Occasional Papers | Page 7

on other
grounds, he pronounces the strongest condemnation on the present
formation of the Court of Appeal, which, working in a way which even
its framers did not contemplate, has brought so much distress into the
Church, and which yet, in defiance of principle, of consistency, and of
the admission of its faultiness, is so recklessly maintained. Feeling and
stating very strongly the evil sustained by the Church, from the
suspension of her legislative powers,--"that loss of command over her
work, and over the heart of the nation, which it has brought upon
her,"--so strongly indeed that his words, coming from one familiar with

the chances and hazards of a deliberative assembly, give new weight to
the argument for the resumption of those powers,--feeling all this, he is
ready to acquiesce in the measure beyond which the Bishops did not
feel authorised to go, and which Mr. Gladstone regards as "representing
the extremest point up to which the love of peace might properly carry
the concessions of the Church":--
That which she is entitled in the spirit of the Constitution to demand
would be that the Queen's ecclesiastical laws shall be administered by
the Queen's ecclesiastical judges, of whom the Bishops are the chief;
and this, too, under the checks which the sitting of a body appointed for
ecclesiastical legislation would impose.
But if it is not of vital necessity that a Church Legislature should sit at
the present time--if it is not of vital necessity that all causes termed
ecclesiastical should be treated under special safeguards--if it is not of
vital necessity that the function of judgment should be taken out of the
hands of the existing court--let the Church frankly and at once
subscribe to every one of these great concessions, and reduce her
demands to a minimum at the outset.
Laws ecclesiastical by ecclesiastical judges, let this be her principle; it
plants her on the ground of ancient times, of the Reformation, of our
continuous history, of reason and of right. The utmost moderation, in
the application of the principle, let this he her temper, and then her case
will be strong in the face of God and man, and, come what may, she
will conquer.... If, my Lord, it be felt by the rulers of the Church, that a
scheme like this will meet sufficiently the necessities of her case, it
must be no small additional comfort to them to feel that their demand is
every way within the spirit of the Constitution, and short of the terms
which the great compact of the Reformation would authorise you to
seek. You, and not those who are against you, will take your stand with
Coke and Blackstone; you, and not they, will wield the weapons of
constitutional principle and law; you, and not they, will be entitled to
claim the honour of securing the peace of the State no less than the
faith of the Church; you, and not they, will justly point the admonitory
finger to those remarkable words of the Institutes:--

"And certain it is, that this Kingdom hath been best governed, and
peace and quiet preserved, when both parties, that is, when the justices
of the temporal courts and the ecclesiastical judges have kept
themselves within their proper jurisdiction, without encroaching or
usurping one upon another; and where such encroachments or
usurpations have been made, they have been the seeds of great trouble
and inconvenience."
Because none can resist the principle of your proposal, who admit that
the Church has a sphere of proper jurisdiction at all, or any duty beyond
that of taking the rule of her doctrine and her practice from the lips of
ministers or parliaments. If it shall be deliberately refused to adopt a
proposition so moderate, so guarded and restrained in the particular
instance, and so sustained by history, by analogy, and by common
reason, in the case of the faith of the Church, and if no preferable
measure be substituted, it can only be in consequence of a latent
intention that the voice of the Civil Power should be henceforward
supreme in the determination of Christian doctrine.
We trust that such an assurance, backed as it is by the solemn and
earnest warnings of one who is not an enthusiast or an agitator, but one
of the leading men in the Parliament of England, will not be without its
full weight with those on whom devolves the duty of guiding and
leading us in this crisis. The Bishops of England have a great
responsibility on them. Reason, not less than Christian loyalty and
Christian charity, requires the fairest interpretation of their acts, and it
may be of their hesitation,--the utmost consideration of their difficulties.
But reason, not less than Christian loyalty and charity, expects that,
having accepted the responsibilities of