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ter, and made way for the peremptory decisions of synods, and the self-authorised decretals or rescripts of the popes. The Conquest introduced their authority into England, and that authority was extended partly by the weakness of our kings, and partly by the artifices of the See of Rome, until the originally independent English Church was completely subject to the pope, the legantine authority firmly established, the regular orders of the clergy released entirely from temporal jurisdiction, and our own early ecclesiastical customs, and national and provincial canons and constitutions, were exchanged for decretals and bulls. And this was the exchange which the laws that were passed at the time of the Reformation specially annulled: all authority of foreign' canon law as such being formally disclaimed, and those parts of it only which the nation had by its own consent and sufferance allowed to grow up into usage and common law being admitted to be valid.'

The proper barriers against the usurpations which were thus at last overthrown, should have been the common and statute law of the realm, and the prerogative of the Crown. The first was rendered ineffectual from the following circumstances the early adoption of parts of the imperial code as the common law of the land: the contemporaneous establishment, or growth of the courts of common law, and of the papal authority in this kingdom; the influence of a clergy, now more and more devoted to Rome, in the courts over which they occasionally presided, and in which, for a time, they were the chief, if not the only advocates; and lastly, the indistinct. ness of the limits between temporal and spiritual jurisdiction; especially as defined by the civil law, and introduced into our country by the Conqueror. All these causes com bined to facilitate the usurpations

of the spiritual over the tempora courts; and a recollection of those usurpations has frequently, though not recently, induced the latter to retaliate, by infringing upon the undoubted province of ecclesiastical law. The jealousy has now happily subsided; and an acquaintance with the true bounds of each jurisdiction, and a determination to adhere to them steadily, will be the best preservative against future errors.

The statute law, did, on the whole, offer a decided resistance to the encroachments of Rome; and although, at times, the legislature was less prudent and guarded than it ought to have been, it still might have secured the independence of the country, had it not been thwarted and rendered nugatory by the interference of the Crown.

The prerogative of the Crown being the very first thing that was attacked, we should have expected it to offer an uncompromising resistance. But so far was this from being the case, that the Sovereign often expressly invited foreign interference; and to serve some temporary purpose, or to strengthen some illegal pretension, had recourse to an ally who could render effectual assistance. The common and statute laws against the popish usurpations were to be executed, if executed at all, by the king: and were rendered merely a dead letter, when he neglected to enforce them. Even when he resisted, as our kings often did, it was more from pique than principle, and the ground that was recovered in one reign by a vigorous effort, was lost in the next by the continued vigilance and cunning of the Popes. And even when the sovereign stretched his prerogative to the highest pitch, and relying upon the despotic principles of the civil law, dispensed with the customs or enactments of his own country, these arbitrary proceedings were so far from in clining the balance against Rome,

that they were actually adopted in numerous instances to prevent the execution of the very laws which were intended to secure the proper prerogative of the crown. And lastly, it was this dispensing power, claimed in secular affairs, before the Reformation, and after the Re. formation claimed (as a part of the supremacy) in spirituals also, which being maintained in succeeding times, when the maxims of the age would no longer admit of it, that involved the general rights of the crown, the church, and the nation in one common ruin. This was well understood at the æra of the Revolation, and additional securities were then taken both for fixing the proper boundaries to the prerogative, and for securing an unequivocal recognition of it.

If this brief abstract of the Archdeacon's argument is in any degree worthy of the original from which it is compiled, the reader cannot fail to agree with us in thanking the learned writer for his admirable history of our ecclesiastical law. His references aud illustrations which we forbear to cite, are numerous and satisfactory, but the practical application of his reasoning is too important to be omitted.

"The clue which has enabled us to appreciate the several authorities that establish our Laws Ecclesiastical,' and to distinguish their true and unbiassed state from an unnatural and forced one, will connect these various systems of law with each other when thus cleared of what does not really belong to them. In essentials, they will be found no longer contrariant or repugnant.' To the civil and the canon law in our now qualified understanding and application of the terms, the correctives of the common and the statute law may amicably be applied; these will be seen not merely to recognise but to protect and secure the proper ecclesiastical jurisdiction, both directly and by the very limitations they affix to it. In a word, our National Church, resting on the Laws Ecclesiastical' in this the full and accurate view of the materials which compose them, will be contemplated in her proper station

and character, and we shall distinctly acknowledge that to our princes she attributes that supremacy over all estates and degrees, and to our princes and parliaments united the supreme legislative controul, both which the Christian emperors concentrated in their own persons; whilst she claims for herself that power of order in spiritual matters and those actual ministrations which, though bounded in some respects in the case of an established religion by civil authority, are nevertheless of a different and higher origin. The primitive discipline of the Universal Church and of our own early National Church Establishments, which the intervention of papal usurpations is apt to hide from our sight, will thus connect itself with what was done at the Reformation, and subsequently for the restoring of it; with the Canons of 1603 and with the Rubric; on these Canons and this Rubric that discipline altogether will throw considerable light; while such portions of it as have grown up into custom, will bestow authority in cases where the Rubric is silent, and the Canons of 1603 are not binding. Thus (for we now may venture to encounter objections which less extensive or less definite views

of this complex subject shall have given rise to), when it is said that the Canons of 1603 do not bind the laity, the proposition is true, but wholly inapplicable to cases of discipline introduced perhaps into those Canons, but resting for their authority on immemorial and valid custom. These cases

derive not any additional sanction from the statutes of Henry 8th, where the operation and effects of usage and custom are indeed expressly shewn, but where no confirmation of their previous obligation is given, as in fact none was needed. In such instances, both laity and clergy are indiscriminately bound, and would have been so, although the Canons of 1603 had never existed. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction has there the authority of the common law, of which that jurisdiction is itself a part. Accordingly the ecclesiastical juris- ‹ diction will be found to bear directly and without any interruption from the temporal courts upon lay impropriators, and upon laymen composing the body of parishioners, in regard of their respective obligations to the repairs of the chancel and of the church. On the lay rector is expressly entailed, by the reason of the thing, by the very nature and constitution of an appropriation, the duty of the chancel repairs; the change of an ecclesiastical appropriation, for such all appropriations originally were, into a lay fee, creates no difference

in the law or in the jurisdiction on the subject, otherwise than that for the obvious reason of its interfering with a civil right, the profits of the lay-fee cannot be sequestered by the ecclesiastical court, as may those of the spiritual rector. In al other respects ecclesiastical censures for non-repairs may be followed up into their consequences as fully in the case of lay as of spiritual rectories. And in regard to the obligation of parishioners to repair the body of the church, the custom on which it is founded, though succeeding to one that allotted the duty otherwise, may be traced back much further than a custom to be legal need be traced, namely, to the Laws of Canute, where it is spoken of as already subsisting." P. 39.

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"But what shall be said of that still more ancient and far more important point of Church discipline which attaches to the laity also, and is noticed in the present set of Articles, the discipline in regard to moral offences? 'Primitive,' assuredly it is at all events, and godly' it must ever be when administered on right principles and in fit circumstances; whence then is it so generally neglected? Now, not to speak of other causes which are beside the present purpose, it is certain that no friend to truth, or to the liberty of the subject, can lament that legislative interposition which put an end to the oath ex-officio and purgation in criminal suits, as all cases pro salute animæ necessarily are, can lament that those who present, should, if their presentments are to be listened to, be put to legal proof of offences which are supposed on the face of them to have given scandal by their publicity. Next, the transfer of the official duty of presentment from the parishioners generally, or from a certain number of them, as was the ancient practice, to the churchwardens, has materially altered the circumstances under which presentments for moral offences now are made; and it is a fact that of the causes of this description which come under the cognisance of the ecclesiastical courts, the greater number are prompted by motives to which no court would know. ingly lend itself; and to which the interests of religion and morality do not require that it should. Further, since it appears from the Commination Service, which dates with the earliest part of our Liturgy, that the want of a proper personal Lent penance was even then experienced and deplored, how much must the necessity and with this the difficulties of establishing it be augmented at this distance of time, were it only from the cir

cumstance of our having been so long without it; from increased irreligion and profaneness, and a proportionate unwillingness to submit to the proper spiritual remedy. Whether any effectual system of Christian discipline could, in the present condition of things, be established for immoralities, which temporal laws either do not directly reach, or reach only in the way that commutation of penance anciently did, that is, without reclaiming the offender, or edifying others, we are not here concerned to enquire; while we wonld willingly return to that primitive dis cipline in this respect, which the papal abuses of it interrupted, aud which has never been properly restored, the very nature of the obstacles will suggest what it is the clergy, who, by the 113th canon, not less than the churchwardens, are engaged in such cases to present, may still hope to effect by their presentments. Wherever then there is legal proof, whereever the crime is considerable and recent, wherever the scandal is general throughout the parish, it may be presumed that the parishioners will be ready to support the churchwardens, and the presentment should be made; for then, in the sense, though not in the letter, the ancient practice of the parishioners themselves presenting will be revived; but the putting down in presentment papers, as the churchwardens are now in the habit of doing, the supposed offences of their neighbours, of which, if real, neither they nor the parishioners have due proof, and which they are not prepared to prosecute in the ecclesiastical court, is worse than useless. The word of God however searches deeper,' says Bishop Taylor, than the laws of men; and many things will be hard to be proved by the measures of courts, which are easy enough to be observed by the watchful and diligent eye and ear of the guide of souls; and it is certain, reverend brethren, that in lesser instances, our habitual persevering discharge of the pastoral duties, our example still more, will often supersede the occasion for what would be attended with so much difficulty, and afford so little probability of reform or edification as ecclesiastical censures for ordinary immoralities.

"Under the head of the laity, further I hardly need insist on what I presume to be sufficiently obvious, that over the churchwardens, though laymen, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction is admitted to extend in a peculiar and specific sense; inasmuch as no jurisdiction could exist without a direct authority over its own officers. P. +5.

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"Obedience to the discipline of the Church then is neither a vague indefinite feeling, of uncertain application, which may be, and is relaxed, as fancy or prevailing opinions may incline the individual who is bound to it, nor is it a servile, unintelligent principle, which, where the sense and spirit of the rule have passed into other channels, insists on the indiscriminate performance of the latter. The Church of England claims only a sort and a degree of obedience, which a liberally educated clergy may well bestow; imposes no undue restraint upon the liberty, wherewith as Christians, and as ministers of his Gospel, Christ himself hath made us free. Reason and authority may be adduced for what we continue and for what we disuse; for what is not contained in the Canons of 1603, or in the Rubric, for what is claimed of the clergy, for what is claimed of the laity; and it is by the 'Laws Ecclesiastical,' in this their full and definite sense, namely, as grounded in deed in the civil and the canon laws, but as comprising only such parts of them as may be exercised here consistently with the conunon and the statute law, that the articles now delivered to you have been modified. Not that these articles general and parochial contain enquiries upon all the points of our discipline, but only on those which are of primary importance, or are in most danger of being overlooked. There are points in fact, respecting ourselves, to which enquiries of this kind can never reach; and the questions put respecting the clergy I consider myself as proposing to themselves in the way of remembrancers, (as who amongst us has not need to be reminded?) rather than to the churchwardens in the way of enquiry; although the canon, and usage interpretative of the canon, suppose that the enquiry is directed

generally.

"And now, in conclusion of this brief review of so extensive a subject as discipline, I may ask surely whether, bounded as it manifestly is in its exercise among ourselves, and in the present day, what yet remains of it can excite reasonable distrast even in the laity; whether to argue against the discipline of the Church of England in the degree in which it now subsists, be not to argue against its very existence. And in regard to our own views of it, Reverend Brethren, how shall we be prepared to counteract the attempts perpetually aimed against the doctrines of the Church through the medium of its discipline, if even to ourselves that discipline be distasteful; or what will be our condi

tion, if while the sects by which we are surrounded distinguish themselves by a settled and exact internal government, such as is more or less essential to the welfare of every religious body, we, from whatever cause, disclaim, or in practice disregard it? Cautious, no doubt, the governors of our Church will be, not to insist on it intemperately as to the manner, or incorrectly, and therefore in the end indefensibly as to the substance. The times are confessedly not suited, I know not that any times are so, for the exercise of discipline in the invidious, yet not absolutely unauthorized sense in which some would still appear to understand it; but neither is it a time for making the experiment with how small a portion of it the fair frame of our Ecclesiastical Polity may consist. As little are we at liberty to neglect the requiring and enforcing, if need be, on those who in justice and equity are bound to it, the repair of these material fabrics. Their decay may prove not the emblem alone, but the occasion of a diminished attachment to the Established Religion." P. 51.

The remainder of the Charge is chiefly devoted to a brief exposition of the law upon several points that have been recently under discussion; viz. the publication and republication of banns, the right of presiding in vestry, and the claim to pulpit cloth; and, in conclusion, the Archdeacon directs the especial notice of his clergy to the present state and exertions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, to the Clergy Orphan Society, and to the Society for the Enlargement of Churches and Chapels; and lastly, to the establishment of Clerical Lending Libraries, in each of the seven Visitation Calls of his Archdeaconry. Our limits will not permit us to enter into detail upon any of these but such of our readers questions; as refer to the Charge itself will find them discussed by the Archdeacon with his usual ability.

We are not informed whether the Archdeacon has completed and issued the Book of Articles for Parochial Visitation to which he alludes in this Charge, and which he had promised in his general Articles,

which have already appeared in our work. But we trust that when they are printed he will not confine their circulation to the parishes within his own jurisdiction. His two Charges explain the principles, and establish the authority of the ecclesiastical law; the Book of Articles, already distributed, contains a part of its application; and we have no doubt that the remainder will be perspicuously unfolded in the more extensive

work which has been promised.Nothing can be more useful than parochial visitations; and when the business of them is facilitated by a set of systematic queries, and the Clergy and parochial officers are, by the same means, made acquainted with their respective duties, we may hope to see such visitations more frequent than they have hitherto been.

MR. BROUGHAM'S BILL.

WE have received the following letter from the Author of "Plain Thoughts upon Mr. Brougham's Bill." The writer does us no more than justice when he acquits us of any intentional misrepresentation of his meaning. That we may not be guilty of a second unintentional error, he shall very readily be permitted to speak for himself; but we must beg leave to say in our own vindication, that, though he must unquestionably be the best judge of his own meaning, and the best interpreter of his own expressions, we apprehend that many of his readers have fallen into the same error as ourselves.

cieties of National Education; whereas it was the professed object of my pamphlet to deprecate all Parliamentary interference either with Churchmen or Dissenters, in their respective modes of instructing the lower orders. It appeared to me, to be a subject on which legislative enactments were more likely to do harm than good; and accordingly, I endeavoured to shew that the grand leading maxims of commercial and political science, were strictly applicable to the conclusions which I had formed.

But deeming it probable that the principle of non-interference would, notwithstanding, be sacrificed to an intermeddling and officious policy

To the Editor of the Remembrancer. I ventured to suggest, that, if this

Sir,

THOUGH an author has no right to claim the privilege of replying in your pages to any criticism which you may hazard on his works, yet, as a correspondent, I trust, you will allow" A Plain Englishman" to state his own sentiments, and to rectify some unintentional misrepresentations which you have given of his opinions.

In your last Number, I am described as advocating a Parliamentary Grant to both the leading So

should be the case, it would be better to make a pecuniary grant to both these Societies, than to endeavour to amalgamate them, as Mr. Brougham has proposed, by bring. ing together the most opposite and discordant materials. Now, surely, Sir, this is a very different thing from advocating a grant, either to the National or to the British and Foreign School Society. It is quite in the teeth of my fundamental principle, that any grant should be made to either Society; but if Parliament will interfere, then, it ap

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