PAGE 803 The Factory and Workshop Act, 1895 (58 & 59 Vict. c. 37), s. 17, provides that, subject to and in the absence of notice, the holidays to be observed in a factory or workshop under sect. 22, sub-sects. 1 and 2, of the Factory and Workshop Act, 1878, shall be the whole of Christmas Day and Good Friday, and of every Bank-holiday. 1125 The Chancery Division will, in a suitable case, authorize the application of purchase-money of glebe taken by a railway company in the redemption of terminable rent-charges on the glebe, created under the Improvement of Land Act, 1864. (Ex parte Vicar of Castle Bytham, and Ex parte Midland Railway Co., 1 Ch. 1895 p. 348.) 1221 The provisions of sub-sects. 2 and 3 of sect. 8 of the Tithe Act, 1891 (54 & 55 Vict. c. 8), were applied in the case of Regina v. Commissioners of Taxes for Barstaple (2 Q. B. 1895 p. 123), in which case the owner of the tithe rent-charge appealed against an alleged under-valuation of the land liable to such rentcharge. 1231 Another local Act for the commutation of tithes in a parish in the City of London is 7 Geo. 4, c. liv, referred to later in this work at p. 1688. 1354 As an instance of a charge on glebe for drainage, see Ex parte Vicar of Castle Bytham, and Ex parte Midland Railway Co. (1 Ch. 1895 p. 348), already referred to in these Addenda. ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. PART I. INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER I. THE CHURCH GENERALLY. THE Church (a) is a society of men instituted for the worship of The God, bound together by the profession of a common faith, the Church." practice of divinely ordained rites, and resting upon a visible external order. Such a society was unknown to heathen antiquity, and is the peculiar creature of christianity. Heathen antiquity had a priesthood, but not a church. Its religion was inseparably interwoven with the civil life and municipal law of the citizen (b). Its creed was not a regular system of doctrine directly affecting practice, but a variety of incoherent legends and traditions mingled with remnants of divine revelations, more or less believed by the people. Christianity is inseparable from a community, in which it imparts its truths by regular course of instruction, and endeavours to secure the observance of its precepts by a moral and religious education; and being a revelation of the will of God is necessarily independent of municipal institution, and unconfined by the limits of places or kingdoms. The Church of Christ ought to be, and once was, like the robe Divisions in of its Blessed Founder, and, like its faith, one. But in the lapse the Church. of time various errors have been introduced from various causes into the faith and practice of the Primitive Apostolic Church. This unity has been broken, and various communities of christians have formed separate churches. The great separation of the Eastern and Western Churches, originally caused by the arrogance, ambition and un-catholic conduct of Rome, remains from the same cause not only unhealed up to the present day, but aggravated by the new dogmas which Rome has recently promulgated, founded upon a new theory of development which shakes the stability of all christian faith. From like causes came the independence of our branch of the catholic church in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and their offshoots in the United States of America, in India, in the British colonies, and in heathen lands, and of the imperfectly constituted Churches of the Protestants (c). From a like cause it seems probable that an independent Episcopal Church will be formed in Germany by those who, holding fast to the ancient doctrine of the church and rejecting the novelties of the last Roman Council, adopt the title of "Old Catholics" and avoid the error and confusion generated by the ambiguous title of Protestant (d). (3) CHAPTER II. CHARACTER AND STATUS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Church. THE Church of England requires her members to believe in Belief in the "one Holy Catholic Apostolic Church," or "one Catholic and Catholic Apostolic Church" (a). A very grave and carefully considered manifesto, put forth in March, 1851, at the time of the last papal aggression, on her behalf by two archbishops and twenty bishops of England, distinctly declared "the undoubted identity of the church before and after the Reformation" (b): and that at this epoch she purged herself from certain corruptions and innovations of Rome, and established "one uniform ritual," but "without in any degree severing her connexion with the ancient Catholic Church." So also at the time of the foundation of the Anglican Bishopric of Jerusalem, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the new bishop a "letter commendatory letter commendatory" to the "right reverend our brothers in Christ, the prelates and bishops of the ancient and apostolic churches in Syria, and the countries adjacent"; and in an explanatory statement published by authority, it was declared to be the duty of the new bishop to "establish and maintain, as far as in him lies, relations of christian charity with other churches represented at Jerusalem, and in particular with the Orthodox Greek Church" (c). In 1867, eight primates and sixty-eight bishops assembled from all parts of the globe, under the presidency of the metropolitan of Canterbury. The resolutions of this conference were prefaced by the following introduction : "We, bishops of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, in visible communion with the United Church of England and Ireland, professing the faith delivered to us in holy scripture, maintained by the primitive church, and by the fathers of the English reformation, now assembled, by the good providence of God, at the Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, under the presidency of the primate of all England, desire, first, to give hearty thanks to Almighty God for having thus brought us together for common counsels and united worship; secondly, we desire to express the deep sorrow with which we view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, ardently (a) Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, English Prayer Book. (b) 2 Phill. Intern. Law, § ccccxx. |