekictant Venetians, 
 not a penanee, but an absolution, so private and so informal, 
 that they continued to deny that they had either wanted or 
 received it ? What was the feeling of the Church about lier 
 property in earlier times, and what were her real powers of 
 guarding it ; powers of course dependent on the extent to which 
 her I'eeHng was shared by society at large ? And what have been 
 in later times — in Austria, in Tuscany, in Naples, in France, in 
 Spain — we do not say the encroachments of greedy nobles, but 
 the sweeping confiscations of Catholic kings or Catholic govern- 
 ments — and how has the Church judged it expedient to meet it ? 
 Has she spoken of excommunication ? or, if she has spoken of 
 it, has it not been in a whisper ; very unlike, either for dignity 
 or effect, to her awful voice of old ? The theory of the deposing 
 power is written in the pages of Bellarmine, and Bellarmine is 
 still one of the greatest doctors of the Roman See ;— is the case 
 conceivable, in which that power would now be used, to vindi- 
 cate a right, even to avenge an outrage ? Wlio would have 
 deemed it credible or probable beforehand, that any circum- 
 stances should arise, which should make it a question with a 
 pope, whether or no he should endure such a system as that 
 which imposed the ' Organic Articles ' on a Church of his 
 obedience? and, it may be added, who could have said, that 
 after such a step, by such an authority, it would be possible 
 ever to retrieve it? 
 
 It is not in England only that the Church has withdrawn 
 from ground which she once claimed — that her hold on society 
 
 Ihas been loosened. In fact, the English Church has retained 
 ' far more of her ancient position and power than any other of the 
 I ' Western Churches. And let it not be said that the explanation 
 of this is in her spirit of compromise and their spirit of inde- 
 pendence. It has not been by pressing their spiritual claims, 
 and protesting against the world, that they have been deprived 
 of their temporal power. The charge of compromise comes 
 hard from them. Surely the principle of condescension and 
 compromise has been accepted and acted on by the Roman 
 Churches in the most varied forms; in privileges, in indul- 
 gences, in dispensations, particular and general, in concordats. 
 It does not follow, because their difficulties are different from ours, 
 that they are entitled to the monopoly of rightful compromise.
 
 I 
 
 Church and State. 51 
 
 They have yielded, to avoid breaking with the powers of the 
 world, to secure their concurreuce, to retain the means of 
 power. They have yielded, when they could not avoid it, 
 by making that the formally free act of the spiritual power 
 which in reality it was forced to submit to, or risk a schism 
 or a persecution. Acquiescence, guarded by refined reservations, 
 has been the rule ; resistance the exception. It has been so, 
 because it seemed to thoughtful and well-intentioned men the 
 best way at the moment of preserving the influence of the 
 Church. And yet, notwithstanding Eoman prudence, Roman 
 losses have not been small. 
 
 If then we have to bear up against the discouragement of an 
 apparent diminution, steadily and uniformly progressive, of 
 Church influence, it is not our trial only. And if so, there is 
 no wisdom — even in order to strengthen an argument, or 
 enforce an appeal — in claiming a monopoly of grievance, or 
 the lowest depth of degradation. But perhaps we misinterpret 
 altogether the apparent law of Divine Providence. Perhaps 
 the right way to look at former liberties and powers of the 
 Church is to view them, not as things sacred in themselves, 
 and meant to be held fast for ever, but as having laid a ground 
 for us, without which we should not now be able to do our 
 work in furthering God's kingdom ; and their gradual dis- 
 appearance, not as significant of the weakening of the Church, 
 but as pointing to the line on which henceforth the Church 
 is to be mainly thrown for its influence ; that moral superiority 
 which seems still to have an irresistible hold even on a sceptical 
 and self-relying age, — 'by pureness, by knowledge, by long- 
 ' suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, 
 ' by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour 
 'of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.' In this 
 respect, and in others also, she seems being thrown back on 
 her earlier days. 
 
 To keep in view, practically and vividly, both what is moral 
 and spiritual, and what is political, in that mixed system which 
 upholds and strengthens the Church, is the necessity and the 
 difficulty of those who have to work for her. It is not so easy 
 to adjust these two lines of thought and action ; not so easy for 
 the same mind to follow both, for they naturally attract the
 
 52 Church and State. 
 
 interest and sympathy of different classes of minds. In exclu- 
 sive attention to either there is the danger, on the one hand, of 
 a vague and dreamy hopefulness, or an equally dreamy despair, 
 ruinous to all thought, all effort, all practical truth ; and on the 
 other, of a stiff attachment to special points or measures, and a 
 forgetfulness in the bustle and conflict of ecclesiastical business, 
 and the necessary technicalities of theological debates, of the 
 inscrutable mysteries of nature and grace on which they bear. 
 To be dogmatic and not to be verbal — -to feel that a remedy or 
 a safeguard may in itself be temporary, and yet for the time 
 indispensable — to appreciate in their full extent the evils and 
 the perils of the day, without losing sight of its real good and 
 its grounds of hope— to bear without flinching, and without 
 glossing them over, uncomfortable facts — to be able to endure 
 the humiliation of an unanswerable retort, or tlie still greater 
 humiliation of apparent temporising or conniving at evil — to be 
 earnest for a principle, without being the slave of a watch- 
 word — finally, to be able, without ceasing to be zealous for the 
 work of to-day, to consider it in the light in which in years to 
 come we shall look back on it, — this has been necessary for the 
 defenders of the Church in all former ages, and cannot be less 
 necessary now. 
 
 It would be weakness to disguise from ourselves that we have 
 a serious prospect before us. What is now proposed and looked 
 forward to by Churchmen is a change — a change startling to 
 the minds of most men, an anxious one, probably, to all. To 
 bring it about, the usual obstacles to change must be encoun- 
 tered — political suspicion, political dislike, political indolence, 
 political caution; strong adverse precedents understood in the 
 most adverse sense. Still the claim — that what the English 
 Church Avould have a right to, ivere she hut a sect, she has a 
 right to, as a power in the English State, as the Church, recog- 
 nised by the English nation,— namely, the right to be really 
 represented, as a Church, — is so strong and so reasonable, that 
 I when she makes it in earnest she must be heard. And the 
 I change, though great, is in entire harmony with that principle 
 ' of improvement Avhich has worked so long and widely in 
 England; which does not destroy, but add on; which alters 
 Avith as little visible change and break as possible; which,
 
 Church and State. 53 
 
 leaving Avhat it finds, reinforces what appears too WQak, — a 
 principle of compensation and remedy, not of substitution and 
 obliteration. But, in making the change, technical difficulties, 
 perhaps great ones, must be anticipated ; and difficulties would 
 not be over with the restoration of the English Synod. Then 
 would come the difficulties of government. And what they 
 have been in the active and influential periods of Church history, 
 as in the days of the Councils, the Schisms, or the Eeformation, 
 w^e, accustomed only to paper controversy, know little. 
 
 Doubtless, great difficulties await us, for we have a great 
 duty to perform, and a great stake to win. To expect that a 
 Church, claiming the position, and exercising the power and 
 influence, which the English Church does, is to go quietly 
 through an age of thought, and boldness, and jealous watchful- 
 ness, without having to meet real difficulties at every step, is 
 to expect what is contrary to that course of things in which the 
 Church, though divine, has to take her part — is contradicted 
 by all her history. It is impossible, without shutting our eyes, 
 that we should not feel the seriousness of the prospect : it 
 is impossible that such a prospect should not raise misgiving 
 and anxiety. . / 
 
 But misgiving is not ahvays so ominous as confidence. * It is, 
 ' indeed, a season of trial and uncertainty ; but the most glorious 
 ' days of history have dawned in doubt ; and it is only what 
 ' every conquering host has suffered on the morning of victory, 
 ' if England is now spent with exertion, harassed by perplexity, 
 * and saddened with the recollection of many reverses ' — so 
 speaks a politician, looking forward, after a discouraging past, 
 to a future no less replete with fear than with promise, — 
 full of perilous risk, and of the chances of failure,— a new era 
 of colonizar^'on. It would indeed be a painful contrast if 
 Churchmen should meet their seasons of anxiety with less high 
 and firm a heart, with less steadiness and faith ; and that, with 
 such a history as the Church has had. We are sure that we 
 express the feelings of many minds, when we say, that of all the 
 wonders of history, the history of the Church is the strangest. 
 How it has lasted — how, ever seeming to fail, it has never failed 
 — how strangely it has seemed to change, yet has remained in 
 s])irit and substance the same — how, not through ages like those
 
 54 Church and State. 
 
 of E^^pt or China, but exposed to the most changeful cen- 
 turies of history, it has still kept its own faith, — kept it, out of 
 all analogy with that principle of change which seems a law 
 of European society, and with those human changes which the 
 Church underwent itself, — how, we say, this faith, which to 
 human eye seems but opinion or prejudice, has resisted that 
 fluctuation which no opinion or prejudice has been exempt from, 
 and how, again, it has survived trials enough to destroy the 
 firmest belief which was hut opinion, trials brought upon it by 
 the evil elements which had gathered round it, and provoked 
 a retribution which threatened more than themselves, — with 
 what strange security both the Church and its doctrine have 
 taken up without hurt, principles apparently destructive, — 
 this may make a philosopher marvel, and a Christian believe 
 and give thanks. And what is true of the Church Universal, 
 is not less true of the last three centuries of the English 
 CI lurch. 
 
 But, in spite of all this, there is one contingency wdiich, in 
 the present state of the world, comes unbidden into our 
 thoughts. It may be the fate of the Church throughout the 
 world to sink again, as regards the State, into the condition 
 of a sect, as she began, — to sink from being the associate — 
 honoured, or disliked, or reluctantly acknowledged — of Govern- 
 ments, — to be ignored by them as a mere school of thought, or 
 watched as a secret society, or legalized as a harmless or even a 
 useful association. Something like it has happened abroad ; 
 and it may follow liere. But do not let us use words lightly 
 about it. If it comes we may turn it to account, as it has been 
 turned to account abroad. But, before it came, the Church 
 abroad shrank from no sacrifice, which she could consider 
 lawful, to avert it ; she well knew what she would lose by it, 
 wliatever might be its compensations. And surely the Church 
 here would be inexcusable if she courted it or needlessly let it 
 come to pass. This great nation of Englishmen is committed 
 to her trust; if she cannot induence them, what other body has 
 a more reasonable hope ? If they will break away from her, or 
 cast her off, let it be clearly their fault, not hers, or that of her 
 clergy. She and her clergy have much to answer for ; but the 
 heaviest of their former sins will be in comparison light, if from
 
 Church aiid State. 55 
 
 iinpatieuce, from want of due consideration of the signs and 
 changes of the time, from scruples, from theory, from fear of 
 being taunted with inconsistency, or want of logic, or love of 
 quiet, or insensibility to high views, or indifference to the 
 maxims of saints — or any other of those faults of feeling or 
 intellect, which are common at once to the noble and the 
 feeble, the sensitive and the timid — she, or they, throw up 
 that trust. 
 
 r 
 
 LONDjN : R. CLAY, SOMS, AND TAYLOR, BKKAJU STREKT HILL.
 
 
 
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