power, called to mind their coronation (27) oath, and by strong and vigorous measures checked and ultimately abolished it; so now that evils no less perilous have arisen from domestic secular control over her affairs, that you will be graciously pleased to revive the constitutional functions of the ancient legislature and council of the Church of England, the Convocation of the Clergy; and to recover to the Crown the most sacred prerogative entrusted to it, of really choosing, with the aid and advice of the spiritual rulers of the Church, such persons as may be considered most fit, for purity of life and doctrine, and other necessary endowments, to succeed to vacant bishoprics, and such other ecclesiastical preferments as are in your Majesty's gift and disposal.

And we will, as in duty bound, ever pray, &c.

APPENDIX.

(1) Reges sacro oleo uncti sunt spiritualis jurisdictionis capaces. 5 Coke's Reports, Caudrey's Case.

Our kings, when they take possession of the room they are called unto, have it painted out before their eyes even by the very solemnities and rights of their inauguration, to what affairs by the said law their supreme power and authority reacheth. Crowned we see they are, and enthronized and anointed; the crown a sign of military, the throne of sedentary or judicial, the oil of religious or sacred power. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book viii. ch. ii. 13.

Rex est persona sacra et mixta cum sacerdote. Year Book, 10 Hen. VII. 18a. Hertford v. Leech. W. Jon. 327. Branch's Principia, 196. The king is persona sacra, and therefore may constitute and restrain ecclesiastical jurisdiction, dispense with the ecclesiastical laws, inflict ecclesiastical censures, &c., for he is supreme ordinary. Comyn's Digest. Eccl. Persons, A.

The quotations contained above, and in other parts of these notes, on the extent of the regal power, must be understood with the same caution as was thought necessary to be expressed in the 37th Article, for this power does not in any respect prejudice, or come in collision with that purely spiritual authority delegated to the Church by commission from its Divine Founder, and called the power of the keys, which was lawfully exercised during the first three centuries before the emperors became Christian, not only without their grant or favour, but often against their express commands. Spiritual power is divided by writers on this subject, into that of Ordinis and Jurisdictionis. That of Ordinis appears chiefly in the administration of the Sacraments. That of Jurisdictionis is held to be double : first, internal, where the Minister of God, by demonstrations, persuasions, instructions, and the like, so convinces the inward conscience of a man, as it presently resigns and yields obedience to that which is proposed, as did those three thousand souls who were converted at the preaching of St.

Peter; secondly, external, when Christians in foro exteriori are compelled to their duty and obedience. That power of order and of jurisdiction internal our kings or queens never claimed, but of jurisdiction external and what belongs to the outward polity of the Church, they have ever looked upon it as their duty and honour to become "Nursing Fathers and Mothers."

(2) The king is the head of the commonwealth immediate under God. And therefore carrying God's stamp and mark among men, and being as one may say a god upon earth, as God is a King in heaven, hath a shadow of the excellencies that are in God in a similitudinary sort given him. God's excellencies and honour standeth partly in things incommunicable unto other, partly in such as after a sort He maketh his creatures partakers of both; which the king is said to have, some in truth, other by fiction, all by similitude from the Divine perfection. The excellencies which God bestoweth upon his creatures (for I will touch no more but those that the books of our law do speak of, and such as are leading rules to the cases that you shall find there argued and debated) are, first, majesty, sovereignty, power, perpetuity, and then the noble complement of justice and truth. Finch's Law, book ii. ch. i.

(3) In a national convention or parliament held by William the Conqueror, it is declared Rex, quia vicarius Summi Regis est, ad hoc constitutus est, ut regnum et populum Domini, et, super omnia, sanctam ecclesiam regat et defendat," which parliamentary declaration is nearly a transcript from a similar avowal of Edward the Confessor. Laws of King Edward the Confessor, cap. 17, fo. 142. Spel. Con. vol. i. p. 63. 5 Coke's Reports, Caudrey's Case. Jewel's Defence of his Apol. part ii. c. ii. div. 1.

Rex ex jurisdictione suâ sicut Dei minister et vicarius tribuat unicuique quod suum fuerit. . . . Omnis quidem sub eo et ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo.... Et quidem sub lege esse debeat, cum sit Dei vicarius, evidenter apparet ad similitudinem Jesu Christi cujus vices gerit in terris. . . . Ad hoc autem creatus est . . . ut in eo Dominus sedeat et per ipsum sua judicia discernat. . . . Separare autem debet rex (cum sit Dei vicarius in terrâ) jus ab injuriâ, æquum ab iniquo, ut omnes sibi subjecti honeste vivant. . . . Nihil enim potest rex in terris, cum sit Dei minister et vicarius, nisi id solum quod de jure potest. Bracton de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, lib. i. c. viii.; lib. ii. c. 24; lib. iii. c. 9.

Of what kind soever the means be whereby governors are lawfully advanced into their seats, we by the law of God stand bound meekly to acknowledge them for God's lieutenants, and to confess their power His. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book viii. ch. ii. 6.

The reason why we are bound in conscience to be subject unto all such power is, because all "powers are of God." They are of God either

instituting or permitting them. Power is then of Divine institution, when either God himself doth deliver, or men by light of nature find out the kind thereof. So that the power of parents over children, and of husbands over their wives, the power of all sorts of superiors, made by consent of commonwealths within themselves, or grown from agreement amongst nations, such power is of God's own institution in respect of the kind thereof. Again, if respect be had unto those particular persons to whom the same is derived, if they either receive it immediately from God, as Moses and Aaron did; or from nature, as parents do; or from men by a natural and orderly course, as every governor appointed in any commonwealth, by the order thereof, doth: then is not the kind of their power only of God's instituting, but the derivation thereof also into their persons, is from Him. He hath placed them in their rooms, and doth term them his ministers; subjection therefore is due unto all such powers, inasmuch as they are of God's own institution, even then when they are of man's creation, omni humanæ creaturæ: which things the heathens themselves do acknowledge.

Σκηπτούχος βασιλεὺς, ᾧτε Ζεὺς κῦδος ἔδωκεν '.

As for them that exercise power altogether against order, although the kind of power which they have may be of God, yet is their exercise thereof against God, and therefore not of God, otherwise than by permission, as all injustice is. Ibid. book viii. Appendix.

The natural body of the king being thus invested with his politic and royal capacity, we behold him as the representative and lieutenant of God Almighty, who is King of kings. All power is from God, and Imperium non nisi Divino Fato datur. Essay on the Supremacy of the King of England, by Thomas Staveley, Esq., of the Inner Temple, 1769, annexed to "The Romish Horseleech,” p. 228.

(4) Collect in the Inauguration Service.

(5) On the subject of the royal supremacy, see the whole of the 8th book of "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," by the incomparable Hooker," whom most political writers, though differing in opinion among themselves, respectfully look up to and eagerly cite in support of their several persuasions." Wooddesson's Elements of Jurisprudence. The greatest security of the Church is the supremacy of the Crown, whereby as a body spiritual it is united to the king as head, who is thereby its protector and defender. Answer to a pamphlet, entitled An Examination of the Scheme of Church Power, laid down in the Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, &c., 1735.

(5*) 13 Eliz. c. 12.

i Hom. ll. lib. A. ver. 279.

(6) The Canon is in these words, "Whoso shall hereafter affirm, that the king's majesty hath not the same authority in causes ecclesiastical that the godly kings had amongst the Jews, and Christian emperors in the Primitive Church, or impeach in any part his regal supremacy in the said causes restored to the crown, and by the laws of this realm therein established, let him be excommunicated ipso facto, and not restored but only by the archbishop, after his repentance and publick revocation of those his wicked errours."

The first of the same Canons requires, that "all ecclesiastical persons having cure of souls, and all other preachers and readers of divinity lectures shall to the uttermost of their wit, knowledge, and learning, purely and sincerely (without any colour of dissimulation), teach, manifest, open and declare, four times every year (at the least) in their sermons and other collations and lectures," what is there expressed respecting the supremacy. The 27th Canon forbids the administration of the holy communion "to any that have spoken against, and depraved his majesty's sovereign authority in causes ecclesiastical ;" and by the 55th Canon, "before all sermons, lectures, and homilies," the form of prayer setting forth the king's titles and ecclesiastical prerogatives is prescribed to be used. See also the Canon of 1640, "Concerning the regal power," and the Directions of King George I. to the bishops in 1714, that they require the clergy in their prayer before sermon, to keep strictly to the form in the 55th Canon contained, or to the full effect thereof; and providing that "nothing in the said direction shall be understood to discharge any person from preaching in defence of the regal supremacy established by law, as often and in such manner as the first Canon of this Church doth require."

(7) Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book viii. ch. i. 1 ; ch. iii.

(8) "Ego Constantini, vos Petri Gladium habetis in manibus." King Edgar's Speech to his Clergy. Ailred. Rival. Coll. 361. 16.

(9) Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book i. ch. ii. 3.

(10) Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo, et sub lege, quia lex facit regem. Attribuat igitur rex legi quod lex attribuit ei, videlicet dominationem et potestatem, non est enim rex ubi dominatur voluntas et non lex. Bracton de Leg. Angl. lib. i. c. 8. 4 Co. ad Lect. Branch's Principia, p. 195, 196.

Happier that people whose law is their king in the greatest things, than that whose king is himself their law. Where the king doth guide the state, and the law the king, that commonwealth is like a harp or melodious instrument, the strings whereof are tuned and handled all by one, following as laws the rules and canons of musical science. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book 8. c. ii. 12.