ART. I.-SUCCESSION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND EXAMINED. BY REV. CHARLES ELLIOTT. Continued from page 152. AT the present time, when foreign bishops are to be ordained, a license must be obtained from the king before either of the archbishops can proceed to ordain; as was the case in 1787, when bishops were ordained for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. In this case, too, both the parliament and the king have made the most sacrilegious infringement on the ministerial office that ever occurred in the annals of Christianity. I mean in limiting our Lord's commission so that no person thus ordained, or their successors for ever, shall be permitted to exercise their ministerial office in any part of the British dominions. Thus they sacrilegiously invaded our Lord's commission; and the American bishops and clergy servilely submitted to receive a null ordination, and act under the disability of this disfranchisement until this day. This alone is proof positive that the king is the principal ordainer; and it also shows how unsound at bottom the fabled succession is, when so many ecclesiastical irregularities are interwoven in its very nature, and in its consequence limits our Saviour's commission, and nullifies the ministerial office. (6.) The king has the power of suspending or depriving bishops. This power appears to have been exercised previous to the Reformation; for William the Conqueror displaced Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, upon some frivolous pretences. But since the Reformation, the Protestant monarchs have frequently degraded bishops. Queen Elizabeth actually deprived fifteen Popish bishops on her accession to the throne, because they would not take the oath of supremacy. Charles II. suspended Archbishop Abbot for refusing to license a sermon, and the bishop of Gloucester for refusing to swear he would never consent to an alteration in the church. James II. suspended seven bishops; he also suspended the bishop of London because he refused to suspend Dr. Sharp. And at the time of the revolution, William III. deprived several bishops who refused to take the oath of allegiance, and from that were called non-jurors, and became the founders of a new sect, through which Mr. Seabury, the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, received epis. VOL. VIII.-July, 1837. 21 copal ordination. And hence the line of succession to the American church was through the non-jurors, who were excommunicates from the English church. Now it is generally acknowledged that it requires the same or equal power to deprive of office that it does to confer it. Therefore as the British kings deprive bishops, they are also principals in conferring that order. (See Dyer on Subscription, p. 174.) (7.) The king, when a vacancy occurs, has the right to the temporalities of the vacant see. This is another evidence of the part which the king has in ordaining bishops. At least it considers the king as the founder of the see. Our limits, however, do not allow us to enlarge. We refer those who desire to see the nature and extent of the ecclesiastical revenues of the king, and his right to them, lucidly discussed, to Blackstone. (Com., b. i, c. viii, p. 282-286.) (8.) The king has uncontrollable power over the convocation. No convocation or ecclesiastical synod can assemble but by a writ or precept from the king; when assembled they can do no business without the king's letters patent, appointing the particular subjects on which they are to debate, (Statute 25 Henry VIII., and Stat. Premunire;) and, after all, their canons are of no force without the royal sanction. Blackstone says, "In virtue of this authority, the king convenes, prorogues, restrains, regulates, and dissolves all ecclesiastical synods or convocations. This was an inherent right of the crown long before the time of Henry VIII." (Com., b. i, c. vii, p. 279.) How far this part of the prerogative is scriptural it is not necessary now to inquire. The English convocation has not been permitted by the king to do business for upwards of one hundred years. (9.) An appeal lies to the king as the dernier resort in all ecclesiastical causes. As head of the church, an appeal lies ultimately to him in chancery from the sentence of every ecclesiastical judge. And from the court of arches, belonging to the archbishop of Canterbury, which is itself a court of appeal, an appeal lies to the king in chancery (that is, to a court of delegates appointed under the king's great seal) by statute 25 Henry VIII. c. xix, as supreme head of the English Church, instead of the bishop of Rome, who formerly exercised this jurisdiction. The delegates are appointed by the king's commission, under his great seal, and issuing out of chancery, to represent his royal person, and to hear all appeals to him made by virtue of statutes enacted under Henry VIII. This commission is frequently filled with lords spiritual and temporal, and always with judges of the court of Westminster, and doctors of the civil law. (Blackstone, b. i, c. vii, p. 281, and b. iii, c. v, p. 65, 66.) In short, the power possessed by the pope in appeals was transferred to the king, who, according to Blackstone and others, was the original possessor. Thus all ecclesiastical jurisdiction is vested in the king and taken away from the bishops, except by delegation from him. Now in all bodies, civil and ecclesiastical, that power to which there is the final appeal, is acknowledged to be the highest in office. Consequently, the king, in ecclesiastical matters, is superior in office and power to all the clergy and people in England. (10.) We are told, however, That the coronation oath secures to the church her spiritual and appropriate privileges. That this is a considerable guard we are ready to acknowledge. But that it is an adequate or strictly scriptural one we cannot admit; nor can the wisdom of the wisest show that the oath itself, with all it secures, furnishes a proper, scriptural, or primitive restriction against corruption or irreligion. The following is the part of the oath which refers to the church. "Abp. or Bp. Will you, to your power, maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by the law; and will you preserve to the bishops and the clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall pertain unto them or any of them ?-K. or Q. All this I promise to do." It is also required, both by the bill of rights and the act of settlement, that every king and queen of the age of twelve years, either at their coronation, or the first day of the first parliament, shall repeat and subscribe the declaration against popery. (Jacobs on the word King, Blackstone, b. i, c. vii.) The coronation oath certainly gives some security; but still the king, as supreme head of the church, may interfere with the concerns of the church, so as to form and control her almost at pleasure. The power of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs is enormous, and the character of the church, in her very constitution, is formed according to the principles above mentioned. In several things the Church of England has been changed since the days of Henry VIII. and his immediate successors; and, according to present prospects, more serious changes yet await her. (11.) But it is usually answered, That the kings of England, by their supremacy, neither exercise nor claim any more power than was exercised and claimed by the Jewish kings under the law, and by Christian emperors and kings in the early ages of Christianity. As it regards the Jews, their government was a theocracy. God himself was their king, and the laws of their nation were strictly and pro'perly the laws of God, who was Lord over the conscience, and may annex what sanction he pleases. Their judges and kings were chosen by God himself, not to make a new code of laws, either for church or state, but to enforce the laws already made by the hand of Moses. Besides, the introduction of kings does not appear to have been contemplated in the original and more perfect state of the Jewish commonwealth. God gave them a king in his wrath. Because of their stubbornness, and of their rejection of him as their king, he gave them kings to scourge them. But there is no part of the Jewish constitu tion, I mean the Pentateuch, that recognises regal authority; and when kings were introduced, there does not appear to be any special authority given them respecting religion in their kingly character, whatever they might have as prophets or good men. Moreover, their kings were among the first to lead them to rebellion against God. Solomon's example was far from being salutary to the nation. conduct of Jeroboam, who, in his ecclesiastical character, caused Israel to sin, became a proverb of reproach, and was held up afterward to the whole nation, during successive reigns, as most detestable in the sight of God. The royal powers seem to have been introduced as a degenerate and exotic plant into the Jewish constitution, and infested them ever after while they existed as a people. The |