COMMUNION. northern prelates. And when, in 1540, it was thought ENGLISH desirable to compile a book containing the 'principal articles and points of our faith, with the declaration of other expedient points, and also for the lawful rites and ceremonies and observations of God's service within this realm,' the work was to be executed by the archbishops and sundry bishops of both provinces, and also a great number of the best learned, honestest, and most virtuous. sort of the doctors of, divinity.' Directions for the purging and remodelling of the ancient service-books proceeded from the southern convocation, with the acquiescence of the crown. To this body the work was finally submitted for their approbation. The Articles of Religion were, in like manner, authorised, and afterwards revised by them, and therefore the document was entitled, 'Articles, whereupon it was agreed by the archbishops and bishops of both provinces, and the whole clergy, in the convocation: while at the very opening of the seventeenth century, the principle of synodal action was re-affirmed in the most emphatic manner. The 139th of the canons of 1603, which form the standard of ecclesiastical law in dealing with all persons over whom the church-courts exercise their ancient juris See Stat. 32 Hen. VIII. c. 26. Twysden, who draws attention to this act (Vindication, p. 138), and also to the language of Stat. 2 and 3 Edw. VI. c. 1, with reference to the Liturgy, concludes that the King, in composing this book, did not assume to himself, or the parliament attribute unto him, any other than assembling of the bishops and other learned men together, to take their consultations.' Above, p. 206, n. I. 5 Above, p. 212, n. 4: cf. p. 222. 6 Above, pp. 232, 249, 257, n. 7. To archbishop Parker the Church is indebted for the Forma sive descriptio Convocationis celebranda, which still regulates the proceedings of the COMMUNION. ENGLISH diction, determines, under a penalty of excommunication, that the sacred synod of this country, 'in the name of Christ and by the king's authority assembled, is the true Church of England by representation;' and the last canon strongly censures all 'depravers of the synod' as then congregated1. Confiscation of churchproperty. The practical working of the Church of England, though affected in no very sensible degree by other modifications, was severely crippled and retarded at the Reformation by the loss of her chief revenues. That the hierarchi cal element had for some years been threatening to was predominant2, and that a reduction of its influence might be found expedient and desirable, is suggested by the fact, that, during the reign of Henry VII., the spiritual repre sentatives in the house of peers outnumbered the lay-lords: while more than half the landed property3 had passed into the hands of ecclesiastics, or at least of them and of monastic establishments. When, therefore, the cupidity of an English monarch prompted him to spoil the latter by confiscating the possessions of religious houses, the policy of the court not only satisfied the anti-papal spirit of the times, but tended to restore a somewhat juster balance in the general distribution of property. Henry, it is true, professed his willingness to give the Church a fair equivalent. 1 See Homilies, &c., p. 684. Camb. 1850. 2 When the clergy in a kingdom are really (and not upon the feigned pretences of sacrilegious persons) grown to that excessive grandeur, that they quite overbalance the laity, and leave the commonwealth neither sufficient men nor sufficient means to maintain itself; it is lawful by prudent laws to restrain their further growth, as our ancestors and all the nations of Europe have done by prohibiting new foundations of religious houses, and the alienation of lands to the Church without special licence.... But eradication, to pluck up good institutions root and branch, is not reformation, which we profess, but destruction.' Bram hall, Just Vindication, Disc. II. Works, I. 119, Oxf. 1842: cf. Twysden, Vindic. pp. 2-5, Camb. ed. 3 See Middle Age, p. 367, n. 5. 4 Above, pp. 200-202. The present valuation of the property then alienated from the Church is little short of a million sterling (cf. Ross, as before, pp. 289, 200), while, as fifty thousand persons were connected with the monastic establishments, the and beggary produced must have been enormous. vagrancy by appropriating some at least of the monastic endowments to the founding of new bishoprics", and so augmenting the proportion of the lords spiritual. This and other kindred projects were urged upon his notice by some of his 'reforming council: but the splendid scheme which he devised was most inadequately carried out. A public benefit was sacrificed to his extravagance, or the aggrandisement of needy favourites who assisted in the work of spoliation. ENGLISH COMMUNION. and impropria It should not, however, be forgotten, that the enormities Appropriations thus perpetrated by Henry VIII. were, in a large degree, tions. retributive. The monastic institutions of this country fattened on the property of clerics: they had frequently obtained permission either from the lords of the manor, from the crown, the bishops, or the court of Rome, to appropriate, and attach to their own society, the tithes of the parochial benefices, on the understanding that they made themselves responsible for the due performance of all pastoral functions. For this purpose, one of their own body, or, more commonly, a secular priest ('vicarius'), was entrusted with the supervision of such parishes, receiving for his stipend only a fraction of the revenues, and too often manifesting a proportionate inattention to the poor as well as to the offices of worship. At the Reformation, all rectorial tithes which had been thus appropriated' to religious houses (male and female also) were, under the name of impropriations",' entirely diverted from the parish, and bestowed upon the courtiers of Henry VIII., who treated them like other pieces of secular property. Yet, as Above, p. 200, n. 2. The evil originated, or at least received a powerful impulse, at the time of the Conquest, when Norman lords withdrew the tithes of their manor from the Saxon clergy, and transferred them to monks whom they imported from the continent. See the notes in Stephens, on Stat. 15 Ric. II. c. 6, and Stat. 4 Hen. 7 See Kennett's Case of Impro- ENGLISH COMMUNION. alienations of the former class were by no means limited to England, so neither can the second be regarded as legitimate consequences of the English Reformation. Diference betrozen the foreign Reformers. SAXON COMMUNION. In all those branches of the Church, we have been just English ant considering, it was commonly believed that the spiritul authority confided to ecclesiastics had originated in the Apostolic age, and been transmitted to them by Christ Himself through an unbroken series of ordainers. The pastors were thus held to be invested with a sacred charac ter, which entitled them to special deference, and which made them independent of their flocks. But, on the cont nent, the modes of thought were often widely different. The ultimate power of calling and ordaining was there vestel in the church collective, so that ministers became the organs and representatives of the whole body, acting in its name. as well as for its benefit. In other words, as all the faith are true priests, the nomination of particular teachers is merely to avoid disorder, and implies in the minister ny more than a conventional authority depending on the wil of the congregation. But this principle, avowed in most emphatic terms by Luther1, and by Zwingli2 also, at the outset of their 1 Above, p. 35: see also Luther's Lehre von der Kirche, by Julius Köstlin, Stuttgart, 1853, where a chapter (§ 4) is devoted to the relation of the universal priesthood' to the office of preaching. One of Luther's special writings on the subject appeared in 1523, with the title De instituendis Ministris Ecclesiæ (addressed to the senate of Prague, as a dissuasive against 'papistical orders'): Opp. II. fol. 545 sq. Jenæ, 1600. Luther there distinguishes clearly between the universal right to teach, and the universal exercise of the right: affirming that auth rity for that purpose is conveys only to one class of Christians, qu' vice et nomine omnium, qui ide juris habent, exequatur officia ista publice, ne turpis sit confusion populo Dei, et Babylon quædam fat in ecclesia, sed omnia secundum dinem fiant' (fol. 553, a). In the same manner he frequently declared that some outward call' is necessary i the assumption of public ruinistra tions. That call of God, however, COMMUNION. nisters ap labours, was considerably modified in course of time, and SAXON as experience inculcated on its authors the necessity of curbing the extravagances of the individual spirit3, and suggested that the faithful were not so taught of God as to be ripe for their ideal constitution. Hence, in Saxony itself, Regular miis early as the Visitation of 1527, measures were adopted pointed." for securing to the Lutheran body a compact and sysematic organisation of its own. In that country, and Indeed all others, where the civil power was found propitious to the Reformation, a close alliance was cemented between it and the 'new learning.'4 Pastors were accordingly placed in all the parishes of Saxony; over each small group of these, a 'superintendents' was appointed, either might be formally made either through the senior members of the church, through the secular, or the ecclesiastical authorities (see Köstlin, p. 74), but in every case it amounted only to the delegation of an individual possessing the very same inherent rights which are diffused in the whole community: cf. Möhler, Symbolik, II. 91 sq. 2 e. g. in the Archeteles (as above, p. 114, n. 1), he writes, "Non unius esse videtis aut alterius de Scripturæ locis pronunciare, sed omnium qui Christo credunt.' 3 There can be little doubt that many of the Anabaptists, as well as some preachers who excited the Peasants' War, had been themselves stimulated by the theories of the continental Reformers respecting the nature of the ministerial office: above, PP. 40-42. The turning-point in Luther's own mind seems to have been his reappearance at Wittenberg in 1522. In the following year, when writing to the Bohemians (as above, p. 368, n. 1), he had matured his plans for the providing of ministers where episcopal ordination was impossible or undesirable: 'Convocatis et convenientibus libere quorum corda Deus tetigerit, ut R. P. vobiscum idem sentiant et sapiant, 4 If,' says Ranke (Ibid. II. 488, 5 The regulations respecting su perintendents were made as early as the Saxon Visitation of 1527, and BB |