mals'. A legal defilement was attributed even to the water into which such substances had fallen'. In the Penitentials, accordingly, are provided penances apportioned to all these breaches of the ceremonial law, whether accidental or otherwise. It is this peculiarity which has made many regard certain canonical sanctions, occurring in Anglo-Saxon monuments, as irresistibly ludicrous. Readers have been unable to contain their laughter, on encountering grave denunciations against water that had come into contact with a dead mouse or weasel. Those who think, however, of Mosaic prohibitions and the council of Jerusalem, will recognise in such peculiarities interesting links connecting modern times with ancient. It was owing, probably, to Theodore of Tarsus that these Asiatic restrictions were enjoined so rigidly by the Anglo-Saxon Church, and her deference for his authority remained unshaken to the last.

3

As this venerable community, like other ancient churches, was happily connected with apostolic times by an episcopal polity, sufficient care impressed laical apprehensions with a due perception of this essential feature in religious discipline. Opulence was, indeed,

deed, enjoins, that even water, | blood. Egbert goes no further into which a little pig had fallen, than to say, We believe that they should be sprinkled with holy nevertheless are not to be cast water and fumigated with incense away; but he adds, that they canbefore use. It allows, however, not be used until they are clean. expressly the eating of unclean animals in cases of necessity.

3 Theodore is cited in the 39th canon, as an authority for dispensing with some of these scruples. This may, perhaps, appear an additional reason for attributing chiefly to him the naturalization of this Judaizing Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons. As usual, some of his admirers had gone further than he intended.

exhorted and allured abundantly to the foundation of churches, by the offer of patronage. But no trace appears of independent congregations or of congregations federally connected. Every new church was considered as an additional member of that single religious body which, without episcopacy, must want its full integrity. Whenever a diocese, accordingly, lost that spiritual head, which is alike necessary for securing the apostolical succession of ministers, and for assimilating religious communities with primitive antiquity, all the more considerable inhabitants were convened. Both laity and clergy solemnly admitted a serious loss, for the speedy reparation of which they were equally concerned. Hence it was by their united suffrages that a successor was appointed to the vacant see'. His original nomination might seem to have rested with the crown, and the popular duty to have been that of approval or rejection. Having been chosen, the bishopelect was presented to the prelates of the province for examination. He was now interrogated as to the soundness of his belief, and required to give a solemn pledge for the due performance of his episcopal duties. A profession of canonical obedience to his metropolitan was also exacted from him. Of obedience to the Roman see, or of a belief in transubstantiation, there appears no mention in our earliest pontificals. Pro

1 For the address of clergy and laity to the bishops of the province, see Bampton Lectures, 177. 2 For some of the interrogatories, see Bampton Lectures,

94.

3 Nasmith in his printed Catalogue of Archbishop Parker's MSS. in the library of C. C. C. C., has the following remark on an

ancient pontifical in that collection, No. 44:-"Promittit eps ordinandus se plebem ei commissum ex sacris Scripturis docturum, officium episcopale fideliter obsecuturum, ecclesiæ Dorobernensi se fore subjectum et obedientem, et articulis fidei assensum præbet. Nihil vero hic invenies de subjectione a sede Romanâ ab electis

fessions of such obedience and belief are, therefore, palpable innovations. Their occurrence in later pontificals only, deservedly stamps them as interpolations. Formularies, thus interpolated, contrasted with more ancient records, afford invaluable evidence against allegations of antiquity advanced by a Romish advocate.

The prelacy constituted a standing branch of the Saxon witena-gemot, or parliament. Legislative assemblies merely lay were unknown to those who provided England with her envied constitution. It would be, indeed, monstrous folly, as well as gross injustice, to exclude from political deliberation that very class of considerable proprietors, in which alone information and morality are indispensable. On every meeting, accordingly, of the great national council, Anglo-Saxon archbishops, bishops, and abbots, were provided with appropriate places. Thus the civil polity of England was wisely established on a Christian basis. The clerical estate has formed an integral member of it from the first. An English prelate's right to occupy the legislative seat that has descended to him from the long line of his predecessors, is, therefore, founded on the most venerable of national prescriptions. It is no privilege derived from that Norman policy which converted episcopal endowments into baronies. It is far more ancient than the Conqueror's time; being rooted amidst the very foundations of the monarchy'.

postea exactâ, nec de transubstantiatione."-P. 28.

For the interpolations respecting traditions and papal constitutions, see Bampt. Lect. 95: for those respecting transubstantiation and remission of sins, see n. 420. It might have been re

marked, in the Sermon upon Attrition, that the insertion of an interrogation as to the remission of sins, in the later pontificals, is an incidental proof that the scholastic doctrine of sacramental absolution is of no high antiquity.

Our Saxon princes "had their

Episcopal privileges were, indeed, abridged, according to modern ideas, under William. He found the bishop and the earl, or alderman, sitting concurrently as judges in the county-court; having for assessors the thanes or gentry within the shire. The tribunal entertained ordinary questions of litigation, and was open to appeals from the various hundred-courts. Its own decisions were liable to revision by the king alone. An Anglo-Saxon prelate was therefore continually before the public eye, invested with an important civil trust. After a reign of about seventeen years, the Conqueror abrogated this ancient usage, and following continental precedents, erected separate places of judicature for ecclesiastical suits'; which were to be conducted solely by canon-law. A principle of clerical exclusion, or more properly exemption, from one class of secular duties, was thus established: probably to please William's foreign ecclesiastics, who must have been indisposed, both from habit and prejudice, to the simple forms, and mixed jurisdiction of the old Anglo-Saxon courts'. This alteration, therefore, was rather meant to raise, than depress the Church. But it may supply an argument,

seen the French were wont to do. The bishops and clergy advised apart in matters purely spiritual: but the great-men debated together with them in civil and mixed affairs, and in which the interest of the state was concerned, as well as that of the church.”—ABP. WAKE's Authority of Christian Princes. Lond. 1697, p. 161. See also his State of the Church, p. 135.

general councils, first, in which | after the like manner that we have they deliberated of all public matters: and these councils consisted of the archbishops, bishops, and abbots, of the clergy; and of the wise-men, great-men, aldermen, counts," (earls) "that is to say, of the chief of the laity, indifferently called in those times, by any or all of those names. In these councils they debated, both of civil and ecelcsiastical affairs, and made laws with the prince's consent and concurrence, for the ordering of both. And this they did, so far as I can judge,

1HICKES, Dissert. Epistolaris. Thes. i. 4.

Gent. Mag. Jan. 1844, p. 35.

if unexplained, to proud and selfish spirits, bent on reducing the ministers of religion to insignificance.

Soon after the conversion of Kent, an episcopal see was founded at Rochester, in subordination to that of Canterbury. To this, the archbishops are said to have nominated until after the Conquest'. When other kingdoms of the Heptarchy were converted, a single see was established in each. In Wessex this was the Oxfordshire Dorchester; in Essex, London; in East-Anglia, Dunwich; in Mercia, Lichfield; in Northumbria, Lindisfarne; and in Sussex, Selsey. Essex and Sussex remained permanently under one prelate. The diocese of Wessex was firstly dismembered by the foundation of a bishopric at Winchester'; subsequently still further, by such foundations at Sherborne, Wilton', Wells', Crediton and Bodmin. Mercia was gradually divided into the dioceses of Sidnacester, Leicester, Hereford', Worcester, and Lichfield. Of these, the two former

1 GODWIN, De Præsull. 527. This archiepiscopal privilege, we are told, was relinquished in favour of the monks of Rochester, by Archbishop Theobald, in 1147. But Godwin's editor shows the statement to be inaccurate. The ancient usage appears to have been, that the monks of Rochester should choose their own bishop in the chapter-house of Canterbury. Probably Theobald relieved them from this mark of subjection. It is obvious, that while the old practice continued, the archbishop would be likely to influence the election. The see of Rochester was founded in 604.

2 The see of Dorchester was founded about 635; that of Winchester, about 663.-Ib. 202, 203.