1808. were those wiser men, and what were their opinions, which are at present the basis of the present church establishment, and of which that claim to supremacy forms no part? The supremacy of Geo. III. over the church of England, is precisely the same as that, which was vested by Parliament in Henry VIIIth. and it is actually vestedl in his present Majesty, by virtue of the acts passed under Henry the VIIIth. It becomes then peculiarly harsh to punish Catholics for not admitting that spiritual supremacy in the King, which the Protestants themselves do not admit. Now if these acts mean no more, than to import, that the King is the head of the civil establishment of the religion of the state, that proposition, it is confidently assumed, no Catholic would refuse to admit, and Lord Grenville brings the matter fairly to that question. The objection of foreign supremacy, must mean temporal supremacy, or else it is not fairly applied. To secure the temporal supremacy point, which raised the obstacle to his passion for Anne Bulleyn: that in 1539, after he had directed his Parliament to invest him with the spoils and revenues of all the abbeys, monasteries, religious houses and communities throughout the kingdom, he forced them also to pass the famous act, then called The Whip with Six Strings, by which they ordered the belief of transubstantiation communion under one kind, private mass, auricular confession, the celibacy of priests, and voluntary vows of perpetual chastity, to be maintained under pain of death: and at last, in 1543, every innovation made in religion from the year 1540, every doctrine preached and maintained contrary to the King's instructions, speaking irreverently of the sacrament of the altar, and even reading the bible in the vulgar tongue, were made crimes punishable with death. of the government for all temporal purposes, is all that can be desired, and this I conceive, might be effected without interfering with any speculative belief of the Catholics with respect to any spiritual supremacy of the Pope. His Lordship could not on that or on any other occasion be supposed to have forgotten, that the body of Irish Catholics had generally in compliance with the acts of miti gation declared on their oaths, that they did not believe, that the Pope of Rome, or any other foreign Prince, prelate, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-eminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm; and had solemnly in the presence of God, and of his only son Jesus Christ their redeemer, professed, testified, and declared, that they made that declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words of that oath, without any evasion, &c. What further security can be taken of human beings, for keeping up the temporal supremacy of the government. His Lordship's candor on this occasion has however brought him to the important avowal, that though the Catholics differ from the Protestants by their submission to the spiritual power of the Pope, yet it would be absurd to suppose, that they could not be equally good subjects and eqnally disposed to defend their country with their Protestaut fellow-subjects. The present oath of supremacy appears to have been framed with a captious desire to exclude Catholics. An oath might, I conceive, be framed 1808. 1808. freed from that captiousness, acknowledging the temporal supremacy. The true intendment of supre macy. Why should Lord Grenville or any other man of the oath wish or expect, that the Roman Catholic subjects of his Majesty should now retract, renounce, declare or accede to any thing contrary to their former belief or conduct, that affects the question of Supremacy, whilst to the disgrace of a christian legislature, a captious oath is kept on foot to ensnare, proscribe and punish millions of his Majesty's liege subjects? What then can be meant by his Lordship's CHECKS AND SUITABLE ARRANGEMENTS? The effects of this captious oath have been long scen, sorely felt and publicly deplored. The Author in 1796 (in his Church and State) thus spoke upon the subject, and is gratified, that his opinions have been so strongly confirmed by such high authority. When the present oath of supremacy is brought under the unbiassed and stern judgment of an upright conscience standing at the awful tribunal of the Deity, I feel not too bold in defying the most liberal, ingenious and elaborate interpreter of it, to pronounce, that by the obvious, plain and necessary import of the words, the juror does not deny the possibility of any spiritual authority or power of the Keys, (to which British Christians owe submission) existing either in the Pops, Councils, or elsewhere out of the civil jurisdiction of the Parliament of Great Britain. I will admit, that a Protestant may lawfully take such an oath, who prefesses to deny the primacy of St. Peter; but not a Roman Catholic, who professes to believe and hold i it as a necessary term of communion with the Ca- 1808. 1808. diction, and no one shall act in that dignity without the approbation of the Crown. The weakest of drivellers must perceive, that a Royal Negative is an actual influence of the Crown in the nomination of Catholic Bishops. between the Difference The allowance to exercise episcopal jurisdiction spiritual (which is a merely spiritual function, and therefore ral power. of itself incapable of producing a civil effect) is and tempo here introduced by Lord Grenville, as proceeding from the Civil Magistrate, who assumes the prohibitory right of prevention against any one's acting in that dignity, without the approbation of the Crown. The civil magistrate is here introduced actually interfering with the spiritual power, and exercising a paramount authority over it. A right of approbation and restriction from acting, until approbation be given, argues a supereminent authority over the agent. Each of these powers is supreme and independent: they cannot therefore clash or interfere with each other: their several objects are essentially different. Bishop Warburton has truly said of the Civil Magistrate: Whatever refers to the body is his jurisdiction: whatever to the soul is not.* The King's interference with the spiritual power of the Pope,† in conferring mission or grant * Vide hoc fusius. Church and State, 345. + Lord Grenville has with truth and candour after a lapse of two centuries, very appropriately repeated the substance of what the Protestant Primate Bramhall said within less than a century of the reforming statutes, which extinguished the papal authority over the Church of England, and new modelled the form of her Church Government, which exists to this day. Neither " |