in an anti-reforming sense. There was not the smallest reference made to the approaching exercise in the superlative degree of the papal power by the denunciation of the divorce from Rome. Had there been even a savour of reference to this subject, the opposition of Fisher would probably have been roused, and he might have been supported by a party. Henry committed a gross error in his first demand for the acknowledgment, which was couched in terms so large as to threaten his plan with total failure. But he retreated from this false position, and, in accepting with crafty forethought a qualified recognition, he contrived, without rousing prematurely the enemies of the divorce, to strengthen his own hands for putting them down at the proper season by making what was to all intents and purposes an effectual provision for the determination of the cause within the realm. Accordingly we find that, as early as in February 1530-1, Chapuys writes to Charles V. that Anne and her father have principally caused the movement.13 IV. Such was the position of the question between the Church, with the State, on the one side, and the See of Rome on the other, when Mary came to the throne in 1553. In her early measures for the restoration of the Roman worship, she did not touch the supremacy." At a later period the Parliament proceeded to repeal the Acts which it had passed under Henry the Eighth against the See of Rome, and the Statutes of Appeal, Submission, and Headship. But it is most remarkable that, although the actual bishops and clergy had, through expulsions and burnings, become sufficiently conformable, there was no doctrinal and no legislative action of the Convocations. No attempt was made to disturb the proceedings of 1531 or 1534,15 while the list of books proscribed does not contain the works of Tunstal and Gardiner against the papal supremacy. It is possible that these prelates were not disposed to assent to the reversal of the former proceedings, and there may also have been a jealousy at Rome, adverse to the revival of anything resembling a national church government by the practical exercise of power. Postponing the general recital of the changes made on the accession of Elizabeth, I will only here notice that the Queen found in full force, as ecclesiastical declarations and enactments, the synodical acts of the reign of her father. All that was wanting to give them legal effect was the action of Parliament in the removal of impediments. This was supplied by the very first statute of the reign, 1 Eliz. c. 1. By this statute the regal supremacy was restored. The ideas dominant in it are the renunciation of a 'usurped foreign power; , 16 and 13 Brewer's Letters and Papers, 112, 54. 14 Lingard, vol. v. p. 33. 13 As in the reign of Elizabeth, the Lower House outstripped the Upper, and petitioned the Bishops for many things, among them the restoration of the liberties of the Church as they were in 1 Henry the Eighth. This was in 1554. Wilkins, iv. 96. 16 Sect. i. ii. xvi. xix. the annexation of all such ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction as 'hath heretofore been or may lawfully be used' to 'the imperial crown of this realm.' Or as it appears in the preamble or first section, it is the 'restoring and reuniting' to the crown the 'ancient jurisdictions''to the same of right belonging and appertaining;' and the title of the Act is An Act to restore to the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the estate ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign powers repugnant to the same.' The Act provides an oath to be administered among others to bishops; and this oath declares the sovereign to be the only supreme governor 'as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal,' and utterly renounces all foreign jurisdiction. It might have been supposed that the episcopal body and the members of the Lower House of Convocation, having their personal composition as yet unaltered, would either not have been allowed to sit, or if so allowed would have bestirred themselves on behalf of the Marian legislation, or in some shape of the papal power. They met, however, under the authority of a brief' from the Queen: a fact which of itself raises the presumption, that Elizabeth had by some means assured herself that their action would be kept within due bounds. But it is asserted by Lingard that they presented a petition to the House of Lords declaring among other things belief in the papal supremacy. On reference to the records we find that the allegation is radically erroneous. The facts were as follows.17 On the 25th of February 1559, the Prolocutor, on the part of the Lower House, did make known to the bishops certain articles which that House had framed for the exoneration of its conscience and the declaration of its faith.' One of these articles declares that the supreme power of governing the Church belonged to the successors of Peter, without however attacking in terms the supremacy of the Crown. Another claims for the clergy the right to discuss and define in matters of faith and discipline. The articles were incorporated in an address to the bishops; and, according to the narrative portion of the official record, they asked for some kind of co-operation in the original words, ut ipsi episcopi sibi sint duces in hac re. But the document itself is more explicit; and only asks that, as they have not of themselves access to the Peers, the prelates would make known the articles for them. On a later day they inquired whether this had been done (an articuli sui propositi præsentati essent superioribus ordinibus). Bonner, the acting president, replied that he had placed them before the Keeper of the Great Seal, as Speaker of the House of Lords; who appeared to receive them kindly (gratanter) but made no reply whatever (nullum omnino responsum dedit). The prolocutor and clergy renewed their request, but the Convocation passed on to the business of subsidy; and 17 Wilkins's Concilia, iv. 179. nothing further happened but that the concurrence of the Universities with the five articles was made known on a subsequent day. Thus it is plain that, while the lower clergy framed a document which if a little ambiguous was clearly hostile, the bishops took no part. It is not, I think, too much to say that they carefully and steadily avoided taking a part. There were, indeed, but four of them present. In the Convocation of York no steps whatever bearing on religion were taken. There never was in either Province so much as a question of a synodical act to reverse, or even modify, the formal and valid proceedings taken in the time of Henry. V. Before any steps were commenced by the Queen, eleven out of the twenty-seven bishops of the two provinces were dead. To the other sixteen the oath was legally tendered, which asserted, on behalf of the Crown, less than was contained in the unrepealed and therefore still effective declarations of the Anglican Convocations. One only, Kitchin, Bishop of Llandaff (an indifferent subject), took it. The other fifteen were deprived. It is difficult to conceive a more regular proceeding: they were put out of their sees for refusing to conform themselves to a law of the utmost practical importance, and one which had the sanction alike of the Anglican Church and of the State. Out of these fifteen, five 18 died before steps were taken for the appointment of their successors. Of the remaining ten, Palmer 19 has shown that either eight or nine were liable canonically to expulsion as intruders under the auspices of Mary. If, he says, there was irregularity in one or two remaining cases, this cannot impugn the proceedings generally. It appears, however, that, if the foregoing statement be correct, although the circumstances were exceptional there was no juridical irregularity whatever. The sees were legitimately cleared before the new appointments were made. The avoidance was effected in a majority of instances by death, in the remainder by expulsion for legal cause, with all the authority which the action of the national Church could give for such a purpose. The episcopal succession through Parker is therefore unassailable up to this point, that it did not displace any legitimate possessors, or claimants, of any of the sees. This is of course upon the assumption that, in recognising the supreme governorship of the Crown, and in denying the foreign jurisdiction of the Pope, the Church of England acted within her rights as a distinct national Church. It is not for me to enter upon the questions, properly theological, whether the Pope had a jurisdiction which neither the nation nor the Church had power to touch; or whether the consecration of Parker is assailable on this or on any other ground. 18 Lingard, v. 630, note G. 19 On the Church, i. 372; and J. W. Lea on Spiritual Jurisdiction at the Epochs of the Reformation and Revolution (London: Wells Gardner). I think, however, that it is difficult or impossible to deny that the Anglican Bishops and Clergy under Henry the Eighth, and before the accession of Cranmer, the divorce, and the re-marriage with Anne Boleyn, believed themselves entitled to deal with what Palmer has well called the ordinary jurisdiction of the Pope. It may be that, under Mary, the conservative party in the Church had narrowed its ground, renounced in a measure the older English tradition, and made a rally round the papal standard. It remains, however, a curious question why they did not, before Elizabeth had re-purged the Convocations by means of the oath of supremacy, avail themselves of their legal standing by some attempt at synodical action in the Roman sense and it is a question of still greater interest for what reasons no such action was taken during the Marian period, when the episcopate and priesthood had been effectually purged, and the nation had been acquiescent in the restoration of the Roman form of worship. Such is the subject which I have endeavoured to present under an aspect free from colour, and with the dryness which properly belongs to an argument upon law. I ought perhaps to make two brief additions. First, that my account of the proceedings in the first Elizabethan Convocation, although brief, contains all that is material. Secondly, that I have carefully perused an able article in the Dublin Review for May 1840, which is believed to have been written by Dr. Lingard, and bears the title 'Did the Anglican Church reform herself?' It covers the ground of the argument made in these pages; but supplies no reason, I believe, for altering anything that I have written. W. E. GLADSTONE. OUR MISSIONARIES. SAINT PAUL, when he made answer before princes and governors, was wont to divide his defence between eloquent vindication and wellweighed argument. The great missionary Apologia of last month wisely followed the same lines. A series of crowded public meetings awakened enthusiasm and powerfully urged the religious claims of missionary enterprise. A separate series of Open Conferences quietly and accurately examined into the practical problems of missionary work. It is full time that to some of the questions thus raised an honest answer should be given. During a century Protestant missionaries have been continuously at labour, and year by year they make an ever-increasing demand upon the zeal and the resources of Christendom. Thoughtful men in England and America ask, in all seriousness, what is the practical result of so vast an expenditure of effort? And while the world thus seeks for a sign, the Churches also desire light. What lesson does the hard-won experience of the century teach; the experience bought by the lives and labours of thousands of devoted men and women in every quarter of the globe? What conquests has that great missionary army made from the dark. continents of ignorance and cruel rites? What influence has it exerted on the higher Eastern races who have a religion, a literature, a civilisation older than our own? How far do the missionary methods of the past accord with the actual needs of the present? For the first time the Protestant Missionary Societies of the world have given an organised and authoritative reply to these questions. Their Centennial Conference, which assembled in London in June, devoted fifty meetings to a searching scrutiny into each department of missionary labour, and to the public statement of the results. Fourteen hundred delegates attended, from Europe, Great Britain, and America; each with his own special knowledge on one or other of the subjects dwelt with. Of the 2 millions sterling expended annually on Protestant Foreign Missions, over 2 millions were officially represented at the Congress. But the delegates brought to their task not only the collective authority of Protestant Christendom, they also brought their personal experience, gained in every outlying region of the earth. Certain of our High |