Occasional Papers | Page 6

in a mere spirit of narrow perverseness, to insist that
it can have none but a literal meaning in ecclesiastical matters; and that
the Church did mean, though the State did not to accept a despotic
prerogative, unbounded by custom, convention, or law, and unchecked
by acknowledged and active powers in herself. Yet such is the
assumption, made in bitterness and vexation of spirit by some of those
who have lately so hastily given up her cause; made with singular
assurance by others, who, Liberals in all their political doctrines, have,
for want of better arguments, invoked prerogative against the Church.
What the securities and checks were that the Church, not less than the
nation, contemplated and possessed, are not expressed in the theory

itself of the royal prerogative; and, as in the ease of the nation, we
might presume beforehand, that they would be found in practice rather
than on paper. They were, however, real ones. "With the same
theoretical laxity and practical security," as in the case of Parliaments
and temporal judges, "was provision made for the conduct of Church
affairs." Making allowance for the never absent disturbances arising out
of political trouble and of personal character, the Church had very
important means of making her own power felt in the administration of
her laws, as well as in the making of them.
The real question, I apprehend, is this:--When the Church assented to
those great concessions which were embodied in our permanent law at
the Reformation, had she adequate securities that the powers so
conveyed would be exercised, upon the whole, with a due regard to the
integrity of her faith, and of her office, which was and has ever been a
part of that faith? I do not ask whether these securities were all on
parchment or not--whether they were written or unwritten--whether
they were in statute, or in common law, or in fixed usage, or in the
spirit of the Constitution and in the habits of the people--I ask the one
vital question, whether, whatever they were in form, they were in
substance sufficient?
The securities which the Church had were these: First, that the
assembling of the Convocation was obviously necessary for the
purposes of taxation; secondly and mainly, that the very solemn and
fundamental laws by which the jurisdiction of the See of Rome was cut
off, assigned to the spiritualty of the realm the care of matters spiritual,
as distinctly and formally as to the temporalty the care of matters
temporal; and that it was an understood principle, and (as long as it
continued) a regular usage of the Constitution, that ecclesiastical laws
should be administered by ecclesiastical judges. These were the
securities on which the Church relied; on, which she had a right to rely;
and on which, for a long series of years, her alliance was justified by
the results.
And further:--
The Church had this great and special security on which to rely, that the
Sovereigns of this country were, for a century after the Reformation,

amongst her best instructed, and even in some instances her most
devoted children: that all who made up the governing body (with an
insignificant exception) owned personal allegiance to her, and that she
might well rest on that personal allegiance as warranting beforehand
the expectation, which after experience made good, that the office of
the State towards her would be discharged in a friendly and kindly
spirit, and that the principles of constitutional law and civil order would
not be strained against her, but fairly and fully applied in her behalf.
These securities she now finds herself deprived of. This is the great
change made in her position--made insensibly, and In a great measure,
undesignedly--which has altered altogether the understanding on which
she stood towards the Crown at the Reformation. It now turns out that
that understanding, though it might have been deemed sufficient for the
time, was not precise enough; and further, was not sufficiently looked
after in the times which followed. And on us comes the duty of taking
care that it be not finally extinguished; thrown off by the despair of one
side, and assumed by the other as at length abandoned to their
aggression.
Mr. Gladstone comes to the question with the feelings of a statesman,
conscious of the greatness and excellence of the State, and anxious that
the Church should not provoke its jealousy, and in urging her claims
should "take her stand, as to all matters of substance and principle, on
the firm ground of history and law." It makes his judgment on the
present state of things more solemn, and his conviction of the necessity
of amending it more striking, when they are those of one so earnest for
conciliation and peace. But on constitutional not less than