(and have only) an 'architectonical' power-to see that clergymen do their duties in their proper places; but this power is always most properly exercised by the advice and ministry of ecclesiastical persons: in sum, we hold our benefices from the King, but our offices from Christ; the King doth nominate us, but Bishops do ordain us."

But from the past turn to the present. And here, remembering that the terms of our charter are unimpeachable, let us see how change of circumstances, and the revolution that has come to pass, both in men's opinions about the relations of the State to religion at all, and in the distribution of power in the State itself, and other incidental results rather than designs, have altered the application of those terms to actual facts, and their consequent actual working. That which

Cranmer long ago stated as an extreme parallel, and a kind of à fortiori argument, viz. Turkish supremacy in Turkey, has come now within sight of a possibly literal application, and has for some time been in effect the actual fact,-I mean, that the State as such is no longer one with the Church; and no longer holds it a State duty, but even the contrary, to support religion directly at all. And Church cases are accordingly decided by judges and by other tribunals, not only lay, but not necessarily in communion with the Church, and very often out of it. Yet this

by itself is certainly not fatal in principle, so long as these tribunals adhere honestly to their own repeated professions and to the terms of the laws and canons; and, dealing solely with civil rights of individuals, really do abstain from intermeddling with questions of faith. The civil tribunals of even a heathen land must needs determine questions of civil right. Treat us then as Dissenters are treated,-i. e. regard the Church as a religious body, having its own laws and spiritual powers, and simply provide that justice is done according to these to individual members of that body,-and no one could or would complain. But the danger is, first,-and let it be added in the outset, that nothing of the kind has yet been actually and professedly done, -lest the case of the Church be regarded as so far exceptional to those of other religious bodies, that we be taken to be essentially and primarily a national Church, in the sense of a Church that must needs include the whole nation, or at least the great bulk of it; and not (as we really are) a branch of the Church Catholic, whereof, happily for themselves, the bulk of the nation are actually members; and therefore that our faith is to be interfered with, and vital doctrines set aside, in order to comprehend the nation, or most of it, even those who do not believe those doctrines, within the same nominal Church. And then next, a like danger threatens in two other ways,

on the side of legal tenderness for individual rights, and on the side of a quasi-contract theory, which practically regards the State as in covenant, not with a living and acting body with its proper powers, viz. with the Church, but with the letter of certain limited and special documents, and with these alone. Legal ingenuity is set to work to devise any kind of gloss, whereby the language of particular individuals may be forced into at least a possibility of harmony, no matter how utterly "non-natural," with theological language interpreted untheologically. And the civil rights of individual teachers, as dependent on their teaching, are to be determined according to the letter of documents, framed long since, and so, very possibly, bearing either no reference, or a very indirect reference, to forms of error not then existing, or not then of importance, or even which were then so absolutely taken to be confessed error, that no express condemnation of them was thought necessary, or perhaps even thought of at all. Here, then, are our dangers: intensified by the prevalent latitudinarianism, which arises partly from a righteous horror of persecution and partly from an indifference to religious truth, and by the habit ingrained in English minds of regarding the Church in its legal aspect, and of looking to State tribunals as the one security against change and against schism, and, lastly, by the groundless bugbear of some imaginary personal

supremacy in the Crown, in special relation to the Church, differing essentially from that which the law gives to it over every one else. And now, how does all this affect our position as a Church, or the valid exercise of our orders? The Queen is supreme governor over all persons, and therefore over Dissenters and Romanists as well as ourselves. And this means, in their case as well as ours, that legal tribunals will settle all questions in any way involving civil rights, as for us, so for them also. Those tribunals have, in fact, done so repeatedly already; and it is quite right they should. They have discussed Baptist doctrine, for instance, apropos to the (Baptist) orthodoxy of a Baptist minister, and to his consequent retention of an endowment or a salary. And of the dangers above mentioned, all save the first affect all classes of religionists alike. It assuredly makes no difference (save the unreal mockery of calling it a Church tribunal), that the Committee of Privy Council (for it is but nominally the Queen) determines for us, what the ordinary law-courts determine for them. And to say that e. g. the House of Commons may vitally interfere (not that it has interfered) with Church doctrine, or that law-courts (professing all the while that they have no jurisdiction whatever to determine doctrine) have incidentally, in the effort to protect individuals, or to enforce what they considered the terms of a compact, compelled the admission or retention of particular unfit

persons in Church offices,-to say all this tells, no doubt, of danger and of wrong; it saps the discipline and the vigour of the Church; it is a scandal, and a source of weakness; but surely it leaves the principles of union between Church and State untouched. And our duty, therefore, even granting all this to the utmost, would be to cling to the Church still, and strive and pray for a remedy. If the Judges, for instance, in the Gorham judgment chose to say, not that Baptismal Regeneration was not the doctrine of the Church of England, but that somehow Mr. Gorham did not deny Baptismal Regeneration, as that Church held it1; we may wonder how they came to be able to say so, and may grieve over the practical unsettling of the truth which their judgment caused for the time; but the doctrine itself, as held by the English Church, remains where it was before. Nay, as one actual result of that judgment, it is held more intelligently and widely than it ever was. And the real remedy is, that every member of the Church should be active and earnest in his own sphere of Church duty. Judges will strain words to nonnatural senses, only to protect popular heresies or those that are fancied to be so. And the Legislature will leave us alone, if the whole Church holds Church doctrine universally and heartily, and just in such proportion as the Church leavens and

'See the remarks on the subject in Prideaux's Guide to Churchwardens.