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Enough has been said to show, that the discussions which have taken place in connection with the assertion and maintenance of the Liberties of the Gallican Church, form a very important department in the history of the investigation of the principles that ought to regulate the relation between the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities; and that they afford most interesting and valuable confirmations of the opinions upon this subject, as well as upon the internal constitution of the church, which have been generally entertained by the Presbyterians of Scotland.

CHAPTER VI.

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.*

THE true Popish doctrine upon the subject of the relation that ought to subsist between the church and the State, or between the ecclesiastical and the civil authorities, is, that the ecclesiastical power is superior, in point of jurisdiction, to the civil. This is the view which has been held by the generality of Romanists except the defenders of the Gallican Liberties, and it accords most fully with the general principles and spirit of the Church of Rome. The opposite extreme to this is, of course, the doctrine of the superiority of the civil power to the ecclesiastical. This doctrine is often called by continental writers Byzantinism, a name suggested by the unwarrantable control generally exercised by the Emperors of the East over the Patriarchs of Constantinople and the Greek Church during the middle ages, while in this country it is usually known by the name of Erastianism. The golden mean between these two extremes, is the doctrine that the Church and the State are two distinct societies, independent of each other, -each having its own separate functions and objects, and its separate means of executing and accomplishing them,-each supreme in its own province, and neither having jurisdiction, or a right of authoritative control, over the other. This we believe to be the doctrine of the sacred Scriptures upon the subject. The defenders of the Gallican Liberties in the Romish Church of

*NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, No. xxix., May 1851. Art x.-1. The Royal Supremacy not an Arbitrary Authority, but limited by the Laws of the Church, of which Kings are Members. By the Rev. E. B. PUSEY, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, Canon of Christchurch. Part I. Ancient Precedents. Oxford, 1850.-2. The Papal and

Royal Supremacies contrasted. A Lec-
ture delivered on Sunday the 12th of
May 1850. By the Right Rev. N.
WISEMAN, D.D., Bishop of Melipota-
mus, V.A.L.-3. The Queen or the
Pope? the Question considered in its
Political, Legal, and Religious Aspects.
By SAMUEL WARREN, Esq., of the
Inner Temple. 1851.

France, and the old Scottish Presbyterians, were led most fully to develop this doctrine, and it is now held by all the non-established churches in this country.

The chief difference among the non-established churches, in regard to this matter, turns upon these two questions-first, Does the denial to the State of any jurisdiction or authoritative control over the church, involve or imply a denial that the State is entitled and bound to exercise its proper authority in its own province, with a view to promote the welfare and extension of the church? and, secondly, Does the independence of the Church as a distinct society, with the church's obligation to maintain this, necessarily preclude it from entering into a friendly union or alliance with the State? The advocates of what is commonly called the Voluntary principle answer these two questions which are virtually and substantially one, in the affirmative; while the advocates of what is usually called the Establishment principle answer them in the negative. Both parties, however, concur in holding the entire independence of the Church and the State as two distinct societies, and in denying to either any superiority, in point of authority or jurisdiction, over the other; while, on the points on which they differ, the advocates of the Establishment principle undertake to prove, that an obligation lies upon the State to aim, in the exercise of its proper authority in civil matters, at the welfare of true religion; and that there is no consideration which necessarily and universally precludes the Church from entering into friendly union with the State, and of course treating and arranging with it about the terms on which mutual co-operation may take place.

No sooner had the civil authorities made a profession of Christianity, than we find indications of their assuming to themselves jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, and encroaching upon the church's province. Before the end of the fourth century, the church was obliged to pass canons prohibiting the clergy from applying to the civil power, in order, by its interference, to secure or to retain their ecclesiastical status and privileges,-canons identical in their substance and objects with the law passed by the Church of Scotland, in 1582, against Mr Robert Montgomery, when, in defiance of the church, he attempted to intrude, on the nomination of the king, and by the aid of the secular power, into the archbishopric of Glasgow. The encroachments of the civil power led to a setting forth of the fundamental principle of the

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independence of the church upon the State, and of the supremacy of each in its own province; and we find this principle very fully and accurately stated by some of the Popes, and other leading ecclesiastical authorities, in the fifth and sixth centuries. This important doctrine, however, did not obtain permanent practical ascendency; for, during the middle ages, the Eastern Church lost all its rights and liberties, and sunk into a condition of abject slavery to the civil rulers; while the Western Church, by the marvellous skill and unscrupulous dexterity of the Popes, succeeded, to a large extent, not only in obtaining exemption from civil control in civil matters, but in securing supremacy over the civil power. The principle of the superiority of the civil over the ecclesiastical was established in the East, while that of the superiority of the ecclesiastical over the civil was established in the West. Both these principles are opposed to the sacred Scriptures; and both, in their practical results, operated injuriously to the interests of religion, and to the general welfare of the community.

At the Reformation, the civil authorities who espoused the Protestant cause, were called upon to repel the encroachments which the Church of Rome had made in many ways upon the secular province, and to assert to the full their own legitimate power. This tended again to lead them to assume too much to themselves in regard to ecclesiastical matters, and to make encroachments upon the church's province, a tendency which some. of the Reformers did not a little to countenance. In most of the Reformed churches, accordingly, the rightful independence of the church was more or less encroached upon, and the civil powers practised an extent of interference with ecclesiastical matters, which scriptural views of the duties and functions of the Church and of the State do certainly not sanction. There is good ground to believe that Luther and Melancthon became at last sensible that they had erred in conceding too much power to the civil authorities in the regulation of ecclesiastical matters; but they could not repair the evil they had done, as their rulers were not disposed to abandon any portion of the power they had acquired. Calvin, whose comprehensive and penetrating intellect raised him far above all even of his great contemporaries in the discovery and establishment of truth, promulgated from the first sound views in regard to the right mutual relation of the civil and the ecclesi

astical authorities; but he did not succeed in getting these views practically adopted in all the churches which embraced, in the main, his system both of theology and church government. Of all Protestant countries, that in which the scriptural independence of the church was most strenuously maintained in argument, and most fully realized in practice, was Scotland; and that in which the civil power secured the largest share of unwarranted authority in the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs, was England. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown in England, the transference at the Reformation to the sovereign of the authority which had formerly been enjoyed by the Pope,-a result which the old Scottish Presbyterians used to denounce as implying a change in the Pope but not in the popedom,—has always been regarded as a peculiarity of the Anglican Church, and has given rise to a good deal of discussion. It may not be uninteresting to consider this subject of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown in England,—the relation in which it stands to the place which the civil power ought to hold in the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs, and some of the practical applications which have been made of it.

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The origin in fact of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown in England, was the determination of Henry VIII. to be Pope as well as Sovereign in his own dominions, to possess and exercise the power in ecclesiastical matters which the Pope had formerly enjoyed; and he certainly succeeded in getting the Parliament to sanction the whole extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which he was pleased to claim. Henry was very vain of his ecclesiastical supremacy; and in the year 1545, near the end of his life, he had a medal struck, bearing his likeness, in which he is described, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, as "Under Christ, the Supreme Head of the Church of England and Ireland."* Attempts have been made (the most full and elaborate is to be found, we believe, in the Fifth Part of Sir Edward Coke's Reports) to prove that the laws of Henry and Elizabeth in regard to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown were fully warranted by the legal enactments which were in force before the Reformation, directed to

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