appurtenances thereunto belonging:. ... And WE do by these presents commit unto you the government of the souls of the parishioners of the said parish, and do authorize you to preach the word of God in the said parish. » Form of Instit: Palm Suppl. to Orig. Liturg. Lond. 1845. p. 118. Upon this follows INDUCTION, which may he compared to livery and seizin of a freehold, for it is putting a Minister in actual possession of the Church to which he is presented, and of the glebe land and other temporalities thereof; for before Induction he hath no freehold in them. The usual method of Induction is by virtue of a mandate uuder the seal of the Bishop, to the Archdeacon of the place. who either himself, or by his warrant to all Clergymen within his Archdeaconry, inducts the new Incumbent by taking his hand, laying it on the key of the church in the door and pronouncing these words I induct you into the real and actual possession of the Rectory or Vicarage of H. with all its profits and appurtenances.' Then he opens the door of the church, and puts the person in possession of it, who enters to offer his devotions, which done he tolls a bell to summon his parishioners. » Church Dict. (Art. Induction.) This form, were, of itself, enough to make it plain, what is the sense of the Church of England respecting the necessity of direct and immediate Mission from the Bishop, in order to authorize a Priest to exercise, in any place, his functions of administering the Sacraments, and preaching. « It certainly is essential", writes Mr. Pal-. mer, «that the true Ministers of God should be able to prove that they have not only the power, but the right, of performing sacred Offices. There is an evident difference between these things, as may be seen by the following cases. If a regularly ordained Priest should celebrate the Eucharist in the church of another, contrary to the will of that person and of the Bishop, he would have the power of consecrating the Eucharist, it actually would be consecrated: but he would not have the right of consecrating; or, in other words, he would not have MISSION for that act. If a Bishop should enter the Diocese of another. Bishop, and contrary to his will, ordain one of his Deacons to the Priesthood, the intruding Bishop would have the power, but not the right of ordaining: he would have no MISSION for such an act. In fact, mission fails in all schismatical, heretical, and uncanonical acts. because God cannot have given any man a right to act in opposition to those laws which He Himself has enacted, or to those which the Apostles and their successors have instituted, for the orderly and peaceable regulation of the Church; He is not the Author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints' (1 Cor. XIV. 33.); and yet, were He to commission His ministers to exercise their Offices in whatever places and circumstances they pleased, confusion and division without end must be the inevitable result." Orig. Liturg. (2.d Ed.) ii. 247, 248. See also p. 25, (8), supra. F. 1. It is vain to argue, that the Regulations here referred to are rescindable at pleasure, or perheps already, even now, rescinded. The point is, Has not the Foreign Secretary deliberately recognized by this XV th Regulation, that the Bishop's Licence is requisite for Foreign Chaplains of the Church of England? By an en post facto rule, he may certainly annul the XV.th Regulation: but he cannot annul his own previous deliberate recognition and admission of the Bishop's province, and the Church's rights. He mav, by such alteretion of His Office rules, encroach upon that province and those rights: but he cannot abrogate his own former testimony to them. He may, if he pleases, tear in pieces his own paper but he cannot destroy the truth which it embodied, or the just interpretation of the law which it contained. He may expunge, as to his own departir ent of the State, his own official words and resolutions: but he will not be able to erase, as to the world at large, their tributary witness to the constitution of the Church, the functions of her Bishops, and the rights of Churchmen. On the contrary, by now trampling on the Licence of the Bishop of London, and' by substituting fresh and ex post facto rules or directions. founded upon local or temporary objects of alleged expediency, in the place of regulations in accordance with the laws and canons of the Church and Realm of England, he will but stamp with the force of unwilling testimony his former official determinations. The Crown of England has, in fact, no power of itself, in any case to dispense altogether with -Episcopal jurisdiction over Clergymen and members of the Church of England. It were an infringement of the Laws and Constitution of the Church and Realm to do so: and the Crown binds itself by the Coronation-Oath, to govern secundum non contra leges. ( Vide Coronation-Oath, supra p. 22). Hooker (Eccles. Pol. VIII. ii. 13) says, « I cannot choose but commend highly their wisdom, by whom the foundations of this commonwealth have been laid; wherein though no manner person or cause be unsubject to the King's power, yet so is the power of the King over all and in all limited, that unto all his proceedings the law itself is a rule. The axioms of our regal government are these: Lex facit regem'; the King's grant of any favour made contrary to the law is void, 'Rex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest'. Keble's Hooker, iii. p. 353. The Government, or mere Executive, therefore, cannot be justified in so interpreting a solitary Act of Parliament. as to assert from it a power at variance with the most essential principles, nay, with the very being and constitution of the Church, and which no other law or Statute gives the Sovereign.. If the Consular Act (6 Geo. IV cap. 87) is really in itself defective on this head, the defect should be amended, not laken advantage of, by those whose high office it is to minister under the Crown in Law and Equity. Interpreting this Act however fairly, and conformably with the whole stream of law and custom, both Ecclesias tical and Civil, it may seem more natural to consider it, 'not so much defective on this head, as taking for granted, as a well-known and acknowledged axiom, and so tacitly implying or implicitly assuming, the necessity of the Bishop's Licence and Jurisdiction, when it provides for the support of a Chaplain to celebrate Divine Service according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England " (See PROTEST, p. 8. §. 11.) And so, at least in 1840, thought Lord Palmerston himself, with the advice doubtless of the Crown Lawyers, when issuing the XV. of his Regulations under the authority of the Act"; which can only be of course regarded in the light of an acknowledgment, or recognition, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ACT, of a principle tacitly assumed or embodied in the Act: not as a new law or condition, then first mooted and imposed by the Civil Government, or Foreign Office, on its own authority, and so,like the Regulation itself, rescindable at pleasure. For the principle in question is coeval with the very name and constitution of the Church Catholick of Christ It is mere foolishness to talk of its dependence on a Regulation of the Foreign Office, and to prate of its liability to "drop", lapse or be cancelled, at the wilt and pleasure of a Foreign Secretary. The Bishop of London's Jurisdiction over Foreign Chaplains, as it had existed for 200 years hefore, so would it have continued to exist, both in law and conscience, as it does at this moment, had Lord Palmerston's XV,th Regulation neither been issued nor rescinded. The XV.th Regulation, was only a proper tribute and witness, in distinct interpretation, of the Act, to its preexistence and authority. At most, it only gave the duc of outward temporal support, by the present Civil Government, to a law already binding on the consciences of Church. men under any circumstances: a law essential to Church membership, nay, to the very name and notion, of the Church Episcopal:- a law of spiritual obligation, prior to, and independent of, all State or human laws; and which Bishops would be bound to exercise, and the people to observe, whether the State encouraged and approved, or, as often in the early ages of the Church, opposed and persecuted, its observance. See pp. 40, 41 supra, 2. To exempt Foreign Chaplains from Episcopal jurisdiction, is, in fact, an attempt to extend in its worst forin, one of the worst abuses in the Chnich, called Exemptions' or 'Peculiars': (+) those « scandalous remnants of Popery», as Bishop Burnet justly calls them (Hist. of his own Times, ad finem): concerning which I will first transcribe the following passage from an eminent modern Divine: "That if any (+) The Act of Parliament, 2 Hen. IV. cap. 3, enacted provision be made by the Bishop of Rome to any persons of religion, or any other person, to be exempt of obedience regular, or of obedience ordinary, that such provisors, who, from henceforth, do accept or enjoy any such provision, shall incur the pains comprised in the Statute of provisors made in the year above mentioned.” COLL. Eccles. Hist. Book VII, Cent, XV. A. D, 1400. << Those parishes and places are called Peculiars, which are exempted from the jurisdiction of the proper Ordinary of the Diocese where they lie. These exempt jurisdictions are so called, not because they are under no Ordinary, but because they are not under the Ordinary of the Diocese, but have one of their own. They are a remnant of Popery. The Pope, before the Reformation, by a usurped authority, and in defiance of the canons of the Church, exempted them from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of the Diocese. At the Reformation, by an oversight, they were not restored to the jurisdiction of the Diocesan, but remained under the Sovereign, or under such other person, as by custom or purchase obtained the right of superintendence. >> HOOK'S Ch. Dict. (Art. Peculiars) The origin or at least prevalence of such Exemptions, according to Rieger (Instit. Jurispr. Eccles Pars ii. Decretal. Lib. I. it XXXIII. §. 636), cannot be well traced further back than the Eleventh Century. And they have been always held by other Tramontanes, even of the Roman Communion, to be scandalous and gross corruptions. S. Bernard, in the 12.th Century, vehemently wrote against them; and even the Tridentine Synod, or Council of Trent, passed some restrictive Canons on the subject. See RIEGER loc. cit. SS. 637-672; et Pars I. Sect. 1. cap. iii. S. 146: See also COLLIER, Eccles. Hist. Book IV. Cent. XII. A. D. 1177. Modern legislation has also done much, it may be thankfully acknowledged, to abale or amend this notorious and scandalous abuse of Peculiars or Donatives. In some Dioceses of England they have, very recently, been either wholly or partially suppressed, and restored more or less to regular Episcopal control. By 3 and 4 Vict. cap. 86. |