Forms which the papal su sumed. bishops also, and others of inferior rank, were so indignant as to assert that rather than surrender the privileges of their forefathers, they would depart from the Roman Church"-till the final struggle in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, the encroachments of the pope had been calling forth a spirited opposition; and if we allow that his interference was in some cases salutary, and as such cordially desired by a large body of the nation, it is impossible to study the civil enactments of the period, without perceiving the growth of that deep exasperation, which eventually repelled the papal aggressions, and secured the freedom of the Church. These aggressions, separately attempted after the premacy as time of the Norman Conquest, and either absolutely denied or impatiently conceded, were made up of the following particulars : (1) A judicial power in matters ecclesiastical, or cases of appeal. (2) A power of granting licences and dispen sations. (3) A liberty to send legates into England and to hold legatine courts. (4) A power of granting investiture of bishops, of confirming episcopal elections, and of distributing ecclesiastical patronage. (5) A privilege of receiving first-fruits, the tenths of English benefices, and the goods of the clergy who died intestate. The motives of the monarch, in whose reign our country was providentially relieved from these foreign 1 Archbp. Anselm's Letter to Paschal I.; in Twysden's Vindication, 16, new edit. The constitutions of Clarendon 'were an actual subversion, as far as they went, of the papal policy and system of hierarchy introduced by Gregory VII.' Turner, Middle Ages, 1. 246, ed. 1830; and at one time there was a general idea that Henry II. would have anticipated the resistance of his eighth namesake, 259. 2 See a list of protestant acts during the Middle Ages, in Fullwood, Roma Ruit, chapters VIII. -XIII. adopted in encroachments, have no necessary connexion with the English Reformation. The Church herself, duly convened and canonically represented, was the real judge The course of the questions at that time mooted in her commu- its rejection. nion and, after examining them severally upon their distinctive merits, pronounced her authoritative sentence, as similar points had been uniformly decided by the Church of the earliest ages. For example, in the year 1534, after a few limiting statutes had been carried in parliament, it was solemnly proposed to the bishops and clergy, in the provincial synods of Canterbury and York, Whether the bishop of Rome has in Holy Scripture any greater jurisdiction, within the kingdom of England, than any other foreign bishop?—and the question was answered in the negative with only four dissentient voices. In this judgment the universities, after five weeks of deliberation, also cordially acquiesced, and were followed by the cathedral chapters and the various conventual bodies; so that, excepting the single bishop of Rochester, the votes of the ecclesiastical authorities were all unanimously recorded against the pretensions of the Roman pontiff'. that course, The ground, upon which this decision was rested, Reasons of will be seen in the following extracts from an almost contemporary document. They prove that the English divines of the period were actuated by no spirit of revolution, but proceeded with their critical task upon the principles which they had drawn from the study of Christian antiquity. stitution of a Man,' 1537. 'I believe that these particular Churches, in what from the Inplace of the world soever they be congregated, be Christian the very parts, portions or members of this catholic and universal Church. And that between them there is indeed no difference in superiority, pre-eminence or authority, neither that any one of them is head or sovereign over the other; but that they be all equal in power and dignity, and be all grounded and 1 Burnet, Hist. Reform. I. 158,159, Oxf. 1816; Records, No. 26,27: Rymer's Fœdera, XIV. 487-527, ed 1728; Wilkins, Concil. III. 771. builded upon one foundation. ... And therefore I do believe that the Church of Rome is not, nor cannot worthily be called the catholic Church, but only a particular member thereof, and cannot challenge or vindicate of right, and by the Word of God, to be head of this universal Church, or to have any superiority over the other Churches of Christ which be in England, France, Spain, or in any other realm, but that they be all free from any subjection unto the said Church of Rome, or unto the minister or bishop of the same. And I believe also that the said Church of Rome, with all the other particular Churches in the world, compacted and united together, do make and constitute but one catholic Church or body.... And therefore I protest and knowledge that in my heart I abhor and detest all heresies and schisms whereby the true interpretation and sense of Scripture is or may be perverted. And do promise, by the help of God, to endure unto my life's end in the right profession of faith and doctrine of the catholic Church'.' If it be alleged that the rejection of the papal supremacy is here almost exclusively based upon a theory of the Church, the following passage from the same book will exhibit the historical reasons which influenced the English synod: 'As for the bishop of Rome, it was many hundred years after Christ before he could acquire or get any primacy or governance above any other bishops, out of his province in Italy. Sith the which time he hath ever usurped more and more. And though some part of his power was given unto him by the consent of the emperors, kings and princes, and by the consent also of the clergy in general councils assembled; yet surely he attained the most part thereof by marvellous subtilty and craft, and specially 1 Institution of a Christian Man; A.D. 1537; 'Formularies of Faith,' 55-57, Oxf. 1825. 2 This epithet was applied at the time of the Reformation to other synods besides those which were strictly acumenical. Cf. Art. XXI. by colluding with great kings and princes; sometime training them into his devotion by pretence and colour of holiness and sanctimony, and sometime constraining them by force and tyranny: whereby the said bishops. of Rome aspired and arose at length unto such greatness in strength and authority, that they presumed and took upon them to be heads, and to put laws by their own authority, not only unto all other bishops within Christendom, but also unto the emperors, kings, and other the princes and lords of the world, and that under the pretence of the authority committed unto them by the gospel1: wherein the said bishops of Rome do not only abuse and pervert the true sense and meaning of Christ's word, but they do also clean contrary to the use and custom of the primitive Church, and also do manifestly violate as well the holy canons made in the Church immediately after the time of the Apostles, as also the decrees and constitutions made in that behalf by the holy fathers of the Catholic Church, assembled in the first general Councils: and finally they do transgress their own profession, made in their creation. For all the bishops of Rome always, when they be consecrated and made bishops of that see, do make a solemn profession and vow, that they shall inviolably observe and keep all the ordinances made in the eight first general Councils, among the which it is specially provided and enacted, that all Concilium causes shall be finished and determined within the tertium Carprovince where the same be begun, and that by the cap. 26. bishops of the same province; and that no bishop shall exercise any jurisdiction out of his own diocese or province. And divers such other canons were then made and confirmed by the said Councils, to repress and take away out of the Church all such primacy and jurisdiction over kings and bishops, as the bishops of Rome pretend now to have over the 1 For this reason the point brought before Convocation in 1534 was respecting the Scrip- thaginense, Gregorius, lib. iv. Epistolarum, epist. 23. same. And we find that divers good fathers, bishops of Rome, did greatly reprove, yea and abhor, (as a indictione 13, thing clean contrary to the Gospel, and the decrees of the Church,) that any bishop of Rome, or elsewhere, should presume, usurp, or take upon him the title and name of "the universal bishop," or of "the head of all priests," or of "the highest priest," or any such like title. For confirmation whereof, it is out of all doubt, that there is no mention made, neither in Scripture, neither in the writings of any authentical doctor or author of the Church, being within the time of the apostles, that Christ did ever make or institute any distinction or difference to be in the pre-eminence of power, order, or jurisdiction between the apostles themselves, or between the bishops themselves; but that they were all equal in power, order, authority and jurisdiction. And that there is now, and sith the time of the apostles, any such diversity or difference among the bishops, it was devised by the ancient fathers of the primitive Church, for the conservation of good order and unity of the Catholic Church; and that either by the consent and authority, or else at the least by the permission and sufferance of the princes and civil powers for the time ruling'.' aim of the Reformers. This subject was authoritatively resumed in the 'Necessary Doctrine for any Christian Man,' A.D. 1543, and discussed in the same spirit, with the aid of still more historical precedents against the usurpations of the papacy. The whole drift of the arguments emRestorative ployed convince us, that the aim of the Reformers was not to establish a new system of their own, but to re-establish one which they saw falling to decay,-not to depart from the communion of the rest of catholic Christendom, but to suppress the unlawful jurisdiction of a proud and daring pontiff,—and by following in the steps of the primitive Church, to regain for the whole of the English nation many pure and practical elements of the faith, which in the lapse of the Middle Ages had |