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CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF THE SUPREMACY OVER THE

ENGLISH

CHURCH, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE ACT OF SUBMISSION.

THE history of the Supremacy in this country presents a remarkable and striking contrast to the history of its rise and progress in the world at large; a contrast which deserves to be noted more particularly at a time when the connexion between Church and State is deprecated, not only by the enemies of the Church, but by many of her members. To those who look for the severance of that connexion as for a great social improvement to be achieved, it may be far from useless to be reminded, that that connexion is coeval both with the Christianity and with the civilization of this land; that the proposed separation would strike at the root of a principle which, through all the changes through which this country has passed, both by foreign invasion and by internal commotions, has ever been a fundamental principle of our social life; that no experiment can be conceived more directly opposed to the whole of our past history, no experiment, therefore, if there be any continuity in the life of nations as well as of individuals, more hazardous to the national welfare. And those who are, through faithful attachment to the

Church, no less than through loyalty to their Sovereign, opposed to the idea of such a separation, who desire to preserve a connexion which sets upon the national life of England the stamp of religion, may derive no small encouragement from the thought, that the principle for the maintenance of which they are concerned, is a principle which has already withstood the shock of ages and the storms of many changes; that, looking at the providential dealings of God with this land and nation from the earliest ages, they may confidently inscribe on their banner the motto: "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

The accounts transmitted to us of the introduction of the Gospel into Britain, lose themselves among the uncertain legends of the remotest antiquity; it is, however, quite certain that Christianity had found entrance, both among the conquered and among the free tribes, before the close of the second century 50; nor is

there any reason to doubt the truth of the ancient tradition, according to which Britain was the first country of all, in which a national profession of Christianity was made". Of the relation in which, during the British times, the temporal and the spiritual powers stood to each other, no direct evidence exists in the scanty records of those times. The civil constitution of the British tribes, though monarchical in name, seems in reality to have been in a great measure democratic ; and on it the municipal organization of the Roman law was engrafted in those districts which were for a

50 Tertull. adv. Jud. c. vii.

51 Usser. Brit. Eccles. Antiq. c. iii. p. 40.

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time subject to the Roman empire. Under these circumstances the royal power could not but be extremely limited, both in the State and in the Church; and as the Christian hierarchy in all probability succeeded to the powerful influence which the Druids had exercised over the national affairs of the Britons, the ascendancy which the spiritual power, wielded by the bishops of the Church, appears to have possessed, is easily accounted for. The few transactions which are recorded, seem to indicate that the episcopate habitually intermeddled with the civil government of the kingdom, and that temporal interests were discussed and decided in the assemblies of the Church; that in fact, the political assemblies of the nation and the synodal assemblies of the Church were confounded together. Among the objects for which councils were convened, the histories mention the settlement of the succession to the throne, the coronation of kings, and at other times the infliction or removal of penances for deeds of violence committed by the contending chiefs, in the vindication of their own, or the usurpation of each other's rights 52. On the other hand, it appears that synods convened for the settlement of purely ecclesiastical questions, and even for the decision of controversies of faith, partook of the character of popular assemblies, and that the maintenance of orthodoxy depended not so much upon the opinion and the votes of the bishops of the Church, as upon the

52 Matth. Westmon. Ao. 465; Labb. Concil. tom. v. p. 695; Spelman Concil. t. i. p. 61; Labb. t. vi. pp. 507-510; Spelman, t. i. pp. 62-64.

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impression which the arguments and the eloquence of the champions of the true faith produced upon the minds of the assembled multitude 53. There are traces of the exercise of a royal supremacy in the convocation of synods and in the appointment of bishops 55; but it is evident, also, that the bishops possessed an independent power of convoking synods, and that they exercised it not unfrequently for the purpose of proceeding by ecclesiastical censures against the king himself, and other chief men of the land 56.

Meagre as this information is, and wholly insufficient to determine, with any degree of accuracy, the respective limits of the temporal and the spiritual power, it is nevertheless sufficient to establish the fact,

53 See the proceedings of the Council at Verulam, at which Germanus and Lupus attended by invitation from the orthodox party in Britain, for the purpose of confuting the Pelagian heresy. The victory of truth over error is attributed to the ability and the eloquence of the two prelates from Gaul: the assembly was attended by an immense multitude of men, with their wives and children; and in the expressive language of the historian, " populus arbiter vix manus continet, judicium tamen clamore testatur.”Beda Hist. Eccl. 1. i. c. 17; cf. c. 21.

54 Mention is made of a council called by Aurelius Ambrosius, at Stonehenge, date uncertain; see Spelman Concil. t. i. pp. 60, 61. "The bishops, it appears, did homage to Arthur on his accession; and the king's uncle was appointed to the metropolitan see, which took its name from him, his predecessor Dubritius having resigned. -Labb. Concil. t. v. p. 695; Spelman Concil. t. i. p. 61.

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Maurice, king of Glamorgan, and subsequently Guidnarth, a British prince, were excommunicated by synods called for this purpose by the Bishop of Llandaff.-See Labb. Concil. t. vi. pp. 507-510; Spelman Concil. t. i. pp. 62-64: compare also the accounts of the later synods in Wales, Labb. Concil. t. xi. pp. 564 -568. 861. 981. 1279. t. xii. p. 11; Spelman, t. i. pp. 381-386. 429. 502, 503. 570. 625, 626.

that the primitive British Church was a national establishment, that the royal power, and the voice of the laity generally, exercised considerable influence over it, while, at the same time, it preserved the distinctive attributes inherent in the Church by virtue of her divine commission. For a short period this state of things was interrupted in those parts of the island in which the Saxon invaders effected their settlements; the holders of the temporal power being pagans, the fury of persecution was let loose upon the Church. After a time, however, the labours of the Roman missionaries in the south and east, and those of the British and Irish missionaries in the north and west of England, converted the new population to the faith of the original inhabitants; and as the efforts of the missionaries were directed in the first instance upon the kings and chiefs, the Anglo-Saxon Church also assumed, from the very beginning, the character of a national Church and a stateestablishment. King Ethelbert of Kent, to whom Gregory the Great himself wrote on the occasion of his conversion, to bespeak his royal good offices in support of Augustine's mission ", and who interested himself in the abortive attempt made by Augustine to obtain the submission of the British bishops to his metropolitan jurisdiction 58, convened, was personally pre

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57 Tota mente cum eo vos in fervore fidei stringite, atque adnisum illius virtute quam vobis Divinitas tribuit adjuvate; ut regni sui vos IPSE faciat esse participes, CUJUS VOS FIDEM IN REGNO VESTRO RECIPITIS ET FACITIS CUSTODIRI.-Gregor. M. Ep. 1. ix. Ep. 60.

58 ADJUTORIO USUS EDILBERCTI REGIS convocavit ad suum colloquium episcopos sive doctores proxima Brittonum provinciæ.-Beda Hist. Eccl. 1. ii. c. 2.

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