16. « Q. Can the Supreme Civil Magistrate communicate these Spiritual Powers to Church Officers?

A. The Nature of these Powers being purely spiritual, and having a relation to the Souls of Men, can only be conveyed in that Way and Manner Christ has appointed; who delegated these Powers only to his Apostles and their Successors; and without his express Commission no Man ought to take upon himself, or communicate to others a Power to sign and seal Covenants in his name. This Commission the Apostles and their Successors exercised in all Places, and even in Opposition to the Rulers that then were; so that the Church subsisted as a distinct Society from the State for above three hundred Years, when the Civil Government was only concerned to suppress and destroy it. Indeed when the Church received the Benefit of Incorporation and Protection from the State, she was content to suffer some Limitations as to the Exercise of these Powers, and thought herself sufficiently recompensed by the Advantages that accrued to her by the Incorporation.

Q. Wherein then consists the Supremacy of Sovereign Magistrates?

A. In ruling all Estates and Degrees committed to their Charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal (Art. 37). In exercising their Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, as well as over Ecclesiastical Persous, and in restraining with the civil Sword the Stubborn and Evil doers. So that all Persons in their Dominions, Spiritual as well as Temporal, are subject to their Authority; because when Men became Ministers in the Church they did not

cease to be Subjects of the State. Every Soul must be subject to the higher Powers (Rom. XIII. 1), which includes an Apostle, an Evangelist, a Prophet, or whosoever else, as St. Chysostom observes upon the place. But by

virtue of this Supremacy, the ministring either of God's Word, or of the Sacraments, is not given to Princes, because they are not imvested with, nor have a sovereign Disposal of the Power of Orders. »

NELSON'S Festivals, 16.th Ed. Lond. 1736.
pp. 558, 559.

17. Courayer, the celebrated Defender of the Validity of English Ordinations, though a Priest of the Gallican Church, and a member of the Roman Communion, treats this subject with his accustomed candour, closeness of research, and strength of argument. After quoting Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions of 1559 (See Protest, p. 7), in which he says she « had herself disavowed all the spiritual power attributed to her, to confine herself to preventing the recognition in her kingdom of any other independent authority in things spiritual», he proceeds: he proceeds: « James the First went yet further; as both in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, and in his Premonition to the Princes, he declared that he did not pretend to assume to himself by that Oath any other than a superiority in matters civil and temporal. I thought good to set forth an Apology for the said Oath wherein I proved, that as this Oath contained nothing but matter of civil and temporal obedience, due by subjects to their Sovereign Prince, so &c'. This is what he repeats in several other places, and what proves clearly that nothing is less true than the attributing of spiritual power to the Kings of England. It is true that the Acts of

Parliament of 1535 and of 1559 seem to give the King somewhat more; but since the Clergy and the Kings themselves restrain their sense, and acknowledge that these Acts mean no more than to declare, that the King has a supreme authority over the Ecclesiastics Ecclesiastics of his Kingdom as well as over others, and that the subjects of his Realm ought not to submit to any other Power; it is an injustice to press their terms rigourously, and not abide by the sense put upon them by their proper interpreters. For this interpretation has been so fully regarded as the only sense of the law, that the English Divines have not otherwise explained the Supremacy of the King, and his authority in matters Ecclesiastical and spiritual, than in subjecting all Ecclesiastical Persons to him, exclusive of any other Power, and making him to employ his power in THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH. » And presently he subjoins, « Whatever inclination Burnet Bishop of Salisbury had for the Presbyterians, he does not explain differently the power of the King in spiritual matters. The power of the King', says he (Expos. of 39 Art.), in Ecclesiastical matters among us, is expressed in this Article (37) under those reserves, and with that moderation, that no just scruple can lie against it; and it is that which all the Kings, even of the Roman Communion, do assume, and in some places with a much more unlimi ed authority. The methods of managing it may differ a little, yet the power is the same, and is built upon the same foundations. ... In the strictest sense, as the head communicates vital influences to the whole body, Christ is the only Head of His Church; ..... But as head may in a figure stand for the fountain of order and government, of protection and conduct, the King or Queen may well be

6

called The head of the Church.' »

COUR AYER, Validity of English Ordinations (A D. 1723) Oxf. 1844, pp. 191, 192, 195.

18. « All (that) this Oath of Supremacy affirms is. that the King of England, like his predecessors, and all other Christian Kings and Emperors, has the right, from ancient custom, universal consent of the Church, and expediency, to direct, control, and support the affairs of the Church in this Empire, for its own good, and according to the law of God and the Canons; while at the same time it permits us to add, that there are Pastors who have a Divine right to administer spiritual affairs; THAT THE KING HIMSELF CANNOT INVADE THEIR PECULIAR OFFICE; that he can do nothing lawfully against the Christian faith AND DISCIPLINE, THE CANONS, or the benefit of the Church. »

PALM. Orig. Liturg. Vol. ii p. 277.

19. «To recognize the King as Supreme Head of the English Church, as far as it is allowable by the law of Christ', certainly was not to admit his right to interfere with the spiritual jurisdiction of Bishops, or with any of the laws, liberties, doctrines, or rights of the Church, established EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY by the law of Christ. The Clergy of England were entitled to believe that they saved all the spiritual rights of the Church by this proviso; and, indeed, we learn from Burnet, that those who adhered to their former notions', i, e, the Church generally, understood this headship to be only a temporal anthority in temporal matters.' I shall not here enter on the

general question of the authority of the King in Ecclesiastical affairs, which will be discussed elsewhere; but it is admitted by the Theologians and Canonists of the Roman Obedience, that Christian Kings have generally a Supreme Power of external direction in such matters. It has been shown by our writers that the Kings of England always were the Supreme Political Governors or Heads of our National Church. The most learned lawyers, Fitzherbert and Coke, affirm, that the law confirming the Royal Supremacy was only declaratory of the ancient laws of England; and Bossuet himself only condemns this Supremacy on the erroneous supposition that it was admitted to affect fundamentally the validity of all Ecclesiastical acts, not if it were understood to relate to a merely external direction and execution.

Now it is incredible that the Clergy, in acknowledging the Supremacy as far as it is allowable by the law of Christ,' could have designed to admit that all their Ecclesiastical acts emanated from, or were fundamentally affected as to their validity by the Royal Power. They could not at once in a body have relinquished the notions which had always hitherto prevailed; and there is evidence that they did not, as we shall see in discussing the Royal commissions for Bishopricks. Indeed King Henry himself, in a letter to Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, who thought the title of Head' could not with propriety he given to man, unless it were limited to temporals, seems to restrain his own Ecclesiastical jurisdiction to such things as were of a temporal or of a mixed nature, such as the assembling of Convocations and confirming their laws, the appointment of Bishops and Abbots, the cognizance of causes in criminal